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jrbedard

2,031 karma · joined February 24, 2007

http://jrbedard.com http://twitter.com/jrbedard
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jrbedard··on Ask HN: Are There Any Bitcoin Billionaires Yet?
Those could qualify:

  - Satoshi Nakamoto (bitcoin creator(s) ~1.5M btc = $3.5B today)
  - Roger Ver (reportedly bought >$1M of btc in ~2010)
  - Winklevii (reportedly owned ~1% of all btc in 2013 = ~$2B now)
  - Ethereum funder(s) (bought >$1M of ether at 2014 crowd-sale @ $0.25, today @ ~$200/eth)
  - Chinese btc/eth mining farm owner(s)
jrbedard··on Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?
Deep Learning (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series) by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, Aaron Courville

Came out in November 2016. Split in 3 parts:

Part I: Applied Math and Machine Learning Basics (Linear Algebra, Probability and Information Theory, Numerical computation)

Part II: Deep Networks: Modern Practices (Deep Feedforward Networks, Regularization, CNNs, RNNs, Practical Methodology & Applications)

Part III: Deep Learning Research (Linear Factor Models, Autoencoders, Representation Learning, Structured Probabilistic Models, Monte Carlo Methods, Inference, Partition Function, Deep Generative Models)

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Adaptive-Computation-Ma...

jrbedard··on With 1$, what is the best thing to buy online?
1/790th of a Bitcoin.
jrbedard··on Ask HN: What service would you pay $1k/mo for?
An outstanding Bloomberg terminal alternative
jrbedard··on Mr.Robot “TV Today” BBS
IP address found on an highway panel: https://www.reddit.com/r/MrRobot/comments/4x7ara/spoilers_s2...
jrbedard··on Badger.com is Shutting Down
For a moment I thought it was all over for the timeless & endless http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com
jrbedard··on David Bowie Has Died
Interview in 1999 with his predictions about the internet, with career/songs comparison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WaPXKfFHms&feature=youtu.be...
jrbedard··on Lumosity fined $2M for deceptive ads of “Brain Training” app
Marketplace has done an interesting investigation on those types of mind games. http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/episodes/2014-2015/brain-train...
jrbedard··on The Peculiar Ascent of Bill Murray to Secular Saint
What's interesting is how to cast Bill Murray for a movie. He doesn't have an agent, lawyer, personal phone number, or email address. Only a mythical anonymous 1-800 number where you leave a voicemail describing your script and hope he calls back. He's known to check his voicemail only once in a while.. He's also a nomad, so if he's interested, the script is sent through snail mail to his variable current location.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2014/09/05/casting...

jrbedard··on Monoprice now has $400 3D printers
Thanks, for these projects I used a Dremel Idea Builder.
jrbedard··on Monoprice now has $400 3D printers
I've used it mostly for prototyping and gifts. I've made a photography turntable, a functional arduino robot, and 3D printed my dad's house to put in a shadow box frame as a gift.

http://jrbedard.com/printing

jrbedard··on Square Prices Its IPO at $9, giving it a $2.7B valuation
Just added your suggested figures.
jrbedard··on Famo.us pivots, fires 20 employees
Famo.us founder was a Powerset co-founder, which had an highly successful exit to Microsoft. This pattern often explains generous funding of outlandish ideas.
jrbedard··on Layoffs Hit Gumroad as the E-Commerce Startup Restructures
It was April 4th 2011. There's an entertaining sub-thread about Bitcoin in that discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2407053

At the current ~$0.70 / bitcoin...

I can't imagine bitcoins in their current implementation gaining traction as a form of payment with 'regular folks'...

jrbedard··on Ask HN: What's your favorite HN thread?
The one on recursivity: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3550767
jrbedard··on Two Programs Enter, One Program Leaves
Microsoft did something similar to promote the .NET framework in it's early days. They launched the Terrarium competition http://terrarium2.codeplex.com/ where you would code your creature's AI in C# or Managed C++ and ship it as a DLL that would compete against other peoples creatures.
jrbedard··on Show HN: Gamification.org - Open Source Game Mechanics
We're evaluating with different CMS platforms. The good thing with MediaWiki is that the content is easily migratable :)
jrbedard··on Show HN: Gamification.org - Open Source Game Mechanics
Our wiki is still primitive, but open for feedback and contributions. Akin to the SCVNGR's Secret Game Mechanics Playdeck, we include a repository of classic game mechanics at http://gamification.org/wiki/Game_Mechanics. The difference is we want to make it open for collaboration and discussions through game mechanic definitions, implementation exemples, best practices, metrics, strategies, etc.
jrbedard··on Gamification Needs to Level Up — Here’s How
I agree with the tenuousity of just tacking shallow game elements on top of existing applications. Using game mechanics and dynamics for optimal user engagement and loyalty is a deep and complex topic that is currently being explored and researched by many.

If you are interested to learn more, we are setting up a new Wiki for gamification discussions and the open/crowd sourcing of various game mechanics @ http://gamification.org

jrbedard··on What I Learned From FarmVille - So You Don’t Have To Play It
Cool document, in the same vein, we are setting up a new Wiki that open/crowd source various game mechanics at http://gamification.org
jrbedard··on TheLikestream, Digg For Facebook “Likes”
Long live TheLikeStream! congrats Ed :)
jrbedard··on Indie (Game) Fund is open for applications
Specially in Quebec, where productions costs are highly subsidized by the provincial government - http://venturebeat.com/2009/12/04/canadian-government-is-buy...
jrbedard··on Sculptris 1.0 video
Looks good, similar feature-set than ZBrush or Mudbox. The big challenge when building these kind of software is handling the staggering amount (multi-million) of polygons that need to be transformed and manipulated in real-time by the artist. To achieve this, ZBrush relies on pixols (voxel-like 3d pixels) and Mudbox uses advanced gpu-accelerated 3D partitioning. Sculptris seems to be more akin to Mudbox.
jrbedard··on [dead]
I don't see an email address in your profile?
jrbedard··on Google Goes Native: Offers Sneak Peak at C++ Support in Chromium
They also hint that the Native Clients could eventually work in IE/Firefox. But they will rely on open-source contributions to port NPAPI/Pepper to those browsers..

https://groups.google.com/group/native-client-discuss/browse...

"A subset of our current functionality works in Firefox, for example (though it's currently missing some important parts, like 3D)"

jrbedard··on Google Goes Native: Offers Sneak Peak at C++ Support in Chromium
Is there any information about how the native plugins installation process will look like for the end user?
jrbedard··on The Ritual Calling of the Engineer
In Québec, to call yourself an Engineer and join the OIQ (Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec), post-graduation, you need to work for 3 years as an EIT, then pass a 3 part exam about the profession.
jrbedard··on The Ritual Calling of the Engineer
Pet peeve for me too, specially at Silicon Valley startups, where a political science grad student who codes some Ruby on Rails on the side, joins the company as a "Senior Software Engineer".
jrbedard··on The Ritual Calling of the Engineer
I lost mine somewhere in California :/ I would be curious to see the percentage of my graduating colleagues of 5 years ago, who still wear it.
jrbedard··on Art vs. Computer Science
If you are put off by C++ but not by Java, there's the Processing framework which is similar: http://processing.org/
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