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ram1024

89 karma · joined October 5, 2008

Ryan Van Zanen is a software designer currently working at Rackspace in Dallas, TX
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ram1024··on Bitcoin: peer-to-peer network based anonymous digital currency
i'm having trouble wrapping my head around the logistics of this...
ram1024··on Ask HN: How do you deal with mental illness?
i am ever so pleased that you enjoyed my mundane utterance.

and check out that downvoting! apparently this place is rife with crazies. butthurt ones...

ram1024··on Ask HN: How do you deal with mental illness?
the rest of us are fine, but thank you very much for asking
ram1024··on Indie game made by 2 people out-selling Spore, Left 4 Dead, & Fallout 3 at Amazon
i suggest people buy left4dead to catch it up. because THAT game is funtastic.

you have no idea

ram1024··on Ask HN: Where does consciousness come from?
consciousness is simply the state of being responsive to one's environment.

it can boil down as far as gauging the responses of one neuron, but the "environment" of that neuron is its connectivity to others, so it's far more comprehensive to total consciousness up as the whole collective.

ideally, you'd be able to single out a singular and distinct "thought" and trace the workings of all your cognitive elements involved. the result of this thought then loops back through the system and re-patterns it with a "conclusion".

the chemical nature of one's neurons is the important part whether malleable or incorrigible, allowing us to exhibit unique traits and personality.

ram1024··on If an email service thinks your email is spam, shouldn't it ask you to solve a CAPTCHA?
don't know what you're trying to say, really.

but if you're wanting inboxes to be request verification on incoming mail, it's not going to work very well for the service mails that are truly useful, like bill notifications from your creditors and the like.

and it will inconvenience the hell outta your friends and family...

ram1024··on Can we live 1000 years?
so the question is. what happens at 1000 that kills us, and why aren't we solving that problem?

WTF didn't anyone see this coming? might as well just die now if it's all going to be the same...

ram1024··on $1000 to spend
way more information needed to make constructive observations
ram1024··on Ask HN: force comments or attach username to downvotes?
most of my downvotes are from me being deliberately inflammatory, so i generally know why...

a few of them are wonderful mysteries though. fun!

ram1024··on Ask HN: What is your definition of Artificial Intelligence
bare essentials:

uses memory to create hypothesis about situations

experiments using hypothesis

augments memory with results

loop

ram1024··on Ask HN: Proof of concept for my web site
i like the idea of investor "bidding" but of course it seems like a hard task keeping everything honest.

the whole concept seems burdened "legally" so to speak.

would be neat to see something like this fly, though

ram1024··on Forget the Bailout, Here's How to Save Detroit
and if you slot a penny in the back end, they drive around doing wheelies!
ram1024··on Selling ideas to a big company
very few buy ideas anymore, they prefer to have the people create a company proving that the idea is viable/valuable then they buy it out
ram1024··on Scientists extract images directly from brain
has to be the scariest thing i've read all year
ram1024··on Adobe AIR soars to loftier heights
add me a nice "port to iPhone/Android" button and i'm sold.

seriously i would pay hard cash for it

ram1024··on Ask YC: Better to ask users to upload photos vs. have some canned images?
best case i would have both. require the author to select a category when posting, and using this category either pull random image out of stock photos in the category or if you want to get cheeky, parse the text and run semantic to get a closer match (does it really matter though? :D ). if user decides to upload his own photo, just use that instead.

easy peesy

ram1024··on Ask HN: Finding a job for the rest of my life
nice block of text for someone purporting to "hate writing" :D

in any case, i don't think there's a job that distinctively encompasses "learner/problemsolver" sans the execution of the actual fix itself :(

you need to be independently wealthy and be a designer/projectmanager and commission your own ideas into reality to fill the niche role that you've defined

ram1024··on Common chemicals are feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals
male to female disparities means i am allowed to have my harem...
ram1024··on How Will the Semantic Web “Think”?
the semantic web doesn't have to actively "think" it just needs the ability to allow users of the web to properly define relationships itself democratically so to speak and display the internet using these relationships.

we're starting to see the formation of web 3.0 with social tagging, voting, rating, commenting, and flagging. this along with the vetting of user profiles via reputationing systems is solidifying the structure of the web we are to use in the future

ram1024··on Does Steve Jobs lisp?
he doesn't...

and i have a trained ear for picking out lithpers

ram1024··on Ask HN: A Karma API?
a universal "reputation" tied to your email account might be useful

universally

ram1024··on Outsourced Blog Comments
hmm... i thought disqus or whatever was supposed to unify social media commenting
ram1024··on AHN: What can we learn from Reddit?
never used reddit, but here's a "solution" system i thought up on the fly for a social posting site.

"karma" like HN for participating/socializing on the site.

with enough karma you can log into new.sitenamehere.com and vote on new submissions which are in queue for an hour. if you upvote something that gets more downvotes than upvotes, you lose karma. if you upvote something that passes the votes you gain karma, but the whole process is a blind vote, you don't see the results till the end.

what this does is puts moderation of site content into the hands of the people actively participating in the site, they're karmicly "voted" into moderator position, and then further vetted when they review content for the site.

downside: hour long submission "queue" before they show up on the site proper (or get rejected)

ram1024··on Perspectives - Interviews without spoken words, only body language
what the hell is going on here...

i thought it was going to be some kinda charades thing, but they just cut out the word responses to the questions and left the parts where they're not speaking.

doesn't really give any information at all

ram1024··on McDonald's files patent for making a sandwich (with flowchart)
so... it's a patent for method to use a special spatula that they use to build the "fixins" on, which they later invert onto the bun.

sounds very scientific, i doubt anyone would have ever come up with this, let alone put it to significant commercial use other than mcdonalds. i for one welcome our new mcoverlords.

ram1024··on Ask YC: WoW items commodity exchange, why wouldn't it work?
because unlike a standard material commodity, a playing card's value can be dramatically affected by whatever the publishing company decides to do to the game. whether it be printing more of the card, releasing a new version of the card that's more powerful, making that one obsolete, or even discontinuing the game altogether.

i'm sure you COULD make something like this, but really with the value of the item being intangible and largely based on emotional/prospective value, it'd be hard to get traction with the idea...

<disclosure: i know nothing about WoW cards>

ram1024··on Seeking: freelance web designer in DFW
sounds like a "leave your morals and ethics at home" venture

oh well, good luck with your hunt

ram1024··on Since Twitter Won’t Sell, Who Should Facebook Buy?
any company that's actually generating revenue. until facebook itself has a method of making money, spending FUNDING to acquire more uncommercial services under its belt is wildly irresponsible.

sure it might turn out to be a good idea, but it could more easily turn out to be a bad, horribly bad idea.

ram1024··on The last advice you will ever need.
no
ram1024··on Watching the Times struggle (and what you can learn)
long story short, if media is your business, and media is changing, you'd best change with it because its not going to wait around for you.

seems like common sense, but i guess when you get to be old and venerable you also acquire a stance of complacency. no one is invulnerable however. seth should have reminded nytimes of their mortality about five years ago.

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