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hrasm

23 karma · joined April 16, 2011

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hrasm··on Hacker News Kansai (West Japan) First Ever Meetup - Saturday 14th in Kyoto
Anytime in the afternoon after 1300 is OK.
hrasm··on Hacker News Kansai (West Japan) First Ever Meetup - Saturday 14th in Kyoto
I shall be there.
hrasm··on Hacker News Tokyo Japan Meetup #8 – Friday 21st of October
No love for Osaka. Bummer.
hrasm··on Ask HN: Which language localizations first?
Japanese & Korean.
hrasm··on Netflix Splits DVD And Streaming Businesses
A poorly thought out point: a defensive move against the whole company folding due to some reason?
hrasm··on Ask HN: Does anyone use SolidWorks for web design?
My understanding is that it is a tool for use with a very niche market: 3D CAD in a budget. I would think that such a use is not in their roadmap.
hrasm··on Advice for an aspiring programmer?
Here is my take:

If you are just going to learn a programming language, there is still plenty of competition. Instead, I would suggest that you build a web-based product. It involves a lot of moving parts that you will get familiar with. It is quite an arduous task.

Don't focus on the tool (programming language); instead, step back a little bit, see the bigger picture and build something with that tool. People are much more appreciate of such efforts.

Edit: In case you need some hand holding in the initial stages, I am more than willing to help.

hrasm··on Amazon EC2 EU-West is down
They don't. They do have an RSS feed that you can monitor with your favourite feed aggregator: http://status.linode.com/rss.xml
hrasm··on A Billion Dollars Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s Cool? Basic Human Decency
Off-topic: women is plural while woman is singular.
hrasm··on Ask HN: How do you handle unsupported browsers?
Is there a way you can collect browser stats? You should be able to pull something from the server logs. Once you have done that, take a look at them numbers and you will have a fair idea on what your userbase prefers. If I see something like 50% of IE7, I would think that it's a good business decision to support IE7 development if my bread and butter depends on that.
hrasm··on Ask HN: Learning other (non-programming) languages?
I was able to augment Pimsleur's Japanese tapes with some reading to crack the old Level 4 of Japanese Language Proficiency Test. It was a very good starting point. Worked well for me I would say.
hrasm··on Ask HN: What OpenSource projects are good to learn from?
sqlite and postgres are often regarded as projects with good, clean style.
hrasm··on Complex numbers have never been so intuitive to me
You are correct. From what I could gather from reading that write-up, "size" is used to mean the magnitude of a number.
hrasm··on I've made a terrible mistake
What happened?
hrasm··on Ask HN: Why has visual programming not caught on?
A visual language called G exists. It is forms the backbone of LabVIEW (a product of National Instruments [NI]). You could use it like any other programming language to solve problems. IMHO it is quite powerful. However, LabVIEW's real strength lies in providing an easy interface for data acquisition from cards, again by NI, specifically built for the purpose. LabVIEW is pretty much ubuquitous in university labs.

Edit: There is also Agilent VEE.

hrasm··on Ask HN: How do I get Ajax working with a Bookmarklet?
You might want to ask such tech-related questions at stackoverflow.com.
hrasm··on Ask HN: SCRYPT or BCRYPT?
This page http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46716/what-sh... suggests that both bcrypt and scrypt can be used (4th bullet under 'Security'). Disclosure: I added the scrypt part alongwith the references which the mods haven't deleted yet (so I am guessing it is ok).

I just went with bcrypt in my project for now because postgresql has it as a built-in function. I couldn't find for scrypt that was readily usable.

Here is a good argument on why scrypt is better: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1987632&cid=35149... (the second ref link for bcrypt on the above stackexchange page)

hrasm··on EFF and Bitcoin
Such an arrangement of payment in a different currency might fly in the US. But I am guessing such stunts in the top two populous countries can get you arrested?

edit: s/pretty sure/guessing

hrasm··on Geeky Stats About Magic Mushrooms
But be warned that usage of psychotropic substances may act as a catalyst to bring out any latent psychological issues. Also, there is the possibility of a bad trip.
hrasm··on Ask HN: Please review my startup, www.cloudorado.com
When I slide to 512MB on the RAM slider, incorrect linode plan is shown.

Edit: Ditto for 256.

hrasm··on Google's Les Paul Doodle Cost More Than 10 Million Man Hours
Estimate is 26 seconds on an average per person "wasted" on this doodle. Also, a possibly incorrect assumption that all google visitors on that day played with it.

What exactly is the point being put across here with such stats?

I wonder if it never ever occurs to them that on the flip side, google has saved time for a lot of people over a long time? Where is the math on that you awesome spark-in-my-brain reporter?

hrasm··on Pesticides found on nearly all fruits and vegitables
"And so we're back in the magical world of risk perception, where science can become the tool of bias—conscious or not."

I just cannot wrap my head around that one.

hrasm··on HOW TO:Set up a Ruby based DNS Server
NIH much?
hrasm··on When is the right time to introduce high availability for web site?
My apologies. I misread the whole thing as a question about fault tolerance (which is not a bad thing to consider at all IMO). RAID will certainly help in your case. You need to come up with an estimate of how much your losses will be if you have a single point of failure. Usually, paid-for services have this factored into their pricing model.

But as another comment suggests, unless you are grumpy about Azure ToS or US laws (maybe Azure services exist outside the US) or whatever, you should take a look at Azure services.

hrasm··on When is the right time to introduce high availability for web site?
At 8k USD a month, each day is approx. 267 dollars in revenue on average. So, downtime of 1 day due to a catastrophic event is that much loss. That is the base cost. However, how many premium members are going to be angry if the site goes down for a day? Support costs for replying to angry emails? Losses in member cancellation (I would consider that permanent...they are not coming back)?

IMHO, a standby server is worth it.

hrasm··on How I Taught Third Graders Binary Numbers
I think such engaging and visual teaching methods are far more etching on the mind. Great post.
hrasm··on Ask HN: How much time did you invest in your startup until ramen profitable?
x
hrasm··on Ask HN: Beginner code projects?
I cannot recommend K&R enough. Right at the end of the first chapter, you are asked to write a C syntax checker. It was a very tough albeit interesting exercise for me.
hrasm··on [show HN] Closest.in - Represents your closest social graph, the missing angle.
> Business plans are better kept for later stages.

That is a naïve statement.

hrasm··on [show HN] Closest.in - Represents your closest social graph, the missing angle.
Login/Registration should be https. No excuses.
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