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tdmackeyon Unanswerable multiple choice question

So be it, but it doesn't imply that Godel's incompleteness theorem applies.

Metaphorically they may somehow be similar given someone's viewpoint, but it doesn't make it so.

tdmackeyon The Internet interface is dying.

"What's the advantage of "installing" an app from Chrome Web Store? When Google Chrome users "install" a web application from the store, a convenient shortcut is added for quickly accessing the app."

When I read that I say to myself, "wait, you mean a bookmark?"

tdmackeyon Unanswerable multiple choice question

No. Godel's incompleteness theorems say nothing about non-arithmetical or non-mathematical statements nor do they apply in contexts where no formal system exists. Some sort of paradox, sure, but Godel doesn't apply.

Truth is not a mathematical concept, and determining the "truth" or "falsehood" of a sentence has nothing to do with Godel's incompleteness theorems.

tdmackeyon Unanswerable multiple choice question

Gödel's first incompleteness theorem states that any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory (Kleene 1967, p. 250) per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödels_incompleteness_theorems

Just because you title something an "Unanswerable question" doesn't mean it actually is, and certainly doesn't mean the first incompleteness theorem is relevant.

tdmackeyon Ask HN: How can a brilliant hacker make the greatest impact on the world?

By doing what he does best, hacking on what he loves. The rest will fall into place.

tdmackeyon Tradebot had zero trade-lose days in last 4 years

You'd be pushing it to make any reasonable gains with a volatile trading strategy via interactive brokers. They target more run of the mill day trading strategies that your average at-home trader would employ.

tdmackeyon HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war

To speculate that they would be interested just because you don't like their OS and think their development team is too slow is also incorrect.

I will agree that their OS is lacking in many areas compared to many of the newcomers in this space, but that doesn't mean they run out and buy another failed phone OS for a whole lot of money in exchange a few features their rapidly growing team could implement or a smaller acquisition like their purchase of Torch Mobile could deliver. RIM's main focus is also more enterprise customers than consumer and the feature set demands of their customers are a little different.

tdmackeyon HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war

HTC, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Huawei although Huawei talks stalled early on so they may not be considered.

tdmackeyon Python multiprocessing is different under Linux and Windows

Writing a patch for this is an incredible undertaking, writing a blog to draw attention to the issue is not. The author is a user of python that is aware of the issue, but is not one who has contributed to the language. This is probably well outside of his expertise as the task is systems programming in C and he is a python web developer.

tdmackeyon Work at a Startup

From underneath the big bold "Work at a Startup" text: June 17 2010, 6:00-7:30 pm | Y Combinator, 320 Pioneer Way, Mountain View

tdmackeyon My MacBook Pro runs JavaScript 26.7x as fast as my iPad

It's a very common process to reduce heat and power consumption. For instance all the previous iphone and ipod touch underclocked their processor and the new HTC incredible underclocks. Just about every embedded device underclocks as a higher speed processor often runs more efficiently at a lower speed than a processor designed to run at that speed.

tdmackeyon Ask HN: How did you learn about search engines/text processing ?

Introduction to Information Retrieval by Manning et al is a great text on the subject: http://nlp.stanford.edu/IR-book/information-retrieval-book.h...

tdmackeyon Choosing names for your computers

I use names of Star Wars planets and my wireless ssid is The Outer Rim

tdmackeyon Ask HN: Who is already sick of all of these "Like" buttons plastered everywhere?

Can't say I've noticed one yet. :(

tdmackeyon Blippy Publishes User Credit Card Numbers

Out of proportion? Sure at least in the US you are protected from credit card fraud assuming you take the appropriate actions.However, such a problem on their end shows a lack of attention to security and while this may be an isolated incident it reveals a lot about how the company acts and prioritizes their responsibilities to their users. People like to repeat their mistakes, especially when they don't have the necessary resources, whether it be time, man power, money or something else, to correct them therefore I doubt this is the last serious blunder they will make and that is reason enough for me to avoid them.

tdmackeyon C language inventor spurns Google's language exam

It's not really a language exam like a certification or anything but merely a style compliance review. Also, such a compliance review doesn't exist for C, but rather C++, and all of Thompson's work is on Golang which run a little differently than and separately from the centralized google codebase where this little bit flag matters therefore he doesn't need to worry about it since he doesn't really commit to the core. Besides, if someone else who has "passed" reviews his code, which just about every reviewer has, he can commit anyway.

tdmackeyon Apple to acquire ARM?

Don't really know what apple is up to, but watch the 4 hours on the London Stock Exchange before NASDAQ early hours opens and if it's happy buy a lot of ARMH.

tdmackeyon Are you one of the 10% of programmers who can write a binary search?

If you read Bentley's original work that the article is based on then the point is exactly that even the most seemingly simple tasks like implementing a binary search are incredibly difficult if not near impossible to get "right."

tdmackeyon Twitter Confirms It Will Launch Its Own Link Shortener

Thought it was just kind of well known. The first of many sources: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-and-twitter-wanted-to-...

tdmackeyon Twitter Confirms It Will Launch Its Own Link Shortener

Twitter already tried to acquire them and they declined the offer.

tdmackeyon New Core i5/i7 MacBook Pros released

It's a hardware thing, so no. Surprisingly though it isn't Nvidia's Optimus switching stuff but rather some proprietary apple concoction.

tdmackeyon Adobe makes CS5 preorder form Flash only. Alt title: Worst use of Flash ever.

Flash CS5 allows you to export your flash to html5 canvas so in the not to distant future it will be a reality.

tdmackeyon Jobs forgot about developer adoption in iAds calculation

Someone missed the point of the statistic. Jobs was merely saying there is a potential to make money via ad sales and we as Apple want a slice of the pie it not, "hey look we are going to be serving a billion ads a day via iAds alone the day we launch."

tdmackeyon Steve Jobs Says, "Fuck You Ruby Fanbois"

"... gotta embrace the curly-brackets, and they can't call them fucking stache or mustache characters. They're called fucking curly-brackets, and if you can't call them that then me and my damn C friends are gonna laugh at you every day you come to work."

Oh noes! I'm a full-time C programmer doing linux-based networking OS stuff and I call them staches! I am probably going to get beat up at work now. Than being said, I don't think I really ever use "stache" or "curly-brace" in actual conversation, its just sort of implied when necessary.

tdmackeyon [dead]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ass%20clown

Given the urban dictionary definitions, your "lifestyle" usage is far less common and probably not the intended meaning of the phrase in this article.

tdmackeyon Emiller's Balls-Out Guide to Nginx Module Development

google.com

http://nginx.org/en/download.html

tdmackeyon Internet Explorer 9: Platform Preview

hmm, in viewing HN from the IE9 platform preview it centers all the text which is promising ;)

tdmackeyon IE9 to support SVG and some CSS3

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work.html

As you can see CSS3 is very far from being "finalized" so any implementation that mozilla or webkit or someone does is just their best guess at what the final standard will be or experiments to provide recommendation. They leave the prefix free version for when they actually know what it is they are implementing to cause less pain in the long term allowing developers to know full well that what they are using is far from finished.

tdmackeyon And BitTorrent’s Oscar Goes To... District 9

and did not consider distribution time at all which makes the results largely meaningless.

tdmackeyon Ask HN: Still using thesixtyone?

I too fall into this group. The redesign is very interesting and the javascript work is amazing.