hoag

What's staggering to me is that the 1989 earthquake in SF was only a 6.8 -- and that made our home in Marin feel like we were floating on a swimming pool. I can't even begin to imagine what an 8.9 is like. Tragic, but apparently expected: Japan's strict building codes will go a long way towards minimizing human loss. If only there were a way to protect against the biblical devastation of tsumanis.

I am certain that disciplined sleeping habits had a lot to do with it: absent the discipline, I would have often gone to bed around two or three in the morning, gotten less sleep -- or less quality sleep -- and, were I to have maintained this haphazard schedule, would have never been able to have set my biological clock to the necessary 10-6 sleeping schedule required for the three days of the exam itself. Beginning at 8AM, we had to be there by 7-730 or so, and I had to allow time for an adequate (light) breakfast.

Obviously I didn't mean to exclude the value of the actual studying, I'm just saying that studying -- without proper sleep and sleeping schedule -- would have lead to physical and mental and fatigue. And the nature of the bar exam material makes it virtually impossible to adequately perform on a sleep-starved mind.

Preparing for the California Bar Exam was a fascinating experience for me. Not only was it the most mentally challenging endeavor I had ever undertaken, it proved to be the most psychologically challenging as well.

Fortunately, our two bar prep professors were not only licensed attorneys, but also Ph.D.s in neuropsychology. Part of our rigorous training therefore was not simply learning the law, but actually learning how to learn -- in particular, how to store and recall so much data on demand -- and above all, how to manage our time. (It turns out the human brain is actually quite good at writing and storing data, but really bad at what can be best described as "random access memory" operations: recalling random data at will, instantly.)

A great deal of emphasis was placed on structuring extremely precise "living schedules," for example, what to study when, for how long, when to eat, what meals, and above all, how and when to sleep. And how to force ourselves to sleep when we couldn't.

Long story short, forcing ourselves onto regular sleeping patterns was both immediately necessary and yet proved to be one of the hardest disciplines to learn: to force yourself to stop studying at a given hour (typically 10PM) even in the midst of learning something, and allow time to drive home, have a snack, rest, unwind, and then fall asleep by 11PM, to then awaken at 7 and be back at the library at 8... every single day, for 2 months... that was truly an act of willpower. Especially for me, as I've always been the personality type where, once I start doing or learning something, I can't stop until it's totally finished or mastered. Forcing myself to stop studying without having yet completed the particular matter was excruciatingly difficult.

The same thing proved true for the three-day bar exam itself of course: had to sleep between 9 and 10PM and awaken by 6AM, with virtually no studying at all in between days. At this point, you just had to trust your brain to marinate on all that it had absorbed in the 2 months leading up to those fateful three days.

Looking back on it now, it was due largely to my discipline with sleeping habits that I was able to pass the bar on my first try.

Cool, I just signed up for the Monday 14th dinner @ 7:30 PM @ La Méditerranée! (Which, by the way, I never thought about until now means, if my French doesn't totally fail me, "borne from the middle of the earth"... right? Or perhaps the Latin, mediterranus, "in the middle of the earth?")

Anyway, can't wait to meet the rest of you!

I didn't know about it: I must have missed it or glosed over it in my daily (hourly?!) readings of tech and web news. Either way, that's why I posted it now. That said, Google's realtime feed has always been so, well, "realtime," I didn't even notice a change.

Speaking of which, has anybody tried google.com/health? Or how about the cool WebGL-powered site bodybrowser.googlelabs.com?

As I have mentioned elsewhere on HN, one of the purposes behind our new startup is to help entrepreneurs like you find great co-founders: we ensure that you only get connected with the most qualified candidates for your purposes, immediately. This means that you don't have to spend weeks filtering through hundreds of resumes from people who never even read your job description. And, you don't waste time interviewing totally useless candidates who shamelessly over-marketed themselves.

We're not quite ready yet, but if you sign up you can give it a shot! venturocket.com

Cool man. I hope we can be fully operational soon enough to help you out. In the meantime, I do wish you the best of luck.

Dude, I'm sorry to hear how rough it's been for you. I'd like to echo what many have said about posting samples of your work, and spelling out in more detail your particular skill sets as well as explaining what you have been doing with your time.

That said, I'm afraid we're not hiring yet, however -- and no, this is not a shameless plug, but a genuine offer to help -- I can offer you this:

I think you would benefit tremendously from our new startup. The way that we match Opportunity Seekers (such as job seekers, like yourself) with Opportunity Providers (such as employers) should greatly assist someone in your position -- i.e., talent without experience -- to find a new job or even co-founders to build your own company. We're still prepping the beta (having some typical last minute issues) but you should definitely sign up and give it a shot: venturocket.com.

And as defensive as it may seem to do so, I would like to preemptively state that I'm not trying to take advantage of your seemingly dismal situation, but genuinely trying to help you get connected with something. That my desire to help you will of course benefit our startup -- and therefore me -- should not, on its own, in any way invalidate the sincerity of my claim. After all, if it weren't for my desire to create a more efficient way to connect people with opportunities, I would never be doing my startup in the first place.

Besides, I do believe a certain Mr. Smith once pointed out that "[i]t is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

Best of luck either way.

I suppose the source meteorite could have been ejected matter from an impact with another planet that harbored life; i.e., a sort of "meteor vector." That, to me, seems far more plausible than life developing out of nothing on a meteor or comet in space.

