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noilly

175 karma · joined January 27, 2010

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noilly··on The sad positive feedback loop of lotteries
"I picked strawberries, and though I can't recall what I got per crate for picking, I remember that after working hard all one day, I wound up with about a dollar, which was a whole lot of money in those times. I was so hungry, I didn't know what to do. I was walking away toward town with visions of buying something good to eat, and this older white boy I knew, Richard Dixon, came up and asked me if I wanted to match nickels. He had plenty of change for my dollar. In about a half hour, he had all the change back, including my dollar, and instead of going to town to buy something, I went home with nothing, and I was bitter. But that was nothing compared to what I felt when I found out later that he had cheated. There is a way that you can catch and hold the nickel and make it come up the way you want. This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating."
noilly··on Jon Stewart assails Apple for becoming "Big Brother"
straight from horse's mouth

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-28-2010/appholes

starts in earnest around ~2:00; probably region locked

noilly··on What happens to water if it’s not allowed to expand when frozen?
Yes- larger crystals + expansion --> puncture and break cell walls --> not good when you're defrosted. Tangentially, this is why ice cream cooled with liquid nitrogen is so smooth
noilly··on Don’t believe the hype on GM’s loan repayment
iirc, even in the good old days, GM was more profitable as a car financing company than a car manufacturing company... profits which were then transferred to employee benefits rather than reinvested in the company
noilly··on Goldman executives cheered housing market's decline, newly released e-mails show
This only looks bad in hindsight... I cannot speak for GS et al., but it seems like most of the commentary attributes the banks with prescience (and therefore malice).
noilly··on Why Apple Could Sue Gawker Over 'Lost' iPhone Story
thought: if apple files a lawsuit, does it mean this was not a plant?
noilly··on Pay It Forward
thanks a lot!
noilly··on HN Contractors: Add Yourself
I bolded the top row if you don't mind...

sans serif font + italics = no go

noilly··on Remove p21 Gene = Grow new limbs like lizards tail
Perhaps a large metabolic cost for larger animals- hard to maintain that energy cost when you've just had your limb cut off + trying to fight off infection, run away from predators, etc.
noilly··on The Largest Infrastructure Project in History: Chinese High-Speed Rail to Europe
London to Beijing takes about 9-10 days as of right now. You could easily get that to 5-7 days if you cut out stops (especially between Moscow and Beijing) and if you tripled the average speed of the trains from ~30-40 mph to 90-120 mph... there you go, although the latter part is what requires so much money and engineering.
noilly··on The Largest Infrastructure Project in History: Chinese High-Speed Rail to Europe
a more salient consideration is the already existing tension between China and India over their border. You cannot currently get between India and China directly by train.
noilly··on Are you capable of being ruthless to get ahead?
"In Andy Warhol's "Diaries", he describes being at a Thanksgiving 1983 dinner party at Yoko Ono's apartment. Bowie and Madonna are also there. Warhol wanders to a bunch of people in Sean's room, where "some kid is setting up one of those Apple computers". The "kid" springs up to greet him, "Hi, I'm Steve Jobs."

Even before product placement, Jobs was very keen on real-life placement, getting his products in the hands of the "right" people, tastemakers, before anyone else. The Macintosh he was setting up for Sean would famously come out 2 months later. It was a sort of high-end salesmanship he never really stopped, at least when a new product was launching."

noilly··on Scott and Scurvy: How the cure for scurvy was lost
if the world ends, don't eat carnivore livers
noilly··on Valve bringing Steam to Mac
the current steam beta ui has been ported from ie to webkit (which was a hint that they were going to introduce mac support)
noilly··on First iPad Commercial Released - what do you think?
the video shows it used while propped against crossed legs or on your lap with both feet raised on an object (or sitting on the floor with knees up). I wonder how it feels otherwise?
noilly··on Japan: It's Not Funny Anymore
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-5-2010/even-be...
noilly··on I was the one who came forward about the Macbook Air
"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently."

Warren Buffett

noilly··on At Stanford, computer science students are big cheaters
I go to stanford, and intro CS is required or strongly recommended in most majors (all engineering, hard science, and even social sciences)... so a pretty large fraction of the student body goes through the class- most prospective cs majors have already placed into higher level classes.
noilly··on New errors in IPCC climate change report - Telegraph
Nicholas Stern (of the stern review) is asking for 2% global gdp (!) based on findings of the IPCC report
noilly··on Ask HN: Looking for interns / entry level?
Hi I'm a Junior at Stanford in Biogeochemistry and Economics. I'm looking for a do-anything, put-on-different-hats ('cept coding as I've only taken intro CS) internship anywhere in the world (Bay Area, NYC, Mongolia, etc) for the summer- paid, unpaid, plastic tchotkes is all good.

Thanks! elee89 _at_ stanford dot edu

noilly··on Howard Zinn, historian who challenged status quo, dies at 87
e.g. Malcolm Gladwell
noilly··on Avatar still only #26 when box office receipts are adjusted for inflation
the film studios only see part of (I've heard ~50%) gross box office when taking theater operator's share out (+ cost to manufacture and distribute film reels, etc). Plus Avatar cost >300 million to produce + >100 million marketing + James Cameron's share, etc. Film studios make most of the profit from accounting/tax tricks, dvd revenue, tv deals, etc.
noilly··on Court Upholds Prison Ban of Dungeons & Dragons
I like that playing dungeons and dragons

"foster[s] hostility, violence and escape behavior" and "'could make it more difficult to rehabilitate prisoners and could endanger public safety'"

ironically, they cite a lifer as an example (rehabilitation?). the thought of D&D gangs roaming prisons is tragicomedic

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