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imok20

101 karma · joined July 19, 2009

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imok20··on XeTeX: A modern LaTeX with proper OpenType and Unicode support
Got it, messing with it now :) There a neat way to use emacs with it?
imok20··on XeTeX: A modern LaTeX with proper OpenType and Unicode support
Any chance of a version that works on Snow Leopard being released? Just tried installing – no luck. A shame, I'm about to start typesetting a paper.
imok20··on LaTeX vs. Word vs. Writer
Interesting to note: Pages.app handles ligatures quite nicely (type "office", for example).
imok20··on When is a 9 inch pizza tha same size as a 12 inch?
I'd prefer not to treat all my customers as morons.

(Regardless of how many are...)

EDIT: What's with the boom of posts demonstrating how stupid non-computer people are? It's rather elitist...

imok20··on The Philosophy of Punk Rock Mathematics (interview)
Ah, don't we wish. There's this thing called an "Axiom" that is, ruefully, generally, arbitrary. Definitions, too.

e.g. Some say the set of natural numbers contain 0, some say it doesn't.

Granted, the kind of math being discussed here isn't open to much interpretation, but I thought I'd note it.

imok20··on Canada beats the U.S.A., and Twitter beats the New York Times
BNO (Breaking News Online), the company who posted the news ahead of the NYT, is reputable. I'd say they have a lot riding on their reputation.
imok20··on Canada beats the U.S.A., and Twitter beats the New York Times
While I completely agree, and upvoted you for it, I think the implication of this is more along the lines of "whoa, the NYT is no longer the formost producer of breaking news (mostly.)"

The NYT should focus more on investigative reporting and analysis, and Twitter should stick to being about getting information out there as fast as people can type. To each it's own, right?

EDIT: To those who downvote, I'm curious as to why you did; this makes a lot of sense to me, and I'd like to hear contrasting opinions.

EDIT2: I think I must not have been clear at all: I agree with the OP. Completely. I'm just saying that no, the NYT doesn't care about getting out information as soon as possible. BNO does, that's why they're slightly better than the NYT at it. Twitter delivers a little bit of news in small bites – for some, that isn't sufficient (and it isn't for me either, though Twitter is a nice heads-up for when I'm not watching the news). But bites of news can be transmitted in 140 characters, or at the very least they can contain links to news (such as, again, BNO's links.) I don't see the controversy here, but I suppose that must be the Twitter kool-aid.

imok20··on Apple admits use of child labour in China
I, too, do wonder.

Right now, it's not clear what those conditions were; my comment was meant to address the only clear-cut part of this vague article: that 15 year-olds were working in a factory.

I'm not justifying poor working conditions, nor am I justifying overwork (though I find it interesting that we don't see it as criminal when professionals spend around 130 hours a week working.) I was simply astonished at the knee-jerk reaction so many have when children... gasp... work!

Substantiated claims that the working conditions of these children were poor can be addressed separately.

But, by all means, protect these children from feeding their families.

imok20··on Apple admits use of child labour in China
I worked at a lab programming for minimum wage when I was 15; this isn't sweatshop work. Children are allowed to work in the US, too. (Though, certainly, not at factories.)

The title is is misleading, as well: Apple contracts these oversea factories; they don't hire or force children to work for them. It's all a bit inflammatory.

imok20··on Insanely deep fractal zoom
That's not quite true – as you zoom in, you're no longer simply taking Re(c) = x pixel on the screen and Im(c) = y pixel on the screen. The more you zoom in, you're moving in on the Re/Im axes, which means you're no longer looking at integer values for the computation. You start looking at floating point values for x (Re(c)) and y (Im(c)) when computing the sequence. Therefore, the computer begins to do more and more floating point computations on, ostensibly, arbitrarily accurate fp.

EDIT: Added "pixel on the screen".

imok20··on Ask HN: How to beat the chicken egg situation with user-content driven website?
The trouble with that is that the sole purpose of our product is to facilitate connections between people selling or offering goods and services. Without people and the stuff they want to sell, we've got nothing.
imok20··on "On iteration": Why people leave Python
As additional anecdotal evidence, this is true for me, though I'm still using Python for my next project simply because it's a proven language with proven libraries.

But I'm certainly ready and interested in moving toward a more functional language -- I've always been interested in the Lisps, and have always tended to write code in the functional style, where possible (even though my first language was Java...)

imok20··on A flash platformer made in 48 hours by myself and 4 other people
X makes you invisible - notice how your opacity changes? Just go invisible and let them zombie walk by you, the continue on your merry way :)
imok20··on PS3 Ring0 Exploit Released
Thanks! Google wasn't particularly useful for me, unfortunately. Good for me to know, as a PS3 layman.
imok20··on PS3 Ring0 Exploit Released
Could anyone tell me what map_htab and write_htab are?
imok20··on TechCrunch Hacked
The difference is that this site is called "Hacker News."
imok20··on TechCrunch Hacked
Really? Let's call this "cracked," not "hacked" – we're only furthering the misunderstanding by using the incorrect term here, too.
imok20··on Ask HN: My nephew wants to learn programming. What should I recommend?
Make him a language: let me elaborate. Use Python or Ruby and write a library of functions that he can call in particular ways that will make a "game." Let him learn how they work, and let him dive into the source code and figure it out and eventually make his own functions and classes and ... etc.

