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jasonwockyon A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

I'm not familiar enough with Bitcoin to engage in dialogue about its market dynamics specifically. I only wanted to point out that the mere fact that all sales involve both a buyer and a seller doesn't make it "by definition as equally hard (or easy) to buy as to sell".

jasonwockyon The Period Is Pissed

apologies

jasonwockyon A Prediction: Bitcoin Is Doomed to Fail

No.

Try buying an iPhone 3g right now on Craigslist. I bet it takes you all of two minutes.

Then try selling it. I bet it takes quite a bit more time.

Asymmetry.

jasonwockyon The Period Is Pissed

My personal favorite has always been:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/09/02

Definitely a pissed-off period.

jasonwockyon How Node.js has revolutionised the Mail Online (Worlds No.1 Online Newspaper)

Jerry Weinberg has an essay on fads in computer programming[1]. Basically, it's written such that you can swap in whatever today's hottest fad is, and the article still makes sense (it was originally written for Structured Programming, but OO Programing, Agile Development, Node.js, et al would fit well within it).

One of his conclusions is that the organizations that are likely to succeed with the latest whiz-bang technologies are also the ones who were most likely to succeed without them. Sure, what's new can be better, but it's hardly sufficient.

Based on my experience, I would agree, and so I think you're right. With the exception of this being specific to "programmers these days". I think our industry has always been plagued by this trend. It's just that now, with the internet, the stories have a longer reach.

[1] http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com/2011/06/beyond-agile...

jasonwockyon Google v Authors Guild: a victory for readers' right to choose

Not much. A lawsuit has been dismissed.

What has been "decided" is that given the facts stipulated to by both the Authors' Guild and Google, Google is not breaking the law. Instead, their conduct is in accordance with "fair use". Nothing more or less.

jasonwockyon Google v Authors Guild: a victory for readers' right to choose

It will certainly be appealed. The results of the appeal are anybody's guess.

jasonwockyon PrimeSense bought by Apple for $345M

Microsoft doesn't use PrimeSense for the XBox one. It's all in-house now. Should have negligible effect on the supply chain.

jasonwockyon Bloomberg News Is Said to Curb Articles That Might Anger China

> Edit: Morals and halos don't pay journalist salaries.

Yeah, but at some point in their behavior, you kinda have to stop calling them "journalist" salaries.

jasonwockyon Sprite Lamp

You could easily combine both worlds. You don't have to bake in the lighting. Just export the light maps, and then use them with a tool like Sprite Lamp to dynamically merge them in at runtime.

jasonwockyon Sprite Lamp

I don't think it's really a budget issue. The type of 3d modeling & animation software that is necessary to create character spritesheets can be had at pretty commodity prices (sub-$200).

Personally, I would never try to do this kind of work by hand in 2D (not a talented-enough draftsman). But the grandparent is right...even in my clumsy hands, I can do a decent job working in 3D. It's just an easier workflow.

Now, style-wise, nice hand-drawn 2D animation is in a class of its own. If indie studios are sticking with 2D, I'd suggest it's frequently more a matter of style than price.

jasonwockyon I Bought An Apartment To Rent Out On Airbnb

If you want to visit my city and see its sights, you can "kick back" into the damn kitty that it takes to keep those sights maintained.

jasonwockyon Don't blame HealthCare.gov

I blame talking points & incendiary rhetoric.

jasonwockyon Martin Gräßlin, KDE: "Good Bye, Ubuntu"

Except that humans each have different and at times irreconcilable notions of "merit".

jasonwockyon How Big Is The NYC Tech Sector?

I think NYC would be a great tech hub if the city could solve the cost-of-living problem

Doesn't Silicon Valley have a similar problem?

jasonwockyon How Big Is The NYC Tech Sector?

Fragmented in what way? Physically? B/C NYC isn't that big, and has outstanding transit. My assumption is that NYC tech is actually less physically fragmented than SV tech.

jasonwockyon Ask HN: Why the Microsoft hate?

IDEA's development environments are only ones, in my experience, that outdo MS's. Way better refactoring support (any VS user who doesn't also have a copy of IDEA's Resharper plugin installed is crazy), better debugger. Better all around.

jasonwockyon Introducing Login and Pay with Amazon

I think he meant his or her lost business opportunities.

jasonwockyon NY Attorney General hits AirBnB with subpoena for user data

i.e. "Made up stuff I like is inalienable. Made up stuff I dislike is imaginary."

jasonwockyon After Silk Road

Why does a "free" society take away my right to eavesdrop?

jasonwockyon After Silk Road

> a vast majority of techies, and a majority of the working class and underclass consider drug use and trafficking to be less of a crime than double parking

Citation badly needed.

jasonwockyon Diablo 3 to permanently remove its auction houses in March 2014

> The best, surest way to get a complex system that works is to begin with a simple system that works and make a series of many incremental changes.

Shades of Gall's Law from Systemantics:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system. – John Gall (1975, p.71)

jasonwockyon Does Steve Jobs know how to code?

Better for whom? HP was an organization designed to make money in a certain way at the time, from certain kinds of customers, and most likely the Apple I's design would have been influenced by that business model (to its detriment, revolution-wise).

jasonwockyon Lord Blair: we need laws to stop 'principled' leaking of state secrets

Names of undercover agents infiltrating criminal organizations, to start?

jasonwockyon On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs

My perspective is that idle hands are actually idle: not building, not thinking, not active, not contemplative, not searching, not trying, not even resting. But idle. Un(der) used. And rather hard to defend.

This is difficult for me to understand. How can you tell the difference between resting hands (easy to defend, imo), and idle hands?

jasonwockyon [dead]

> A. We all know it happens.

I didn't until now.

jasonwockyon Google Open-Sources Gumbo: C Library for Parsing HTML5

Most languages can be extended by C code without too much fuss. If the C is written in a platform-independent manner (which should be possible for this library), it's pretty much write-once, run-anywhere. Even if optimal performance wasn't a goal, it's still nice to have a single portable, performant html5 parser that's been tested against billions of pages.

jasonwockyon Elixir Design Goals

Erlang and OTP in Action goes pretty deep into it.

jasonwockyon Why does Amazon have more books from the 1880s than the 1980s? Blame copyright

I swear, I would be willing to put up with continual copyright extensions solely for Mickey Mouse if it meant we could have the rest of our stuff.

jasonwockyon It's official: Fez 2 has been cancelled

Certainly, we are a social species. There are thousands of social species. Isolate certain birds from social interaction, and they'll be depressed as well. I'm not talking about real isolation, they kind they do in psychological experiments.

What is conjecture, as far as I can tell, is that we're "hardwired to function by looking for approval from others".

> it's what evidence from pretty much every bit of research on the subject shows - from psychological experiments to brainscans showing that feeling "pain" over not being treated nicely isn't a metaphor - it actually activates the same areas of the brain as things that physically hurt.

But that doesn't tell me the order of operations. Is it, a) Someone does something "not nice" (leaving aside whatever that specifically means) b) My senses take the event in c) My lizard-brain activates my pain center d) I have a bad emotional reaction

Or is it a) Someone does something "not nice" (leaving aside whatever that specifically means) b) My senses take the event in c) I have a bad emotional reaction d) My lizard-brain activates my pain center