tp3z4u's comments

tp3z4u | 8 years ago | on: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

I have friends that work there and say the same thing.

I turned down a job there a long time ago, I did ontologies academically so I already knew they didn't work for what they were trying to do.

tp3z4u | 8 years ago | on: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

By backchannel I meant via people. As in the Palantir analyst calls up their friends at the CIA/NSA for help. CIA/NSA data collection remains secret, Palantir justify their expense, and NYPD find the guy. The problem is that you can't reproduce your results. The other problem is the erosion of civil liberties - but I'm only speculating with a thought experiment.

tp3z4u | 8 years ago | on: Anti-addiction drug maker found a captive market in the criminal justice system

I take Low Dose Naltrexone for chronic fatigue. It was an instant fix. A return to an almost forgotten normal. I do get crazy vivid dreams that I remember well and they can be a little disturbing but it is a small price to pay for my life back. I buy the 50mg pills from overseas and dose it down to 4.5mg. It's the only thing that worked for me after years of trying practically everything else. It is super cheap. I think the world would benefit from more people knowing about it.

tp3z4u | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

The drain back into the reservoir is so you don't have to worry adding too much water in one go as it'll just drain back out right away. The soil will only hold a certain amount. By not having the soil soak water back up from the pan you don't need to worry about controlling the amount of water you just need to time the period between waterings. The drier the soil the more water it'll absorb every watering period so it's reasonably self correcting.

A rough ballpark on watering cycles is usually good enough. I'd watch the leaves to give you an idea. I'd stop watering and wait until the leaves show signs of under-watering and then use slightly less time as my watering period. I'd guesstimate based on your setup that the period will be measured in days.

IMHO if you're going to have that much set-up you might as well go hydro.

And, as I'm assuming the real aim is to build cool things perhaps you could use Deep Learning to do leaf classification (Over Watering | Under Watering | OK). That way you could use a webcam to control the watering instead of the sensors. Knowing your watering times and regular classification samples you could use a fourier transform to help identify the optimum watering period. Perhaps someone could do this as an API service. I do Deep Learning on images as my job so if you want I could tell you how to create the training data and once you have that I could train a classifier for you.

tp3z4u | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: GreenPiThumb – A Raspberry Pi Gardening Bot

The plants look waterlogged; the roots need air to breathe.

Drain the water back into the reservoir (use a simple filter to prevent damage to the pump) and just use a schedule for watering.

I used a mechanical timer switch for 15 mins every hour for my hyrdo setup. For soil, such tiny plants, and no lights you would need far less frequency. A general rule of thumb is to give it enough time between waterings to let it get a bit dry.

tp3z4u | 8 years ago | on: 'Why did eBay side with the buyer when he returned my Apple MacBook?'

It's a big nuanced topic but I'll elaborate a bit more.

Amazon has bigger fish to fry than eBay. Amazon can always focus on second hand market place later while leveraging their infrastructure to ensure a win. My bet is that they will take a long time to get around to it. In the meantime phone based and social based have a pretty good shot at competing. This will also take a long time.

eBays efforts to take on Amazon at being Amazon is a total waste of what little focus they have. Like Yahoo, one of the best perks of eBay is that it's hard to get fired. It's very relaxed and people are quite comfortable - why risk an easy / safe job by taking a risk doing something innovative. After a while innovative people get jack of it and leave and all you're left is the lazy and incompetent. There are pockets of excellence within eBay but they're getting smaller. There was a potential for a turnaround when the stock price was $10 but at $30+ no-one is interested.

tp3z4u | 8 years ago | on: 'Why did eBay side with the buyer when he returned my Apple MacBook?'

Ex eBay employee here. Don't buy or sell on eBay. It's not that no-one there cares, I certainly did, it is that no-one in power cares. The corporate culture is toxic. I worked in bad buyer experience and building algorithms to fix this is trivial. It happens a lot so there is a lot of data and the patterns are simple. The problem is that every fix costs eBay a discernible amount money.

We did customer analysis to show that existing customers were leaving faster than new ones were coming in. Usually people have one bad experience and never come back. They still didn't care and given their culture they will never care until their stock plummets or a real competitor comes along.

tp3z4u | 9 years ago | on: How Utah Keeps the American Dream Alive

I used to be a Mormon, my family converted when I was young. At no point did I believe their teachings. Like many cults being required to believe something obviously wrong keeps the normies out and clearly defines who is in the 'in group' and who is in the 'out group'. Just by saying you believe it signals to others that you are willing to lie in order to belong.

I really enjoyed my time in the church. There is huge pressure to conform in one area but this means your free to be yourself in others. I was a nerd and constantly tormented for it outside the church. (The US is much nicer to nerds than those in my country where it considered a civil duty by other children to beat it out of you). Inside the church I was treated like a normal person. Similarly, Dijkstra had to leave Europe to escape a 'religious' academia and found refuge in 'backwards' religious Texas.

There is a natural human tendency, an emergent behavior, to self organize into 'religious' groups. I see the same behavioral patterns in environmentalism, veganism, feminism etc. By keeping 'religion' to religion there is less of for it in others areas.

I left the Church quite young because I didn't need it anymore and thought the church was stupid. I still liked the people in it.

Obviously if I was gay I would have a different story.

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