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cjf4

716 karma · joined December 12, 2013

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cjf4··on Data wrangling in Elixir with Explorer, the power of Rust, the elegance of R
Can you make a pitch to a Python/R user to give this a try?

What you’ve built looks very nice and heard nothing but good things about elixir elsewhere, but would take a lot to leave those much more robust ecosystems. Do you hope to grow into that over time? Is there enough in terms of viz, statistical models, and ml to survive?

cjf4··on TikTok Congress Hearing
That's half the story. The other half is that it's under the influence under an antagonistic authoritarian government. If tiktok were a japanese app, this would play out very differently.
cjf4··on ML would have advanced faster if another front-end language had been adopted?
If you take the thread's stated pros (low barrier to entry, experimental scripting workflow) and cons ([not] fast, compilable, no GIL) at face value, it's interesting evidence for what really matters compared to what needs to be merely acceptable for a ML language.

The thing neither of them list which is absolutely enormous is the breadth and quality of boring general purpose stuff in Python. It's a big deal that you can write a production grade web app or api in the same language you do modeling work in.

cjf4··on A Midcentury Bender: Revisiting Mad Men
This post mirrors why mad men isn’t nearly on the same level as the sopranos/breaking bad/the wire.

For all the visual richness and unique period dynamics, the story wasn’t particularly compelling and the show winds up feeling empty.

cjf4··on Ask HN: Good resources to become financially literate
The nice thing about bogleheads is it starts pretty simple but scales into the minutia of various tax efficiency techniques, fund selection, real estate, and so on when you need it.

The other thing I like about it is that the forums have lots of detailed personal scenario discussions that are helpful for getting real life examples of the application of the dogma.

cjf4··on Parser as Prototype: why choice-based games are more interesting (2013)
Tangential to the discussion in the thread, this is a nice reminder of some of the nice things from the blog era: - medium form essay that's not SEO optimized - simple, fast loading websites - real discussion in the comments

It's too bad distribution for this type of content was never really solved.

cjf4··on Ask HN: Why did Frontend development explode in complexity?
Most of the answers here are pointing to things like inefficiencies, short-sightedness, and over engineering, but I'm not seeing the positive side.

The web is an incredible distribution channel. With decent engineering, anyone can make an app that has access to an enormous marketplace with very little capital costs.

The past 20 years of software have been dominated by this distribution model so it's easy to take for granted, but compared to pre-web distribution that involved manufacturing and much larger differences in user platform, it makes sense that the world is trying to squeeze as much software as possible into this model.

With that comes complexity.

cjf4··on FTC seeks to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard
While I don't think centralization of media is a good thing, the anti-competitive argument doesn't make sense given the amount of viable competition. Microsoft is probably in 3rd place in console sales, lower if you include PC and define Steam as a separate platform.

If the merger were completed, it would certainly change things, but it wouldn't be any guarantee of Microsoft's dominance, or even a first place finish. So to block the acquisition based on something that might happen seems like a clear case of regulatory overreach.

cjf4··on Goodbye, data science
One of the things that always sort of annoys me about complaints that "management doesn't listen to data (science)" is the lack of awareness they consist of.

It turns out that data work is limited by all the same things every other part of the business is limited by: the need to make quick decisions, institutional imperative, the beliefs of decision makers, the ability to communicate well/influence, and so on.

Having better access or skill with data doesn't give you a pass on these things, despite the suggestions otherwise from laments such as this.

cjf4··on Intel and the $1.5T chip industry meltdown
Many thought it was not only possible but inevitable: The Schlieffen plan, French revanchism, general military buildup across Europe, and of course Biskmark's 1888 comment:

"One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans."

cjf4··on GTA VI Leak [video]
I started out thinking RDR2 was immersive, but the theme park ride on rails main plot missions absolutely killed it, and diminished all the cool world stuff they did.
cjf4··on The Best Books on the Great Divergence
This was a good survey. The nature of historical books (and especially grand macro books such as these) tends to lead to an acceptance/rejection debate on a particular perspective, which can be tedious, but this did a good job of taking each perspective seriously yet critically.
cjf4··on Coinbase is rescinding already-accepted job offers
The stock market does two things crypto doesn't: - generates consistent cash flows - produces real economic value
cjf4··on Fractals: An Eclectic Survey, Part-1 [pdf]
Another eclectic fractal not listed here is the novel Infinite Jest. David Foster Wallace specifically noted the plot structure as a Sierpinski Gasket. You could think of the tennis academy, the halfway house, and the international assassins plots as the three subcomponent triangles within the overall triangle of the novel.

