fgimenez

This might be splitting hairs, but why do people insist on going out for coffee? It's way cheaper to make at home with a $20 coffee maker. The price per cup is cheaper, you don't need to leave the house, and it is little to no work at all.

That's exactly what I wanted to know! Do you know what this formula is called and/or where is is formally derived?

For the record, that technique was developed by Jon von Neumann. It's called a randomness extractor.

Obligatory wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor#Von_Neuman...

Technical question: He states that you should look at a pattern, look away, and then check to see if it changes. Supposedly it will change because your memory can only hold 7 +- 2 bits. Now if your memory is too small to keep this supposed pattern consistent, how the hell are you supposed to memorize this pattern for a consistency check? I.e. you need your memory to assert that your memory failed. Is there a separate memory he is talking about here? Even if that technique worked, couldn't the pattern stay the same just based off the chance that you get horizontal/vertical stripes twice in a row?

Sorry if I'm nitpicking, maybe my cs theory courses just ruin these things.

I understand the pressure, and it makes sense that we should treat them as respectfully as any other person. Yet, police should be expected to react rationally regardless of the situation. They should be prepared for all manner of verbal abuse; it comes with the job.

As an example, take a look at E.R. doctors. They treat a lot of people who are insanely abusive, both physically and verbally. Do they refuse to treat these patients? No, they are required by law and by their hippocratic oath to care for their patients. I work at UCSF, and residents tell me their war stories about drugged up patients who scream profanities at the doctors endlessly. Should a resident retaliate in any way, they would be pulled from their program. This process forces E.R. doctors to have thick skin and learn to cope with assholes on the job.

If we are to give police officers this insane amount of power to the public, we should expect nothing less than their ability to withstand some idiot's verbal tyrades.

I'm up to part 6, and this documentary is awesome. The only problem I have with it is that any of the North Korean citizens depicted have probably been sent to "re-education" camps for letting this filming happen. The makers of the film have essentially killed anybody they interacted with them.

My boss used to live in communist poland, and this was a very common tactic. Instead of shooting paintballs, they squirted people with liquid that would only show up under a black light. Police would later hold checkpoints with black lights to scan potential protesters.

Isn't convolution defined as an integral?

Looks like imageshack is down. Here's the image I saved before: http://imgur.com/wCaS0.jpg

I love the idea, especially since the magazine reading experience is somewhat diminished on the web. Unfortunately, the only way they achieve this is by using a pdf, which isn't terrible, I would just prefer to navigate some sort of html in my browser.

Are there any projects out there that attempt to make reading on the web more "print like"? Typogridphy (http://csswizardry.com/typogridphy/) is a good example of making a website less like website and more like a well styled magazine, but I have only seen one site use it (http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/). Obviously this is more likely due to my ignorance of other such sites, but the point still stands that there isn't much development in this area.

I just did it naturally. When I realized it, I tried to listen in another way to see if it was just a habit or necessity. Needless to say, when I tried the other ear or looking in a different direction, I couldn't understand a thing.

One of the main issues I have with listening is that I need to hear abstract concepts in my left ear. It is a little troublesome because I tend to stare listlessly off to the right when I'm trying to visualize what I'm hearing. People tend to think I'm being rude because I don't look them in the eye, but it's really the only way I can truly understand a long conversation. When I do force myself to look people in the eye, I end up coming away with zero comprehension of the conversation.

This was a pretty interesting read: http://books.google.com/books?id=90Vh8wUThAgC&pg=PA43...

Also, I remember reading a study where rats were deprived of REM cycles and the result was they were never exposed to nightmares. The hypothesis was that nightmares prepare us for real world dangers, and once the rats stopped dreaming, they were also less skittish in dangerous situations. I'll try to find the article again after work.

I loved myst! Does anybody know if there is a way to play it (or the even better sequel, Riven) on modern computers?

Fortune's Formula by William Poundstone. The story behind Claude Shannon and Ed Thorpe gambling (and then using those techniques on Wall Street).

RSA being broken is not optimistic

Is Jim Gray - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Gray_(computer_scientist) - considered dead?

My highschool calculus teacher told us his own experience with Escalante. We were in Northern California, not too far from Hiram Johnson, and the calculus program there was considered a failure. Escalante made all his students sign contracts that they wouldn't participate in any extracurricular activities (like sports, clubs, etc..) to be admitted into his calculus program. When he tried to do the same at Hiram Johnson, nobody wanted to join his classes. Apparently, he was also a hard man to work with and needed absolute control over his work (as stated in the article). Though his system obviously worked, imagine having to work with a cocky person who wants absolute fine grained control over everything that goes on in your office. Even if it is successful, most people would probably be more than angry.

Wow. With all the MBA bashing lately (more so on reddit), younger programmers like myself really begin to fear them like the plague. This is the first truly convincing argument as to why I would want to work with them. Heck, I couldn't see myself wanting to work without this treatment. Where do I sign up?

Okay, I have yet to understand what the heck postmodernism really is. Apparently, everybody I've asked cannot define it without resorting to incomprehensible explanations. Could anybody shed some light on what has become the whipping post of philosophy?

Wait, so this wasn't the result of a hack as mentioned here: http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html

How'd the brutesoft presentation go?

Is it just me, or does Linus' blog have the most vitriolic comments ever? It's like they are deliberately trying to anger him by disagreeing and arguing with whatever he says.

Was there a specific reason this story got reposted to the front page?

What's the general way to draw these charts in javascript? SVG, Canvas, VML?

It's not tabloid junk if it's a famous mathematician?

Half of me wants this to be successful because it's such a great idea. The other half hopes it crashes and burns simply because I don't need another hacker news to eat away my time.

More info:

The article is an introduction to Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSP's). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constraint_satisfaction_problem

A very rudimentary demonstration of this: http://aispace.org/constraint/sample2.html

Norvig implemented a quick and dirty version of this for his sudoku solver: http://norvig.com/sudoku.html.

Note, while you eventually end up just telling a CSP what you want, there's a plethora of algorithms to solve these constraints.

Definitely agree with apprenticeship. I've learned more through a couple hours of pair programming with an experienced coder than I did at the university.

This isn't to say university is bad. Data structures, algorithms, etc.. should all come at an instructional level, but good design practices definitely come from coders.

As a side note, is there any sort of organized apprenticeship program, or are we dependent on introductory training at a job/Open Source level?

You forgot empanadas :)