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luser001on This is How Wrong Kurzweil Is

Upvoted for the OI reference, which I found to be a remarkable book. I highly recommend it.

But I wouldn't go so far as to say "it would seem that the algorithm of the cortex is mostly figured out": my takeaway from the book was that a lot of it was solid educated guesses and connecting of dots. E.g., the concept that the brain stores and manipulates patterns and this is the key intelligence behind all the senses, and the multiple "levels" of intelligence and how they connect to each other.

I totally agree with your second para (this is another point that is present throughout in the book). Jeff Hawkins did a good job (for me) to distinguish between intelligence and "human-ness". Recreating the human cortex will still leave us far far away from creating an artificial human brain.

luser001on Follow up to "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C"

... which seems to be written in C++ (based on clicking around in the source tree for a minute).

https://ssl.icu-project.org/trac/browser/icu/trunk/source/co...

luser001on Y Combinator is funding the future of spam in Windows

Do you have Adblock Plus installed? It frequently removes the illegitimate download links since it (rightly) classifies many of them as ads.

luser001on The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

I used to do this. But then I realized I would be importing all symbols from std into my code. Including ones that might get defined in the future (similar to python's 'from foo import *'), which might conflict with some of my own symbols.

Hence, I now implicitly import each symbol I need with something like 'using std::map;' (similar to python's 'from foo import bar, bar2').

I've found that the 'using' statement can be used even inside a function to restrict the importation to just a single function.

FYI.

luser001on Show HN: FileRock, a Secure Dropbox Clone, goes Open Source

On the contrary.

As a user of a service the client is the only piece that I really care about wrt data security. If I can verify that the client isn't secretly uploading encryption keys to the server while claiming to encrypt my data, it's a massive win for transparency.

The server is a just an abstracted hard disk. Why would I care how it is implemented?

luser001on Never, Ever Compromise: Hiring For Culture Fit

This whole article should have been prefaced with a giant 72-pt IMHO and suffixed with a 72-pt YMMV.

I was amazed at recommendations #4 and #5: reward somebody for "fitting in" etc. (!!!!!!!)

I highly recommend Andy Grove's "High Output Management" if you're really interested in building a high-performance organization. It's a highly objective book: don't waste time on voodoo like "Intriguingly, in a "social" environment, the candidate would often show more of their "true colors". Especially if beer was involved."

luser001on Tcl/Tk 8.6 released (now stackless, w/coroutines, tailcalls, and more)

> I do not like this sort of behavior in my dynamic type system.

Why? [Other than for performance reasons]

I keep repeating this point in every Tcl thread. Tcl was meant to be used to enable command line shells for programs written in C.

Btw, being able to treat a list as a dict has been useful to me. I (developer) write a routine to be used by a non-developer, who may not be a great programmer. The list notation is easy in Tcl. I can just tell them to make a list with keys and values alternating. And for a one-time conversion cost, I get to use it as a dict.

Also works the other way around: I can return a dict. And if a Blub user is processing it, he's free to ignore my documentation that it's a dict and process it as a list (again for a one-time cost).

YMMV.

luser001on Tcl the misunderstood (2006)

If you haven't already, you might want to look into Nagelfar. http://nagelfar.berlios.de/

luser001on Tcl the misunderstood (2006)

I would make a distinction between a CLI (to be used by ordinary users of the program) and a scripting interface (to be used to "extend" the program, to be used by power users and/or other programmers).

And I would further submit that the same language may not be the right choice for both tasks.

Tcl leans further towards being a pleasant CLI interface language, while AFAIK Lua leans further towards being a pleasant plugin development language.

IMHO.

luser001on Tcl the misunderstood (2006)

Probably because Tcl has other redeeming qualities.

Command line programs are now passe in all except a few niches like routers, chip design etc, but IMHO there still isn't a better "/bin/sh++" that you can embed as command line shell interface between your C functions and the user.

Swig + Tcl + C/C++ works like a dream!

luser001on Tcl the misunderstood (2006)

> But ultimately, it feels like a language with lots of good ideas, implemented poorly. I'm not a PL theorist or purist, but "everything is a string" constantly feels like a really poor abstraction.

I see where you're coming from, but IMHO:

Tcl's ideas make total sense if you understand why the language was invented. The name is the hint: Tool Command Language. It was never intended to be a "proper" programming language, AFAIK.

That is, a "sh++" CLI to be embedded in big programs. The role of the CLI is to be a thin layer between the data structures in the embedding program and the user.

