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nsgoetz

121 karma · joined June 6, 2014

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nsgoetz··on Launch HN: Roame (YC S23) – Flight search engine for your credit card points
Does the website take into account the seasonality of certain flight routes?
nsgoetz··on Fortnite seems to have been removed from the Play Store as well
The Google statement really feels like they're subtweeting Apple:

> The open Android ecosystem lets developers distribute apps through multiple app stores. For game developers who choose to use the Play Store, we have consistent policies that are fair to developers and keep the store safe for users. While Fortnite remains available on Android, we can no longer make it available on Play because it violates our policies. However, we welcome the opportunity to continue our discussions with Epic and bring Fortnite back to Google Play.

nsgoetz··on How compatible are democracy and capitalism?
FWIW As a native speaker, I think your English is great, and I have seen native speakers do worse. It’s nothing to take for granite ;)
nsgoetz··on Why we should care about the Nate Silver vs. Nassim Taleb Twitter war
538 had almost a 1 in 3 chance that Trump won in their final prediction before the election. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/
nsgoetz··on Bitcoin falls below $5,000
FYI, FYI is a TLA for “For Your Information”
nsgoetz··on Twitter’s deletion of its FB app caused old cross-posts to temporarily disappear
It easily could be a bug such as the refence to the Api being removed. Posts that reference it could raise an error leading to them being hidden. I’ll wait to hear if Facebook makes a statement.
nsgoetz··on OpenStreetMap for the dyslexic
My sister has dyslexia and confirmed that it’s so much easier for her to read. Her face lit up with excitement the first time we saw it.
nsgoetz··on Readme-Driven Development (2010)
doxygen is tool to programmatically generate documentation from properly formatted comments. If you use python, it is very similar to pydoc. We never actually used the generated documentation but basically used the format as a style guide. For functions it looks like:

  /** @brief Prints character ch with the specified color
   *         at position (row, col).
   *
   *  If any argument is invalid, the function has no effect.
   *
   *  @param row The row in which to display the character.
   *  @param col The column in which to display the character.
   *  @param ch The character to display.
   *  @param color The color to use to display the character.
   *  @return Void.
   */
  void draw_char(int row, int col, int ch, int color);
Here is the class's guide to doxygen https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~410/doc/doxygen.html
nsgoetz··on Readme-Driven Development (2010)
I took an OS class in college where either a TA or professor would read every line of C code in the OS you turned in. They required every function to have a doxygen style doctrings. It was also a partner based course. Writing those docstrings before implementing the functions not only helped them be more useful, but also helped my partner and I coordinate on features/interfaces before they were done. I think documentation in general is highly underrated.
nsgoetz··on Reddit is down
I am able to get onto it
nsgoetz··on Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)
And it mentions Go which I believe was invented in 2009. It was on the site previously as 2001 which also seems wrong https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3439772 . Maybe it is just being updated.
nsgoetz··on Fired Google Engineer Loses Diversity Memo Challenge
It sounds like you are saying the law and precedent is good. You just disagree with their interpretation of the facts in this particular case. Not everyone in a scociety can come to a consensus on every issue. That’s we have the court system decide.
nsgoetz··on Cryptocurrencies are collapsing
Actually there are legal repercussions, and in the case of disasters like fires the federal government will actually replace your cash. Planet money had a great episode on this https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/06/30/535062249/epis...
nsgoetz··on Jon Skeet earns 1mm rep on Stack Overflow
I believe it come from mille - Latin for 1000. So 1mm is one mille mille or one thousand thousand. Why we use the Latin? I have no idea.
nsgoetz··on IPhones start slowing down after a year
Low power mode seems to turn off unnecessary animations and speed up my phone.
nsgoetz··on CryptoKitties craze slows down transactions on Ethereum
> Are they buying an option on the right to receive dividends at some indeterminate point in the distant future?

> Do they think they'll receive a fraction of the enterprise value when Google gets bought by a bigger company?

> Will Google get sold off piece by piece and they'll get a pro-rata share of the liquidation proceeds?

Yes, but also a bet on other people's demand for those things - its asset backed. Since they all are based on USD I think they're a little safer bet than a cat fad.

nsgoetz··on Think Twice Before Ordering Coffee or Tea on a Plane
I believe the fetuses get some immunity from their mother by blood but not bacteria.
nsgoetz··on Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
No one is stoping them from speaking. Harvard just doesn't want them if those are the things they have to say
nsgoetz··on We’re Getting Close to Full Employment
Labor force participation has many other problems - retirees being a huge one. There are disputes on who to include as actively looking for work and how to measure the underemployment, but labor force participation is not the answer.
nsgoetz··on Rust 1.17
Different languages are targeted for different purposes. Most people don't like JS as a language, but necessary to take full advantage of what a web app can do. This is because today browsers run JS and not much else. The sometimes chose to write their sever in it too to decrease the number of languages they need to maintain in their code base, and to be able to reuse code for the backend and front end of their webapps.

