doorhammer

Yeah. Definitely.

Usually part of the fun for me is finding a used book store wherever I'm at and exploring it.

That was particularly interesting in Thailand, because one of the shop owners wanted to talk about buddhist philosophy and seeing the types of books they had around was really fascinating

This is almost an aside, but you should take a look at some of the stuff that comes out of Microsoft Research. They employ some of the biggest names in Haskell (Simon Peyton Jones for one) and have done some really interesting and bleeding edge work.

It was funny to me, because I immediately liked the second version most, but implemented as as function that takes the range of numbers I want to use. The only reason I liked that version more is because it "solves" common "problems" I run into when I'm screwing around with fizzbuzz in new languages.

Funny to me because I'm adding a layer of abstraction to handle specific issues I've encountered in the problem space for a question where the problem space is totally synthetic

But yeah, as it's asked, I think the first is the best answer to Fizzbuzz

This isn't terribly profound, but I think I just like to read books in different places.

I enjoy it; it feels satisfying. The volume on that seems to edge up when I'm in a really different location, like another country.

That's not a counterpoint to what you said. It's just what hit me, and I thought it was funny.

Warning: I only glanced through the code real quickly, so I haven't checked to see if this has unintended side effects to the game logic, or to make sure it's a complete solution.

It looks like there's a variable that controls how quickly the board itself is updated:

  var boardGameUpdateInterval = 10;

And a function deciding how quickly the visual representation gets updated:

  var render = function () {
      setTimeout( function() {          
          requestAnimationFrame(render);
      }, 1000 / 15);

      if (gameTicks % boardGameUpdateInterval == 0) {
          updateBoard();
      }
  
      animateBoard();
  
      gameTicks++;
      renderer.render(scene, camera);
  };
  

They're global variables so it's pretty easy to just drop into the developer console and overwrite them.

I just changed the denominator of the setTimeout to 30 instead of 15, and the boardGameUpdateInterval to 5 instead of 10. Of course, you don't have to change the render speed to get the logic speedup, but I figured I'd do both.

This appears to have sped the simulation speed up by a factor of two.

ymmv

I don't think the parent is saying that the title is definitionally/grammatically incorrect. I think they're saying that it's not the typical/idiomatic use of the word when used in the context of a GUI. I got the same misimpression when I initially read it.

I don't think it's bad or crazy, or says anything about the project at all (it looks like a cool project). I mostly say this to note that the parent wasn't the only one that was a little confused by the title.

I immediately though "Man, has hacker news always been so angular? Wonder if styling changed... my task bar seems harder too... wat"

Really interesting effect

I used to buy one powerball ticket a week. About ten guys at work would pool together and buy ten tickets on the pretense of splitting it if we won.

We saw it pretty much exactly the way the article described. There'd almost always be an hour or two talking about what would be an interesting use of that much money, or talking about how stupid we were for playing the lottery, and it'd come back up over the work day.

We were paying for group amusement, and I still remember having a lot of fun with those conversations. I don't regret it any more than I regret spending money on a soda here or there during the same time period (long term health wise I regret the soda way more :) ).

If you want to see similar technology that's being used now, check out the Leap Motion being used with the Oculus Rift. They mount it on the front. I've personally only got experience with the rift (I have a DK2), but I've heard good things.

I think Oculus has it right, though, in that any HMD that does positional tracking needs super low latency to feel natural. Should be a little less problematic since the whole world wouldn't lag, but I'd be disappointed if the virtual overlay had perceptible lag after using some of the better experiences on the rift.

Yeah. Implicit bias is tough. For anyone interested, there's a quick rundown here:

http://med.stanford.edu/diversity/FAQ_REDE.html

I should have said "there's no data you're presenting to support this claim."

The problem I have is with phrases like "I would bet there is" or "I assume those blacks [with white sounding names] are more likely to come from families that are wealthier and better educated."

It seems like an obvious correlation to make, but they're not based on data. I think it's in our best interest, intellectually, to take a few minutes and look for some information. The internet means it can take fifteen or twenty minutes to find a decent chunk of data to start working with. It won't make you an expert (and I'm by no means one either), but it can help highlight a lot of the nuance that exists in issues like this.

