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rudin

95 karma · joined October 23, 2009

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rudin··on Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program
> however, the authors do not disclose any conflicts of interest in their scientific reports

I find it amusing the Lancet complains about this considering Peter Daszak's et al covid origins letter was published without disclosing conflicts of interest.

rudin··on Why isn’t New Zealand richer and more productive?
Compared to Australia, New Zealand has a significant Maori / Polynesian population. If you combine a part of Australia with a part of Fiji, you would get similar mix of people and also a similar economic output to New Zealand. While this obviously doesn't explain all of it, it is important to consider the historical and demographics reasons as well.
rudin··on Re: Facebook acquires Oculus, a letter of concern
The core worry for me is that, Facebook represents the social gaming, Zynga, pay-to-grow-a-plant kind of gaming that is the antithesis of hardcore gaming which Oculus (especially with Carmack) represents. They are two fundamentally different modes of games and it will be difficult to integrate them into one company.
rudin··on Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface
You have posted 10 positive Microsoft reviews in the past year which corresponds to approximately 10%-20% of your posts. Are you paid to do this or just really into the company?
rudin··on Cryptocat Considered Harmful: The Root Cause
Definitely. I'm really interested in the progress of OpenPGP.js. It could possibly replace a lot of the sketchier parts of Cryptocat.
rudin··on Cryptocat Considered Harmful: The Root Cause
Guy creates a blog and his first single post is to discourage someone truly trying to innovate in the cryptography space (though admittedly more in usability aspects).

After listening to Glen Greenwald at the CCC it was quite clear that cryptography that is easier to use than PGP is really needed in this world (he almost lost the Snowden story due to it). I think that Nadim needs to be encouraged. Sure, point out any flaws but aim for constructive feedback.

The points here centre around it "not good enough". This is a bit of a chicken and egg problem and isn't really helpful.

rudin··on Why Do Brits Accept Surveillance?
I understand if you are fine with it. It has lost most of its meaning with history but I still cringe a little whenever I read it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_names_for_the_Briti...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Brit

rudin··on Why Do Brits Accept Surveillance?
I would just like to point out that many British people find the word Brit pejorative and that you shouldn't use it unless you want to offend.
rudin··on Low Tech Magazine: The Chinese Wheelbarrow
While this is an interesting piece of technology, I can't read this article without cringing. The bias towards "Chinese technology" over "European technology" and the constant comparison between the two makes this read like some sort of propaganda piece.
rudin··on "Gangbang Interviews" and "Bikini Shots": Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem
If you look past the horrible sexism I see an actually different undercurrent going on here. The clash of cultures is not between these "brogrammers" and women, but between brogrammers and "geek culture".

Geek culture has for various reasons dominated the technology sector for the last couple of decades however the risk and reward situation involved in startups has been attracting a different type of crowd, the brogrammers. The geek culturists feel threatened by this new crowd and so attack them by accusing them of sexism (a valid criticism) as it goes against one of the core geek tenets of tolerance towards others.

I on the other hand, view the inclusion of different subcultures in the tech industry, regardless of how they act, to be a positive thing. I hope more subcultures will come along which will continue to break up the dominant stereotypes in the tech industry (and hopefully address the gender imbalance at some stage ... bring on the sisgrammers!).

rudin··on Ask HN: I'm rebooting my life, and could really use your advice.
Me being blunt.

Find someone to help you write your resume? Why can't you do this yourself? You are just offloading responsibility. It takes a day to do and is fairly easy.

Find a good recruiter? Cannot you just start applying for jobs now? Why do you need a recruiter? They can be helpful but as you need a job as soon as possible you shouldn't limit yourself here.

Finally, starting the job hunt in early January is procrastinating. Get up and start applying now. There is a pre-Christmas lull in many offices that make it a good time to hire.

Good luck with your job search.

rudin··on Loser-Pays makes lawsuits fairer in Europe. It could work in US, too
I am inferring from your post that you are a lawyer which would give you a vested interest in against anything reducing the number of court cases. Next your anecdote rests on the loser paying an unreasonable fee for their situation ($400k). Surely the fine would be based on someone's income and act as a deterrent rather than cause bankruptcy.
rudin··on ATM Fraud at Aldi: Terminals modified in manufacturer's factory.
I see we are still losing the rights for the moniker "Hacker".
rudin··on Electric cars neither as useful nor as green as their proponents claim
One does wonder if this article was financed by oil companies. Richard Pike, the specialist the article referred to had a 25 year career at BP [1] and has put forward arguments that oil shortage is a myth [2]. I am adding The Economist to my list of untrustworthy new sources.

