bapadna | 15 years ago | on: De-anonymizing LinkedIn profile views
bapadna's comments
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?
If somebody says "evolution is a lie, and it shouldn't be taught to children", the fact that they don't actually live their life according to that credo is sort of irrelevant.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?
As presented, that just means 9% of people think it's too high, but shouldn't be eliminated.
I think the issue with your presentation is that 'cut' can mean either 'reduced' or 'eliminated'.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: How teenage poker prodigy Steven Silverman won, and lost, millions
Didn't expect a response from you! All is excellent, except for the fact that I'm east coast now and the mixed game and limit game selection around here is worse than terrible.
Seriously though, I meant what I said about the debt of gratitude. Massive thanks.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deaths
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bapadna | 15 years ago | on: How teenage poker prodigy Steven Silverman won, and lost, millions
I've never been on deucescracked, but as a long-time acquaintance (and poker foe) of Joe Tall, DeathDonkey and Jay Rosenkratz, I'd be surprised if it wasn't good.
I can still remember the exact moment back in 2002 or 2003 where I realized just how much than me better Joe Tall was. We were having a cigarette near the Foxwoods poker room and he reviewed the action on a few hands we'd just played in a 20/40 game, and he remembered them in more detail than me, but he also processed the detail differently to emphasize different aspects of my game.
I was a winning player but after that night I stopped playing for a month, did nothing but study books, analyze hands and sessions, and grind out math to see if some of my assumptions about lines against various hand ranges were correct.
After that I got a lot better, jumped limits, and ended up meeting DeathDonkey in a 100/200 game at Commerce and again realized I was outclassed.
I'd say I owe them a debt of gratitude, but I'm pretty sure I already paid it at the tables.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: How teenage poker prodigy Steven Silverman won, and lost, millions
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: How teenage poker prodigy Steven Silverman won, and lost, millions
Poker is an education and entertainment product.
Entertainment, because professional players are allowing amateurs to pay to meet better players, and test their skills against them. There really aren't many other games where this is the case.
Education, because there are huge numbers of available lessons (in both hard and soft skills) for players who decide to think about the game deeply.
I don't see anything "empty" about it. But then again, I'm a winning poker player who ported lessons from poker into everything from business to my golf game. It's had such a positive impact on my life that I can't view it negatively.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Google Cars Drive Themselves, in Traffic
My car automatically throws on the brakes if it thinks I'm about to hit something (tested accidentally, once, and it stopped me with about one car length to spare.), and my cruise control watches for cars in front of me, so it will go the speed I set, unless there's a slower car in front of me, in which case it leaves a safe distance.
The future is now, man :-)
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: What a scientist didn't tell the New York Times about his study on bee deaths
Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman
This guy doesn't deal in those books. He deals in books with known prices and enough volume that he can be reasonably sure it'll sell in a moderate amount of time.
If nobody else has it on amazon, this guy isn't buying it and putting it up there.
Your stated benefit doesn't exist.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman
He deals in non-obscure books with known pricing and demand. Your hard to find, obscure book won't be on his shelf. And on the off-chance it is, he's pricing based on other vendor prices, so it won't be cheaper.
So... consider him a saint all you'd like, but he is not helping you in the way you imagine he is.
All he's doing is going to thrift shops, and ensuring that poor people don't get any of the popular books at below market prices. Nothing saintly about that, IMO.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Poll: Are you using SSDs?
I'm using ZFS with SSDs as L2ARC and intent log devices, and standard SAS drives as the main spindles, all sitting in a JBOD enclosure.
It won't make purely random reads fast, but it makes my workloads scream.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Does anyone do SEO out there?
As with so many things, the devil is in the details. Here's a simple keyword example:
accounting services and accounting service are different, with substantial gaps in search volume and competitiveness. Do you know which one is worth more? Do you know how much more?
There's an order of magnitude difference between the traffic on nj accounting firms and new jersey account firms. Are you sure you know which is better?
Even if you cultivate a list of hundreds keywords that are relevant, valuable and that you can be competitive in, do you know how to decide which words to try to hit via SEO and which to do via SEM? Do you have a tool that can help you make that decision quickly?
