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alexsb92

353 karma · joined February 9, 2011

alexsb92 [at] gmail.com @G_raph www.alexblidaru.com
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alexsb92··on Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
As some one who's just interviewed with them for a "Forward Deployed SE, Government" internship position, I did ask what's up with the government in the title and what kind of work I'd do for them. They informed me that the word referred to one of the two products I'll be working on (Gotham over Metropolis) and that Gotham used to be called "Government", something that you can see on Wikipedia as well.

Now I'm not saying Gotham isn't used by gov't, I just wanted to explain what the word actually stood for.

alexsb92··on Cluster (spacecraft)
Maybe someone more knowledgeable about these things can answer this for me: when they say that this resulted in the loss of $370 million, is that number the entire mission cost or simply the actual rocket plus Cluster cost? I imagine the r&d cost far outweighs the cost of the actual build. I've been wondering at the same time why we don't send another one or two rovers to mars based on the design of curiosity seeing how it worked, as how expensive would the entire build be to replicate considering there's no more r&d costs?
alexsb92··on Software will not be patentable in New Zealand
Ok, then what would be your response to Canada?
alexsb92··on Dear Apple, let's talk about photos
I haven't looked yet, so sorry if it's mentioned, but is there any support for Amazon Glacier integration? If all I want is to make sure my photos are safe, and I'm not interested in really accessing a number of albums, can I select them and have them transferred to my Glacier account? This would be the case for many childhood photos of mine at this point in life.
alexsb92··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2013)
I remember mentioning that I'm a Canadian student to whomever I spoke on the phone with from SpaceX, and they said no, but I don't know if they knew about this exemption, or if SpaceX is just generally very broad in this regard to make things easier.
alexsb92··on Poll: Do you have a 3d printer?
I'll add another data point to this. While working for Thalmic Labs (of the MYO fame) last semester, one of the best purchases decision was to buy a 3D printer. We were able to find a big, cupboard size professional 3D printer for a great price, and we bought it. It ended up being invaluable for prototyping the design of the product. The difference between the first prototype, and what the final product is going to look like is incredible. In addition to simply prototyping, it also greatly helped in demos and testing, as we essentially had a prototype that for all intents and purposes looked fully ready at every demo, which definitely helped with testing the different sensor design, and form factor designs and getting valuable feedback from it.
alexsb92··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2013)
I really don't think it's up to them unfortunately. As a non-US student looking to apply for one of their internships, I was burned by that too. The regulation in question is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_R...
alexsb92··on Ask HN: Why would a government have created bitcoin?
I'm curious, are you saying that with some particular examples in mind?
alexsb92··on Waiting for a 1TB SSD below $1 per GB?
How would the laptop of your dreams be like? In a year or so it will be time to start thinking about getting a new one.
alexsb92··on Building Photoshop 1.0
> I often think about how incredibly inefficient modern software is given that we've had roughly the same level of productivity software ability (with varying levels of usability) for a few decades now. I distinctly remember my NT4 system of the late 90's, and how it was roughly as productive as my current machine, and I wonder just how much cruft is inside modern operating systems and applications.

As a fellow young person (probably even younger than you), I remember watching this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14 two years ago when it came out and I remember gaining quite an appreciation for all the work put in over time in Windows and the complexity that it probably brings.

alexsb92··on Building Photoshop 1.0
I'll check those emulators out.

> I really find historical technology to be edifying in the same way political, musical, and broader cultural history is edifying. I think it's a shame that we don't spend as much time teaching technology/design history to software engineers as we spend training 6th graders to understand their local political/cultural history.

I couldn't agree more. My local Science Center is currently running an exhibit on video games of the past 60 years http://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/GameOn/, and while I was familiar with most of the 90s and onward ones, it was incredibly cool to walk by and see all the different hardware and games pre-Win 95 which was the first computer I ever used. I would love to go through a curated presentation of the history of other types of software, and see them evolve over the years, see what concepts stuck and what concepts were dropped in time. It would be even better if along actual demos, I could read about some of the quirks that they had to deal with and anything else to give a young one like me more context about those times. EDIT: It was even cooler going there with my younger sister, and reliving some of the fun times we had as kids.

