marinabercea's comments

marinabercea | 9 years ago | on: Sorting algorithms visualizer

Interesting approach. If this was part of a series and perhaps in a different material + color-mapped (think Shapeways full color sandstone for instance), I could see someone very passionate about algorithms wanting to buy/own/print them.

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: Distributed systems theory for the distributed systems engineer

Great timing and submission, thank you for posting! I've been meaning to get more in depth knowledge on distributed systems, but despite having access to several academic (text)books, I felt overwhelmed and didn't know where to start exactly and what sub-topics I might want to focus on.

Just downloaded and sent to Kindle 'Distributed Systems for Fun and Profit' as a free PDF written by an engineer currently working for Stripe, a book recommended in the article. It's only 62 pages and doesn't feel intimidating!

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: HyperDev: deployment, hosting and collaborative editing for web apps

I would've liked testing this, if the signup prompts weren't so... aggressively displayed ? I almost never do signups, especially social signups via GitHub/Twitter/etc anymore for beta products because it's happened in the past that they ended up semi-abandoned with no way of deleting my profile/account, as well as for other reasons.

The alternative is of course, signing up with a temp email address and data, but it makes me feel uneasy going this route.

I suggest considering to make hyperdev.com/about the homepage instead (perhaps that's already the plan, once out of beta) or adding a link to it from the current homepage. People can read a bit about the product first, before deciding to signup, it seems more honest and empowering.

At least maybe display prominently on the homepage that this is a FogCreek product, I think it would make it easier for users to trust.

Try imagining a homepage visit is your first encounter with the product, having known nothing about it previously. It asks for your data, but it doesn't even tell you who made it. You have N other sites to visit or work to tend to.

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: Theranos’s Fate Rests with a Founder Who Answers Only to Herself

When you think about it though, it's unlikely she nominated herself for the award or asked for it. Can we really hold someone accountable for another group of persons' actions?

With that in mind, I briefly researched the 'Horatio Alger Award', it's being offered by the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, a nonprofit organization. I checked their site and merit of any kind is only part of the story.

As I understood things, when you're awarded the title, you automatically become a member and it's not possible to gain membership otherwise. This prize ensures growth and continuity for the organization, along with potential funding.

I read the 'Become a Member' pdf document from their site and while it appears anyone can be nominated, as long as the nominee is 'on brand' with the organization's ideals of remarkable achievements, the new member/awardee will, in turn, have to support the association in as many ways as possible, either by contributing to the program (activities with an administrative or promotional purpose), AND/OR financially.

The form states that it 'must be completed and signed by the nominee and the nominator. If the nomination is confidential, the form may be completed and signed by the nominator only. By signing this form, the nominator and nominee acknowledge their understanding and acceptance of the responsibilities associated with membership in the Association.'

I think the more questionable thing here is possibly exploitation of the desirability of status and prestige.

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: Magic Lantern Blue Screen of Death April Fools' Prank Bypass

It's been 5 days since you commented and I've only just seen it unfortunately, although no longer relevant, I can assure you it does work. ML runs in parallel with Canon firmware. If there's a card in the camera with ML installed on it, it will attempt to run. No card with ML on it, camera boots normally. I've tripled checked both solutions. This post has also been promoted by @autoexec_bin, the official ML Twitter account. You either did something different or your camera is running a different version of ML than mine on a different camera model.

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: What real-world apps are based on less popular disciplines of CS?

  * Timetabling or scheduling apps like Doodle.com - subjects pertaining to Graph Theory
  * Travel comparison sites that can find you the fastest flight route from A to B (and/or cheapest or some other type of constraints) - Graph Theory
  * LinkedIn network analysis apps such as Socilab.com - Graph Theory
Basically Graph Theory is extremely important, with applications in domains such as: networking, linguistics, (bio)chemistry, pathfinding & GIS, social network analysis, matching (dating apps, organ donation, medical residency matching) etc.

Edit: Another application is PCB design. The circuit to be printed is the graph itself, it should not allow edge crossings that would result in a short circuit.