The EIAS approach makes it easy to write commandline scripts. I've seen non-programmers abuse the hell out Tcl but the underlying C function still got the correct arguments.

luser001on What Marc Andreessen said to Quartz that made us sit up and listen

Thanks! Even simpler fix for lazy: Inspect Element, right click on the element in the developer pane, and choose "delete node".

luser001on The Minimum Wage Machine

PSA: It's available on Netflix.

luser001on Hacking Meat: Can technology make us eat fewer animals?

https://www.google.com/search?q=percentage+of+grass+fed+beef

Only 3% of beef in the US is grass-fed. For chicken, the equivalent would be "pastured", and I bet it far less than 1% (I've never seen it for sale in supermarkets and I know you have to join a coop or something to get it).

luser001on Hacking Meat: Can technology make us eat fewer animals?

> (I'm Hindu, so no beef or pork)

Minor nit: I don't think Hindus are prohibited from eating pork. AFAIK.

> And I would bet that my environmental impact isn't all that high.

Ironically this page claims that lamb is the worst of all meats wrt CO2 footprint.

http://ewg.org/meateatersguide/eat-smart/

luser001on Ask HN: GitHub vs Bitbucket

It's very easy to install under Ubuntu.

luser001on Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

Pretty good point. Jeff Hawkins makes the same point in his book "On Intelligence", which I highly recommend.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=on+intelligence+book&#...

luser001on Dell releases powerful, well-supported Linux Ultrabook

Btw, I'm with you. I turn down the brightness of my monitors and have gray-on-black in my terminal windows.

For a while, I even went hardcore and used color-blind color mappings hotkeys via compiz to cut out the white glare backgrounds of web pages.

luser001on Dell releases powerful, well-supported Linux Ultrabook

One problem I have out of the box with xubuntu (i.e., xfce) is that if I suspend it in a docked configuration (with an external monitor connected and laptop display turned off) and wake it up in undocked config, it doesn't automatically switch to showing stuff on the laptop.

Dunno if it's an XFCE thing or a Ubuntu thing or an X thing or a Linux thing. I'm too lazy to debug this fully. I just yank the power and reboot. :)

luser001on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

Minor nit: is there evidence that dinosaurs evolved into monkeys? didn't they all get wiped out by an asteroid?

AFAIK, mammals existed during the dinosaur era. But they occupied a tiny ecological niche and were physically tiny. They survived the asteroid hit because they were tiny.

The absence of dinos enabled them to eventually occupy niches occupied by dinos.

luser001on Linode Simplifies Plans, Reveals CPU Priority

Please do. I would have thought the micro would be faster than the Pi (I have a Pi)!!!

luser001on How to set up a Raspberry Pi Web Server

I did some benchmarking to find the CPU overhead of data transfer. Here is the draft of what I found.

https://gist.github.com/4144871

I was able to saturate a 100 Mbps LAN link with netcat. IIRC CPU was at 70%.

luser001on How to set up a Raspberry Pi Web Server

The latest Raspbian seems to support it out of the box. It was pretty painless for me.

luser001on The High Price of Nickel-and-Diming Doctors

No. It seems that hospitals are paid on a per-patient basis while individual doctors are paid on a per-procedure basis. Unless I misunderstood the article.

luser001on Google Apps Disabled My Domain

I am currently unable to login to one of my domains on Google Apps (i.e., www.google.com/a/example.com returns an error). When I try to register it, it says the domain is already registered. Fun.

It isn't my primary domain, so I haven't bothered to pester one of my Googler friends to see if they can do something about it.

luser001on Trotify: make your bicycle sound like a horse [video]

Pretty cool. But the coconut should be included. IMHO. I can see how a whimsical/retro thing like this might appeal to some.

luser001on [dead]

Pretty cool. The coconut should be included. IMHO.

luser001on 'The Hobbit' at 48fps: Frame Rates Explained

Disclaimer: I am not an art expert.

You point is well taken, but just as a minor nit, I wanted to add that artists did achieve photorealism first and then move on to abstractness. Arguably, that was driven by the advent of photography which commoditized photorealism.

luser001on "Your criticisms are completely wrong": Stallman on software patents

I used to think this until I read book The Long Pursuit. It's highly likely that Lincoln thought slavery was intrinsically bad.

It's a thin-ish book and I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Long-Pursuit-Lincolns-Thirty-Year/...