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TriinTon What Startups can learn from Lady Gaga

Either you're deaf, or your standards are very low. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I personally know tens of musicians, and most aren't even that talented, who make Lady GaGa look like the proto-amateur she is. Her talent is to sell, not to make music. Last but not least: she's ugly as hell. But then, so was Britney Spears 10 years ago, and that didn't stop her from becoming "successful".

TriinTon Computer Science Education: It’s Not Shop Class

Philosophy is mostly games of words that lead nowhere. Wittgenstein wrote all about it. History is interesting, but too ambiguous and too subjective. Literature is to be enjoyed, not to be analyzed. CS is rigorous Philosophy and, hence, it's a good mental exercise that one can't get in other fields of knowledge.

When you design an algorithm and implement it in code, the computer will not allow you to be ambiguous and imprecise. You made a wrong assumption? Sorry, your program won't work. No partial credit for you. It's tough, but it's fair.

TriinTon What Startups can learn from Lady Gaga

That being fugly and having absolutely no talent whatsoever does not mean one can't be a commercial success?

TriinTon Computer Science Education: It’s Not Shop Class

I don't have a problem with the Bourbakists doing very abstract and rigorous Math. After all, Math was an edifice built on quicksand until they came along. I think they contributed a lot.

However, I also think the Bourbakists created a monster, which was this notion that the "Greek method" was the only valid one, and that the "Babylonian method" was to be avoided. Even Combinatorics was considered "unworthy" of great minds. All geometrical intuition was frowned upon. Applications were laughed at. All of a sudden, Math became sterile. Interestingly, Turing's work, in a sense, derived from Hilbert's program to make the foundations of Math solid. The fact that Theoretical CS exists outside of traditional Math is nothing more than an historical accident. Computability is pure Math. Computational Complexity is still a bit "dirty" but it's also rather fundamental.

TriinTon Computer Science Education: It’s Not Shop Class

It's sad to read the comments on the NYTimes article. Even people who claim to have years of experience in the "field" can't tell the difference between Computer Science and computers. Dijkstra said it all:

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

In my most humble opinion, the value of CS education is not to prepare young people for a job in IT. Instead, its value is in teaching young people how to think in an abstract and rigorous manner. This is much more valuable, and it's useful regardless of what one's future career path is.

These days students think they can hack everything. They think they can BS on their homework essays, they think they can BS on their exams, they abstain from precise reasoning because it's too much work. Well, guess what? You can't BS a computer. All those sub-human morons commenting on the NYTimes article, the ones who work in IT and who are so afraid of outsourcing, should keep in mind that CS education is, at its core, applied philosophy and applied math. The label "Computer Science" is a misnomer. Yet once again, I blame the Bourbakists. If Turing had lived a few decades before, Theoretical CS would be a part of Math, not a separate field.

TriinTon Intercourse and Intelligence

I never thought I would say this one day, but I believe that puritanical attitudes exist for a reason. Not that long ago, one could die of syphilis. Many other STD's would result in infertility. The sexual revolution is only a few decades old, and it was made possible by penicilin, antibiotics and advances in Medicine. You call anti-sex attitudes "ridiculous", while "anachronistic" would perhaps be a better word.

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

When I studied Biology in high-school I found it beautiful but boring to study because it was too descriptive. Many years later, after having done various kinds of engineering, I must say I am amazed at living systems. Now I see connections between biological systems and systems engineered by humans. I see feedback loops everywhere. I think in terms of robustness and fragility.

Saying that "we have a lot to learn from nature" is almost a vacuous statement. Nature is so complex, that there are billions of opportunities to learn from it and to design bio-inspired systems. An example: neural processing is orders of magnitude more power-efficient that CMOS. Sure, our brain can't do arithmetic at high-speed, but if we lose a bunch of neurons, our brain still works. Humans can literally lose parts of their brain and survive and function. It's amazing. By contrast, a dust particle on a Silicon wafer is enough for a CPU to malfunction.

This fascination with nature has a dark side, too. Just because evolution has attained such quasi-perfect designs, it does not mean we can do the same. Neuromorphic electronic systems never got anywhere. People in the 1980s talked so much about analog VLSI and neural networks, and I haven't seen that much coming out of it.

The problem with being fascinated by something is that being in awe is not always the most productive way. Sometimes despizing something works much better. Whatever. I am not saying anything deep, and cheap philosophy never got anyone to actual achievement, to building actual things that actually work. Hence, I shut up.

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

Let us agree that this discussion is pointless due to lack of reliable performance metrics. In general, biological systems are orders of magnitude better than systems engineered by humans and, hence, I mentioned that we have a lot to learn from Nature. Sure, a hummingbird does hover but it can't attack enemy tanks like the Harrier does. We're talking apples and oranges here. However, look at the size of the brain of a hummingbird and how little power it must consume when compared to the powerful computers that run the control algorithms necessary for the JSF to hover. It's humbling. But Nature had millions and millions of years to come up with such solutions, and we, humans, have been flying for merely 106 years. Maybe we'll catch up.

