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schmidtc

77 karma · joined April 6, 2014

spatial analysis + scientific computing + web developer

http://geoscore.com

submissionscomments
schmidtc··on “Car Wash” test with 53 models
But, there is a clear incentive to answer the question incorrectly. The wrong answer is funny and will give the human some level of pleasure thinking about it. I would certainly reply with "walk" just for fun and apparently 28.5% of people agree with me.
schmidtc··on Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
Going back to your slippery slope argument, where does it end?

Is HN not a public forum as well? Are my constitutional rights being violated when a moderator deletes something a post here on HN?

What about all those shadow banned users, are they entitled to their free speech on any website that allows comments?

schmidtc··on Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
It's always fascinating how quick people are to jump on the slippery slope bandwagon when it suits their ends.

Your suggestion that privately held malls are subject to free speech protections is misleading. See Lloyd Corp. v. Tanner. There are counter examples of course, be these apply only in niche situations.

Regardless, Facebook is not a public space. It's very much a private space. Suggesting that Facebook be treated as a public space is a pretty radical idea.

schmidtc··on Facebook Bans Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, InfoWars and Others
The actions are policed and no one here is suggesting thoughts be policed. These individuals are free to shout their ideas in the public square. Facebook is a corporation not a government agency and they have the right to control their own products. Facebook isn’t refusing people based a protected status. Should a baker be required to make a cake promoting a hateful cause?
schmidtc··on Mosh: An Interactive Remote Shell for Mobile Clients
This is old, but I just discovered it. Makes a slow ssh connection feel like a fast one.
schmidtc··on Why Is 'Affordable' Housing So Expensive to Build?
I was expecting this article to provide some insight in regards to the title. It does not. The article should be titled, “Here Are Some Examples of Expensive ‘Affordable’ Housing Projects”.
schmidtc··on Safari Technology Preview supports 100% of the ES2015/16/17 features
Hot keys for Bookmarks in Favorites Bars (Command+Option+N).
schmidtc··on Ask HN: Kubernetes vs. Nomad vs. Mesos vs ...
I run a small 4 node mesos cluster. So far it's been great, took a day or two to setup and has been running for about a year now with little to no maintenance. (I should probably update). I launch long running services through Marathon and crons with Chronos. I use haproxy for service discovery and load balancing. It's mostly used for data processing, but does serve data to a production web environment (~40k req / day).

The things I like the most about mesos is that it is light weight and removes a like of the friction in deploying new services. So I can test out a new idea without a big investment or f*ing around with the giant monolith. I found container based approaches too resource intensive for my budget.

schmidtc··on Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
> "it's only a `git grep` away"

Off topic, but how did I not know this was thing? You never know what you're gonna learn reading hn comments.

schmidtc··on [dead]
Thanks, never thought of that.
schmidtc··on Geoscore open sources mapping code
Creator of geoScore here. We're looking for contributors to help get this code out and help with documentation. I'll do my best to answer any questions. As far as the javascript client, it is almost ready to release, but I'll be a lot more motivated to put the hours in if there's interest.
schmidtc··on Counting Things in Python: A History
just for fun...

  import itertools
  colors = ["brown", "red", "green", "yellow", "yellow", "brown", "brown", "black"]
  dict([(color, len(list(grp))) for color, grp in itertools.groupby(sorted(colors))])
or

  dict([(color, len(filter(lambda c: c==color, colors))) for color in set(colors)])
...because sometimes job security is important too.
schmidtc··on Performance in Big Data Land: Every CPU cycle matters
Thank you
schmidtc··on Frequent Social Networking Associated with Poor Functioning Among Children [pdf]
Is frequent HN consumption associated with poor functioning among programmers?
schmidtc··on Why we travel
That's not entirely true. Travel can be done on the cheap, many people don't even explore their own city. People who don't travel find a million excuses, but it usually boils down to fear of the unknown.
schmidtc··on Apache Kafka, Samza, and the Unix Philosophy of Distributed Data
Can anyone provide a legitimate criticism of Kafka? "It sucks, doesn't use it" isn't very helpful or productive. The closest thing I can find is http://engineering.onlive.com/2013/12/12/didnt-use-kafka/ which is more critical of zookeeper then anything else.

I'm evaluating Kafka for a new project and it seems to be a perfect fit. I've contemplated building something from scratch in python, as my reliability and performance demands are pretty minimal. However, it seems that a lot of thought went into Kafka's design and it's feature set is perfect match for my problem. Specifically the unlimited buffering, log compaction and the ability to replay logs from arbitrary offsets.

