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gregjwild

136 karma · joined April 9, 2015

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gregjwild··on YouTubers Will Enter Politics
They haven't already? YouTube is already a key intellectual touchstone for many people already. Whether or not they're party members, they're already influencing many people's views.

I personally worry about it given the flagrant disregard for rigor in their op-ed style, but it's here to stay.

gregjwild··on Don’t listen productivity gurus: why waking up at 6am won’t make you successful
I think you're missing the point: 4:30am may be the right time for some, but that may be absolutely the wrong time for most. And it's not to do with finding a distraction free window. It's down to - as the article highlights - your body rhythm.

For instance, if I wake up at 6am I will spend hours in an awful state of catatonia. Often, I don't get over it the whole day. It's equivalent to how I felt when I suffered with depression. So, screw that.

gregjwild··on Show HN: DeepSpeech based automated transcription service
In general we're pretty happy with Trint for American & British accents for our stuff (though not to say we won't take a look at what you've got :)). They usually require a bit of tweaking, but it's pretty good. The killer feature for us would be training against people with other accents. You'll notice our transcripts really constitute a pretty big part of what we do, so a good quality transcription service for people with different accents would be an awesome thing.

e.g. clearly once this course leaves early access we'll want to get this copy-edited, and Yan here is British, so even here Trint's not always great :) https://livevideo.manning.com/module/38_1_1/production-ready...?

gregjwild··on Marketing Firm Exactis Leaked a Personal Info Database with 340M Records
More and more this just feels like the modern crisis of capitalism. The declining rate of profit is so extreme that we have to institute a corporate marketing panopticon designed to sell you shit you don't need, to the extent we're willing to risk that panopticon leaking dangerous information to non-state actors that could lead to theft, extortion, or worse.

And we're not even beginning to think about what this can be used for by authoritarian regimes (cf. https://www.madamasr.com/en/2014/09/29/opinion/u/you-are-bei...)

gregjwild··on Three Common Misconceptions About China
It's not necessarily unique, however. While European civilisation is more fragmented by nationalism, by comparison there's clear lineage through religion, law, culture, etc. Much like China's lineage was really kick-started by the Han, Europe still owes much to Rome. If you get right down to detail then sure, there's a difference in the character of the cultural journey, but I think the principle is similar.
gregjwild··on Ask HN: How do remote workers deal with taxes?
I'm on about £28k per annum as a remote contractor -- I'd second this advice.
gregjwild··on DevTube: Searchable index of developer videos
Glad to hear it! :)

It's in-house, yes. Interestingly, the original code base was designed to tie book text to audio-book readings, which we use in our liveBook platform. There's various third-party libraries in play for some of it, but other than that we've built it all in-house.

gregjwild··on DevTube: Searchable index of developer videos
Glad to hear it!

> - I wish the transcript text size could be increased without affecting the rest of the UI (which seems fine). Maybe it can and I missed it, or I need to be logged in?

Totally agreed we need this. I've passed this feedback onto the developers (I'm in editorial here).

> - I see “pause on try its” in the page options (it's checked and disabled) but couldn't find any videos that use this. This feature sounds like it would greatly enhance the learning experience and it should be part of all videos. I learn a lot more when actively trying things than when passively watching and reading, and few online courses combine video and text transcripts with hands-on opportunities well.

Yep, we're still experimenting with this feature. I think you'll see us using it much, much more in future content.

gregjwild··on DevTube: Searchable index of developer videos
We do some of this - inline code samples, some of which can be executed, embedded headings, additional reference material, etc. https://livevideo.manning.com/module/3_2_2/es6-in-motion/arr...
gregjwild··on DevTube: Searchable index of developer videos
We (Manning Publications) added transcripts as a pretty central feature of our video platform. I'd be pretty interested to hear what you thought. A lot of our customers asked for this when we were researching what they wanted, so I'm always interested to see if people outside our usual user base like what we've done: https://livevideo.manning.com/module/31_1_2/algorithms-in-mo...?
gregjwild··on Proposed NYC legislation would give employees right to ignore after-work email
Agreed. Another example of where folks in knowledge economy jobs need should join/found unions.
gregjwild··on Proposed NYC legislation would give employees right to ignore after-work email
I'm not familiar with Kling's model, but that seems like a terribly reductionist model. It scarcely sums up the range of ontological perspectives in America right now, let alone anywhere else in the world, and especially let alone outside of the present context.
gregjwild··on How Do We Learn?
Brain Rules by John Medina and Make it Stick by Peter Brown are pretty good, and not too tough going. In terms of the mechanics of memory, they're pretty good particularly.
gregjwild··on It is easy to expose users' secret web habits, say researchers
For me, this is why it's such a big deal: I don't think it has to be porn to be used against you. It just needs to be some minor character flaw that breaks with your public image.

