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kszx

171 karma · joined October 20, 2013

www.studybrick.com
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kszx··on Prime Minister of Singapore Coded Sudoku Solver in C++
His father also called him Loong (not Hsien Loong), at least sometimes:

"He was still young and it was better that someone else succeed me as prime minister. Then, were Loong to make the grade later, it would be clear that he made it on his own merit."

http://www.singapore-window.org/sw04/040531a1.htm

(They use English in the family, although Lee Hsien Loong can speak Chinese fairly well.)

kszx··on Prime Minister of Singapore Coded Sudoku Solver in C++
Cambridge professor about Lee Hsien Loong:

"No, he was truly outstanding: he was head and shoulders above the rest of the students. He was not only the first, but the gap. I think that he did computer science (after mathematics) mostly because his father didn’t want him to stay in pure mathematics. Loong was not only hardworking, conscientious and professional, but he was also very inventive. All the signs indicated that he would have been a world-class research mathematician."

"I’m sure his father never realized how exceptional Loong was. He thought Loong was very good. No, Loong was much better than that. When I tried to tell Lee Kuan Yew, “Look, your son is phenomenally good: you should encourage him to do mathematics,” then he implied that that was impossible, since as a top-flight professional mathematician Loong would leave Singapore for Princeton, Harvard or Cambridge, and that would send the wrong signal to the people in Singapore. And I have to agree that this was a very good point indeed."

http://therealsingapore.com/content/cambridge-professor-lee-...

kszx··on People on Probiotics Focus Less on Bad Feelings, Study Finds
It may be true that this particular sample is too small; I haven't looked at the experiment in detail. However, just pointing out that n<=20 per group isn't enough of an argument to justify this statement. Significance is about more than just the sample size. The idea that it's impossible to get significant statistical result with small samples is a common misconception.
kszx··on Ask HN: Uniforms
I do. (The number of layers varies with the temperature.)

May I ask the opposite question?

Why do many people change outfits almost every day? Do they derive satisfaction from the process of choosing clothes? Or do they derive satisfaction from the fact that other people notice these changes?

As you point out, choosing and owning different outfits comes at a cost, and people who choose to do so must have a reason for this behaviour.

kszx··on elgooG
Really? com.ycombinator.news seems much more logical and intuitive to me, just like 2015-04-01.

Or how about com/ycombinator/news?

kszx··on The Great Green Wall of Africa
The US (Great Plains Shelterbelt project), China (Great Green Wall, or Three-North Shelter Forest Program), and Russia (Siberia) are precisely the inspirations for this project.
kszx··on An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and Its De-Stigmatization [pdf]
Writing out long variable names while working on a mathematical model is like writing the same text with ten times the number of characters. It's neither elegant nor efficient.

Imagine you're playing around with variables and model configurations in complex mathematical terms, but one formula stretches over two pages and you always need to cross out and rewrite whole words.

kszx··on An Economic Model of the Rise in Premarital Sex and Its De-Stigmatization [pdf]
It makes sense to use Greek letters for exogenous parameters so that we can use Latin letters for endogenously determined variables. The distinction between capitalized and uncapitalized letters is useful for a similar reason.

This makes economic formulae much more readable.

kszx··on Algorithm Clones Facial Expressions and Pastes Them onto Other Faces
Is this "issue" a bug or a feature? Isn't it very liberating that people can't see whether you're looking at them or not?
kszx··on Amazon opens a store on Alibaba
Alexa's China sample appears to be unrepresentative, so the numbers are flawed.

Another indication: chinadaily.com.cn (English) is #23, just after one of the most popular Chinese web portals (sogou.com).

kszx··on Baun – A modern, lightweight, extensible CMS for PHP
The Pico CMS website features an attractive description / value proposition: "Pico is a flat file CMS, this means there is no administration backend and database to deal with. You simply create .md files in the "content" folder and that becomes a page." Perhaps you can add a similar sentence to the Baun website as well?
kszx··on Sandwich Fund, the New Venture Arm of Silicon Valley's Favorite Video Maker
Possibly.

But Sandwich Video's decision to accept equity is obviously based on an assumption that start-ups continue to reach high valuations.

So if we're at the top, Sandwich Video is late. In that case, cash out now by purchasing a video. The service provider will suffer the valuation loss.

kszx··on Sandwich Fund, the New Venture Arm of Silicon Valley's Favorite Video Maker
If the video increases your expected valuation by another 100k or more - e.g. by influencing other VCs' investment decisions - then it's probably the right thing to invest in.

[This statement is inherently true by the principles of finance.]

kszx··on Apple invests €1.7B in renewable energy data centres in Denmark and Ireland
HK is a potential retail destination for > 1 bn consumers in East Asia.

Mainland Chinese cross the border and come back with bags full of Apple products (in addition to LV bags etc.).

kszx··on CMU Accidentally Sends Out 800 Acceptance Letters To CS Program
My personal impression:

Formulation 1 (with variables, short and concise sentences): easy to understand.

Formulation 2 (without variables, long sentence): difficult to understand.

==> I prefer Formulation 1.

kszx··on When Children with Autism Grow Up
The part about "Wilbarger Protocol" sounds like torture.

