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davemabe

65 karma · joined October 8, 2008

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davemabe··on A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles
Do you have a link to the study? I'd love to read it.
davemabe··on To influence people don't try to persuade them, use ‘pre-suasion’ instead
This is also referred to as "priming" which researchers have repeatedly failed to replicate.

See: http://psych.stanford.edu/~michael/papers/Ramscar-Shaoul-Baa...

davemabe··on Save more with Google Drive
I have more confidence that Drive is here to stay because of one fact: an entire line of computers (Chromebooks) rely on Drive solely for their storage. At this point, abandoning Drive would be abandoning a lot of other things. This was never true for your list of Google chopping block apps.
davemabe··on The CODE Keyboard
I have had one too for several years and it's one of the best decisions I've made. It's still holding up quite well and no letters on the keys is great. Though I still, after all these years, have a little trouble being able to type the number keys without the labels on them.

Most people are intimidated by the absense of labels, but my daughter takes it as a challenge and does pretty well without them.

davemabe··on Facebook Will Launch In-Browser Video Chat Next Week In Partnership With Skype
I've polled my teenage daughter several times over recent years about this. She barely _talks_ on the phone anymore - texting is FAR and away the most common form of communication. Even (facebook) chat is not used that often. I can't imagine video chat being compelling for her and her friends.
davemabe··on Dropbox sued for June 19 Authentication Bug
Here's a good recent documentary that goes into detail about the famous hot coffee case. It was eye-opening for sure. I never thought that I would going in, but I came away thinking McDonald's was woefully negligent in that case.

http://hotcoffeethemovie.com/

davemabe··on I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday
There are trades that get "busted" (i.e. rolled back) every day in the US stock markets. I've had it happen several times. This is part of normal market activity. In my experience it has seemed pretty subjective - some trades that I thought for sure would have been busted weren't and others were.

There's some speculation that when some more powerful market participants (read: Goldman Sachs) are on the losing end of a questionable trade they complain to the exchange and get the trade busted far more frequently than when it happens to less powerful participants.

davemabe··on Ask HN: Have you written a book?
I wrote BlackBerry Hacks several years ago:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101152

Definitely a lot of work and a worthwhile pursuit.

davemabe··on Fell Off My Bike, and Vowed Never to Get Back On
I had a concussion but other than that I was pretty much fine. The bike handled it pretty well too - new front wheel, new saddle, and new bar type was pretty much all that was required to replace.
davemabe··on Fell Off My Bike, and Vowed Never to Get Back On
Scary indeed. Here's an image of my helmet after I crashed in a race a couple years ago. Not fun!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davemabe/5220685015/

davemabe··on Google Voice for iPhone Released
Tks - that might be enough reason to switch to Android actually.
davemabe··on Google Voice for iPhone Released
This is great - but you still have to be in the app to make a phone call (doesn't integrate with the native iPhone phone app well). Does anyone know if the Android version has tighter integration?

I'd like to not have to remember to launch the app to return a call and use the native SMS app to send from my GV number. Is this possible with the Android version?

davemabe··on How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do
PRs: 5K 14:53, 10K XC: 30:29 all from college.

Nothing fancy compared to people I trained with.

I've read Once a Runner a long time ago. Training life is similar - it's all consuming really. In many ways it's like a job and a way of life.

Since I gave up running and got on with my life, I still train and compete competitively - even low key competition is enough to keep things interesting and motivating even though it's not the way of life it used to be.

I don't recommend that people do marathons actually. I've done 3 and they take such a tremendous effort to recover from that a lot of people just stay on the couch and don't start running again.

davemabe··on How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do
I don't think they're contradictory at all. As you gain more and more fitness you'll have to work harder to get to the pain. As you experience more pain you become somewhat more comfortable with it and can tolerate more of it over time.
davemabe··on How to Push Past the Pain, as the Champions Do
I was a competitive runner for many years and trained with some of the best. The difference between great runners and cyclists and everybody else is that they learn to tolerate pain - a lot of it - on a regular basis. They crave pain and can push their pain threshold far beyond what normal people would be able to tolerate.

If you've ever seen a great runner working out - it's almost painful to even watch - but always very impressive.

davemabe··on "the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians"
I agree that statisticians will be more and more in demand as time goes on.

I need one right now for a project - if interested email me at my username at gmail.

davemabe··on High-Frequency Programmers Revolt Over Pay
Here's a very good presentation that describes what HFT is and how it works (and some of the myths):

http://www.tradeworx.com/TWX-SEC-2010.pdf

davemabe··on Ask HN: I sold my company last month for $5m. What do I do with the money?
One word: plastics.
davemabe··on Plummeting Marijuana Prices Create A Panic In California
Maybe it's time to give these guys a bailout.
davemabe··on The sad positive feedback loop of lotteries
The lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math.
davemabe··on Taleb on Black Swans, Fragility, and Mistakes
My favorite quote on Nassim Taleb's writings:

Taleb’s writings are filled with certainty, anger, and immodesty, having the Godelian impossibility of someone shouting 'I am the most humble!'

Spot on. From http://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/review-of-talebs-blac....

davemabe··on Day Traders 2.0: Wired, Angry and Loving It
There's no question there are a lot of snake oil salesmen in this business. That said, there are a small number of elite traders out there that make these types of returns and are fully content not growing their account infinitely.

Also, as your account gets larger, trading it for the same types of returns becomes more and more difficult just because of the position sizes you have to take. This reason alone is why the little guy still has a built in advantage over institutional traders who have to move around very large amounts of money to be worth it.

I don't know if these guys are charlatans or not, but there are guys and gals doing similar things making similar returns consistently.

davemabe··on Poll: Are HN users interested in sports analytics?
I'll second that - Statsheet is quite a one-person startup success story.
davemabe··on GNU Screen: an introduction and beginner's tutorial
Is screen really that terrible? Enough to switch to something else? Screen is largely standard at this point. Why would I want to switch to this tmux?
davemabe··on Remotely installing Debian using a web browser
Wow - this is exactly what I needed this morning actually. Is this mirrored anywhere? The site is down it appears.