Hacker News Reader

technoguyrobon Review our startup: FlowMingle - Online Dating for the Social Internet

I like "Start on Monday, Have a Date By Sunday" better. It sounds more pleasing to the tongue (since it rhymes). The phrase they use now is semantically nice, but not as stylistically pleasing.

technoguyrobon Peter Norvig's Election 2008 FAQ

In this instance, the author is irrelevant. This would have been more aptly titled "2008 Election FAQ (by Peter Norvig)".

technoguyrobon Google brought back oldest available index for their 10th birthday

Some other fun ones:

Your search - "sarah palin" - did not match any documents. Makes me anxious that she is a vice presidential contender.

Top result for "iraq war" is a historical note on the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

Top result for "myspace" is an online storage portal (a whopping free 50MB).

"LCD" refers to a webcomic, not an LCD display.

Top result for "china" is a web page whose title is "New Page 1".

And of course ycombinator is nowhere to be heard of. :)

technoguyrobon RescueTime (YC winter 08) raises $900k to expand

this could go on forever

technoguyrobon Hidden Features of JavaScript

I don't know why the second-top one has so many votes, it's completely wrong.

   var x = 1;
   var y = 3;
   var list = [0,1,2];
   x in list; //true
   y in list; //false
   1 in list; //true
   y in [3,4,5]; //true

That last expression is false. This is because the "in" operator does not check for values in the list; it checks for keys. Try this:

   javascript:alert(3 in [3,4,5])

The only things that will be true for "X in [3,4,5]" are 0, 1, and 2 for X (since these are the natural keys for the terms in the array). More specifically, "in" in general checks for members associated with objects (e.g., keys in an array, methods of a class, etc.):

   javascript:alert("The setFlag method " + ("setFlag" in {setFlag:function(){}} ? "exists" : "does not exist"))

EDIT: This makes the keyword considerably less useful (since indexOf doesn't work for the Array object in IE--although jQuery has a way around this), although it can be used to replace the less elegant

   if (typeof object.method == "undefined")

technoguyrobon Why Should You Use Plain Language?

Translation: "It's me."

technoguyrobon Frequently asked questions in Mathematics

Not what I was expecting. Here's some beautiful (and more technical) explanations about mathematical topics that consider the motivation behind them, and are thus very natural summaries:

http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/mathsindex.html

technoguyrobon Can a Human See a Single Photon?

The toad's brain controlled it's tongue at the threshold of being able to statistically distinguish signal from noise.

Aha! A new spam filter!

technoguyrobon Sims creator hopes to soar with Spore

Spore is out!?

Alright, see you guys in a week.

technoguyrobon The Singularity is Far

Not if you have silicon neurons that can process information a hundred times faster (since they use electromagnetic signals, not chemical agents, to pass information)! ;-)

But I beg the question...

EDIT: I sort of disagree with you. I'm in graduate school right now, and 90% of a modern mathematician's life is spent on keeping up with the progress of others, particularly in the last 50 years. That is true. However, over time, we also filter out the unimportant stuff. While automorphic forms may be an important field today so that we can bring in fresh minds to try to tackle the Langlands Program, once that is solved there won't be as much of an emphasis. I knew "more" calculus than Isaac Newton when I was 12 in the sense that I had learned things like Stoke's theorem that he had not even known about, but Newton's knowledge was much more of a mess, as well. The stuff you learn from textbooks is not how researchers originally discovered things. Think of the analogy of starting a fresh startup codebase that looks horrible, but becomes very polished and clean after several refactorings; it may take weeks to introduce a person to the former codebase, but for the latter it may only take a good one-hour tutorial.

technoguyrobon The Singularity is Far

So don't wait for the singularity - it's not coming. Work on upgrading humanity, not computers.

One of Kurzweil's really strong points was to treat "AI" as a very loose term. That is, it could for example mean replacing every human neuron with a manmade (e.g., silicon) counterpart. This has already been done on a small scale in rats (I can't find the reference, but it's in his book).

"Upgrading humanity" IS artificial intelligence if you take artificial to be functionally equivalent to manmade: man has "upgraded" himself, and hence created something artificially intelligent.

technoguyrobon The Singularity is Far

If the singularity mind was bigger than us, but of the same nature, we would be able to compute it with pencil and paper, or in a computer, and to analyze it to see how it works (very slowly, as a Turing machine).

