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rpm4321on The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

Yep, clarified a bit below in my response to nickkthequick that I was talking more about my personal experiences with what I would call minor caffeine overdoses, not the clinical definition of caffeine intoxication. My main point is that the notion that massive amounts of caffeine injestion is consequence free, especially as it's usually paired with sleep deprivation, is laughable.

rpm4321on The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

Yep, I've read all about clinical definitions of caffeine intoxication, and its relative rarity isolated from any other factors.

I guess I was a little sloppy in labeling what I'm talking about a "caffeine overdose", although I think what I described happening to me (heart palpatations, dizziness) probably happens much more often than physicians are aware of, and could be classified as a minor caffeine overdose. Most people logically conclude they've had too much coffee and too little sleep, and just drink some water and go to bed like I did. They don't go to the hospital over it.

What I'm really saying is that people who consume massive amounts of coffee are usually trying to compensate for exhaustion or sleep deprivation. In fact, there's sort of a feedback loop, where massive amounts of caffeine make restful sleep much more difficult, which then leads to more caffeine consumption and possibly to a downward spiral in health. Studies have shown that a perfectly healthy person lacking in sleep is in sort of a pre-diabetic state already, so when you pile on massive amounts of stimulants at the same time, it's clearly bad for the heart. It won't lead to you being declared DOA of a caffeine overdose, but it could exacerbate heart disease, or help its onset, or even cause a heart attack.

Don't get me wrong, as I mentioned I'm a huge caffeine addict. I drink Coke Zero by the gallon. However, the picture the author is painting that massive ingestion of caffeine is consequence free is simply not accurate, and in fact dangerous.

rpm4321on The Case for Drinking as Much Coffee as You Like

Anecdotally, this seems like pretty reckless advice, and I'm a caffeine junkie.

Don't get me wrong, it's clearly not crystal meth, but Caffeine overdoses are real and can be dangerous, especially in a situation where you are drinking a boatload of coffee. I'm sure I'm not the only person on this board that has had some minor heart palpitations during an all-nighter after one too many coffees or Coke Zeros.

rpm4321on Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

I agree with you that there are certainly some risks, so I'm shocked at how little attention the idea of neural interfaces and intelligence augmentation gets, even in a tech savvy place like HN. It seems like the concept is no more pie in the sky sci fi than strong AI, but there seems to be a stigma against even discussing it in a serious manner. It could bring the same benefits to society as strong AI, but mitigate the risks somewhat.

rpm4321on Canadian scientists create a functioning, virtual brain

Hey pdog this isn't really in response to you - it's more something that's been bothering me for awhile - but who the hell appointed Gary Marcus the arbiter of all things AI?

The New Yorker apparently hired this guy to be an AI columnist, and he has no background in either neuroscience or computer science, only psychology.

If you read his articles, he veers wildly from "strong AI ain't gonna happen" to "AI could destroy us all", the only common thread being pessimism. Meanwhile, he displays a frightening lack of understanding of the subject matter, and perhaps most disturbingly, in some of his more alarmist articles advocates that computer scientists should step aside and make room for psychologists, philosophers, lawyers, and politicians to sort out these thorny issues at the big boy table.

Kurzweil is certainly fair game for legitimate criticism, but Marcus calling Kurzweil a joke is an even big joke in itself.

rpm4321on Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots

Whoops, posted a link to the overview article. Here's the report it refers to: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/11/19/losing-humanity

rpm4321on Hunter Moore’s Revenge Porn Site Will Map Submitted Photos to People’s Addresses

Yep, I'm aware of some of the nasty things that happen on 4chan.

In my defense, I made it clear that I think this is one of those rare cases where Internet-vigilante justice is not only excusable, but possibly even noble. This man is a truly reprehensible human being, and may have found a way to continue to act in this way with impunity. If there is absolutely no recourse available to civil society, I really don't have a problem with him getting the worst Anonymous has to offer - which, let's face it, pales in comparison to what the state can dish out when it wants to.

In their defense, it seems like many of the high-profile, highly organized campaigns by Anonymous have been against worthy targets like drug cartels and cults, rather than some random vile post by some script kiddy on 4chan.

I could very easily see them going after this guy.

rpm4321on Hunter Moore’s Revenge Porn Site Will Map Submitted Photos to People’s Addresses

Reading about a person like Hunter Moore is one of the rare times I'm very glad that Anonymous and their extra-judicial brand of justice exists.

Cue The Dark Knight "hero we deserve" quote.

rpm4321on [dead]

Do you guys manually read the content and create summaries, or is this an automated algorithm like Summly - http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-vi...

rpm4321on Swedish Exchange paralyzed by buy order for "-6 stocks"

Well, they're going to have a lot of explaining to do when a dump truck shows up outside of their house with 4,294,967,290 stock certificates.

rpm4321on Swedish Exchange paralyzed by buy order for "-6 stocks"

Just curious, how accurate was the rest of the translation?

rpm4321on Job Posting for Amazon.com Before it Launched

Are you concerned the subject matter will be out of date ;)

rpm4321on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

No problem, I love pedantry - except when I'm at the business end of it. :)

Interestingly enough:

"how does this jive with" - About 257,000 results

"how does this jibe with" - About 234,000 results

"how does this gibe with" - About 6,490 results

rpm4321on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

Does anyone know how this jives with Slate and The Atlantic reporting yesterday that the whole thing was a big misunderstanding and that no big discovery had been made?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4841107 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4840905

Edit: Here are similar stories from PC Magazine and Mashable, which was apparently the original source of all of these articles:

http://mashable.com/2012/11/27/curiosity-rover-discovery-npr...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412567,00.asp

rpm4321on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

I don't know why he didn't use "perhaps"; it's a perfectly cromulent word.

rpm4321on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

Embarrassingly enough, I'm a Python dev on Win7 - now you know why I'm so paranoid. :)

Thanks anyway, though.

rpm4321on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

Here we go: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nickbostrom...

