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AndrewS

37 karma · joined January 12, 2010

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AndrewS··on Thank HN: 127 days since I asked for your advice.
If it is entirely out of the blue and you have nothing in particular to discuss, it might come across a bit weird or creepy. Expanding your social circle is probably a great start though.
AndrewS··on Ask HN: I'm giving away my startup taketake.com for free - who wants it?
I completely agree. As much as I hate videos that play automatically, your intro was inoffensive enough that I listened until it got interesting.

On a side note, why do you have invite only on?

Best of luck whichever way you go with your startup. Maybe you just need a short holiday to sleep on it...

AndrewS··on Is Tor Safe? Think Again.
Given the direction in which governments seem to be moving, it's probably more relevant now than it was then.
AndrewS··on Show HN: I'll help you name your next startup/product for $50
I agree, although I'd love to see some results or examples (and I must admit I'm a little pessimistic). I hope to see some on the website soon :)
AndrewS··on Why nothing can go faster than the speed of light
I enjoyed reading the article, and I wouldn't have found it if it wasn't here on HN. If it shouldn't be here (according to the HN community) it wouldn't be sitting at the top of the news page.
AndrewS··on Google, These Aren’t Really The Best Answers For Users.
Who voted this down and why? Down-voting is not a tool through which you demonstrate your disagreement with someone's opinion.
AndrewS··on The Age of Music Piracy Is Officially Over
The headline "The Age of Music Piracy Is Officially Over" really bothers me for some reason. It should be "The Age of Music Piracy Is Over According to Some Columnist".
AndrewS··on How to destroy your business with one email
To be fair, we can't verify that either way. If a company treated me as the reviewers claim, I wouldn't give them more than one star either. As was mentioned in other comments, there needs to be some validation of reviewers built into yelp.
AndrewS··on Re-entry to US without backscatter or pat-down
I don't agree with Eil's comment at all, but that is no reason to vote his comment down. Comment voting is to make interesting comments more prominent and to remove noise, not to banish unpopular opinions. I don't interpret Eil's comment as a trolling attempt that warrents down-voting either.
AndrewS··on Ask PG: Have you ever been to India or planning to?
I've only spent about a week in India (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur). It was a good trip, but not necessarily 'fun'.

If there is one thing I learnt (as a caucasian), it is that anyone who talks to you on the street (who doesn't have an obvious reason to be there like a shop keeper with merchandise) is probably trying to scam you. Trying to buy a train ticket to Agra from Delhi was a nightmare; we ended up organising a taxi through our hotel. It was hard going from being used to trusting directions and advice from strangers at home, but I got over that pretty quick.

Also, carry plenty of small change; anyone who does absolutely anything at all for you will expect a tip.

Have fun :)

AndrewS··on Startups Ain't Always Pretty (And That's Normal)
I've never heard of Hunch before, but just yesterday I was actually thinking that it'd be nice if a tool just like it existed. However, the first thing I thought when I saw their website was "this looks like too much work" (bearing in mind that I'm a little short on sleep today, which is probably why I'm writing this rather than code right now).

I don't want to sign up to stuff and I don't want to answer 20 (unknown) questions to build something (a "taste profile") that I don't understand. After I've seen (and used) some benefits then certainly, but not as soon as I hit their page. I guess this is because every website on the web seems to want me to sign up and invest time and effort in them. I wonder if there is something they can do to lower this initial barrier a little.

AndrewS··on Kinect by Microsoft Keeps You Entertained Hands Free
I think plenty of people said the same thing about the Wii. It is fun so long as games use the interaction as a constructive part of the game. There are plenty of fun multiplayer games on the Wii that just wouldn't work with traditional controllers.
AndrewS··on Is there such a thing as a sustainable todo system?
I've tried a number of methods (mostly for work-related todos) and nothing really worked perfectly. I find that I go through phases of needing a list versus doing what is on my mind. Each phase can last a week or a month.

My solution is to use a spreadsheet like Excel (or your choice of GoogleDocs, OpenOffice or other equivalent). I put a cross next to items as I complete them. When I lose interest in my list it tends to atrophy, but at least my tasks and accomplishments are still recorded.

If I come back to my spreadsheet after an extended break and it has atrophied substantially (as in I've completed many tasks without marking them off, priorities have moved away from uncompleted tasks to new unrecorded tasks etc), I simply create a new page and copy across old tasks that I still need to do.

