HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

fl3tch

588 karma · joined August 10, 2011

submissionscomments
fl3tch··on The hypocrisy in Silicon Valley's big talk on innovation
If you want to make a difference, quit trying to cash out as a 25 year old millionaire.

Get a PhD and do research. That's the real risk in life, that you might work your ass off for little pay, spend 30 years chasing a dream, and fail in the end.

But the people who succeed change the world.

Interestingly, most Nobel Prize winners donate a large percentage of their prize money to charity or research. They weren't interested in early retirement in the first place.

fl3tch··on Academia.edu - Share research
> I think the idea is that instead of using the current journal system...professors will post straight to Academia and bypass publishers altogether

This might work in fields where there is more collaboration than competition, such as most of physics, but it won't work in the biomedical sciences. People want and need to publish in high impact, well-established journals. That's just the reality for now.

fl3tch··on Host me in California
The cost of hosting someone for a year is pretty high.

If you become a yacht salesman, are you expected to sell one on the first day? Are you a failure because someone else sold a hundred hot dogs?

fl3tch··on [dead]
It's important to point out that he wasn't arrested merely because he posted a message on Facebook. That was just a tip that lead to concrete evidence of the crime, namely his damaged vehicle. Cops follow leads all the time, and Facebook is a part of the ecosystem now.
fl3tch··on Thorium
Do you have an email address?
fl3tch··on You’re not anonymous. I know your name, email, and company.
Depends on the filter list. EasyPrivacy is designed to block trackers, and if you look at the list

https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.txt

you'll see that Demandbase is there.

fl3tch··on Google+ Is Growing at Facebook Speed
G+ has 135 million "stream active" users. Those are people who really meant to go to plus.google.com, not click something in Gmail.
fl3tch··on "Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on software patents
It certainly isn't trademarked. :)
fl3tch··on Nate Silver correctly called 50 out of 50 states
One way to look at is that there were only about 6 states that could go either way, so he picked 6/6.
fl3tch··on Watch Twitter users say who they voted for in real time
I saw one that said, "I would have voted for Obama if he had accepted my Farmville request", and it ticked up for Obama.
fl3tch··on Is Facebook becoming the next MySpace?
It may be different for different cohorts, but for my social circle, SMS is the de facto communication medium. I deleted my Facebook account over a year ago and still keep up with friends, plan events, etc., all via text message.

Thus, there really was no downside in terms of being "out of the loop", while I get the benefit of not feeling like shit because I'm continually inundated with self-promotion posts that make others (most of whom I barely know) look like they are doing more important things than me.

fl3tch··on Raspberry Pi Colocation
Reminds me of the Mac Mini colocation, but more extreme. Just want to throw in that I have a KVM with Edis and they are a solid hosting company in that price range.
fl3tch··on Verizon is Selling Your Personal Data
No, I had several options on the page linked by OP. When I went to the locationmanagement.vzw.com page, it says, "There are no services available. A location service must be downloaded on the handset to be listed here."
fl3tch··on Google Consumer Survey
> Simply choose multiple choice questions and stack the answers in the right order (people usually click in certain pattern when doing it at "random").

Ideally, you could randomize the order of the answers for each person, and later divide them up by order presented to detect any bias. This is something that online surveys make much easier than paper surveys.

fl3tch··on How Apple's Obsession with Google Is Hurting Apple
It should be noted that Mike Elgan is a prolific user and advocate of G+ with a big following.

https://plus.google.com/+MikeElgan/posts

fl3tch··on Facebook's Gen Y Nightmare
That last point is interesting. There's already a burgeoning industry for companies that protect privacy, keep you off Zaba Search-type sites, etc. There are a few "reputation management" companies that try to get negative information removed or pushed down in search results. The next logical step is to just pay someone to create profiles with great content.
fl3tch··on Facebook Wants You To Snitch On Friends Not Using Their Real Name
I'm guessing it's because a culture and expectation of using real names had already been established on Facebook by the time the masses arrived, while privacy-conscious techies were the first G+ users.
fl3tch··on Facebook Wants You To Snitch On Friends Not Using Their Real Name
I think judges have more to fear than prison guards.
fl3tch··on Facebook Wants You To Snitch On Friends Not Using Their Real Name
I going to guess that referring to inmates by numbers would be widely criticized as inhumane by many human rights groups. It would be an uphill battle to keep something like that going.
fl3tch··on A real fMRI high: My ecstasy brain scan
"This is my eye, captured by a mini TV camera mounted inside the machine. This camera isn't a normal fixture but was installed by the TV production company filming the experiment for a documentary. The pupil is widely dilated, one of the outward signs I have been given MDMA. The inward signs are pretty obvious too."

This is why it's impossible to do a truly double blind study of this kind. So you give them MDMA or psilocybin and ask if it helped their PTSD therapy or if they had a religious experience, and they are more likely to say yes.

fl3tch··on Google Search is only 18% Search
They have much better granularity than simple domain blacklisting. Take a look at a filter list.

https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt

fl3tch··on Vinod Khosla says technology will replace 80 percent of doctors
It seems to me that things like "intuition" and "instinct" are just subconscious algorithms that you can't articulate (example instinct: I pull my hand away from a fire; I can't tell you why, but it isn't magic; somewhere in the wiring of the brain there is an algorithm that makes that happen).

Fundamentally, the brain processes information to make decisions, which machines can always in principle be designed to do. Thus as long is medicine is fundamentally about making diagnostic and treatment decisions, it can be solved by machines.

fl3tch··on Vinod Khosla says technology will replace 80 percent of doctors
Proper care of the elderly is another problem that society should address without racking up insane health care costs just so a little old lady has someone to chit chat with. There are certainly more fruitful (and cheaper) ways to solve that.
fl3tch··on Windows 8 Tells Microsoft Everything You Install, Not Very Securely.
Linux from Scratch. Build it for the ones you love.
fl3tch··on Tim Berners-Lee's Original Announcement (1991)
You know what's interesting? The immediate follow up to that first message, by Richard Chimera, mentions Randy Pausch. Does anybody remember him?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

Small world.

fl3tch··on White House Deletes TSA Petition
The Wayback Machine only displays sites after 6 months have passed.
fl3tch··on The end of the road for OEMs
Yeah, but if they had no choice but to use Linux, they would make sure their hardware worked with it. Can't really compare to the past, when Microsoft essentially got a 10 year head start on Linux and was a monopoly by the time it arrived on the scene.
fl3tch··on Gmail in personal search results
After YouTube auto login was implemented, I started using a cookie manager. With one or two clicks you can enable or disable cookies, which logs you in or out. I don't want every random reddit video that I click on to show up in my YouTube history, so generally I leave it blocked except for when I actually want to view my subscriptions on YouTube.

Also, a fast way to do a logged out Google search, without switching browsers or entering private browsing mode, is to bookmark one of the IP addresses in the 74.125.225.0/25. Since cookies are domain specific and you're not on google.com, you'll be logged out.

fl3tch··on Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident
A lot of those accidents happen in rain and snow, which the Google folks admit are not as well tested. Under clear conditions on open roads, humans probably do better than 300K miles too.
fl3tch··on What Facebook Knows
Good luck getting 900 million people to fill out consent forms to satisfy your IRB. Academic research follows actual ethics rules. :)
Page 1 of 7Next →