"When he was unable to regulate the information coming into his brain, I would perform a process called the Wilbarger Protocol. It was intimate. I would move a soft brush on Scooter’s arms, legs, neck, and back. Then he would put his hand in mine and I would grab his fingers one at a time, compressing the joints in toward his palm. Firm but gentle, confident but caring. I would watch his face, look for some tension to drop from it and then linger there, count to 10 in my head, and then move on to the next one."

kszx··on Peter Thiel's Dropout Club
It's definitely controversial if seen from an American perspective.

But it's much less controversial if seen from a German perspective. So perhaps you need to understand Thiel's German background first. Germany offers many successful alternatives to university.

Now combine it with Thiel's libertarian views: Apparently, Thiel tries to set up alternatives to college privately.

===

EDIT (for clarification):

I'm not saying that Germans would like this particular experiment. But they usually agree that university is just one out of multiple desirable options to gain a qualification.

In other words, I'm saying that thinking about alternatives to university is very German. This leads me to the idea that the motivation for this experiment may have its roots in Thiel's past.

Saying this as a German.

kszx··on Inside a Chinese Bitcoin Mine That's Grossing $1.5M a Month
You can do that with US Dollars. It's more complicated with Chinese Yuan.
kszx··on Internships Abroad: Unpaid, with a $10,000 Price Tag
Correct.
kszx··on Internships Abroad: Unpaid, with a $10,000 Price Tag
You are free to reject unpaid internships. You are also free to accept it. --> No coercion. --> No exploitation.

In contrast, a law against unpaid internships restricts free choice.

kszx··on The man who brought us the lithium-ion battery has an idea for a new one
(1.) The plasticity of the brain changes, which means that it takes more time to learn new things and change your mind. Many other abilities remain at a high level.

(2.) You may look up a chart that plots dementia against age. Prevalence of dementia increases at an accelerating rate as you get older.

kszx··on China Cracks Down on VPN Services After Censorship System ‘Upgrade’
My company hires freelancers for China-related research. Contributors from Mainland China would be ideal. But my reliance on services like Google Drive means that I typically end up with people from HK, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. It's simply much more convenient.
kszx··on An experimental real world adblock
Found it: "They Live" by John Carpenter.

The idea is a bit different though. "Nada discovers the sunglasses are special. After putting on a pair, he sees the world in black and white and discovers it is not what it seems. Media and advertising hide constant subliminal totalitarian commands to obey and conform." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live)

Here you can see how the "sunglasses" work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w

[Added additional information]

kszx··on An experimental real world adblock
Does anybody remember the name of the cult movie where all advertisement is blocked from the real world? It's pretty much the same idea. I remember seeing that movie many years ago.
kszx··on “Your payment data is securely stored at Cloudflare.”
Full German email:

"Liebe Flixbus Kunden,

unser Paymentmodul der Onlineplattformen wurde durch einen schwerwiegenden IT-Fehler unsererseits manipuliert und zur Transaktion von Unbekannten benutzt.

Scheinbar sind dabei auch eure Daten entwendet und versendet worden. Es handelt sich aber dabei um unrelevante IDs. Wir informieren euch jetzt, da das Ausmass doch grösser ist, als wir dachten und um hier Transparenz zu schaffen.

Es handelt sich hierbei nicht wie bisher verkündet um ein Problem des Paymentanbieters sondern um ein Problem in der Programmierung.

Wir haben das Problem aber jetzt behoben. Seit heute steht auch das neue Stornoformular zur Verfügung.

Wir werden allen Kunden die in irgendeiner Form von diesem bedauerlichen Fall betroffen sind in Form von Wertgutscheinen in Höhe von 100€ entgegenkommen. Diese gehen euch zu oder meldet euch dazu auf Facebook kurz. Wir entschuldigen uns nochmals für den bedauerlichen Vorfall und sagen euch eure Daten sind bei unserem amerikanischen Spezialanbieter Cloudflare nun sicher.

Mit freundlichem Gruss

Flixbus Geschäftsführung

Andre, Jochen, Daniel

Auch diesen FlixFall stehen wir durch."

kszx··on Be My Eyes – Lend your eyes to the blind
For these kinds of services, the introduction of a payment can change supply and demand in very unexpected ways.

Example: There once was an experiment with blood donations, where a payment for the blood donation actually decreased the number of people who were willing to donate. Apparently, receiving a payment for an activity that seems charitable makes some people feel bad.

A similar effect might happen if Blind My Eyes introduced payments. (While this particular effect would reduce supply, this does not necessarily imply that the introduction of a payment would lead to a negative change in supply. It's just one factor.)

kszx··on Dreamweaver CS3 crashes with files that are exactly 8KB in size
The current title has an implied if, not an iff.
kszx··on Samsung Comes Out With App To Help Children With Autism
Learning to use facial expressions can be quite useful. It's similar to learning negotiation techniques and sales strategies. In this context, spending 15 minutes a day working on the ability to one's facial expression skills (Samsung app: even improve the daily performance in a "performance dashboard") is not necessarily a bad idea.

However, it should be remembered that this is primarily about imitation. It is not about "self-expression". People do not move their position on the autistic spectrum by using this app. They just improve their ability to use facial expressions in the way that is expected by the surrounding society.

kszx··on Bitcoin adoption in 2015
> Any stock trader that uses linear graphs will lose his shirt.

Can you show me a stock trading platform that uses log values by default?

Yes, log graphs are very useful when you're looking at developments of stock values and many other financial variables - predominantly over longer terms when the changes are high enough that the difference matters.

kszx··on How to Be an Expert in a Changing World
Strangely reminds me of Bayesian statistics and updating of prior probability distributions.
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