If there are any viable alternatives to Kafka what are they? Bonus points if the JVM isn't involved.

schmidtc··on Optimize Python with closures
So the basic gist of this blog post was: Identify bottleneck, optimize bottleneck, throw out optimization because pypy.
schmidtc··on Before the Startup
The general idea of the essay is, i think, spot on. However, like you say it's a bit idealistic. In practice the mountain of student debt facing your average college grad changes the nature of the discussion.
schmidtc··on Ask HN: My company is participating in discriminatory pay practices
Looking the other way is exactly what perpetuates this kind of behavior. Everyone wants to assume there is something else going on when it comes to discrimination. If that's the case the people in charge should have no problem explaining why they are paying men more than women.
schmidtc··on Ask HN: What would you build if you would be a multi-billionare?
I would build a new city. Not some attempt at utopia, but a fresh start in a remote but desirable destination. The town would be seeded with a university and focused on outdoor recreation, startup (and self-employment) culture, and diversity. Basic employment would include the university, but also tourism and startup incubators. Non-basic would initially include something like a brew-pub and grocery store. Basic amenities would include subsidized internet, alternative energy grants, public transportation to outdoor recreation and nearest major airport. The planning of the city would be based on Traditional Neighborhood Design and include a large buffer zone to prevent sprawl.
schmidtc··on Ask HN: Where would you host a quickly bootstrapped site?
I 2nd DO. I haven't found anything else that beats the price. I'm moving all my stuff there from Amazon.

If you can swing a static+javascript. Hosting on github pages seems to be popular, or AWS S3+CDN.

schmidtc··on HN Hiring mapped
Someday I want to visit (0,0), lots of interesting things happen at the center of euclidean earth.
schmidtc··on Show HN: Bits – Your 3 times/week fantasies finally come true (video inside)
Looks pretty cool, iOS version coming anytime soon?
schmidtc··on Ask HN: Should I Open-Source my Startup?
I've been thinking about open sourcing my source code as well. I've been trying to monetize a new mapping technique and I think there just isn't demand for it. So now I'm leaning toward open sourcing the mapping tech and trying to build a business the uses the maps to solve part of a larger problem (like real estate search, or business relocation).

My biggest fear would be one of the big mapping companies picking it up and taking credit for it. Though I'm sure this is unfounded and even if it happens at least people get to use it.

schmidtc··on Ask HN: What are the major problems in drone technology?
Forgot to mention, price was another difficult problem. We were trying to build a low cost system for academic use. The single most expensive component was the flight computer, there were some low cost alternatives, but at the time they didn't perform we'll enough. Perhaps this has changed.
schmidtc··on Ask HN: What are the major problems in drone technology?
I started a UAV company several years ago. The biggest hurdle we faced was governed regulation. Not only was it nearly impossible to operate the things I the US, it was also exceedingly difficult to get an export license. I haven't been paying attention since I left the comply a few years ago, but it sounds like the regulations are getting better.

On the technical side we faced a few chanllanges. The first was reliability. Our planes were small <10 lbs, but would enevitly go down and be very difficult to recover. After the first couple crashes we designed a protective shell around the expensive bits. Causes of the crashes we always unique, from a loose connection, to interference.

The next biggest problem was battery life, ours was an electric system and getting more flight time in the tiny platform was difficult. This of course limited the range which limited it usefullness.

Otherwise, we solved the autonomy with off-the-shelve components (albeit military grade). Otherwise most other issues were resolved with software (flight planning, data recovery, etc).

Our application was aerial imaging, I imagine other applications would have another set of problems.

schmidtc··on Show HN: Free Database-Less Business Model Canvas Web App
excuse the newbie question, but what other "kind" of canvases are there? Or do you just mean print/web?
schmidtc··on Ask HN: Creating full websites using WebGL?
Support isn't great...

http://caniuse.com/webgl

schmidtc··on Ask HN: Do VCs make money if a company doesn't go public?
Checkout Venture Deals by B. Feld and J. Mendelson. It gives a great overview of how the VC world works and how VC's make their money.

VC's get paid through management fees. They get paid regardless of outcome, but their careers last longer if they are successful.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470929820/domofa-20

schmidtc··on The UN thinks we could hit peak births in 2014
yes, this is the demographic transition model...

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

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