My impression is that we couldn't, just like we couldn't decode an audio file that stream forever without real-time decoding. Once we "compute it" "very slowly," the AI will already have improved twice, tenfold, a thousandfold. It will be fruitless.

Not to mention, even if the AI is simply a Von Neumann machine with really impressive specs, what makes you think we'd be able to decode it? If you gave me a RAM chip, I wouldn't know what to do with it without an EE book. Now imagine a technology a thousand times more advanced.

technoguyrobon USC makes a robot that manufactures housing from a CAD file

We see inventions like this every few weeks that have the potential to "completely revolutionize" a field (e.g., long-life batteries, 3D printers, etc.). The notable examples of ones that have come into fruition that I can think of are drinking straws (filtering on-the-spot) and the OLPC project.

It always frustrates me to see things like this so undervalued. To me, it seems something like this could have a societal impact on the same order-of-magnitude as the internet, yet the story only has 16 upvotes, and it will probably take over two decades, if not longer, for this manufacturing system to materialize in, for example, my neighborhood. Why is that? I realize there are certain costs to introducing it and it does have its risk (and some problems, as gibsonf1 mentioned), but wouldn't this be a marvelous investment not just financially, but in general for humankind? I suppose the point of my ramble is to raise the question: why is viral marketing so hard to perform in "real life"?

technoguyrobon Inside Chrome: The Secret Project to Crush IE and Remake the Web

Woah! I had no idea about the "application" feature of Chrome! That is so simple, yet so ingenious!

Try this:

Go to Gmail, then when it's loaded, in the top right in Chrome go to Page -> Create App Shortcut and choose a location (say the Desktop). Then go to the location, and "open" the application. It's like an actual Windows app!

technoguyrobon The Google Chrome download link is live.

Notice Chrome is slower in the first test because of the AJAX declarations. But honestly, who is going to be worried about the speed of AJAX declarations? Look at this comparison:

Chrome: Array object 131 Date object 30 Error handling 7 Math object 13 RegEx object 52 String object 41 DOM 51 Ajax declarations 295 Total Duration 620

Opera: Array object 172 Date object 47 Error handling 31 Math object 47 RegEx object 109 String object 63 DOM 31 Ajax declarations 62 Total Duration 562

If we assume Google can get AJAX declaration down to 62ms just like Opera (which seems perfectly reasonable, I don't imagine they had those in mind when considering speed), ten that would bring Chrome's execution time down to:

387ms!!

Assuming it can get a few more milliseconds down (it is after all only in beta stage, now that it's been open-sourced I can imagine a good couple of improvements will stream in), that means it's 1.5x faster than Opera! (which is hailed as the absolute king of Javascript execution)

Also, Opera does some kind of caching thing I think. On some of the tests (like Array and DOM), Opera consistently scored eiter X or 2X (e.g., 90, or 180). There is no way there could be a 2x speed difference just out of thin air like that, so I imagine it's some trick that notices when it can be sped up. If Chrome did that it could have the speed gain as well.

technoguyrobon Fetishes

But that's perfectly valid. We have just considered that set, so obviously it's not an element of itself. I think maybe what you meant to say is after that: "Now consider an arbitrary element in this set." That would present a problem. Of course so would showing it's non-empty, but I think there could be a way around that.

technoguyrobon What it's like to work at Radar

I wonder if someone from a society where brick and wood is the "dull" office norm (it looks like it certainly could be) would welcome "cloth-covered cube walls" as refreshing.

technoguyrobon Fetishes

I dare say very few of the Digg population would understand this joke.

Personally, I haven't laughed at an XKCD this much in a while.

technoguyrobon Indie game designer spent three years and $180,000 making a masterpiece

This sounds eerily similar to Chronotron:

http://scarybuggames.com/2008/05/chronotron/

technoguyrobon How to Jumpstart the Economy - Tax Free Small Businesses

Thanks, Dr. Paul.

No, but really, I agree with you. However, this might still be a step in that direction, as less tax money for the government to spend means less spending.

technoguyrobon How your behaviour can change your children’s DNA

Why?

technoguyrobon Ask HN: how do i move 5 GB of photos?

http://streamfile.com lets you "stream" a file like a movie, so you don't have to wait for an upload to finish. Just zip up the 5GB into 3 packs (browsers won't let you upload more than 2GB), and stream it. Then let it stream until the other party receives it.