> No

I'd really encourage you to read it an other articles on implicit bias; they're really important issues that have disastrous impacts.

> I'm pretty sure that if you run statistics, you would find out that people from poor neighborhoods are more likely to be criminals, violent, less educated, less intelligent.

The problem I have with this is that it's a hunch that sounds reasonable, but there's no data to support the claim. I think we need to be especially careful in situations with implicit bias to vet all of our assumptions, because in aggregate, they have really negative impacts on large subgroups of people.

Here's a link to the source document for the linked article: http://www.povertyactionlab.org/publication/are-emily-and-gr...

That article references other journal articles that review exactly what you're talking about, varying only location. It appears that it helps, but helps whites more. I didn't read that article (I'm at work; only have time for so much research, which probably should be no time at all :P)

> I'm not from the US, but don't many American blacks have white-sounding names? And I assume those blacks are more likely to come from families that are wealthier and better educated.

The article says, "Each resume listed identical qualifications except for one variation... names"

I looked into the underlying source article and they list and control for the education of the applicants, which means there's no need to judge their education by their name, since you already have it.

I think the problem a lot of people have is that it feels a lot like we're saying everyone is racist, which feels a lot like an attack. To spin it a little differently, I'd personally say we're all biased. You could go through any long list of cognitive biases and implicit racial bias would just be one of the myriad everyone is subject to in some magnitude. It's a matter of being aware of it and really questioning your founding assumptions so you can reduce the bias where possible. The problem with racism is that it has real and lasting impacts right now on minorities, and is particularly insidious (if you ask me).

I really think it would be worth your time to read the article and follow some of the linked articles. It's really interesting information that's relevant.

Yeah. This is anecdotal, obviously, but I always tip online and tip pretty well. My pizzas always seem to get here as quickly as when I tipped in person, and the drivers have thanked me specifically for it a few times.

Be an interesting thing to really do some research on, though.

I will say I tend to agree that I'd rather see employees be paid a higher rate by the company itself and then have their performance monitored and be rewarded or punished accordingly. I've worked in a few places that paid hourly folks $14+ an hour, in parts of the country where that was pretty decent money for a job you get get off the street, and they managed to keep really efficient employees who did their jobs well.

Throwing in another two cents here.

I'd say I lean toward introversion, though I've tried to spend a lot of time learning to engage in social situations, and do fairly well. I've been a full time trainer, and participated in various levels of managing teams to good success (if I do say so myself).

I like the people on my team, and I like going to lunch with them, but I hate Team Lunches. I think it has to do with how contrived the social situation feels, and how much I feel like someone is trying to push me into their vision of a sociable team.

One of my pet peeves is finding out someone wants to push Company Culture and that means getting everyone together to do cheers and chants.

There's nothing inherently wrong with cheers and chants and team lunches or whatever you want to do, but you love your job and who you work with and not want to be forced into a contrived social situation where you're supposed to bond. I bond just fine with my coworkers after we decide which thai place to go to on a given day.

I think people are downvoting you because you're post reads something like, "This is neat, but useless and it's been done before."

Fwiw I didn't downvote you, but it'd probably be taken better if you just said something like, "This is really interesting. I'm not sure what I'd use it for personally, but I'm interested in knowing if you had specific use cases in mind, and what sorts of projects are you seeing it be used in now?"

For me, it looks like it'd be handy to use to generate test data and/or to make fun/weird little game apps, but still be able to keep everything in a .net language, since I work for a .net shop. (I could use python or whatever I want, really. we're flexible. it's just nice to keep things uniform)

I should also say that I think whether or not upvoting and downvoting should have guidelines is largely a choice about what kind of community you want to create.

If you provide guidelines, you're prescribing the behavior you'd like to see and, it seems, doing more to manually try to carve out a culture.

If you leave the barest guidelines, you allow the culture to define what it means organically.

