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strayer

24 karma · joined September 19, 2010

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strayer··on Ask HN: What data structure does our brain use?
The question is fundamentally flawed, in that "data structure" is a concept used by programmers to communicate with computers (or between programmers).

A comparable question would be wondering whether the computer you are using right now, at this point in time, is inside a for loop, or a while loop, or it's just using tail recursion.

Sure some cognitive scientist can make my point more explicit, sorry that all I can only offer is a counterexample.

strayer··on The Dangerous Mr. Khan
Agreed. Watching Carl Sagan´s Cosmos at age 9 was fascinating, even though a second viewing, years later, was much more informative.
strayer··on The Words "Facebook" And "Twitter" Are Banned From French Airwaves
A law could be the way to fix that if it concerns state-owned media, which in France (and Europe, in general) is mainstream.
strayer··on Russian who buried himself alive dies by mistake
That was somehow sorted out by the Mythbusters (Season 1, Episode 8). Or is news of Russians burying themselves a meta-urban myth?
strayer··on Hashify.me - store entire website content in the URL
Isn't it a "page" or "document", and not a "website"?
strayer··on The Economist magazine pension issue
The first paragraph describes a common structure of the articles in The Economist, which goes a long way towards explaining why it is so satisfying to read.
strayer··on Scientists Settle centuries-old debate on perception
The physorg article mixes up, at first, the nature/nurture question and the cross-modality of perception question (whether internal representations good for tactile perception are also good for visual perception). Those are very different fundamental questions.
strayer··on Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed
http://clipperz.com rocks in terms of usability, convenience, and a sense of security (which might be false: here is a call for criticism).

It is open source, portable (runs in Javascript), works on and offline and well designed. You can log in using a master passphrase, or a one-time password.

strayer··on Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed
> I don't like the idea of using a password manager, because it's difficult to move it across platforms

http://clipperz.com is a very portable password manager.

It works on your computer as well as online.

It relies on your browser being a "secure" Javascript interpreter. But then we do that every time we log into a web site.

strayer··on Justin.tv guys launching new mobile video app Socialcam
I think that it adds value to the conversation, because one of the reasons why the link is featured here is to discuss the branding.
strayer··on Justin.tv guys launching new mobile video app Socialcam
I read "social scam" in the HN entry. I only realised it was "social cam" when I actually clicked on the link (after I read a few of the top-ranked comments).
strayer··on Kahneman: Nothing is as important as you think, while you are thinking about it
Or use Readability http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
strayer··on We finally launched Zombal, your thoughts?
You could bootstrap Zombal as a "payment system" for scientific reviews.

Get in touch with the organisers of a national-level scientific conference. They could offer reviewers the option of getting Zombal credits for their (currently unpaid) work. Reviews are automatically meta-reviewed (by the acceptance), you could use that information.

If you do so, please make it fully automatic: conference review websites are already painful to use.

You could also use the information that the reviewers provide about themselves.

There you have lots of people who might be keen on getting some sort of recognition for their currently unpaid work.

strayer··on Ask HN: unix home in the cloud?
I am considering that, but shutting down during off hours so as not to run into a bill of >$200 a year (I'm not a new customer).

I am curious about people's experiences with using them for that purpose.

I found using EC2's non-micro instances somehow inconvenient because boot times seemed to be too long for casual use, plus I had to pay extra for a permanent IP. Maybe I'm too lazy, or perhaps the micro instances are more suitable for that purpose?

strayer··on Ask HN: unix home in the cloud?
Yes, something like the idea of a Virtual Private Server is what I was looking for, thanks.

I wonder what's people's experience for single-user, private daily use.

strayer··on U2's Natural Logarhythm: Exponential Decay in the Delay of The Edge's Guitar
Since e is a number, not a function (the function is exp = lambda x: e^x) then 1/e is not log but one divided by e.

I once was told that using, say, 1/cos for acos is specific to English-speaking countries. Does anyone know about that?

strayer··on Ask HN: Berlin - costs of living, python jobs?
For the Airbus style of jobs perhaps you should consider Hamburg (similar costs, much smaller) because there you could find... Airbus. Not so international atmosphere, though, although the harbour is major local industry.

An added bonus is the local beach over the Elba :-)

strayer··on The plight of the eclectic geek, or, where have all the dilettantes gone?
> I want dialogue! I want mutual reinforcement! I want to comment and be commented upon! I want community, in other words.

Long rant, but pleasant read.

This thought sprung up: On-demand reinforcement, the kind that one would get just by asking for it, makes us dumb, like kids lavished with "positive feedback". But, as a tool that helps us align our goals with our motivations, when nurtured in a community, could deal with the causes of procrastination.