Do you know who your competitors are, what keywords they're winning on, and how strong they are on each, so you can plan an effective attack, leaving them only with the crap you don't want?
Sure, it's pretty easy to say use valid html, use alt tags, use meaningful URLs, have a header, use relevant images, make videos, get links from relevant content with good anchor text, and all the other crap that goes into SEO 101. But when you get into market analysis, competitive analysis, management of link-building campaigns, etc, it gets very involved. I'd expect that it would take smart person a year of working full-time under an expert to be good at it.... and I'd expect it to take them much longer if they're doing a part-time self-guided tour.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: FreeBSD Quickstart Guide for Linux Users
In my experience, FreeBSD's greatest asset doesn't fit well on a feature list. It's that it has a different attitude towards change than Linux.
Linux is a diverse ecosystem, with tons of experiments driving it forward. Different package managers, different kernel patches, different userland configurations, different means of administration... and that's a great thing.
FreeBSD is not diverse or experimental. FreeBSD is a deliberately moving beast, that adopts technologies and ideas in a more methodical manner, often after other OS's (OpenBSD / NetBSD / DragonflyBSD / Solaris / Linux / OS X) have proved that the ideas are solid, and lasting, and then it integrates them carefully, so it still looks like FreeBSD (but with some new capabilities, or better performance, or whatever), rather than having drastically different administration mechanisms, or performance characteristics, or anything else.
Personally, I like this stability. I like that it's a platform that once learned, can be largely forgotten about. But that said, it does require learning first, and while it's powerful, it's not shiny or sexy. But even excluding the man pages and documentation, zfs, the pf firewall, and many other things I like about FreeBSD, this is the winner for me. I just love that it doesn't change unless the change is a large win.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: 40% of Groupon merchants say "never again"
My barber sends me a coupon at about the time I need my next haircut. That coupon converted me to a regular, even though I always forget to bring it with me. It reminds me to make an appointment with him, not one of the many other haircut options that I consider acceptable. He got my home address by flat out asking if he could have it after I was a walk-in one day.
My wife's favorite spa has also figured out that sending me follow-on ads is a pretty effective sales pitch, as I semi-routinely say 'hey, she deserves another half-day at the spa.' They got my email address from an initial online sale.
I don't get any follow-on advertising from donut places, but there's a local restaurant who uses email to fill out slow nights with some really nice prix fixe dinners. Every now and then one shows up in my inbox, sounds delicious, and I don't feel like cooking, and they make an additional sale. They started doing so after I made a reservation on OpenTable, and our dining frequency jumped substantially.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: Strange: Why haven't TI graphing calculators dropped in price?
It is, and the HP-12C is allowed for the CFA exams.
That said, it's a very short list of what calculators are allowed.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Should Entrepreneurs Bet It All On The Billion Dollar Exit, Or Cash Out Small?
Jobs also had Pixar, which had an undeniable impact in it's field.
Here's a question to test if you really believe the argument you seem to be making:
You have the idea of your lifetime. It's a billion dollar idea. You are looking for a co-founder, and find two amazing prospects.
They are equal in every way (education, drive, interests, etc) except one: Jim spent the past five years working at a startup that he just sold for $20m. Tim spent the past five years working in an office job.
You can only pick one of them. Do you prefer Tim or Jim?
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Should Entrepreneurs Bet It All On The Billion Dollar Exit, Or Cash Out Small?
Your argument is only true for people who have only one business idea. If you have a wealth of ideas, you can execute one and sell at a point that gets security for your self and your family, then execute another and aim bigger, but with your downside risk eliminated.
bapadna | 15 years ago | on: Hunter S. Thompson's brutally honest Canadian job request
If you're going to blame something for lots of problems, kindly learn what it is first.
You are king among the problems in the United States today. You hold opinions on things where you are grossly ignorant.
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LinkedIn makes it so if you want to see who's viewing you, you have to agree to be viewable, removing a potential information asymmetry and this is somehow a horrible offense?
I like the change, and I'm glad of it. I like that you can't elect to be hypocritical about profile viewing information. I'll continue ramping up my LinkedIn usage, especially as it seems to only get more valuable for me over time (unlike FB, which has never provided me with any measurable utility.)