HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

joelberman

134 karma · joined February 19, 2012

submissionscomments
joelberman··on The Ethical Principles of Public Health
Which ones do you object to? What would you prefer?
joelberman··on Jewish Calendar Demystified (2007)
It is much easier to calculate eclipses using a lunar calendar. All lunar eclipses happen during a full moon and all solar eclipses during a new moon.
joelberman··on Static site hosting hurdles
Last month I paid $1 for route53, 12 cents for S3. and am hosting my https site which I create with publii. Works fine. Took a little time to set up, but now it is just a button push to update the site. Great for my personal blog and phtot gallery.
joelberman··on No Damned Computer Is Going to Tell Me What to Do – Story of Naval Data System
I was one of the first sailors to go through DS A school at Mare Island. Previously the DS went through ET school first. We learned the purpose of every gate in the UDT a 15-bit computer with 512 words of memory before stepping up to the 642A and 642B computers. This was in 1967 when it was still possible to know how every bit of hardware and software worked.
joelberman··on The Great American Eye Exam Scam
I can go online and get all of my test results including graphs that show change. X-ray reports. The only thing not online is surgical notes, but I easier got copies of them. This is from the UCLA healthcare system. Also Quest labs has online results to patients. This is in CA. My brother-in-law, could not get results from tests in Virginia to get a second opinion. Perhaps it varies by state.
joelberman··on Breaking Pills
I love the internet. I posted this question 20 years ago. Got an answer right away. And even more interesting answers today. Thanks!

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!searchin/alt.math.re...

joelberman··on Altavista: The rise and fall of the biggest pre-Google search engine
DEC wanted to sell Alphaservers (and VMS). Altavista was a great demonstration of scale and speed and distributed computing (versus a giant mainframe). Crawling and indexing speed. Tons of open ip connections, security,etc were all selling points. Bring large customers to see the physical Altavista and also the ip exchange helped sell lots of systems. DEC was a hardware company. Google wasn’t. Made a lot of difference in priorities.
joelberman··on How to Train and Build a Conversational News Chatbot
How do you install/run it from scratch?
joelberman··on Machine Learning from scratch: Bare bones implementations in Python
Very nice project! Learning stuff makes me happy.
joelberman··on Google planning to bring AI and ML tools to Raspberry Pi
anything to speed up tensorflow and/or openCV either on the videocore or an inexpensive chip would be great.
joelberman··on Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates
If I buy or rent space for a billboard I am not allowed to put anything I wish on it. That is no different than putting a poster in a public-facing window. It gets more interesting when a website in one country is offensive to another country.
joelberman··on Ask HN: Is it worth paying for a Coursera course?
I don't care if you paid for it or not. I care if you learned anything.
joelberman··on Ask HN: How do detect a crappy boss / toxic environment when interviewing?
Agree, but also some of your future co-workers. If you think you hit it off with one of the interviewers ask if you can call or meet for coffee. Having an asshole boss sucks, but if boss also hired a bunch of assholes it is even worse.
joelberman··on Lessons from a Failed Tech Startup
You have not yet met a really great salesperson. They will not let you marginalize them. Only the poor ones will. BTW, it is hard to have a business without customers. And whoever finds those customers is a salesperson.
joelberman··on R, the master troll of statistical languages (2012)
I think if you are a programmer or have some programming language experience, R is not very weird. But if you are a financial analyst or a social scientist, or a statistician, and only want to get your work done; it depends on your first programming language. If it was S3 you are golden. If it was Basic, you are not so golden. Mine was LISP.
joelberman··on China stock trading halted early after 7% plunge again
Do you think the government buys and sells stick to manipulate prices? Perhaps the 90M traders lack sophistication so trade mostly on rumor.
joelberman··on Google Patents Needle-Free Blood Draw
Just glucose monitoring for diabetics would make this a valuable patent. The last try at noninvasive glucose monitoring did not work out very well.
joelberman··on The 100-Hour Rule
I think we should strive for more than to be better than most. I would rather be highly competent at something than good enough at many things. But I understand others may prefer the jack of all trades route.
joelberman··on Germany is turning on its monster stellarator
The potential speedup on those old F2C routines is amazing. The ability to use much more memory, understand cache levels, etc. have a huge impact.
joelberman··on The Danger of E-Books
I download books from my library (Boston Public). They are DRM'd and only usable on my Kindle for a few weeks. But that is enough. The range of books available is good. ANd if it is a text or something I like, I can then buy it. If it is just a garbage novel to ease a flight, then that is good too. The Kindle, on a per book rate, was really cheap and the library is even cheaper!
joelberman··on Yogi Berra, Master Yankee Catcher With Goofy Wit, Dies at 90
As a Bostonian I hated the Yankees. But I loved Yogi.
joelberman··on Anatomy of a Modern Production Stack
These articles always remind me of William Gibson, who said "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed yet."

