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gmkoliver

147 karma · joined February 8, 2011

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gmkoliver··on JS roguelike game: The Royal Wedding
Just curious, is it the kinds of visuals, or...?
gmkoliver··on JS roguelike game: The Royal Wedding
Just checking now, vi keys work for diagonals.
gmkoliver··on The Chromebook Pixel
a mobile developer workstation with a solid design, 4:3 high-res screen, pointing stick, and great keyboard

The lack of something like this is why I'm still using a 7 year old Thinkpad.

gmkoliver··on Segway inventor's next endeavor
I'd like to know how much water this makes in how long. A hair dryer is no 60w bulb, that's for sure.
gmkoliver··on Jobs fight: Haves vs. the have-nots
I have a liberal arts degree, and I've been a residential carpenter for the last 13 years. I guess the money I earn puts me in the middle class. Looking back on that time it's fair to say I've left a lot of money on the table by not seeking a higher-paying job.

I don't think it's arguable that a Google engineer will not make more money than a carpenter on my crew. The thing that bothers me about articles like this is the sense that technocrats like Andreesen assume their needs are everyone else's.

gmkoliver··on Ask HN: The future developer rig?
I think the consensus might be underestimating things like Project Glass and new directions in keyboards (microfluid haptics, perhaps even more radical designs). For example it seems like it didn't take long for people to accept in-ear headsets.
gmkoliver··on Hamming: "dubious that great programmers can be trained.."
The writing example isn't that sound. First he asks if you can teach 'good' programming, but then expects 'great' programmers to come of it. Rhetoric like that smells a little fishy. Then he rests his conclusion, that great programmers can't be trained, on the point that we have perfect knowledge of every great writer that ever wrote? I don't buy it.
gmkoliver··on Why is Learning to Code So Hard?
The essay doesn't say when those experienced programmers started learning to code.
gmkoliver··on Denver's gSchool: 6 months and 60 hours per week turns you into a web developer
And what they mean by "60 hours a week".
gmkoliver··on First clear evidence that dogs do not naturally distinguish objects by shape
Or tool use.
gmkoliver··on The People's Bailout
Debt isn't some random accident like getting hit by a car while crossing the street.

No, but distressed debt can be.

gmkoliver··on The People's Bailout
Does anyone have a number for the size of the consumer distressed debt market? Not getting much luck searching so far.
gmkoliver··on The People's Bailout
You make it sound as if people who play by the rules can't have distressed debt. Is that what you mean?
gmkoliver··on Lenovo Twist Review (Windows 8 Convertable)
As a user of an x41 'twist', I'm definitely curious about this new wave of tablets. I wonder how they'll compare to something like an x220t though? Will the price point be convincing enough to accept the reduced performance?
gmkoliver··on Suddenly everyone wants New Yorker style content. Who is going to write it?
I think she meant New Yorker, so it was funny that she talked about newspapers for most of the article.
gmkoliver··on The Rise of Post-Familialism: Humanity's Future?
I read recently that in medieval England large distributed families (i.e. families with lots of extended cousins in different towns and counties) had important network effects for finance, information, and so on. It was a great benefit to have a second cousin in that other town in the rather parochial society of the time.

I wonder if the rise of urban density, fast transportation, and more efficient technological networks have served to replace these benefits?

gmkoliver··on Achieving Top Mental Performance for Software Developers
My favorite saying on motivation, which your experience seems to prove is "motivation is acquired, not required".
gmkoliver··on The Caves of Clojure, Part 2
I like these posts, the presentation is quite good IMO.

You see the old game state --> new game state pattern a lot in functionally written games, but something about that has always seemed off to me. The functional retrogames series of posts (starts at http://prog21.dadgum.com/23.html ) summed up the issue well I think,

When I first mused over writing a game in a purely functional style, this had me stymied. One simple function ends up possibly changing the entire state of the world? Should that function take the whole world as input and return a brand new world as output? Why even use functional programming, then?

gmkoliver··on SecondLife Didn't Fail
In niche MMOs it's not unusual for users to spend over 20 real dollars/month on micro transactions. I don't know what an average multiplier in terms of in-game transactions would be but 3x doesn't seem out of the question.
gmkoliver··on Construction Employment Is At Its Lowest Level Since 1946
Exactly; even though the article mentions the meaning of the graph, it seems to misinterpret it anyway.

From my perspective as a residential carpenter I see a continuing decline in the cost of labor combined with increases in efficiency due to new materials and equipment. Combine that with the high price of land in most urban areas, and I don't see much incentive for the big home builders to push manufactured homes and on-site automated fabrication.

gmkoliver··on How to make a Text Adventure
Text adventures (interactive fiction), and muds for that matter, are alive and well. I've been an active participant in both communities for many years so I feel like I have some perspective on it; in fact I'd say text adventures have seen a resurgence in the last few years. It's hard to say how much of that is fueled by nostalgia though.
gmkoliver··on Google Chrome Extension: 2 Pane for Gmail
I use a Stylish style ('more minimalist') that removes everything but the inbox list and the search box. I'm not sure but I think this is safer than an extension. For my personal taste it's finally made Gmail pleasant to use.
gmkoliver··on The Barbarians are at the Gates
He says, is "Clojure the language that will take us into the massively-multicore regime? I don’t know. In fact, I rather doubt it". He does point to it as a step in the right direction.
gmkoliver··on They laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play
Music lessons by correspondence. Here's a working link,

http://www.powerwriting.com/caples.html

gmkoliver··on Your DNA may carry a ‘memory’ of your living conditions in childhood
I saw this for a class recently, here's the link (part 1 of 5):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toRIkRa1fYU&list=WL7AE0E3...

gmkoliver··on Revisiting 'Zork': What We Lost in the Transition to Visual Games
A great front end to the archive is http://ifdb.tads.org.
gmkoliver··on Life lessons from the very wealthy
From what I've found with a quick search it seems like most held wealth is earned rather than inherited. Does anyone know if this is accurate, and what the typical 'pre-earnings' demographic background of the very wealthy is in the U.S.?
gmkoliver··on A Refrigerator that Runs Without Electricity
I just read a fascinating book, Gaviotas (http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=isbn%3A1890132284), that describes an attempted reverse-engineering of the same thing (back in the 80s).

This was hot on the heels of the 1970s energy crisis and the solar technology boom; I wonder in what ways the drive to innovate appropriate technology has changed since then.

gmkoliver··on The end of the betseller (by J. Konrath)
ps What's coop?

It's when the publisher buys a prominent display in your store, similar to how stores display groceries.