One of the ways languages differ is how much of the hardware they abstract. Assembly is literally a list instructions to manipulate registers (a component of a processor) containing 1 number at a time, and to jump around those lines. Resisters and you memory just hold ints, so the programmer has to know what ints are numbers what are addresses pointing to an array or other number(pointer), etc. C abstracts a ton of those instructions, so for example you have to keep track of what memory you're using but not which register has that memory's address and how to allocate registers etc. Static typing is necessary to remember how to interpret those ints. Python abstracts even more so you don't have to keep track of you memory and its very close to abstract logic. However, in exchange there is a large bit of code that has to run with you python code to figure out how to use the registers and assembly instructions to compute your function. OK it doesn't do that directly, but indirectly that's the point of what is called an interpreter.

There are advantages of more abstract languages like python. You don't have to think about as much and there are generally more safety guarantees. However, sometimes you can't afford to the time or space overhead of the interpreter. This is a commonly cited reason people move away from ruby. Sometimes you need the minute control over you data. For example, if you are writing a OS or a device driver, you need to give very specific instructions to the processor. Languages that are well suited for the latter cases are usually called systems languages.

Rust and Go are examples of languages that try to fit between C and Python on this spectrum. They want to give some of the abstractions and security grantees that python provides without the overhead and while enabling some precise control of the hardware if you need it. They also provide some abstractions that may speed up you code because the language designers have thought through some complex algorithms and code better than you may be able to.

Hope that helped, and let me know if you have any questions.

nsgoetz··on Enroute Airbus A380 wake flips Challenger business jet upside down
I don't know much about aviation, but 1000ft seems kinda close to pass another aircraft. How normal is that distance?
nsgoetz··on [dead]
This is satire http://theseattletribune.com/disclaimer/
nsgoetz··on Summary of the Amazon S3 Service Disruption
This makes me want to write a program that would ask users to confirm commands if it thinks they are running a known playbook and deviating from it. Does anyone know if a tool like that exists?
nsgoetz··on YC Annual Letter 2017
Maybe just making the downvote button more like the "report" button on facebook. Force people to either select from a few common reasons, or leave a comment to explain their downvote. This could also gently enforce norms for what the downvote is for, since some people new to HN might not realize it isn't the same as reddit. Obviously there are details to iron out, but I think it would be helpful.
nsgoetz··on YC Annual Letter 2017
Those numbers surprised me to, but I don't think they should have. I rarely meet anyone in software that doesn't know at least know about HN, if not actively read it. In fact, my sister's boyfriend is in tech even though she isn't. When I met him for the first time, my sister felt a little left out because we immediately got into a deep discussion about an article we read on here. We live across the country from each other, but reading hacker news is almost expected for both of us.
nsgoetz··on Burnout [audio]
I understand that customer service reps do a hard, yet important job. However, calling them "heroes" is a little too much kool-aid for me. It reminds me of every startup claiming that "this changes everything".
nsgoetz··on How Snapchat secretly bought a struggling startup, then bet the future on it
Snapchat has the scaled back version of the original product on the market but I bet they are still working on the more complete AR system. Looking at Snapchat as an AR company paints it in a whole new light.
nsgoetz··on Before You Grow
Sounds like a great sales pitch if you have the numbers to back it up. Walking into a meeting saying we saved a certain company so much money that they're scared to tell their competitors about it is pretty convincing if you can show them the numbers.
nsgoetz··on Google’s Self-Driving Car Project Is Losing Out to Rivals
"Soon" actually is already.

Source: I live in Pittsburgh, have seen the self-driving cars on the road, and friends have driven in then. I unfortunately, have not lucked into a ride in one yet.

nsgoetz··on Study of Theranos Medical Tests Finds Irregular Results
This logic is not necessarily true. The tests are inherently probabilistic. Medical professionals must use the impact of a False positive or negative and the baysean probability of a disease given their test results to determine the best thresholds for patients. False positives can still be very harmful to patients (surgery, medication, lifestyle changes, etc) so they must be taken into account as well.

One classic example is a pregnancy test. You're going to find out eventually, and the impact of a false positive is huge, so the test errs toward false negatives instead of false positives.

This video does a good job explaining it (and is where I learned most of what I know): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF1T7KzRnrs

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