I don't think either of those is right or wrong. I think prescribing behavior through guidelines is more complex and harder to do well, though, but again, not better.

Yeah. I think the real answer to "where is an upvote defined" is that it isn't, and there are probably good reasons for that.

I try to ask "does it add information to the conversation?" and upvote or downvote based on that.

Yeah, this is how I generally approach it.

I don't care if I agree with someone. I just want them to provide more information and add some value to the discussion. If the information is invalid, I just do what I can to provide counter resources.

I also generally try to approach downvotes the way you're saying as well, though that brings us back to downvotes being "mini flags". I don't know that I disagree with that.

Mostly just bringing up that upvotes and downvotes aren't really defined. They represent the general unspoken opinion of the people voting, which I think is fine.

The question I'd have about a downvote being opposite of an upvote is what is an upvote supposed to be for? I mean that as an honest question. Is it because it's something I like? Is it because I think it adds value to the conversation (usually why I upvote)? I've never seen guidlines for voting either way. The flag guidelines also seem pretty hazy (spam or offtopic [1]).

Of course, that could be totally intentional, and I'm not implying it's a bad way to do things. They might not want to nail down the upvote/downvote idea so much and just let them represent a general will of the readers instead of getting into semantic debates over guidelines. Just a few things I'm curious about.

I've only read about half of the article so far, but it's pretty clear they're not talking about people the US wants extradited; that's a completely different story.

These are activists who ostensibly haven't committed any crimes, but suspect they're under surveillance, or get harassed for being activists and want to go somewhere where the culture seems to be deeply and overtly set against state sponsored spying on the populace.

I'd really like to get a surface pro 3 at some point for on the og type stuff. I really like literally sketching things out and when I tried the surface at best buy I loved the feel. I'm doing a lot to learn higher math that I never did and it seemed pretty great for that too

As a side note, one thing I've noticed on hn is actually a lot more love for what Microsoft does right than I might have first predicted. That's not to say that it's all great all the time but level heads opinions seem to surface pretty quickly. I'm not in love with ms myself, but I really like and appreciate a lot of what they're responsible for, which includes the surface. Going to have to get one.

Yeah, I'll have to look into it. I assumed you could take the course, but I didn't know if you'd need to be sponsored by a company or anything like that.

I don't know that I'd see it as a waste of money. I just like using my vacation time and money to experience something completely different and new, while learning new skills. Even if I'm not out doing something more interesting and engaged, I'd just end up hiking around finding a place to hang a hammock and read a book on coding or a technical paper.

My wife says my vacations aren't vacations because I never look like I'm relaxing in the classic sense. I'm not kicking back on a beach with a pulpy novel, usually (not that there's anything wrong with that). For me, a vacation is a time to psychologically recharge, and I get that by engaging myself, but on my own terms. Along with that, depending on how long the certification lasts, it's not that bad to have a backup skill/cert in the wings.

I've also found that it's really valuable to get insight into what other people do to make the world go round. Gives me a better respect and understanding of things in general.

Ohhh, yeah. Sorry. I reread what I said and realized I expressed myself really poorly.

I'm interested in taking the course without getting a job doing it, not the other way around. I was wondering how much it was to take it on my own dime.

I should have said something like "I'm interested in the course; can you take it and not get a job using it, or do you have to be on a job-track through a company to even take the course?"

I used to be a pretty avid rock climber and I'd be really interested in learning the techniques and types of equipment they use.

Reading my post, the climbing buildings part probably didn't reduce the perception that I was trying to do something risky, either

Interesting; I wish I'd known about this a few years back. Might have been a better option than moving companies and gas stations.

But really, my friends and I used to do a lot of building climbing for kicks when I was younger (probably four to five stories usually) and there was a long period where that kind of job would have been way better while I learned to code than the random crap jobs I ended up doing.

Looks really interesting though. Probably going to do some research into this.

Is the course integral to the job or is it the kind of thing where you pay for the course/licensing/certification then go look for a job? Seems like it might be interesting to look into just for the certification.

