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turaw | 10 years ago | on: Meeting People Is Easy, but Hard

You don't have to talk about yourself in a conversation :P this probably feeds back into the 'don't interview someone' mentality, but just talk about something in the news or other recent developments. Have they watched Daredevil (s1 or s2)? Which Zelda game was their favourite? Even though politics have been ruled out as a generally safe conversation topic, it's still fun to ask someone their opinion of Trump (wall/no wall/half-height but with barbed wire).

So I propose the following. Instead of using the simple heuristic of talking half the time which will work with nearly everyone practically always (modulo some edge cases when people have literally no strong opinions about anything), use the wealth of your experience as a human being to establish when and when not to promote complex human social interaction, additionally taking into account contextual and mitigating factors, while simultaneously ensuring that all parties are satisfied with the level and intensity of discourse instead of taking some random Internet person's sound bite advice.

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Meeting People Is Easy, but Hard

Easiest way to do this is to roughly time how long they spoke for and contribute back the same amount. If you do it right, you'll wind up spending 50% of the conversation talking and 50% listening, which is a reasonable split :)

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Medicine’s Uncomfortable Relationship with Math (2014)

Did anyone else learn how to compute probabilities by drilling through the algebra? Like, if asked how to convert a plain English probabilistic query (e.g. "what is the chance of picking two red candies from a mixed bowl") into a formula, I would focus on the 'and', mentally recite something to the effect of 'conjunctions multiply probabilities', then write p(red)*p(red). There's no intuition or understanding, just rote memorization.

I've been trying to recognize and account for this deficiency by drawing mental decision trees enumerating probabilities instead ... anyone else doing anything similar?

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Why Programming is Difficult (2014)

Do you think that sort of a problem (incremental changes eroding an initially sound structure) could be fixed with better refactoring tools? It seems like the issue you're describing is that logic is leaking from some parts of the codebase to others, which might be fixable with sufficiently powerful refactorings.

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are you currently building?

Just started it this weekend, but a git remote + LFS proxy for Perforce designed around ease of collaboration without requiring a central 'git-to-Perforce' gateway. Yes, it's a fairly large project, but the time spent implementing it should be small by comparison to the years it'll add to my life.

turaw | 10 years ago | on: IntelliJ IDEA and the whole IntelliJ platform migrates to Java 8

I'm on a ~5 year old Thinkpad (w/ an i5-520m; apparently it benches to roughly the same as the M-5Y31 that's probably in your macbook), but IDEA pins a couple cores on my processor to 100% for half a minute whenever it opens a project and incurs a noticeable delay when tabbing to and from its window. Compared to my work machine, IntelliJ truly crawls.

I suppose I'm asking, have you had _any_ responsiveness problems? Or does it work flawlessly?

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Ask HN: How to avoid being arrogant?

It happens to physicists too, as satirized by SMBC [1]. Without knowing the first thing about psychology/sociology, I'd posit that it's because both have to learn what is socially accepted as a 'difficult' discipline. Since every other subject is perceived as similarly difficult or easier, their meager understanding of another field is magnified out to perfect knowledge (i.e. this subject must be easy to learn since it isn't physics/engineering && I've spent a small amount of effort learning it, therefore I am now an expert). It'd be interesting to see how experts in other 'difficult' fields react, for example, master martial artists or the like.

... but I'm not a psychologist, so take that with a heaping teaspoon of salt.

[1]: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2556

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Dear Architects: Sound Matters

I've had custom ear_plugs_ by a company that also produces compatible molds for etymotics IEMs. After a suitable break-in period (for which you're literally supplied with ear lubricant) they fit perfectly. I've never had the earplugs come out unintentionally, though they don't have cables to get snagged.

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Dear Architects: Sound Matters

Aah, I can definitely see how twisted wires would make that friction noise worse. It's especially annoying when they scratch against a beard -- augh, just awful. That being said, I normally just clip 'em if they're making too much noise and take them out when eating.

turaw | 10 years ago | on: Dear Architects: Sound Matters

Are they not _fantastic_? The insertion depth can be uncomfortable at first, but the experience of listening to 'loud' music, then removing the earphones and noticing that the ambient noise was even louder is just amazing.
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