[1] http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2006/NewCEO.as...

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/oil-...

rudin··on Ask HN: Would a game to teach Bash & *nix be worth-while?
Loving the concept but maybe you should be charitable and make it free as it is really just a tutorial + triggers.
rudin··on Ask HN: Anyone read Tibetan Book of Living and Dying?
Just a warning who anybody thinks the book is ancient and "gutenbergable" (as the name kind of implies). Don't bother, it is only 10 years old.
rudin··on How to Reset Your Sleep Schedule, Seriously
Please, for the sake of non-Americans (non-Californians?) use the following regular expression on your titles.

s/", Seriously"//

rudin··on She tried 960 times
Yeah but it MUCH rarer that an integer can be written in consecutive powers of 2.
rudin··on Why Beautiful Women Marry Less Attractive Men
I would argue there is some selection bias going on here. If we assume that both sexes are trying to maximise their evolutionary fitness then a beautiful woman marrying a less attractive man would indicate there are other factors involved. Money is the most obvious, and despite anecdotes against it, money has shown to have a positive correlation with happiness.
rudin··on How grep got its name
I think everyone should spend an evening trying to write in ed. Knowing that most of unix was written in this simple editor shows the power of tight constraints in design decisions and the creativity that can come from them. It also makes the whole cascade of editors ed/vi/vim/... more understandable.
rudin··on My next step: Mathematics and functional programming?
I'm finishing up a mathematics degree so I'll tackle question A from my perspective.

If you know how to program a CS degree can be very tedious. This is mainly why I made the switch to mathematics. On the other side mathematics will teach you many things that are fairly archaic as the discipline has not really caught up with the advances in computing over the last few decades.

Both are good for what you want. If I could do it again though I would select a few CS courses (fp etc), some mathematics (graph theory, algebra, cryptography), and actually major in a liberal arts area like linguistics.

rudin··on Patent Troll: Bloomberg calls it what it is
How does the world tolerate these kind of people? This kind of stuff makes me boil over in anger.
rudin··on Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers
Following the general rule in economics that special interest groups are more powerful than the masses in passing legislation I think any regulation would make this worse i.e. "enforced real-id online to make us safer".
rudin··on Avoid hemorrhoids: Improve Hacking and Health by Moving Your Chair
I like this idea but couldn't implement it due to problems with my heart. I think the old company of diet + exercise + not being grossly overweight should never be overlooked. Also I find frequent walks (on the pretense of getting coffee) can be very beneficial.
rudin··on Zenoss: We Can Ditch Nagios Now
My favourite of these tools in Centreon. It is an unholy mix of just about everything (nagios snmptraptranslator etc) and would be awesome if only a few more opensource developers would work on it.
rudin··on Google Buzz is brilliant, Facebook just lost half its value
I am trying to migrate from Facebook to Buzz. From the look of things it suits me better. I never enjoyed Facebook that much as it seems there is a race to get the most friends and I find all the photo sharing a little disturbing.
rudin··on Ask HN: Science vs Religion: how is it compatible?
Well I am going to separate religion into its main components and decide on each one.

The community aspect. Going to a church. Helping your local community etc. All this stuff is totally compatible with Science of course but it is another question if it could succeed without the other religious aspects.

Morality. Science, through Darwin's theories, does explain why we are moral but this is separate to teaching people how to be moral so this area is compatible as well.

Creation stories, miracles. Science destroys these. Philosophy is probably the wrong approach to deal with the question of existence, it will leads towards untestable hypotheses and so towards religion. Let Physics go at it for a few hundred more years.

rudin··on MIT PhD student uses MS Paint to showcase CV
A little on a tangent but I'd like to dispute the conception of MS Paint as something that can only create poor art. Take a look at the following: http://www.drububu.com/tutorial/mspaint.html
rudin··on Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps
Maybe there is another side to things. I know that creating a new programming language isn't the easiest way to earn money but if you are successful there are lots of interesting ways to make money. Even an open source language provides possibilities for books, conferences, advocate positions, merchandize etc.
rudin··on [dead]
To sum it up in one line:

This white-space lambda encapsulates batteries.

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