Of course literature doesn't fit cleanly - IJ simultaneously has a cyclical plot structure, but fractals are interesting way of thinking about the aesthetics of the book.

cjf4··on Ask HN: If your SaaS was used to commit a financial crime, what should you do?
Hire a lawyer.
cjf4··on Microsoft to Acquire Activision Blizzard
GE Honeywell was a huge one.

https://www.rferl.org/a/1096891.html

cjf4··on Finally, on CBS, the football matches the business cards
The article says the old way was the cbs way (blue colors, stay out of the way)
cjf4··on Finally, on CBS, the football matches the business cards
Anything that moves away from the CBSness is a good thing. Their broadcasts have been second rate mediocrities since they’ve had the rights:

- Completely bland theme music.

- Half-witted former QB analysts (other than Romo).

- The worst studio show.

The other networks (particularly NBC) do a way better job.

cjf4··on J. Kenji López-Alt is Seattle’s reluctant powerful food influencer
I think the key to Kenji's success was bring Cook's Illustrated's scientific approach to a younger generation.
cjf4··on Ask HN: Which tools/services have your favorite UI/UX?
They really hit a sweet spot of ease/accessibility, flexibility, and efficiency (Jupyter lab for me specifically)
cjf4··on There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble
>for many of us, money is only experienced through our phones, as a number on a screen. You pay your rent with one app, you buy put options with another. The number goes up, it goes down, it lives in the little portal we hold in our hands.

And decades ago it was a number written down on a little piece of paper, and before that it was little pieces of “precious” metal locked away somewhere.

At least nowadays amateurs have a better chance to be literate.

cjf4··on AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google
I agree with your point that companies should provide more room for individualism, but there have to be some kind of boundaries and recognition that you are part of a team.

It seems like more and more that emboldened employees don't think there is any limit to what they should be able to say/do in a company context, which is a huge problem. If you want individualism to that degree, you need to be in business for yourself. If you take a job at a company, you're implicitly conceding some of that individualism.

cjf4··on Hemingway Editor
I'm sure someone has done this before but Hemingway app ironically has a lot of feedback for this random passage I pulled from the Old Man and the Sea.

https://imgur.com/a/5vheg0w

cjf4··on Religion, Violence, Tolerance and Progress: Nothing to Do with Theology
The overall point Taleb makes is a good one, but he out kicks his coverage here:

> The (Protestant) Puritans who inhabited New England and the Salafis of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf have nearly identical theologies, based on shared communitarianism (refusal of a centralized authority), iconoclasm (absence of representation, of saints, and of any elaborate aesthetics), absence of an organized “church”, and very stern practice of the religion.

None of these things are theology. They can be informed heavily or indirectly by it, but theology is primarily about how we understand God, not the second order effects.

cjf4··on Ask HN: Best Recipe Search Engine?
For paid options, the best is the ATK/CI site.

The reason they're head and shoulders above anything else is quality control. You don't have to worry about a recipe being good or not because they test them so much. Even the NYT, which has more adventurous choices, aren't anywhere near as reliable.

cjf4··on We Can Do Better Than SQL
I'm not sold.

I acknowledge that these are real issues, and commend the authors for attempting to address them. However, these issues rarely cause any real friction for me - I generally find SQL among the most ergonomic languages I use (regardless of dialect).

cjf4··on Harvard CS professor David Malan built a distance-learning empire
Taking CS50 feels similar to watching a movie that has an auteur’s fingerprints all over it. Every word in the lecture, every technology, and every problem set has been carefully crafted to fit together to create a cohesive experience.

College instructors everywhere should take the course to see what the zenith of multimedia online education looks like.

cjf4··on Python should not be taught as a foundational language
I'd add multi-paradigm. It's really powerful that you compare teach/compare/mix OO, FP, and others without leaving the language.
cjf4··on Why skyscraper architects always return to Art Deco
To me, Art Deco stands out in modern skylines in part because it is distinctive. I don't think the glass covered skyscrapers that are sprouting up in every growing city are as ugly as their detractors say, but they do all look the same.

Of course, more distinctive architecture can also get repetitive (the referenced tiering in NY or Haussmann buildings in Paris), but at least they are distinctive to that place.

cjf4··on Altair – A declarative statistical visualization library for Python
This is easily my favorite Python visualization tool. The declarative nature is intuitive, and the way it integrates with vegalite provides a lot of flexibility. The docs are also great.

If you are missing ggplot2 in Python, I’d say look here first.

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