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d2fn

156 karma · joined September 15, 2010

research @  d2fn.com
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d2fn··on The Global Fossil Record
"Paleontologists are sure that the fossil record is biased."...

"Land animals are probably very poorly represented as well. For example, most animals that are now alive, or ever have lived, are insects, but the fossil record of insects is poor."...

http://www.k5geosource.org/1content/1sc/fossils/pg6.html

d2fn··on The Global Fossil Record
Excellent points! Thank you.
d2fn··on Shades: In-memory OLAP cubing, histograms, and more
No dimensionality limits but I wouldn't use this for truly high-dimensional problems like text analysis and inverted indexes (1000s of dimensions). It might work but I wasn't really thinking about those kinds of use cases when building this.
d2fn··on Java's Atomic and volatile, under the hood on x86
"For it to end up with the right value at the end (M x N), two things need to be true." <-- the two things (immediate visibility and atomicity) are not strictly required. this is only required if all intermediate values are to be observed by the running threads. otherwise you can end up with the correct answer (M x N) without requiring threads to coordinate each write.
d2fn··on Flake: A Decentralized, K-Ordered Unique ID Generator in Erlang
Thanks for the interest and the feedback. I've updated the readme and added a roadmap as well as a faq after getting some good input over the last couple of days.

https://github.com/boundary/flake

d2fn··on Hashify: what becomes possible when one is able to store documents in URLs?
some observations: 1. when content changes every hyperlink to that content must change along with it. 2. pass by reference (url) is no longer possible.
d2fn··on Facebook drops "Clear Chat History"
facebook isn't free, you're the product
d2fn··on How do I become a Code Ninja or Rockstar?
You get to be a good developer by repeatedly building software that solves problems and creates utility. Heed the advice of others who suggest learning different classes of languages that affect the way you think about problem solving. But pick something and don't toil over it too long.

The other part of the "doing" side of things is finding something to do. A good place to start is by solving a problem you have yourself or that you are interested in. Maybe you think all the todo list managers suck, or maybe you want a tool that helps to organize your porn collection. Great, pick a language and get to work.

Another secret is to hang out with smart people and other good programmers. Talk to others about their work and learn from them. The rising tide raises all ships.