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_tom_

1,215 karma · joined June 7, 2020

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_tom_··on Ask HN: Why do some people not communicate clearly?
People who can introspect as you are doing here are rarely the problem.

It's the people who never think about other people's mental models (or even their own!) that are frequently hard to communicate with.

_tom_··on Ask HN: What do you use for a personal database?
Apple notes and Elasticsearch.

Apple notes for things I type quickly.

Elasticsearch for larger things like transcripts of classes I teach or take.

_tom_··on I record myself on audio 24x7 and use an AI to process the information
There have been a few products that record everything you see on the web, so you don't have this problem. Obviously analogous to recording everything you hear.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/all-about-seruku-search-...

_tom_··on They made a material that doesn't exist on Earth
Clickbait. Please provide a title that says who and what material.

"Scientists synthesize material that may replace rare earth magnets"

("who" was two universities, so didn't fit a title).

_tom_··on Idaho Stop
I would think that electric assisted biking would be covered by the laws for vehicles, not human powered bicycles. Is that not correct?
_tom_··on Idaho Stop
> We just take for granted that cars will blast through stop signs at a pretty high speed (maybe 10 - 20 km/h?)

No, we don't. This doesn't happen, at least where I live.

This sounds like a made up statistic, to justify bad behavior.

_tom_··on Lab-grown blood given to people in world-first clinical trial
Another comment says this is based on the donor. So, if you can self donate, or find one matching donor, you should be able to get a match every time.

Obviously, custom tailored stuff is likely to take longer to develop, but it seems feasible.

_tom_··on Lab-grown blood given to people in world-first clinical trial
If we can grow it with whatever factor James Harrison had, that would be another huge benefit.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/11/health/james-harrison-blood-d...

_tom_··on Lab-grown blood given to people in world-first clinical trial
People literally ALWAYS say this when a new disruptive technology comes up. I'm not sure why, maybe people like the idea of stability?

"Digital will never replace film"

"Landlines will always be the majority of calls"

"Computers are cool, but will never replace typewriters"

_tom_··on Stop publishing conference videos
"Something very useful isn't perfect. We must stop."

No, we shouldn't. Conference videos are great. The only alternative that is likely to happen is no videos. Clearly worse.

Not a useful article.

_tom_··on I am a quite good bad programmer
> Lots of folks are good at doing the job but bad at interviewing for jobs. Interview prep is a massive industry.

Thanks to interview prep, lots of people are good at interviewing, and terrible at their jobs.

_tom_··on Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading
Yeah, I've signed that. I hate it, but I understand. If the employee can't be reached, they can still finish the patent. If the employee won't cooperate, they can get the patent.

They better be paying for this upfront.

_tom_··on Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading
Most starting salaries in tech are over $100k, at least in high COL areas. That's why the limit.
_tom_··on Laws barring noncompete clauses spreading
Yes. They aren't common, but I e seen maybe half a dozen. Typically high level employees. Never a normal engineer.
_tom_··on Road to Artificial General Intelligence
Figuring out the limits of the law is definitely AGI!

Most humans can't do it.

_tom_··on Star Trek (1964) [pdf]
It was fun to look for hints of actual episodes in the episode suggestions.

"Mirror" and "Charlie" for examples, and many others.

_tom_··on Star Trek (1964) [pdf]
I skip any show that has only one central mystery. If they solve it, the show is over, so you know from day one it will be never be solved.

Lost was obviously in this category.

A five year mission is a much better premise.

_tom_··on Star Trek (1964) [pdf]
> unwarrented flip-flops every episode of people being loyal, betraying, hating someone then in love with them etc.

This is what I hate about most TV series these days, the writers value conflict over character. This basically prevents any actual character development, or even any character identity at all, as the character changes from episode to episode. This is what makes a series forgettable.

Roddenberry forbade intra crew conflict as a plot device, so Star Trek has identifiable character that people still remember. BSGs characters are already forgotten, because they lacked identity.

_tom_··on Ask HN: What was being a software developer like about 30 years ago?
One difference I recall is you had to read manuals first. Now, you just code, and when you get stuck: google or stack overflow. But with no good search engines, you couldn't search books like that, so your chance of finding an answer by searching was poor. You wanted to have read the book first, so it was in your head.

Also: way fewer libraries. You might write ALL of an application. You might call the OS to just to read/write files. Today is much more gluing together libraries, which is nowhere near as much fun.

_tom_··on Variability, not repetition, is the key to mastery
> specifically focusing on lower-level "build blocks" practice

This has been my experience with teaching math and CS.

The biggest causes of failure is not identifying and teaching prerequisite skills.

The key point is prerequisite. Many times the skills needed to pass a math or CS class are not part of that class's curriculum.

Students who have encountered the building blocks already tend to do well, students who have not, tend to fail - no matter how much the class goes over the material in this class - because the problem lies before that material.

_tom_··on Ask HN: What mindset change made the biggest positive change for you?
I find thinking about my future self motivating. Why wouldn't I want to do something nice for me?

Much more effective than thinking about what I "should" do.

_tom_··on 300 meters resolution SF Bay Area Forecast
Displays nothing but garbage on mac/firefox.

I did briefly see something that looked like a map, but then it smeared into an abstract art looking blob.

_tom_··on Ask HN: How do you maintain your daily log?
Apple notes.

It gives a hierarchy, so todos, meeting notes, etc., can be organized. Search is reasonable.

Not perfect, but better than one large word doc, which I had been Using before.

_tom_··on Galactic settlement of low-mass stars as a resolution to the Fermi paradox
The Fermi paradox relies on a false assumption. Intelligence is not binary. It's a continuum that we are likely very low on.

You can communicate with civilizations only at almost exactly your level.

Us, a thousand years ago, could not even detect any of our modern communication methods.

How could we expect to detect signal from a civilization a million years ahead of us?

It's not that intelligence is rare. Intelligence at exactly our level is rare.

_tom_··on Shell script best practices, from a decade of scripting things
Best practice for shell scripting: don't.
_tom_··on Radioactive traces in tree rings reveal Earth’s history of ‘radiation storms’
Hunter gather doesn't work so well in a paved city of a million.

The Amish would likely be fine. Farmers with land and skill would likely survive, but would be able to provide crops for large numbers of people.

People in cities would die.

_tom_··on My next Mac might be the last
It used to be snappy for the whole system, then it took a horrible regression.
_tom_··on My next Mac might be the last
> No one expects a computer to work exactly the same way as a phone or tablet.

I don't expect there to be any difference soon. There no point for a laptop when it is just a screen plus a keyboard, which you can do with a pad.

There are clearly planning for convergence.

_tom_··on Record-breaking gamma-ray burst possibly most powerful explosion ever recorded
And that's assuming it is random. I still want it to be aliens trying to reach us about our extended warrantee!
_tom_··on Sonic: Fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend
The problem with subsets is everyone wants a different subset. It's my popular software almost always bloats. Everyone wants some different features.
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