TriinTon Ask HN: So HNers, whatd'ya get for Christmas?

A massive hangover...

TriinTon IKEA: Flat-pack accounting (2006)

Have you watched the Tax me if you can documentary? You might enjoy it:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

I have stopped, and I am sorry that things became un-civil. However, do note that I did not throw the first stone. Cheers.

TriinTon IKEA: Flat-pack accounting (2006)

Where's the injustice? I doubt the Kamprad family has cost the Swedish welfare state what the state wants to tax them. He's merely doing what's best for him, instead of subsidizing the education and medical care of other parents' children. Frankly, I don't see any injustice.

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

You need to get laid, buddy. Chill. Chill...

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

Quoting Wilbur Wright:

"I confess that, in 1901, I said to my brother Orville that men would not fly for 50 years. Two years later, we ourselves were making flights. This demonstration of my inability as a prophet gave me such a shock that I have ever since distrusted myself and have refrained from all prediction."

No one has ever been able to predict where technology is going. This one is for you to tame your forecasting proclivities and for the moron who's downvoting my comments without explaining where my argument is weak. Cheers.

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

Good find. But what is the efficiency of the nectar -> mechanical energy conversion? If you fly a F/A-18 at afterburner, you will be out of fuel pretty quickly, too. The issue is: how much of the chemical energy stored in the fuel is transformed into mechanical energy?

In any case, you're picking on the wrong issue. The hummingbird can hover better than a Harrier or a JSF. If you want to start an argument, pick on that.

TriinTon Microsoft Solver Foundation: numerical optimization library

I strongly disagree. This has very little to do with Excel Solver. This seems to be Microsoft's take at large-scale, real-world optimization problems, possibly with millions of variables and constraints. Can you do that with Excel? I doubt it. This Solver Foundation framework can do Constraint Programming, Quadratic Programming, and Mixed-Integer Programming. This is serious optimization, not the kiddie stuff Excel users deal with. SF seems to be based on commercial C++ solvers such as MOSEK.

I would say that open-source is not of great interest in optimization software. The idea is to write as little code as possible, and to trust that everything performance-critical has been optimized. Even speed is not the main issue for me. I want something that is flexible. I want to write little code because the less I write the less bugs there are. Correctness trumps everything else.

If I am using SF to allocate investments, I want to make sure an optimal solution is found, even if it takes a little longer. Computer time is cheap. Buy a bigger computer. Developer time is more precious. There are only 24 hours in a day.

You want to change the source code? With all due respect, but I would speculate that 99,9999% of HN users are not qualified to write numerical optimization code. Looking at it is of little use unless you have a PhD in Applied Math and years and years of experience.

Of limited use to HN readers? To those writing web-apps, perhaps. Those doing Machine Learning will probably be ecstatic to find this.

TriinTon Microsoft Solver Foundation: numerical optimization library

I, too, would love to hear from someone who has tried this software. By the way, I found an interview with Nathan Brixius, a senior developer working on the Microsoft Solver Foundation library:

http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=209

Regarding similar software, there's MOSEK and a bunch of others whose logos show up on Solver Foundation's website. If you like to code in Python, there's CVXOPT and CVXMOD. If you're into MATLAB, there's CVX and Yalmip.

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

Say that to da Vinci. His flying machines were inspired by birds. He studied Nature and tried to build machines based on the same principles as those that allowed birds to fly. Of course, that led his astray, because it's hard to design machines that fly by flapping their wings. However, the structural part remains. Take a look at how airplanes are designed these days, and you will see that their structure somewhat resembles the bone structure of actual birds.

Last but not least: never say never, and never predict more than 10 years into the future. In 20 years your predictions might be ridiculed.

TriinTon Trading Shares in Milliseconds

I did. I was unimpressed. I was used to working in fields where theories could be trusted. Finance is a lawless territory. It's fun because problems lack structure and are so hard. It's frustrating because 30 years ago my skills would have allowed me to do something cool, while now the field is saturated and the odds are stacked against you. I moved to greener pastures and never looked back.

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

"Those super-sonic eagles are extremely elegant. And, why do we bother with 747s when ostriches are so much more efficient."

For starters, please do note that I wrote flying machines. As far as I know, ostriches do not fly. Besides, supersonic is not that impressive. Hell, a rocket can move at hypersonic speeds. When you design a fighter jet that is as maneuverable and energy-efficient as a hummingbird, please let me know.

TriinTon How bees perform perfect landing

The lesson is that whatever flying machine we are able to design, it will always pale in comparison to Nature's flying machines. If humming birds had nothing to teach us, papers such as the following one would not be published:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7045/full/nature0...

