anaximander's comments

anaximander | 6 years ago | on: Show HN: Infinite prose generated by Open AI's GPT-2 trained on “Infinite Jest”

This is a really fun use of GPT-2. Uncannily similar to DFW's own writing! And definitely got a hearty laugh out of long strings of "Jim. Jim, Jim. Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim.". Would love to see this extended further!

anaximander | 8 years ago | on: Vimflowy – A productivity tool drawing inspiration from Workflowy and Vim

To expand on this: I use VimWiki daily and it's been a really great way to keep myself organized. Being able to easily hyperlink and jump between documents makes navigating the document hierarchy very straightforward. I have VimWiki set up to integrate with Taskwarrior, so I can create and manage tasks right from Vim and everything gets persisted in a Taskwarrior file, which I can then use to generate reports or otherwise manipulate via standard Taskwarrior commands. Creating/managing tabular data has never been easier in Vim with the help of VimWiki. The list goes on; I really can't sing its praises enough!

anaximander | 9 years ago | on: The Embarrassing History of Crap Thrown into Yellowstone’s Geysers

What is there to like about such an event?

anaximander | 9 years ago | on: Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language

Very cool idea, and impressively well-thought-out. I have long toyed with the idea of a universal 'concept language' wherein all concepts can expressed as one of a set of "root" concepts that has had a chain of generic "transformations" applied to it.

anaximander | 9 years ago | on: Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language

Is assembly language not useful for mere humans? Certainly, every human-friendly programming language abstraction that we use today is built off of something like assembly language.

anaximander | 9 years ago | on: Astronomers Have Found a Star Orbiting a Black Hole at 1% the Speed of Light

I think they're pointing out that while the speed of the earth relative to the sun is 30 km/s, its speed relative to the center of the galaxy is quite a bit faster, which may be a fairer comparison to what's being discussed in the original article.

anaximander | 10 years ago | on: MentalHealthError: an exception occurred

> ... if I ever felt that kind of epiphany personally I know I would head straight to the nearest mental hospital.

I can't say that you're wrong, but I would also ask you to consider that your sane and reasonable state of mind that's saying this now, is not the same state of mind that believes these delusions. What may seem right now to be a very clear and easy decision may be the last thing you would even consider in another mental state.

anaximander | 10 years ago | on: The anonymous Silicon Valley satire that has stumped tech world insiders

Search for the div with id="cLxocL1WVq1Evp" and set its width to 100% in the CSS. Abracadabra.

anaximander | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: How to learn about the history of computing?

Seconding "The Information". I had it on audiobook and listened to it during long car trips. It was very compelling and informative.

anaximander | 10 years ago | on: Arduino-based backyard aquaponics (2013) [video]

Yep, I just subscribed to her not too long ago. Mostly, it seems to focus on alternative and minimal housing solutions. It's wonderfully refreshing to see the unusual and simple ways in which people decide to live, in a world so often focused on financial success and extravagance.

anaximander | 10 years ago | on: Gentrification Spreads an Upheaval in San Francisco’s Mission District

Luxury condominiums, organic ice cream stores, cafes that serve soy lattes and chocolate shops that offer samples from Ecuador and Madagascar are rapidly replacing 99-cent stores, bodegas and rent-controlled apartments in the Mission District

It's a minor tragedy to set up the conflict this way. "Largely useless and hedonistic shops replacing stores that actually matter! How long can the city tolerate these too-wealthy, dandy scum?!"

Certainly, if the stores are being replaced, that's a function of property-owners' decisions to change tenants, is it not? Why are we blaming financially-successful technologists for actions taken by greedy land-owners? Don't you think these "gentrifiers" would be happy to pay the same amount that the "natives" have been paying for so long?

The property-owners are extracting as much from the world as they can, because they have a monopoly on the land/property and nobody except maybe the government can argue with them. They were taking as much as they could from you before, and now they're taking as much as they can from the wealthier people moving in. This is capitalism: they've earned their right to set the price for their property by buying it/building it/inheriting it before you did.

What options do we have, if we want this to change? Let's not pit the victims against each other.

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: I'll Accept Anything – Accepting every pull request submitted

He closed a bunch of issues as "dick" moves, which I can understand, but a lot of PRs were just ignored entirely, which is a little disappointing.

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

I think I get your point, but unfortunately we can't let the value of "public perception" influence how we handle individual cases with individual circumstances. To imagine that a judge/jury would make decisions on this basis is actually a bit horrifying, if I may be frank.

