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heyitsnick

1,568 karma · joined September 3, 2009

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heyitsnick··on The Coin Flip: A Fundamentally Unfair Proposition? (2009)
"1% may not sound like a lot, but it's more than the typical casino edge in a game of blackjack or slots."

The house edge for slots games is anywhere from 2% to 15%+ and is one of the worst bets you can make in the casino.

Blackjack, video poker and some bets on craps are the only times in a casino where the house edge shrinks to below 1%.

heyitsnick··on The Tuesday boy problem, in under 300 words
"I met a man on the street, he said he had two children. I asked him, is at least one of them a boy? He said yes. What's the probability both of them are boys?"

This removes the whole ambiguity of why he would assert "at least one of them is a boy," but still makes the question a bit tricky/counter-intuitive, which is useful for teaching the quirks of probability.

heyitsnick··on Introducing Instagram Direct
I guess you're being purposefully obtuse?

Hipster: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster

Ism: highly active and well-understood suffix that means, among other things: "manner of action or behavior characteristic of a (specified) person or thing" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-ism

heyitsnick··on Sharking: High-Rollers in the Crosshairs
Having following this story since July, it was almost certainly an inside job and the perpetrator had access to the rooms (cleaner or other staff).
heyitsnick··on EFF has 2x matching donations until Dec 17th
Agree, but you're only criticising the submitter, not EFF. There's no mention of "2x matching" on the page; it only says "you receive a 2x powerup," which is accurate. There's no ambiguity and the page clearly says "donate x, with matching EFF will receive 2x" on the form.
heyitsnick··on Gifpop.io – Print gifs with the magic of lenticular printing
Perhaps more accurately put, the "English language has no master."

Many--perhaps most--European languages, do have prescriptivist masters. Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and dozens more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators

heyitsnick··on Magnus Carlsen is World Chess Champion
Poker
heyitsnick··on FBI Says It's Busted The Web's Biggest Anonymous Drug Black Market
Nope, I meant irony. The word has multiple definitions. In its most popular - "the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect" - sarcasm is given as a synonym.
heyitsnick··on FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner
It's funny, i so rarely browse reddit, but i somehow happened upon this story this week - i guess it came up in some kind of mega "what are you most ashamed of" thread or somesuch. Ultimately it was as GP described; a redditor researched one of 'gone wild' big 'stars', poured through her history ,ultimately found another reddit account of a selfie shot that had the same background as the 'gone wild' shot so concluded they were the same or friends, researched back that history and ultimately found her real identity.
heyitsnick··on FBI Says It's Busted The Web's Biggest Anonymous Drug Black Market
If anything, the woosh would be for you. I'm sure conductor understood the irony of the statement.
heyitsnick··on FBI raids alleged online drug market Silk Road, arrests owner
"Based on my training and experience" seems like boilerplate for whenever a supposition is introduced.
heyitsnick··on Children aren't born smart. They're made smart by conversation
Minor nitpick: Very often editors pick the click-baity titles, not those writing the articles.
heyitsnick··on [dead]
I'd love to know what the use-case is for a page with 6000 form items!
heyitsnick··on Rent Affordability Gap in San Francisco
Thanks, that clarifies a lot. Different worlds.
heyitsnick··on Rent Affordability Gap in San Francisco
Good point :) Grocery shopping is such a small part, maybe 5%; going out to eat once or twice a week would be part of recreation budget.
heyitsnick··on Rent Affordability Gap in San Francisco
A 4x factor sure sounds very high, though maybe the costs in SF (or in the US in general) are different to my own;from my experience over the last 6 years, living in a variety of setups in different cities in Europe, I spend 50-60% of my monthly outgoing on rent (then about 10% on bills, 10% on transport, leaving ~20% on misc and recreation). A 2x factor seems much more reasonable.
heyitsnick··on JetBrains releases open-source Python IDE
If memory serves, this will install it side-by-side with existing install, whereas doing it in-app upgrades (windows). Could be wrong though.
heyitsnick··on The Gold iPhone isn't just for mindless sheep that want to show off
I see it as common marketing strategy. It's all about shifting the conversation from "do I really need an incremental smartphone upgrade?" to "are you getting the gold or sticking with white?" I realise its significantly more nuanced than that, but at the core, its subtly changing the decision process of the consumer.

