Hacker News Reader

mrkgnaoon Twilio's Seed Pitch

I'd be interested in a link, too.

mrkgnaoon Why isn’t the fundamental theorem of arithmetic obvious? (2011)

This is usually part of an introductory undergrad course in algebra. What you're looking for is called "ring theory".

Michael Artin's Algebra is a good, concrete book with tons of motivation and zero prerequisites. Wanna try it? ;)

mrkgnaoon Why isn’t the fundamental theorem of arithmetic obvious? (2011)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadratic_integer#Definition

This might help.

mrkgnaoon More awful IoT stuff

I think he's a Linux kernel developer.

mrkgnaoon Numerai, a hedge fund built by a community of anonymous data scientists

Plus, Numerai gives them opaque features for ML training that correspond to real-life data in ways that only Numerai knows. So you can't bail and use your model on your own.

mrkgnaoon India launches 20 satellites in single mission

> The intelligence is there, in a billion people there are a few million outliers.

Um.

mrkgnaoon Why Did San Francisco Schools Stop Teaching Algebra in Middle School?

> Meanwhile, opponents insist that allowing wiz kids to branch off from their peers in middle school will have no implications for the racial or socioeconomic achievement gap.

It's sad, I agree, but I wonder how that can be an argument in favour of holding back mathematically curious children who are clearly "hungry for more"? Does this end up improving diversity down the line?

mrkgnaoon To the DAO and the Ethereum community: Fuck you

As unlikely as it may be (I believe real lawyers will quickly come along and tell us how unlikely), we may actually be seeing $ATTACKER legally assert his claim to the money, and the whole thing "come through", so to speak.

Edit: The author seems like a very, very disturbing individual. Does anyone on HN have a bit of a back story on this person?

mrkgnaoon Guccifer 2.0: DNC's servers hacked by a lone hacker

Or is supposed to tell that he is?

mrkgnaoon The Mistrust of Science

Your reply is interesting, especially the idea of steelmanning.

Also, "Mr Kgnao" is a cute spin on my username :)

I originally intended it as a reference to Ulysses, where James Joyce captures a cat's sound as being similar to "mrkgnao".

mrkgnaoon The Mistrust of Science

I think you may be confusing the intellectual right-wing with the, e.g. evolution/climate change-denying right wing.

There is a lot to be said for the need for differing opinions on, say, social mores, finance, healthcare, government, and philosophies of life in general. That is to say, I agree that the intellectual/philosophical right-wing is indeed not at all similar to the caricatures we see.

I have a hunch, though, that highly religious and closeted people (of the "Do not be educated lest you lose your humility" kind) are almost tautologically biased against evidential "scientific method" models of the world, as opposed to one where all truth flows from $HOLY_BOOK. And if you'll look closely, it is this part that is ridiculed, largely for the unquestioning nature of its beliefs and worldviews.

Aside: I have a feeling I'm stepping on the wrong side of the Slate Star Codex "outgroup" essay with this. If there are any logical fallacies in this, or anything similar, I would appreciate comments. I'm not a seasoned observer of politics or society :)

mrkgnaoon Mathematicians are chronically lost and confused (2014)

So etale cohomology? :P

mrkgnaoon Understanding the Elm type system

Does Elm not have typeclasses?

(I looked at the pics and saw `List.map` everywhere.)

mrkgnaoon The Immutability of Math and How Almost Everything Else Will Pass

> Number theory. If you’re ever asked how one algorithm or data structure performs over another, you’ll need a solid grasp of number theory to make that analysis.

Um, what? I mean, apart from some fancy/hypothetical cache aligning nonsense, I have no idea how this makes sense. Maybe someone can explain?

mrkgnaoon That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification (2011) [pdf]

someone please tell me that "open set" has the topological meaning here

mrkgnaoon Thinking in React

I don't know much JS, let alone React, but after reading the OP link, "Basic Theoretical Concepts" made sense to me. The bit of Haskell experience I have probably helped.

mrkgnaoon Thinking in React

The Yelp clone was scary, yes, but this is pleasant. I'll try this when I get back home today.

mrkgnaoon Deep Learning Without Poor Local Minima

I have a feeling, albeit one not informed by deep knowledge of either field, that there are already-known pure mathematical results that can cause a <insert your favorite way of saying "paradigm shift"> in machine learning, just "waiting to be discovered" by people in the latter field.

All this talk of maxima and minima reminds me of Morse theory, for instance (and that Wikipedia page is more than what I know about it). [1]

Is there any sense in what I'm saying?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_theory

mrkgnaoon TSA gave my MacBook Pro to another passenger at LAX, and now it's gone

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11760052

mrkgnaoon TSA gave my MacBook Pro to another passenger at LAX, and now it's gone

Most Indian supermarkets do something similar for any backpacks etc. that they don't let you take in.

mrkgnaoon Functional Programming, Abstraction, and Names

If I remember correctly, you could forget the "inverses" bit and define a group action with only the monoid corresponding to the group.

So not all the "groupiness" is captured by actions.

Also, Bill Thurston's beautiful "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics" [1] contains several ways to understand the derivative, in addition to it being a look into what a very distinguished mathematician thought of the nature of the mathematical pursuit. Pretty similar ideas, explored in depth.

Edit: Apparently this is linked to in TFA :)

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236

mrkgnaoon SpaceX lands rocket at sea second time after satellite launch

Please move to /r/lewronggeneration :)

mrkgnaoon Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone

Can someone explain the regular (weekly?) dips in the graph of Sci-Hub usage? Is it people not working on Sundays?

mrkgnaoon Google Shuts Out Competitors on Android? Hardly

The title reads like a cryptic crossword clue.

mrkgnaoon Deadly animal prion disease appears in Europe

What does a normal reindeer brain look like?

mrkgnaoon Creating a JVM language

> Polish in-jokes

You can't just say that and leave us hanging!

mrkgnaoon Why does Haskell, in your opinion, suck?

Well, what you are doing is a "generalized" binary search. Suppose you have a four-stor(e)y house. You can start from the second floor and proceed a la standard binary search. You're putting an implicit ordering on the parts of your house, essentially, and then doing a search.

And the bit about cutting the search space to a third (which is what I believe you meant, instead of cutting it /by/ a third) is something you can also do when searching a list, but IIRC halving is preferred because it has better worst-case time-complexity. You can always split a list into 1/3 + 2/3 instead of 1/2 + 1/2, but you risk having to search the 2/3 every time, etc.

mrkgnaoon Saudi Arabia Warns of Economic Fallout If Congress Passes 9/11 Bill

> Are they forbidden from marrying each other.

That's one thing we don't have to worry about any time soon.

mrkgnaoon Smart Kids Should Skip High School

I would guess Terry Tao was one of them?

mrkgnaoon Kite – Programming Copilot

I certainly hope there is a way to use Kite comfortably with minimal/no mouse usage.