Now that I think about it, a physical exhibit where they can recreate the hardware (even if only on a superficial level of aesthetics), and the rooms and settings where that hardware would have existed, and the software it ran would be incredibly interesting. It would essentially be as close as we could get to a time machine for the foreseeable future. That kind of exhibit would probably become one of my favourites very quickly.

alexsb92··on Show HN: A Chrome extension that prevents duplicate downloads
Oh don't worry about it. Kinda saw it coming as I had that problem before. And that's great! Been meaning to switch to the dev channel for a while now.
alexsb92··on Building Photoshop 1.0
The problem i've had sometimes though is that whenever I try using some old software (which is mostly games as I was born in the 92), I often get stuck in making the game play nice with the current set up, regardless if I run it in compatibility mode or not. I guess I should set up some VMs with older OSes, just for this purpose.

And FYI the correct expression is "Hear, Hear!" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear)

alexsb92··on Show HN: A Chrome extension that prevents duplicate downloads
Can't wait to try this out. Some of the course files on my university's website are in .docx format instead of .pdf and I always forget I've downloaded them before, so by the end of the semester I end up with 7 copies of the same file.

As an aside, one of the problems I've had with certain Chrome Extensions is that the Chrome Webstore is telling me that "This application is not supported on this computer. Installation has been disabled." I started noticing this when I upgraded to Win 8 from my Win 7, and when I looked it up it was something about NPAPI plugins being disabled for Chrome on Windows 8. However this [1] and [2] make it seem that this is only for Chrome in metro mode, but I've been getting this message in Desktop mode as well. Now I don't know anything about Chrome extensions and file system access, but it would be great if it can be coded using some other kind of plugin. There is a workaround for Chrome/Win8 [3] but it does require a bit of work and it will put people off from installing it if they have to jump through those hoops.

[1] (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/tincr-for-chrome-dev...)

[2] (http://blog.chromium.org/2012/07/npapi-plug-ins-in-windows-8...)

[3] ()http://blog.chromium.org/2012/07/npapi-plug-ins-in-windows-8...

alexsb92··on Diamonds Are Bullshit
Though not shaving, women and men had been removing bodily hair with a variety of creams/razors way before WW1.
alexsb92··on This 3D Desktop Was Born at Microsoft
> I'm not sure why press, media, futurists insist on pushing the idea that the future of user interaction is via replicating 3-dimensional physical interaction. There's a reason the keyboard, mouse and (small) touch screen are so successful as input devices. They each create an huge degree of meaning with a high level of precision, for relatively tiny physical movements.

While the advantages you mention of a keyboard/mouse/touchscreen are correct, I would not say that is the reason they are so successful. The reason they are so successful is because up until recently there was no competition to either of these. They are the default winners in the world of today, because they were the only ones racing yesterday.

alexsb92··on The Next Generation of Gesture Control
For one off gestures, you could also very well have a quick "trigger" gesture that enables the device, and gets it going. When you are done, use trigger again,
alexsb92··on Google Glass
Here' my take on it, as another 20 year old.

There are definitely people out there like those you describe: the ones who read their horoscopes, shop online and perform any other kind of digital interaction in the wrong place at the wrong time and for far too long.

But looking back at the different people i met over the years, that category of people stays constant, and they are indeed the boring ones. Back in high school when the RAZR was the shit, these same people would be the ones constantly texting to people other than the ones they were hanging out with at the moment, and you'd have groups of people physically hanging out, but mentally they would all be focused elsewhere.

As long as that doesn't happen all the time, that's not a bad thing. What I've found to happen for the majority of people is that they still hang out and pay attention to one another, except sometimes they might quickly send a text or read an email. I don't mind this, and as long as you don't go overboard with it, I'm sure no one else minds. And yes you could argue that most things can wait for you to respond, but for the most part hanging out and maintaining a conversation with them does not require all my mental capacity, and part of it can easily be used for a one-off reply or message read.

Would most cases of Google Glasses be necessary for survival, or would they add that big of a bonus? Probably not. But even all those small things would be worth it. Like not missing that perfect moment for a photo, since the Glass would constantly record the past minute of your life and you could go back and get that moment in that footage. Even helping me figure out the names of people i've met before but forgot. One cool feature which for the msot part quite useless would be Google Goggles for Glasses. Scan my whole environment and tell me what you find. I'd have fun with that plenty.