Entertaining, but hardly useful: the only people who would follow any of this are those who already understand it. Those who don't would be hopelessly lost.

But definitely a lot of entertainment value for those who already understand -- even if only somewhat -- what's being discussed.

Basically stand up comedy for mathematicians. :)

My apologies if this is elementary to some (most?) of you... I for one appreciated verification of my understanding of this particular concept.

Haha this is seriously awesome... almost makes me miss doing hours and hours of calc every day :)

Seems like physical robots are now entering the so-called "uncanny valley" reached years ago by special effects and video game artists: the thing looks real, but as soon as it starts to move, the deepest recesses of our subconscious at once alert us that it is, in fact, nothing more than a futile and imperfect facsimile of life.

That said, the suggestion that this could be a real human acting as a robot is definitely plausible. And that, on its own, is a remarkable accomplishment, really.

By far and away HN.

I just use FB for sharing photos with close friends and family and keeping (passively) in touch with others.

I realize I'm a bit biased with my comment, but frankly, I think law school is great for any entrepreneur. In fact, I attended law school specifically because I wanted to return to startup world. The analysis methods taught in law school are invaluable to life as an entrepreneur. That I now have an understanding of the law is a pretty cool bonus.

Frankly, anything that causes one to give pause and ponder the universe has at least some intrinsic intellectual -- or more accurately, perhaps, philosophical -- value. And that, beyond mere tech, startups, and hacking, is one of the driving factors behind the HN community, as the reader feedback to this link clearly demonstrates.

Agreed, it's so great to have a community like HN where we can just share everything from coding to photography to philosophy and everything in between. I was so excited to share it here as soon as I found it. That's not something you can say about most online communities.

And yeah, I've seen some spectacular photography before, but this just took my breath away.

That was a great event, and that discussion sparked quite a bit of debate between my two friends and me over dinner afterwards. (Actually, you can see the three of us sitting in the front-right-most seats in the photo!)

In my opinion, the notion of "radical innovation" depends on one's point of view: one could argue that, although the spectacular innovation during the space race, e.g, like landing a man on the moon, was indeed remarkable, it was, for all practical intents and purposes, little more than a political publicity stunt to the average individual, i.e., it did not have a profound effect on a personal level.

In contrast, the developments of the past 20 years -- internet, cell phone, facebook -- have profoundly changed individuals around the planet.

I don't think the question should be whether a thing is more or less innovative than another thing, but rather what effect the thing has had on a group of people on an individual level.

This whole thread is way too cool, loved it!

I only just learned about it. And its appearance on the front page - albeit for so limited a time - suggests that others didn't know about it yet either.

I agree re its design: so bad it made me question its authenticity!

Just watch the two video clips included on the page. A first in history? Realistic facial animation in a game. Wow. This is some truly remarkable advancements in existing mocap tech.

I certainly never meant to imply that, once established, a startup should not have an exit strategy -- indeed it should. My point was that a startup should not be borne out of a desire merely to exit, but rather to do something new and exciting and cool. I.e., to create something simply to exit is to create for the wrong reasons.

Agreed: if you're building a startup that simply recycles another successful company with hopes of being acquired -- and that is your predominant "business model" -- then you're in startup land for the wrong reasons. This isn't the dot-com-let's-build-something-that's-not-really-anything-and-IPO-or-sell-it-off-as-fast-as-we-can era anymore. Hint: look at the radical reduction in IPOs over the past 10 years (admittedly due largely to the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley regulations).

I'm already being asked by people what our exit strategy is. I'm like, "um, we haven't even launched yet -- the last thing I'm thinking about is exiting, I just want to build this thing and make it cool!"

Sorry for the delete & resubmit: I realized the original title of the post totally missed the point, i.e., that he is not faced with the death penalty for developing a porn site, but rather because he had developed a photo uploading utility that was subsequently used -- without his knowledge or consent -- by a porn site(s). AND he has a wife back home in Toronto. This is disgusting. That's like saying that a guy who builds beds should be put to death because an unmarried couple made use of one.

Valid point: seems that a "social browser" of sorts, from within FB's walled garden, would accomplish with far greater effect -- and success -- the idea behind Flock and RockMelt.

I know this is hardly "intellectually stimulating," but it was just too cool a demonstration of physics to not post. Come on, it's at least entertaining for a midnight link, no? :)

Anybody else rolling their eyes at this?

I had never heard of Sterling engines before, so I found this quite fascinating.

I have a question though to whomever may offer an explanation. Towards the bottom of page 1, the article explains that "[w]hen pressurized helium on the top side of the metal plate is heated, sound waves traveling through the gas are amplified, causing the plate to vibrate...."

When the pressurized He is heated it causes the sound to be amplified? But heating the He should cause the density to decrease, of course, and therefore reduce the power of the sound waves propagating through the He, no?

I'm not aware of any relationship between frequency and amplitude, just V=(freq)(wavelength). What's going on? The only thing I can think of is that perhaps there's some sort of resonance going on in the chamber? As the pressure drops, the speed of sound should drop. But this shouldn't necessarily affect the frequency... so I'm totally confused. Maybe there's a resonance effect as the waves propagate slower and slower and interfere with one another? I'm totally lost. I just don't see how decreasing pressure (by increasing temperature) increases amplitude.

It's been quite a few years since studying E&M as an undergrad, so I'm a bit rusty and just genuinely curious what I'm missing here.

Thanks!

Haha funny I just tried to post this and got directed here: looks like someone beat me to it! Pretty cool read.