HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

jcasman

88 karma · joined September 14, 2009

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/jcasman; my proof: https://keybase.io/jcasman/sigs/VuYV-nnfjLZby8Tp9VHWfAlrtoMzqo6Thxye5cqGmBU ]
submissionscomments
jcasman··on I'm Tired of Talking to AI
I agree that devices/internet/AI can pull you away from the life around you. In my apartment building, though, we have a group chat to coordinate laundry schedules for the laundry machines on the first floor. It started during Covid and continued even after and with new people moving in. It's turned into a nice, helpful conversation about not only laundry but packages and street parking and more. It's helped to get to know the neighbors better than without.
jcasman··on Python learners – review this free courseware
Join our Python courseware project and help improve a free, beginner-friendly curriculum designed to make students internship- and interview-ready.

You’ll work through the course like a student would, identify what’s confusing or missing, and help us refine the lessons so they land cleanly.

While you review and provide feedback, you’ll also build a realistic portfolio project you can confidently demo, explain, and defend in internship and job interviews. You’ll have an industry mentor (me!) to help you move faster, avoid dead ends, and build real confidence.

jcasman··on NASA's Curiosity Rover Just Spent Its 2,000th Day on Mars
This number is in Sols, Martian days. I believe Curiousity landed on Mars on Aug 6, 2012, which makes it 2056 Earth days.
jcasman··on You are listening to San Francisco
Made my evening, settling me down nicely. Thanks for posting.
jcasman··on In Raising the World’s I.Q., the Secret’s in the Salt (2006)
Small factoid: I visited the Tobacco and Salt Museum in Tokyo and found out that Japan was forced to develop domestic salt technology due to isolation plus climate factors (cool temperatures and heavy rainfall). It's not just a historical topic. With increased use of soda and soda derivatives in modern industry salt now has an important role to play in advanced technologies.

https://www.jti.co.jp/Culture/museum_e/collection/salt/index...

jcasman··on Ask HN: What makes a good online community?
Do you use HN often? It looks as if you've just created this username today.
jcasman··on How Duterte Turned Facebook into a Weapon, with Help from Facebook
Online communities need active human management and engagement. You can't automate yourself out of this, Facebook. It seems like this pattern is repeated over and over. Slashdot figured out a way to have human cultivation aided by software. And the result was high quality. Digg came along and tried to go all software, and it failed. Ignoring these lessons, many, many newspapers open up their articles to unfettered commenting and are shocked when anonymous users with no sense of accountability produce ugly comments.
jcasman··on SpaceX raises another $100M
Is that a lot or a little? How am I supposed to judge? It looks like SpaceX is well over $1B with a B in funding in total now. In comparison Blue Origin just gets money from Bezos, so "no" funding?

Big wikipedia list of private space companies (no funding info): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_private_spaceflight_co...

Overall venture funding going up (from 2015): http://fortune.com/2016/02/22/vcs-invested-more-in-space-sta...

jcasman··on Ask HN: What service do you use for human translations of your website?
I worked as a (very) part-time translator (Japanese to English) for a company called Gengo. It's a "shared economy" structure, with any army of freelancers doing the work. Good at smaller, quick translations. To be clear, I have no experience buying their service, and I haven't done any work with them for several years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gengo
jcasman··on Ask HN: Is anyone using Watson in their business?
Here's an example: Shimmy Technologies is basing their company on Watson API. They make custom swimsuits using Watson's Speech to Text "recognizeMicrophone" so buyers can say their measurements which then gets converted into CAD files and Shimmy produces the customized clothing from there. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/stop-the-hype-the-real-v...
jcasman··on IBM and Google Team Up to Tackle Developer Security Challenges
I don't have any inside information but the IBM blog post states: "IBM plans to deliver Grafeas and Kristis as part of the IBM Container Service on IBM Cloud, and to integrate our Vulnerability Advisor and DevOps tools with the Grafeas API."
jcasman··on Groovy Project Lead to Focus on API Dev Tools
There's a second blog post published at basically the same time by the CEO of Restlet with more info about the connection between Groovy and their API platform and language development: http://restlet.com/blog/2015/03/02/head-of-groovy-project-jo...
jcasman··on Poll: Do you use Google Reader on a daily basis?
These days it's daily but that comes and goes. It's like any kind of reading, way overloaded which means periodically I consciously give up or... just never get around to it. The Mark All As Read is a key function for me, so I can start fresh.
jcasman··on Astronomers Discover Potentially Earthlike Planet Orbiting Binary Star
Posted similar comment directly to the article. Quite pleased with myself for noticing a typo without having to check. It's probably "Gliese 581g" without the extra "4" that the author is referring to in the list of top candidates. It proves the point, though, that this is a hot area of astronomy. I'm no expert, but I was familiar enough with the first exasolar discoveries to notice the typo immediately.
jcasman··on Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify
The announcement seems driven more by why Facebook would want (capturing users, adding a revenue stream) than what users would want (sharing musically cheaply and easily). Hard to see how this competes well with YouTube music videos. Seems like everyone is looking to connect social networking and music. MySpace has (kind of) held on because of the connection but there are many failures including the supposed music heavyweight Apple's Ping.
jcasman··on Twitpic makes deal with news agency to sell users' uploaded photos
I'm trying to imagine a scenario where I post a pic, they sell it in one of their publications, then sue when someone else also uses it. I think it sounds ridiculous, but isn't this one of those legal scenarios were it's possible but not probable? No, I'm still not happy about the principal of it.
jcasman··on The unofficial Google shell
Confirmed. Same here. Also, options for ls don't seem implemented.
jcasman··on SpaceX Falcon Heavy announced: 53 metric tons to low earth orbit
Great details, got a chuckle out of the address for questions. sales@spacex.com "Uh, it says here prices range from $80M to $125M. Would you consider going down to $75M?"