It seems to work quite well for me; it keeps a record of what I've been up to and what I need to do (when I need it to), and works somewhat like agile development iterations without me worrying too much about whether I'm doing it 'correctly'.

AndrewS··on Is HN only about saying nice things about everything?
Intellectual disagreements are usually more interesting than agreements, particularly when the original article is well written and doesn't require commentators to fill in the gaps.
AndrewS··on Apple deprecates Java
Thanks for the info
AndrewS··on Apple deprecates Java
Does anyone have any experience with Mono on macs?
AndrewS··on Programming is hard
Compared to what? Your comment is like saying "A house is bigger."
AndrewS··on Startup idea for you: Modern e-commerce isn't enough
Sounds like reverse auctions. Rather than people competing to buy an item on sale, sellers would be bidding to sell a wanted item. Does anyone do this? Would it actually work?
AndrewS··on Caught Spying on Student, FBI Demands GPS Tracker Back
I would find it quite tempting to destroy it, but I guess that satisfaction wouldn't be worth the opportunity cost.
AndrewS··on Why StackExchange will eventually fail – Control-Freak-ism
StackOverflow is my first port of call when I run into a programming problem that I can't solve. I've started mucking around with Unity 3d (a game engine) and was quite relieved when I found a solid StackExchange forum for the engine.

The main complaint I have about StackOverflow is how the reputation system negatively affects peoples' behaviour. Although the net effect of the system is very positive, I find that people rush to answer easy questions to get some up-votes. If they take too long to craft a detailed answer, they miss out. Answers to difficult questions take longer and get less views and up-votes, so people don't bother trying.

Many of the questions that show up on StackOverflow can be answered with a quick google. They only serve to dilute the quality questions and answers, and cheapen the reputation system. I also get the impression that people who couldn't be bothered to google a question first also couldn't be bothered responding to the comments and answers that they get.

Having said that, StackOverflow is still the best programming forum for languages that I use and I don't see it failing any time soon.

AndrewS··on Solar Impulse plane starts 24-hour test flight
I think they mean time of day, not altitude. Makes more sense without the comma.
AndrewS··on Data Mining with Neural Nets (Python)
Why are they out of fashion? Is it because it is too hard to figure out why a particular neural net makes certain decisions? Are they generally too unwieldy and unpredictable?

I'm very interested in neural nets but I don't know much about alternative tools/models, so I'm keen to hear your reasoning.

AndrewS··on Become a morning person. How to end insomnia for $520.99
It's not waking up that's hard; the problem is getting to sleep. The symptoms in the article definitely apply to me (and I'm working on resolving them).

Yesterday I woke up much earlier than I'd like (via alarm clock) in the hope of being tired enough to get to sleep before midnight last night. I struggled to concentrate and keep my eyes focused all day, but I was still awake until 3am.

I hate spending 12 hours in bed and get up feeling like I've had 6 hours of actual sleep. It's hard to understand if you don't have this problem yourself.

AndrewS··on [dead]
The OP article link doesn't work for me, but the dupe link does.
AndrewS··on News Feed in 38 lines of code using Cascalog
Without understanding the language, I get the impression that the author prizes a low line count over readability.
AndrewS··on WTF, CNN?
They give the masses what they want; rubbish is much easier to watch than real news.
AndrewS··on HP Buying Palm For $1.2 Billion
Actually, HP recently changed their tagline to "Create Amazing". It's a pretty good indication of where HP has gone.

I quit HP early this year (around 18 months after I joined HP in an aquisition). After that experience, I can't believe HP continues to grow at all.

AndrewS··on Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
Perhaps the driver's license was fake. Either way, it's a shame we have to live with people who do these kinds of things. After having my car broken into multiple times and eventually stolen, and home broken into (luckily I don't have much worth stealing), it sickens me.
AndrewS··on The truth about student loans
I never said I disagreed with you; just mentioning that there are probably plenty of solutions and this was my experience under a different system.
AndrewS··on The truth about student loans
Perhaps "they" could see how higher education is funded in other countries. I finished a decent four year software engineering degree a few years ago here in Australia and it set me back around AU$18k. That debt is CPI indexed (I think) and paid for by a levy on top of my income tax. The rest of the cost was covered by the government.

The system isn't perfect (and one of many issues is unis compromising difficulty/quality for full fee paying overseas students), but I'm pretty happy with it and paid off my debt easily enough.

I assume some other countries do a better job again.

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