Of course... I have no idea what all this is like, so I might research for five seconds and realize that's lal stupid to ask

I'd say it's a fascinating social manipulation, but mostly it just satisfies my own intellectual curiosity.

The HN guidelines on what to submit:

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

The HN guidelines on asking why something was posted:

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

It might be worth reading through the HN Guidelines. They're pretty concise: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I can't find a guideline that's meta enough to tell me not to mention the guidelines, but I've blundered in worse ways before.

Yeah, I agree. This wouldn't work in most companies because that's just not the culture, but like you said, I think there's definite value in it.

You also have to deal with people perceiving your optimizations as a threat to their job security.

I see it as a form of process improvement, but instead of analyzing inter-employee/department processes, you're analyzing the processes and individual goes through.

Ticketing systems are a pain in the ass. I get the point of them, and I think they can be really valuable, but they so quickly become bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy.

My team is pretty free to decide how we do things right now, and we're considering adopting some form of issue tracking so we can get a better idea internally what's going on, but we're wary of it becoming ticket hell. More than likely the ticket will only ever be referenced inside the team and we'll just try to use it as a way to make sure we're collectively not losing track of things.

Nice!

Yeah, I've done the excel bit with \n and \t as well. I have a little text-munging javascript app I wrote for splitting and merging things in certain ways.

I also use the excel -> db route a lot, but I'm working with MS SQL Server so I'll just do the data import from excel to db.

I get dirty looks sometimes when I talk about doing things this way, but it's really handy. If I know I'm going to have to do something more than once, I'll usually write a quick script for it, but otherwise, quick ad-hoc text manipulation with ST, excel and the javascript scripts I have is pretty fast and really flexible.

Flexibility is the big thing for me. Often I won't think of every way I really need to manipulate the data right out of the gate, so being able to quickly work through and change things is handy.

I think my favorite two examples of getting more out of my computer lever are Sikuli Script and Sublime Text multiple cursors.

Sikuli Script lets me script almost anything that has a visual element/gui. I've been able to automate just about any task that has a gui and is repetitive, in some fashion or another, and at this point I have a backlog of scripts for working with some of the esoteric software I encounter day to day. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't before.

The multiple cursors (which are getting prominent in a lot of text editors) are awesome for small text munging and manipulation. by and large, everything I could do with multiple cursors could have been accomplished with some other tool, such as regex's or whatever else, but the multiple cursors end up being really intuitive and powerful for me. I never have to rethink how they work because they work just like my normal cursor but... with more of them. Combine them with ST2's ability to do a search and place cursors at every found location, and I can get a lot of weird stuff done quickly.

I think the example is apt enough for the situation of "repetitive tasks which humans are terrible".

I agree that additional more complex examples might be interesting, though.

It seems that there's always going to be a sliding scale, depending on how complex the task is. Some software will provide fairly straight-forward mechanisms for performing some tasks (such as find and replace) and some things will end up being potentially more difficult (maybe, say, find and replace with a regex).

In an office setting I think there's a good case here for having someone that's IT/programming/automation savvy working with people to improve their day to day process.

I've actually done that before at my job, in an informal capacity. I occasionally go sit with the folks on the operations side of the business so I can learn more about what they do, and more effectively build things for them, and often times I end up telling them a lot of tricks in excel, or word, or whatever else, that make there job easier. In a few cases I've managed to create quick tools for them that substantially reduce their workload with minimal effort on my part. In a strict cost-benefit analysis, it's probably not worth my time, but it pays a lot in inter-department relations. Of course, my working environment allows for that, but I mostly mean it as an anecdotal example of what I'm talking about. ymmv.

I'm wondering about the user specific dictionaries and whether or not adoption would be aided by the communities trying to define sets of standard dictionaries that seem to be particularly efficient and effective at different tasks, like coding in brackets languages, or just general coding dictionaries.

If I tried to use it for something somewhat non standard and had to start defining a lot of my own chords, I'd pretty quickly wonder if I was handicapping myself by making bad choices in defining things. Might be that I'd quickly realize it doesn't matter for whatever reason.

Looks really rad, either way.