I am sure this is in our the future.

joelberman··on Examining the core memory module inside a vintage IBM 1401 mainframe
IIRC you could push a button and it would automatically read a card into locations 1 through 80 and start executing at location 1. First instruction had to be a set word mark (, i thing) because instructions were variable length and needed a word mark to denote the end. I also seem to remember that 4K meant 4,000 not 4096. Long time ago and we all danced a happy dance when the 1401 came in to replace our 407 accounting machine with its plugboards. Well not everyone. Some were afraid of the new machine and certain that the time was still not right.
joelberman··on Network handover in Google Fi
I am happy so far.
joelberman··on Facebook ‘Spam King’ Guilty for Sending 27M Messages
And then they thank you for reporting, tell you that they cannot handle individual complaints, and close the case. If they fixed the problem they could handle more difficult cases.
joelberman··on Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died
When I had cancer I just wanted it gone. Since it could be cut out, I went with that. Every time I caught a cold I worried that it had returned. I did not want to be on the wrong side of a statistical curve. That others survived would not have comforted me as much as knowing that I would survive. Your mileage may vary.
joelberman··on Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, has died
Another story. mid 50's, reasonably active and healthy, start to develop BHP (slow stream). Urologist does a PSA test even though I had one a few months before. Long story short, prostate cancer. Had robotic surgery, all good.

67, been following a congenital heart murmur for years. Cholesterol at 130. Noticed my running and biking dropping performance dropping off, so think time for a heart valve replacement. Routine pre-op catheterization shows coronary artery blockage. Have bypass and valve replacement, doing great. But 130 was too much cholesterol for me apparently. On statins and down to 95! I am now 68, no prostate, artificial heart valve, bypassed coronary artery, but feel great and am still active.

Glad the heart surgery took place after I started medicare though. Say want you want about government ineptitude administering anything, but medicare works.

joelberman··on Google Sued by Job Candidate for Age Discrimination
I am 68 and working as much as I want to. I had no trouble finding a job and am actually in demand. I guarantee this is not because I am a genius.

I have hired many people over the years, many worked out well. I have also rejected many candidates over the years. I am sure many of them would have worked out too, but I will never know. Believe me, when you need to hire someone you want to find the right person quickly. And often you know in the first few minutes if the candidate is a fit or not. Then to be polite and fair you spend the next 30-45 minutes even with the candidate you are certain you do not want. Think about the first 2 minutes, because that is where you lost it. Not in the code you wrote or the phone connection.

joelberman··on The Socratic Method: Teaching by Asking Instead of by Telling
I think public education is completely broken and has gotten worse over the years. Other countries seem to achieve better outcomes for a lot less money. Perhaps they do not have such poor parenting that allows their children to hit others or to sob all day.

The reason for amateur pedagogy is that the professionals have completely screwed it up. Look at the controversy over "no child left behind" or "common core" or "STEM." The experts do not agree on anything, which means the body of knowledge is very weak. I think it is time for amateurs to step in.

joelberman··on Ask HN: Do you meditate?
I learned to meditate in my late teens (I'm 68 now), to fight depression and low self esteem. It was very hard for me to meditate, and I still sometimes have trouble getting into a meditative state. But I usually spend 20-30 minutes meditating during the day, or before bed. It helps me clear any depression I feel. No idea how or why it works, but for me it is very helpful.
Page 1 of 2Next →