And in my opinion the thing about all these worst case scenarios that people talk about, is that we have been led to believe by popular culture that they are more likely to happen than the best case or average case scenario. Think about it, almost every movie out there about the future has things going to shit, because those are more entertaining. A movie about humanity's first contact with aliens where everything works out and there's no war would be quite the boring movie for the masses.

As an aside, your name seemed familiar, and i checked my FB list of friends for you. Seems like you deleted your account, but I remembered that we worked together for HackNY, but You Probably Never Heard Of It. Glad you're doing well and congrats on the Codecademy internship.

alexsb92··on Magnet Implants Can Actually be Pretty Annoying
Have you been able to find anything that would do this, as this would be quite incredible to feel. You can measure magnetic fields with solenoids with wrapped wire, but this would be quite the impractical solution for a ring.
alexsb92··on CSS 3D Clouds
It seems that if I get all the options to "a lot" I get at least one or two clouds replaced by a white box icon. I imagine it's not loading them properly?
alexsb92··on OpenSource Nano Quadcopter Kit
It wouldn't be able to fly on three motors only. Opposite motors essentially stabilize each other, both on a horizontal plane and in terms of rotating the quad. So if one motor dies, it would do a combination of spinning out of control, similar to a helicopter without its tail rotor, and rotate on the axis of the two opposite motors that are still running.
alexsb92··on OpenSource Nano Quadcopter Kit
It wouldn't be able to fly on three motors only. Opposite motors essentially stabilize each other, both on a horizontal plane and in terms of rotating then quad. So if one motor dies, it would do a combination of spinning out of control, similar to a helicopter without its tail rotor, and rotate on the axis of the two opposite motors that are still running.
alexsb92··on Elastic (YC W11) launches Close.io, sales software designed by salespeople
Not bad at all! I like having all the contact options in one application, and I find it quite useful since I don't have to deal with multiple apps/devices to accomplish a big task.

Since I haven't played with it yet, what number does it call people with? Would each user would get a new one, or would it be per plan?

alexsb92··on Google acquires BufferBox (YC S12)
But at that point, would Google continue to be an advertising company? It would be like one of those megacorps that you see in movies, but hopefully not evil.
alexsb92··on Google acquires BufferBox (YC S12)
For Bufferbox, when the package is delivered to the box, they send you an email with an access code, and you have to enter the access code. As far as build quality and strength, they seem pretty solid, and I haven't heard of any abuse stories from the Bufferbox guys.
alexsb92··on Google acquires BufferBox (YC S12)
Incredibly happy for Mike, Jay, Aditya and the rest of the BufferBox Team! It seems like it is getting better and better for Canadian, and in particular Kitchener-Waterloo areas. One of the other cool things is that I've had my desk at the Velocity Garage right next to theirs for the past month, and I only heard of the news this morning.
alexsb92··on BufferBox: We're Joining Google
Nope. The common option in the US and Canada is to get DHL or its equivalent to come to your door and deliver it. The problem comes when you are not home and they require a signature. In this case they usually attempt again. If none of the attempts work, they store it in their warehouses for a bit, and if no one comes and picks it up, it's returned to sender.
alexsb92··on Scientists “humanise” Foxp2 gene in mice to probe origins of human language
Thanks! I'll check it out. And i generally agree with your last statement, so by no means do i wish for an island completely ruled by scientists, but I think it would be neat to have a country/city state type thing incredibly renowned by their scientific breakthroughs.
alexsb92··on Scientists “humanise” Foxp2 gene in mice to probe origins of human language
Sometimes I wish there would be a country somewhere with an incredible driving force behind science where things like this would be possible. Still partake in ethical research, but reject the knee jerk emotional reactions that some experiments might cause. Would probably advance some fields quite a bit.

It also always happens that when i imagine it, it's on a big island.

alexsb92··on Why I'm returning my Microsoft Surface RT
I'll admit I haven't used it as much, but I was quite impressed by the looks of it. Yes the snap solves the problem, however you can still only share to that snapped app. Maybe we'll see a change in the behaviour of the Share charm in a future update.

Another problem I've had with the Mail app (though this is Windows 8, so not sure if it's in RT as well) is that you can't just use the Mail/Calendar apps like how you'd use them on an iOS device, where you can just add your gmail as an accunt and then you have your calendars and email. I'd love to be proven wrong, and for there to exist a way to do this though, without having to create another Microsoft account. And I saw another, as I've used my recently revived hotmail to log into the Store and all.

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