Discovery is the most rewarding part of learning to program, and having fast payoffs is always nice to keep a kid interested. Worked for me (I started with Logo around his age, but Python/Ruby is way better.)

imok20··on NYTimes to start charging for access to their website.
I've been hoping for this for over a year now. I'm _more_ than happy to support their journalists oversea and at home (USA for me, as for the NYT). Without some sort of support, we wouldn't be getting the same breadth and depth and quality of news.

It astonishes me when people think this should be free. KNowledge should be free, yes, but news that costs money and much, much time to acquire and then disseminate _does_ cost money and I'm glad to pay for it.

This is high quality journalism from hard working people: asking them to do it for less and less is ridiculous. Content is tangible, to me at least, and worth money, just as a few lines of code "anybody" could write is also worth quite a bit.

imok20··on Pirahã: a non-Turing-complete human language
One of the most remarkable parts of the language is that is does not have recursion. Nor does it have ways of explicitly differentiating temporally distant events.

This is an old article, but there are new ones a-comin'; the implications of Dan's work are just starting to be realized.

imok20··on Ask HN: I have an idea for a startup... now what?
I'll do that – write out a list based on the business plan and try to navigate the fastest way through it to launch.

Thanks for that – it gets overwhelming to consider all the project at once.

imok20··on Ask HN: I have an idea for a startup... now what?
I've checked out Arc before, and it looks pretty neat. Perhaps it could handle some of the "simpler" part of the application, and I let Python handle some of the more intense server-side implementation. Would that be unwise – combining two (similar) languages in one app?

Thanks for the advice! It sounds as though I need to just get a version 1 out there, ASAP.

A problem with my idea is that it requires some pretty intense sysadmin knowledge, and my big stumbling block is either learning more about all that, or bringing in a partner.

Another issue, perhaps you've got suggestions regarding it, is security. How do I go about handling that? Passwords, information, etc?

Thanks again!

imok20··on Ask HN: I have an idea for a startup... now what?
I'll parse last first.

I probably should have mentioned that I am a programmer, mostly Python, but have work experience in Java and am capable with JS/HTML/CSS (and have knowledge of or am somewhat capable in Scheme and C).

Problematic is the fact that I don't have a grasp on database software or security and I dislike the idea of using Django, partially because I don't want to think in Django. I'd almost like to write in Scheme, if Python didn't (a) come more naturally, having written much more code in it (b) seem to have more libraries etc... (c) I have formal education in Python, and I still don't have a solid grasp on where call/cc would be used in a program, which signals to me that I'm not ready to use Scheme.

I'm also decent with sysadmin tools, by no means an expert, but I can use bash and I can script a bit.

So yes and no?

I'm all for the agile approach. I'd like to open with a bang, though. I'm thinking a designer?

2. I suppose I do just need to step into the game. Now. The advice I hear but selectively ignore is "just do it."

1. ?

Thanks!

imok20··on A look inside the developer's toolbelt
I'm always looking for sources like these, but I can never find a place that let's me just look at file 1 and move on from there.

If anyone's got any resources that might give me an idea of the file progression – from OS to OS with teeth – I'd be extremely obliged. I'd like to grok *nix.

imok20··on Things Worth Knowing About Coffee
I've had some of the best homemade coffee by using (1) fresh beans (2) a French press.

My secret to a good roast is http://www.stumptowncoffee.com/ - you can't go wrong with a good roast there. Not only that, but you can order the specific coarseness you'd like the coffee ground at, and they roast it and grind it after you order and send it to you with priority mail. It's nearly as fresh as it gets, anywhere in the US.

imok20··on HTML Slidy: accessible slide shows with ease
It should be noted that this isn't new, at all. It was published in 2005.
imok20··on Google and the Deadly Power of Data
The real key here is Google's efficiency and innovation. They're not simply providing free data for the masses to consume, making nothing off of it and paying to obtain it (as they must, to map the highways and byways of the US).

At it's heart, Google is an advertising company which creates products that use data to place other companies in the eyes of those who use them.

TomTom and Garmin may offer an equivalent (or better) experience for a price, but Google offers an excellent experience for free, the only cost being a little inadvertent exposure to advertisements.

It wouldn't be inconceivable for another company to more efficiently display data and create a better experience for consumers, but profit through advertisements as Google does. Companies do this already. There simply wasn't another model in the mapping industry that could compete. Yet.

imok20··on Joel Spolsky, Snake-Oil Salesman
That was a mistake: Python is QUITE useful. But I wouldn't call it an industry standard. Corrected.
imok20··on Joel Spolsky, Snake-Oil Salesman
I can't imagine a better course than writing a Lisp interpreter in C, and then a Java implementation in Lisp.

They're clearly not fads, they're clearly useful, and the kind of knowledge and education that doing such an exercise would require is exactly something that proponents "world-class western liberal arts education" would laud.

It can work, it seems to me.

imok20··on Joel Spolsky, Snake-Oil Salesman
And that's exactly the problem. In liberal arts educations (such as the one I'm receiving) or even at universities such as MIT, Python is the language of choice. It's great fun to teach, very easy to learn, but it's not an industry standard, and many would argue that it's too easy to use.
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