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Devlin_Donnelly

40 karma · joined October 30, 2012

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Devlin_Donnelly··on How an Army of Ocean Farmers Are Starting an Economic Revolution
I did a quick search and it seems there is some general information out there about ocean farming/aquaculture.

There is a Wikipedia article on the subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture

As well as an office of Aquaculture in the US NOAA (National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration):

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/aquaculture/index.htm

Maybe these resources could help you find information & resources to learn more about ocean farming/aquaculture.

Devlin_Donnelly··on Try Bitcoin
I recieved this error when trying to sign up for coinbase and transfer my uBTC there:

You don't have that much - please visit the Buy/Sell page to add more funds to your account..

Any Suggestions?

Devlin_Donnelly··on How to pay online without a credit card?
Paypal or Bitcoin - though only a small number of businesses accept Bitcoin as payment.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Focusing On Prevention And Neuroscience, President Ends Reagan’s War On Drugs
Yes here's the post from the official White House website:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/24/drug-policy-reform...

Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: What search engines do you use besides Google? Why?
I use DuckDuckGo - http://duckduckgo.com - which has some nice features such as distinguishing between different meanings of a search term as well as respecting user privacy.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: If you could master one technology this year, what would it be?
Efficiency as well as integration with the native OS's style & interface.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: What is the coolest JS library out there?
I think impress.js is pretty cool.

http://bartaz.github.com/impress.js/

Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: Your stack of choice for web development?
HTML/CSS/JS + JQuery on the Front-end with Perl and my own custom Web package using XML files for data storage on the backend.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Apps? No root? Your device serves others, warns Berners-Lee
I have always liked the web as a platform because I can build something once and have it work across many operating systems/browsers/etc... and because the web is built on open standards.

One criticism people have of this approach to application development is that web apps aren't as efficient as native apps.

This pro/con discussion of web vs native apps reminds me of the C programming language, why it was created and what for.

The C Programming language was designed to be a portable language, meaning that it can be compiled on virtually any platform, any operating system. Yet C was also designed to constitute the minimum abstraction away from a given platforms native assembly language.

Thus a program written in C can be compiled on almost any machine, and run as efficiently or nearly as efficiently on that machine as a program written in that machine's native assembly language.

So perhaps we could use something like the C programming language for the web. A technology which allows us as developers to write our applications once in a portable open format, without needing to sacrifice in terms of performance.

Any thoughts?

Devlin_Donnelly··on Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript
> It's inextricable from cultural bias, though the physics obviously plays some role.

Of course, as you say, our cultural biases/values play a role in how we create music and what music we appreciate with how much consonance/dissonance.

But the fact that certain musical intervals sound more harmonious or more dissonant seems to be a result of the human ear's response to the physical nature of the frequency of the sound waves, and thus a response that is shared across cultures.

> The ratios for a tritone, major 7th, etc. are more complex

Yeah, I guess that's true that the ratios between those 12 frequencies aren't the 12 simplest, but they can be derived by following the simplest non-octave ratio - 3:2 or a perfect fifth - starting from a root note and moving up one perfect fifth 12 times.

Thus if you start from C: C - G - D - A - E - B - F# - C# - G# - D# - A#/Bb - F and that's all 12 notes. I guess I thought that because of that pattern those were the twelve simplest ratios. Thanks for the heads up.

And yes this principle applies to the Just tempered Scale not the even-tempered scale.

Devlin_Donnelly··on Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript
As to why some sets of notes sound good or harmonious and others sound "bad" or dissonant, we find that frequencies with the simplest mathematical ratios tend to sound the most harmonious, while frequencies with more complex ratios sound more dissonant.

So for example the simplest ratio 2:1 corresponds to an octave interval. Notes which are an octave apart sound so similar that we describe them with same letter. So concert A is 440Hz and the "A" note one octave higher is 880Hz.

The next simplest ratio, 3:2 corresponds to the interval known as a perfect fifth. So given the example of concert A at 440Hz again, one perfect fifth above concert A is the note E which has a frequency of 660Hz as (440 * 3) / 2 = 660.

We find the simplest ratios of frequency intervals present in music from cultures the world over. The traditional classical Western twelve-note scale consists of the 12 simplest frequency ratios. In some Eastern music we hear a pentatonic or five note scale, which consists of the five simplest frequency ratios.

So this aspect of music we can attribute to innate psycho-acoustics or even physics rather than cultural bias.

Devlin_Donnelly··on Proposition HN: I will pay $8000 for you to build your side-project/MVP
The model described here in this post sounds like a good start-up idea itself. Although you would need a fair amount of capital to mitigate the risk of company ideas that may fail.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Hacker news in your terminal
Looks good. Cleaner and more articles on the screen than visiting Hacker News using lynx.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: How are you using the time between Christmas and New Year?
It is not on GitHub at this time it is still under construction and so not ready to be published just yet.

I am definitely considering publishing it open source though.

As for your project, I am currently writing this blogging platform in perl, though it could be ported to ruby.

Devlin_Donnelly··on New Year's Resolutions: Improve Habits With an RPG
I really like the idea of a game designed to help you out with real life.

I am inspired to perhaps create one along these lines myself!

Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: How are you using the time between Christmas and New Year?
I'm building a blogging platform as well as refining my own web application framework as I go along.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: What are some good tools for converting GPS data into a location name?
Thanks it looks like this one might work for my needs.
Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: What are some good tools for converting GPS data into a location name?
Thanks for the idea, but apparently google only allows the use this service in conjunction with Google maps, so it won't work for my project.

Maybe there are some open source map databases of GPS coordinates mapped to political/municipal localities?

Devlin_Donnelly··on Ask HN: How to code for humanity?
You could always get involved with any open source software project.

You might check out the High Priority Free Software projects at: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/ to see if any of those are up your alley.

Devlin_Donnelly··on What (apps) do you use to stash away your ideas?
I usually write down on whatever is handy, be it a scrap of paper, a text editor on my desktop machine, or the Notes app on my iPad.

The result of this is that all of my notes are on different machines, in different folders or formats.

Now that you mention it, it might be nice to have an app in the cloud that would be just for this purpose and would sync data across all of my devices.

Devlin_Donnelly··on FindALib: All Javascript Libraries In One Place
Nice idea.

This could be updated to include a submission form where folks could submit javascript libraries to be included in the collection.

Devlin_Donnelly··on How do I move from finance into tech?
If you are interested in going the route of an entrepreneur/start-up founder, an interesting place to begin would be to explore where these two fields converge.

Ask yourself questions like:

What kind of new technology could improve the world of finance?

What technological tools did you wish you (or your company) had during your career in finance?

Or you could apply your skills in finance to financing technological enterprises. Perhaps look for a job at a VC firm that focuses on tech investments. You could learn more about technological enterprises on the job there, and see where in the tech world you might like to branch out to next.

Devlin_Donnelly··on The Theory of Gravity is a Hoax
So I just discovered this while I was doing some research for a paper I'm writing on gravity. Anyone know why duckduckgo shows this rather than an excerpt from the article it links to for the first link?