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alphamerik | 13 years ago | on: How We Got 50 Women to Our Hackathon (And You Can, Too)

Thanks for pointing this out, because between the multitude of posts in this forum and the posts which I responded to on the blog, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. What is the big deal here? Seems like so many of my peers have deep seated psychological problems (not like I don't, but damn).

alphamerik | 14 years ago | on: The FBI's files on Steve Jobs

> Wow, back in 1991, he was being considered for a Presidential Appointment [...] That's what all of the documents seem to be from

On the first page it looks like in '07 two documents were destroyed, also from '85 there is a report from a bomb threat.

alphamerik | 14 years ago | on: Show HN: Interviewing devs made easy

How does etherpad (acquired by google) compare to just using Google docs? Recently went through an interview with Google where we used a shared document, it was a horrible experience. I remember thinking that no sane person would code with a plain text editor and there should be a better way to do it. The ideal service to me would be something like a web based collaborative emacs.

alphamerik | 14 years ago | on: Bitcoin is not decentralized

The problem is that if the cryptography is broken, in regards to #3, you have no idea if a token created with the 'old method' is real or counterfeit.

In a decentralised service you would need to convert all old tokens into new tokens before the old cryptography was compromised, which requires work - you would be generating new coins, and would have an exchange rate. Or you could setup a centralised validation service for coins as the article suggests, before the cryptography was broken, to ensure people aren't creating fake money.

I am not sure what you mean by accepting a bitcoin vs voting for a bitcoin, can you clarify? "Voting" doesn't look like a method they normally use for validation...

alphamerik | 15 years ago | on: On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

This is a good example of why (how?) language is so weird. Maybe I am just satiated, but for an inquisitive mind, to me "Why is the moon in the sky?" and "How is the moon in the sky?" parse out to be semantically equivalent. Science (astronomy) does try explain how (why?) we exist and under what circumstance the universe came into existence (if it did).

alphamerik | 15 years ago | on: On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

I think the whole point of that part of the article is that the only answer that could satisfice O'Reilly and viewers is that of religion, and Norvig says Chomsky has a philosophy "(some would say religious belief)" i.e. some unscientific belief that "language should be simple and understandable", which is balderdash to claim that is a religious viewpoint, in my opinion.

There are several ways one could model language, from a top down purely statistical approach that Norvig likes, something in the middle which Chomsky proposes, to a bottom up neural model of chemical interactions. There are advantages and disadvantages to each method for many different reasons.

alphamerik | 15 years ago | on: Amazon Web Services are down

A couple of years ago you had expressed interest in making a port to App Engine, any interest in doing that still? Want any help? ;)

alphamerik | 15 years ago | on: Programmer problem solving sequence: should it be like this?

It amazes me that people would put coworkers second. Those people can be very annoying because I feel like their only purpose is to leech knowledge rather than do any real work. OP's list is the lazy programmer's list. Taking breaks to think about the problem is good, my order of operations is something like:

   1. Google
   2. RTFM
   3. Think
   4. StackOverflow
   5. Coworkers/IRC
Even going to IRC can be dangerous, was told to read the f-ing kernel source when trying to ask questions about the darwin kernel API documentation once.

alphamerik | 15 years ago | on: Tell HN: Uptick in mean-spirited comments

Have you considered charging for write access? Allow the site to be publicly readable but charge people a yearly fee to submit stories and posts. They would be much less likely to act abusive if they are paying and their access could be revoked. Several membership levels and tiers of forums could be provided, including private and invite only.

alphamerik | 15 years ago | on: I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?

I do indent my code, but I prefer to auto-indent. Using indentation to determine if a line of code falls inside or outside some logic block requires a lot more effort for me. Would much rather just use curly braces. Curly braces also make copying and pasting code blocks much easier.

alphamerik | 15 years ago | on: Calling out Jason Fried for bad business advice

They lost me at Stanford vs State school, I had to stop there.

Cover letters are an excellent way to judge the intent and character of an applicant. Sounds like Scott is the one with a chip on his shoulder there...

alphamerik | 16 years ago | on: Dear Millennials: Your parents lied to you

Dale Carnegie has been writing about this stuff since the 30s, minus the pithy blame. This guy sounds like he is going through a late stage realization wound up with an entitlement attitude.

alphamerik | 16 years ago | on: The Unemployment Rate for People Like You

Maybe, or perhaps or is because they are white and college educated. After all, white male college graduates between 25 and 44 have the next lowest unemployment rate of any demographic group.

alphamerik | 16 years ago | on: Why the Evidence of Water on the Moon is Bad News

Scientists like Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson have done more for the public interest of science than any so called administrator, and oddly enough they tend not to impose their specific agendas in the process. If the "public" realized how much money goes into science vs how much money goes into the private military industrial complex they would be appalled. Or, perhaps the public is apathetic and "public interest" is merely a scape goat for the media. Someone, after all, must tell the public what they are interested in.
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