And I guess more troubling still, this kind of stuff could be used to blackmail normal people in the same way revenge porn is. What about threatening to reveal your porn habits to friends & family?

Again, doesn't need to be porn. What about your browsing history for medicine, self-help etc? All that stuff could be used to blackmail someone, especially if they're psychologically vulnerable.

gregjwild··on Show HN: liveBook – Manning Publications' new book platform
Glad to hear you like the audio-book stuff! We've admittedly not got it for all books, though have for our more recent & popular books. If feedback/sales are good, we'll be likely adding it to more.
gregjwild··on The Limitations of Deep Learning
Here at Manning (we're publishing Francois Book) have something in our early access program on this now - https://www.manning.com/books/the-art-of-data-usability
gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
Always good to hear positive feedback :) Thanks! Any particular books you've enjoyed recently?
gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
Not at all :) I was responding to the criticism of O'Reilly reducing to just two choices - Safari or Amazon.

We're committed to DRM free options wherever possible. We're coming up with some new stuff, but DRM free pdfs and epubs are pretty much our core business.

gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
If someone can't pirate "X in a Nutshell", they'll pirate "Learning X". Either way, nobody is getting their money. No point losing customers over it.
gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
We also allow eBook customers to upgrade to a print book for $12 plus shipping - https://www.manning.com/ebooks
gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
Data has value, but not as much value as repeat customer loyalty.
gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
Here at Manning we plan to keep selling beautifully typeset .PDFs & other formats for many years to come :)
gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
We (Manning) have no intention of ceasing DRM free book distribution. If anything, we're in the process of diversifying ways you can consume our content :)
gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
And many more to come! We're always on the hunt for new tech to teach in our books (and now videos)

No Starch are great too though. I own a few myself :)

gregjwild··on O’Reilly Media has stopped retailing books directly on its ecommerce store
Glad to hear you've enjoyed our stuff. We really do try to do a good job with it! :)
gregjwild··on Microsoft will make adjustments to Azure pricing in British pound (22% increase)
heh.

The UK government has a lot of infra based on Azure. The MOD and NHS for starters.

Smooth. Very smooth. Another indicator that the rabid, vulgar libertarians in the Brexiteer ranks are more than happy to use Brexit to strain public services more in order to justify private services.

Man oh man am I glad to be paid in dollars working remotely for a US company right now.

gregjwild··on Microsoft will make adjustments to Azure pricing in British pound (22% increase)
Yes. I had the same situation when starting a job a few years back... the managers just seemed confused that I'd bothered to take the time to understand what I'd meant more than anything. Guess they were just used to hiring people for their ability to follow instructions to the letter.
gregjwild··on Scientists plan to create 'Asgardia' nation state in space
I cannot fathom why someone would want to recreate the flawed idea of a nation state in space.

Not that this is in the slightest bit viable. But still, whatever polities exist in space, they should not be nation states.

gregjwild··on Jeff Bezos' Vision: Trillion Humans in the Solar System
Much as I'd like to think humans-in-space in large numbers will become a reality any time soon, I don't see it happening in the kind of time frame it offsets the dangerous growth curve we're on.

The cost to keep one human alive in space is logistically incredibly expensive. It'll get cheaper the more infrastructure we put up there, sure, and eventually we may see space-based colonies become self-sufficient. But I don't see it happening any time soon.

Meanwhile, current projections suggest that ~2050, human population is going to get very hard to maintain. Even if we could get 100,000 people living in space by then it would be a drop in the ocean.

gregjwild··on Request For Research: Basic Income
Agreed. Nothing is more financially difficult to deal with than a sudden shift in income rendering your current housing suddenly very expensive. With a reasonable price of housing, you have more capacity to save for potential disaster.
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