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: Why I love ugly, messy interfaces

In my opinion, what's important to some categories of users is high information density. This is what makes the 'ugly' Craigslist design useful to its users, the ability to have a bird's-eye view of potential navigation paths throughout the site because it reduces the number of steps needed to perform towards a certain goal and makes evaluation easier, without distractions.

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: The Silicon Valley of Transylvania

I live in Romania.

For potential readers: this comment's content is a gross overstatement and does not reflect reality.

For example, over 50% of the population lives in an urban environment (see the CIA Romania Factbook which is very up to date). Even so, it would be wrong to assume that just because some of the country's citizens live in the countryside, they 'get around by cart and donkey'. Also, for the sake of accuracy, where such transportation is used, horses would be much more common as opposed to donkeys.

As for the 'half built palace that occupies half of Bucharest', I presume you're referring to the Palace of the Parliament, with an area of 365000 m2. The urban area of Bucharest occupies 228 km2, or 228000000 m2, significantly more than the area of the building you mentioned.

Edit: I double checked some data in regards to the Palace of the Parliament, the FLOOR AREA is indeed 365000 m2, but since the building has multiple floors, the actual occupied area is smaller. Check the Technical Details on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_the_Parliament

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: Turkish Citizenship Database Leaked

The data released contains national identification codes that are confidential. I believe the Swedish equivalent is the 'personnummer'. The sites you indicated appear to be regular person search engines, like the US equivalent Whitepages? Can you show a specific search result, pick any Swedish name you want, that would also list the person's personnummer?

marinabercea | 10 years ago | on: Turkish Citizenship Database Leaked

This is the product of self-righteous activism. You'd have to be pretty deluded and starving for attention to think effectively releasing tens of millions of private individuals' complete identification data is justifiable in some way.

marinabercea | 11 years ago | on: Ask HN: How do you read Academic Papers?

In addition, the bulk paper renaming feature has been an invaluable time saver to me.

Throughout the years I've collected thousands of papers, many still unread, but my 'must read' ('must skim' mostly) folder currently houses several hundred of them and I can't imagine how much time I would've wasted by manually renaming using the template {Author} - {Year} - {Title}.

Mendeley is free, but a paid alternative is Papers (http://www.papersapp.com/), which used to be Mac-only and the reason I ended up discovering and using Mendeley. Haven't personally tried it, but heard very good things about it.

My paper reading selection process consists in reading the abstract and the conclusion. Quite a few papers have disappointing conclusions despite attention-grabbing titles. If all is sound and promising, I keep it and depending on other factors, I decide when to read it in its entirety and/or where to store it for later use.

marinabercea | 11 years ago | on: Dear Packaging, I Hate You

You summed up much better what I was trying to say in so many words. Resourcefulness and creativity can be used to ensure a great unpackaging experience, while still being sensible about costs.

marinabercea | 11 years ago | on: Dear Packaging, I Hate You

I'd argue that in Apple's case, a company with a (long) history, they could not afford not to focus on packaging while positioning themselves as the kind of brand they wanted to become. Higher stakes and with Google/Android a potentially dangerous competitor (whose strategy only became very evident later, ie. not wanting to compete on hardware as well). Now however, especially due to the profits they're making, they have little incentive to care about anything else but maintaining status.

Why change something not visibly broken?

I disagree that non-luxury packaging automatically means the company doesn't care about the product contained inside. It's a matter of strategy & costs. I'm not familiar with HP packaging, but you should know that ASUS does offer luxury packaging for its gaming range of products for instance, especially laptops.

My opinion is that it's possible to design thoughtful, non-generic packaging without crossing into luxury materials territory. Experience and loads of creativity are required though. At least this is what I understood from the article (taking into account the Pencil example as well), that startups should bet on resourcefulness instead of throwing money in non-priority directions.

Another aspect to consider: I don't have the specific numbers to back this up, but we live in a world where the general trend is towards minimalism and simplifying our lives, which includes getting rid of no longer necessary stuff, such as a product's temporary home (packaging). Considering it has such a short life, it makes little sense to invest a lot of resources into packaging as a startup, unless you're selling electronics, where at least some consumers have a habit of saving the packaging materials to increase resale value of the product when they decide to upgrade.

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