I'm really paranoid about loading unfamiliar websites up (I've got a version of Chrome with js and plugins disabled that I use for random links), and pdfs are still a bit of a concern as an attack vector. It looks like this viewtext.org will come in handy.

</tangent>

rpm4321on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

Bit of a tangent, but does anyone know of a service where I can copy in a pdf url and get a rough approximation of the content as plain text html?

rpm4321on JPL director: Curiosity may have found organic, not biological molecules

Apparently, it's quite uncertain how much (if any) current volcanic activity there is, which would make organisms a possible source:

http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/20...

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-09/mars-methane-c...

rpm4321on Job Posting for Amazon.com Before it Launched

Jun 1982 - First mention of Star Wars Episode 6

"I wish Lucas & Co. would get the thing going a little faster. I can't really imagine waiting until 1997 to see all nine parts of the Star Wars series."

- Randal L. Schwartz, 6/9/82

You poor bastard...

rpm4321on Why There Aren't More Googles (2008)

You should add "(2008)" to the title.

rpm4321on Google's Digital Creative Guidebook

It looks really impressive and I realize this is a creative showpiece, but is anyone else getting tired of all this "swiping" being forced upon users who aren't even using touchscreens? Between this and Microsoft's Metro swipes, it's getting a little ridiculous. I really hope this doesn't become an even bigger trend because it's horrible for usability.

rpm4321on What Has Changed

Yeah, my impression was that the VC community is actually getting a bit pissed about all the acqui-hires. Sorry to link just to Arrington, but I can't seem to find the other sources I had read on it:

http://uncrunched.com/2012/08/26/investors-dont-like-acqui-h...

rpm4321on Why time is not running out

So, I'm starting to read this and I'm thinking he's making some good points. My inner monologue goes "Maybe 35 isn't too late to reassess and turn things around?" Then I read:

"I’d have nagging thoughts such as these: ‘Oh god, I’m 25 and I haven’t..."

f u c k . . . .

rpm4321on A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

Okay, thank you for confirming that there is no reasoning with you forensic. I'll save PG the trouble of yelling at us and end my part in this here.

Also, just to clarify, I've been an independent freelance programmer/serial entrepreneur for over 10 years - I've never worked for or held an interest in a big corporation, and my bank account balance looks a lot more like an OWS member than a VC. I'm just not gullible enough to fall for this class warfare nonsense, or blame others for my success or lack thereof.

Tell you what: when OWS rounds you up, I'll have a talk with my fellow plebs and see if I can get you a pass.

rpm4321on A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

Look, before PG rightfully jumps in here like the SkiFree Yeti and tells us both to knock it off, let's see if we can squash this: http://xkcd.com/667/

I'll concede that my last comment was inappropriate (it's super-basic Python, not a proof).

Can you at least concede that loose talk of beheading capitalists is, at the very least, counter-productive to what we should all want, which is a robust recovery?

Are you really advocating that people like PG and Elon Musk should be murdered without due process for being successful?

If not, why say so? Even solely as a rhetorical device, it's extremely distasteful, polarizing, and makes a rational person discount anything else you might have to say on the matter.

Or maybe you and people like you have no intention of really following through with these threats - they're just attempts to bully political opponents into adopting your tax policies. So, we're just talking soft-extortion here, not outright plans of murder and violence.

How about "evil" financiers like Warren Buffett (or is he "one of the good ones"?), or the other bankers and financiers - many of whom heavily donated to Obama, some of whom even served in his administration. Should the chopping block be reserved just for them? Do they get a pass if they donated to the right political parties and organizations?

This extreme demonization of capitalism is really troubling to me, and I think it helps explain the sluggishness of the economic recovery. The holders of capital are a bit spooked, and rightfully so.

rpm4321on A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

def further_proof(age, wisdom):

    if (age != wisdom):

        print "forensic"

rpm4321on A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

I really wish that I had joined HN more than a month ago, just so that I could downvote you. This belongs on Reddit or Huffpo, not HN.

Ironically, it's this sort of OWS mullarkey that's helping to prolong the environment of economic uncertainty that's hurting us so badly today.

rpm4321on A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

Just to be clear, I'm mostly talking about companies drastically scaling back their plans for growth in recent years, which obviously impacts private investors in the equity markets as well. Countless CEOs have gone on the record saying they've postponed hiring and capital investments because of the current tax and regulatory environment, in addition to the general dysfunction of Washington.

As you point out, Apple is sitting on over 100 billion, and countless other companies are sitting on amounts of capital that were previously unheard of. You can't honestly argue that it's a coincidence that all of these companies are simultaneously gun-shy to invest in growth.

rpm4321on A Minimum Tax for the Wealthy

Why do you think they are sitting on these piles of money rather than investing it? It's because of the incessant sabre-rattling from the left over the past six years about raising taxes and ramping up even more regulation. It has a chilling effect.