I would much rather that the media focuses on the trials of the underrepresented many who are facing real gender discrimination in the workplace.

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

I think what they're trying to say is:

Grievance - Racial minorities (specifically, black people) are unfairly discriminated against by law enforcement.

Just because, in this case, this tragic situation was deemed a legally acceptable use of force, doesn't mean that racial minorities are not generally discriminated against by law enforcement.

Similarly, just because this case wasn't a clear-cut case of gender discrimination, doesn't mean it isn't still a valid problem in this industry.

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins

It's possible that some men, especially the very successful/powerful, are afraid that a woman will file suit over something which, despite being said without malice, was offensive to the listener.

Edit: I'm not necessarily defending their decision to discriminate based on gender. I'm only trying to suggest a motive for their bad behavior.

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: The Ellen Pao Trial and Silicon Valley

I agree that the gift was inappropriate. I was responding to your comment:

"Hitting on a woman" - Doing nice things and inviting her to be alone with you on a day dedicated to romance.

The invitation to have dinner may have happened anytime.

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: The Ellen Pao Trial and Silicon Valley

I think the author of this article made it (perhaps deliberately) ambiguous as to when these events took place.

he gave Pao a volume of Leonard Cohen’s poems and drawings (entitled Book of Longing) on Valentine’s Day and asked her out to dinner on a night when his wife was out of town

These could very well be two completely separate occasions. I suspect the author created this juxtaposition to elicit your precise reaction.

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression

I guess I didn't mean to imply that I live in a world where everyone can have these "pure-truth" arguments. In fact, it's a rare and often rewarding experience if it does happen. I also know that there's a time and a place for debating and it requires consent of all parties. It also requires that some value is being generated, if we're talking about debating in the workplace.

I guess I am having trouble appreciating the relation of this article to gender, for two reasons.

1. The author is claiming that "men are aggressive" and then claiming that "aggression" is the problem, so the point of the article really seemed to be "men are the problem". I find this in some ways offensive, especially since I (a man) think that I don't do the things mentioned in the article. Maybe I'm overreacting to being accused of something based on my gender.

2. The author states "Crossing boundaries and using aggression to win an argument includes making personal remarks, interrupting, speaking much more loudly than an opponent, or entering someone's personal space." I completely agree that these behaviors are unacceptable. But, I think that these are all gender neutral behaviors, and it harms people of any gender when they are used against them. Is it really important to designate men as the ones who must follow these rules?

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression

This is an excellent perspective. Those tradeoffs are often the root of these arguments anyway: Alice comes up with a solution that has some advantage x. Bob comes up with a solution that has some advantage y. They'll argue endlessly because neither one of them will say "Oh you're right, I didn't consider x" or "I like your solution, but I don't know what's more important: x or y. Let's focus on determining that instead."

anaximander | 11 years ago | on: Argument Cultures and Unregulated Aggression

I feel like this article starts off on the wrong foot:

"An argument is the use of aggressive opposition to weed out weak logic, keeping the strongest ideas possible. The philosophy behind using arguments for problem-solving is that attacking the weak parts of an idea will leave the best solutions."

I'm with you so far. Being able to distinguish good from bad is the basis of critical thought.

"The metaphor for argument in our culture is war. We think of people we argue with as opponents ..."

I know a lot of people who do this, but I certainly don't, and I consider it a sign of maturity when somebody is able to separate ideas from egos. Remember, we started off by talking about the good and bad parts of ideas; not good and bad people. It's not a fight, it's a collaboration to share perspectives and discover new insight.

"... we attack their position and defend our own, we can gain or lose ground, and ultimately we can win or lose arguments—just like battles"

Whether you're focusing on the idea, or the person who generated it, there's really no use in considering them an opponent, and even less use in framing things in terms of winning or losing. Ideas don't "compete" with each other, any more than 1 and 2 compete to see which is the bigger number. There's only truth. If you're winning or losing, you've already missed the point and you're focusing on the wrong thing.

I think "aggression" is unfortunately not the real problem here, the real problem is that people often aren't mature enough to admit they're wrong, or to consider another person's perspective, or to say "I don't know".

I don't want to focus on this aspect of the article, but I find it really discouraging to continually see these articles which try to spin things in terms of gender. Developing this "men vs women" perspective is exactly the kind of "adversarial mind" the author denounces in the introduction.