TriinTon Trading Shares in Milliseconds

The finance academics borrowed the mathematics from physics and the rigor from mathematics, but they forgot that, at the core, theirs is a social science. If they wanted to borrow anything from physics, they could have borrowed the good habit of comparing their theoretical results with experimental data. In physics, a theory is little more than mental masturbation until it's confronted with experiment. That nicely summarizes the state of contemporary academic finance: mental masturbation. Just because physicists were blessed with the ability to model natural phenomena using mathematics, it does not mean other scientists have such luck.

TriinTon Trading Shares in Milliseconds

Actually, I do. Do you?

I found it strange that a guy got downvoted for suggesting that a hedge fund used technical analysis. I hate TA, but then, I hate Quant Finance, too. Whoever thinks that the smart guys at RenTech and the like use that kiddie Stochastic Calculus taught at MFE programs is living in a state of sin. Period.

TriinTon Trading Shares in Milliseconds

Here's an example of what the demigods at RenTec do:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

"Volfbeyn said that he was instructed by his superiors to devise a way to 'defraud investors trading through the Portfolio System for Institutional Trading, or POSIT,' an electronic order-matching system operated by Investment Technology Group Inc. Volfbeyn said that he was asked to create an algorithm, or set of computer instructions, to 'reveal information that POSIT intended to keep confidential.'"

Now, you didn't think they used Black-Scholes, did you?! If you did, then: welcome to the real world!

TriinTon Trading Shares in Milliseconds

I am wondering what clueless fools have downvoted you. Technical Analysis is as foolish as Black-Scholes. Maybe moving-averages and Bollinger bands are not algorithms for the HN crowd. Technical Analysis is retarded, but then... so is all that crap they teach at Quantitative Finance courses.

TriinTon The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

"I just disagree. I have some familiarity with ASL and I feel they've gone off in the wrong direction from the start."

I know a bit of information theory, but I know zero of ASL. It's quite possible that they went in the wrong direction from the start, but someone can still write a paper to point that out and prevent other people from repeating the same mistake. There's value in going in the wrong direction: it serves as a warning to others.

"I guess I'd like to see a little passion in my science. Sorry if that seems too harsh."

Personally, I found the paper's presentation horrible. I would never submit something so visually unappealing under my name. I agree that it sounds like a last-minute rush to finish something. I also agree that there seems to be little passion in it.

However, let us look at the authors: 1st author in an EE undergrad, 2nd author is a post-doc, 3rd author is a professor. Of course, the undergrad did all the work, the post-doc guided him, and the professor secured the grants that paid for the effort. Despite all the paper's flaws, I still think it must be judged for what it is: an EE undergrad trying his luck outside his field... and failing, perhaps.

TriinTon The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

"I file Technology Review with Wired and SciAm. That is, fluff. Hardly intellectual material imho."

Sure, TR and Wired are fluff. Except that the article links to an arXiv paper. This is not a standard TR article. Moreover, you can't present scientific research in half a page without making it fluff. That, too, is an interesting information-theoretic problem.

"That would be interesting if they weren't using so poor an approach."

You missed the forest for the trees. In case you didn't notice, the people who wrote the paper are electrical engineers. They used the information-theoretic approach that is used in communications theory to a problem outside the traditional scope of application of the theory. Sure, natural language is hard, but if you start your research by focusing on all the little details you will get nowhere. To me, the paper looks like a first shot at a difficult problem. If you can do better, I would love to hear about it.

"...it sounds like the parameters of the study were determined by someone with very little understanding of how ASL actually works."

That is not the point. The point is that someone who does indeed understand how ASL works can read the paper, find out what is missing and build on it. No one knows everything, and inter-disciplinary work is very hard. Your criticism is too hard, because no one ever built a theory in one single iteration.

TriinTon The Puzzling Paradox of Sign Language

"This is only interesting if one doesn't realize that sign language is its own language, rather than simply signed English."

Define interesting. Personally, I find the entropic analysis of spoken Engligh vs. sign language pretty interesting, especially so when they relate it to channel capacity and other information-theoretic stuff. Your comment sounds anti-intellectual.

TriinTon The rise of Python in computational science

Python is very easy to learn, very intuitive. For someone who has done numerical computation with MATLAB, Python is a very natural language to use. By contrast, LISP is hard to learn, unintuitive, and unnatural.

In the real world people care about obtaining results as fast and painlessly as possible. The language is just a tool, not a goal.

TriinTon Linear Algebra Done Wrong [pdf]

"Also goes a long way towards explaining why so many linear algebra textbooks are translated from Russian."

I think you're detecting a false pattern there. Russians generally do kick ass in Mathematics. In the West, Mathematics was held back by the Bourbaki fanatics, while in Russia they were never afraid of marrying the pure with the applied, the beautiful with the useful.

There may be a lot of Linear Algebra books translated from Russian, but there are also a lot of other books by Arnold, Kolmogorov, Fomin, Gelfand, etc that were also translated from Russian and that were not on Linear Algebra.