The comments in this thread, the blog post itself, and all the other media coverage, is all playing the same game; it underpins most tech coverage - be it android/ios, xbox/sony, mac/pac - its about setting up either/ors and removing the decision of none.

heyitsnick··on JetBrains releases open-source Python IDE
I've tried a lot of IDE's for python development in the past and always went back to a basic text editor; the extra features never outweighed the bloat.

But then i found PyCharm and never looked back. I feel i develop at least 50% faster with any serious project; i still use Sublime for the one-off scripts, but everything else i find the introspection, code completion and refactoring just so good its now hard to go without.

Props to Jetbrains, and I look forward to v3 pro! (my 2.7 isn't yet telling me i have an upgrade... i'm hoping this is coming soon!)

heyitsnick··on Go Pro on a soaring eagle [video]
The first time I saw this was Human Planet, in an episode about Kazakh hunters training Golden Eagles to hunt foxes for them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y3Dl0BGFfw

The extras part of the documentary includes a behind-the-scenes look at getting the birds-eye shot.

heyitsnick··on How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
I see there's lots of insightful comments here from "digital nomads." Are there any good forums or communities online where you congregate to discuss these issues?
heyitsnick··on Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough?
> So you might say you allocate additional "privilege" to this subset of the population's opinions?

Not in the slightest.

I checked the definition of "privilege" - a special right, immunity - and I have no idea why you think I communicated that at all.

All I said was that I enjoy reading the opinions of the Hacker News population on topics that go beyond startups/technology.

heyitsnick··on Poll: Are there too many NSA stories on HN, or not enough?
I do not think the opinion of a person who works with computers for a living has a more privileged opinion than anyone else.

I do, however, enjoy coming here very day and reading the opinions of that subset of the population. That's why I continue to upvote NSA-related threads and voted "I wanted more."

heyitsnick··on Hacker News Web App for Mobile
What are you using for stripping the content from the links?
heyitsnick··on XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'
And, according to Greenwald, there's a lot more to come. From the comments:

"There are thousands upon thousands of documents and they take time to read, process, vet, and report. These are very complex matters..... there is a lot more to report still. Accuracy is the number one priority. That takes time."

heyitsnick··on Zynga loses $15.8M in Q2, nearly half its daily users year-over-year
They partnered with bwin.party for RMG both for their poker and casino products.
heyitsnick··on How Gmail’s New Inbox Is Affecting Open Rates
>"Subscribing in the first place" almost always consists of forgetting to uncheck the "default opt-in"

Citation needed. Mail Chimp strongly recommends double-opt in, I think it's the default. I very much doubt its "almost always" single opt-in.

heyitsnick··on DuckDuckGo: illusion of privacy?
Really hate it? Gabriel responded quickly and thoroughly on his forum: https://duck.co/topic/we-have-to-talk-about-ddgs-honesty
heyitsnick··on Pebble Smartwatch Is Coming To Best Buy On July 7 For $149.95
Isn't this the classic mistake of assuming "people" on the internet are a single homogeneous group? When Pebble had a kickstarter, a lot of proponents were vocal. Now its going into best-buy, those that are vocal are (a different set of) people who have the opportunity to criticize. Those who successfully funded the project and are proud users of Pebble maybe see less desire to be vocal.

There's nothing really to "go figure", its just different people being selectively vocal in their support/dismissal.

heyitsnick··on Why the Story on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Add Up
I'm not sure if you're being ironic because you answer your own question. A newspaper wants content that is different from its competitors. It takes little effort to "comb through the video" to grab another screenshot. I also find it odd that everyone is using the same still.
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