P.S. Streamfile is written in Erlang, which is kind of cool.

technoguyrobon Three vulnerabilities every web application developer should know about

If you want to get more hands-on familiar with these, I used to be an administrator at hackthissite.org. It's a site that has hacking "missions" which let you try to get in the shoes of the cracker. It was very helpful for me in learning about things like SQL injections and XSS.

http://hackthissite.org

technoguyrobon [dead]

I'm going to try to grab some porn-related domains (I don't think I have to give examples), sell them to pornographers, and donate whatever I get to charity (except the $40 investment).

technoguyrobon jQuery plugin for generating sparklines

I have not dug into the code, but how does this work for IE? Firebug tells me it uses the canvas tag which makes sense, but in IE6 that tag is not supported but the code still works. Is it inline images of the form

   <img>[Bitmap data]</img>

or what?

EDIT: Clever, looks like it uses the IE-supported XML shapes (this is how Frontpage exports simple shape graphics). The javascript line

javascript:prompt('',$($('.line')[0]).html())

produced

   <SPAN style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; DISPLAY: inline-block; PADDING-LEFT: 0px;
   PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; OVERFLOW: hidden; WIDTH: 21px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; HEIGHT: 16px" width="21" height="16">
   <?xml:namespace prefix = v /><v:group style="LEFT: 0px; WIDTH: 21px; POSITION: relative; TOP: 0px;
   HEIGHT: 16px" jQuery1216275956207="2" coordsize = "21,16">
   <v:shape style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px; WIDTH: 21px; PADDING-TOP: 0px;
   POSITION: relative; TOP: 0px; HEIGHT: 16px" coordsize = "21,16" filled = "t" fillcolor = "#cdf"
   stroked = "f" path = " m0,15 l0,1,3,5,6,3,10,15,13,11,16,5,19,11,19,15 e"> </v:shape>
   <v:shape style="PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 0px; LEFT: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; MARGIN: 0px;
   WIDTH: 21px; PADDING-TOP: 0px; POSITION: relative; TOP: 0px; HEIGHT: 16px" coordsize = "21,16"
   filled = "f" strokecolor = "blue" strokeweight = "1pt" path = " m0,1 l0,1,3,5,6,3,10,15,13,11,16,5,19,11 e"> </v:shape>
   <v:oval style="LEFT: 16px; WIDTH: 4px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 9px; HEIGHT: 4px" coordsize = "21600,21600"
   filled = "t" fillcolor = "#f80" stroked = "f"></v:oval></v:group></SPAN>

technoguyrobon Word cloud of Paul Graham's essays (applet, see comment for png)

They are really nice colors, though. Wow. The whole thing is. This is the kind of stuff I'd expect to see on a carefully crafted magazine cover, not generated on-the-fly with a script.

technoguyrobon The Fight to End Aging Gains Legitimacy & Funding

Is there anyone who reads this that has a valid argument in dissent of gerontology? I'm curious, as I know several people (all religious) who take offense at things like this because it's "unnatural." I haven't heard any solid argument, yet, though.

EDIT: Also, I think it is unfair to label people like de Grey or Kurzweil as simply "afraid to die." They just see it as a necessity for reaching the boundaries of human exploratory possibilities. Although it is true that new minds produce new insights, it is undoubtedly also true that if a single person could live for two centuries instead of one in a healthy state of mind, he could probably do more research in his field than two separate people in those centuries, since he would have both the advantage of more overall knowledge and passing on that greater collective to his colleagues and students (who in turn will likely benefit more than from a 50-year-old professor that has had less experience in the field).

technoguyrobon Ask HN : How do I delete my account? Is HN evil?

The author's name is pretty inconspicuous (randomhack), but if it was like mine, it would be tied to a bunch of other online websites with the same name/identity. Maybe he doesn't want that to be indexed on Google. There could be a variety of reasons. Anyways, IMHO deletion of one's account should be possible for every service for any reason.

technoguyrobon HN: New flag feature

Can you add an option for disabling flagging? I probably won't use the option that often (maybe once every few days if not more), so I'd like to hide it until I need it. Too much clutter.

technoguyrobon What’s Obscene? Google Could Have an Answer

"Obscenity" in general is such a silly concept. Why should anyone control the morality of viewing certain things? Is anyone here familiar with law that could explain the doubtless inanity behind "obscenity"?

Honestly, what do the "community's values" matter at all? That's like arguing a religion with only ten constituents in a given town can't have any evangelism because most people think it's nutty. It seems like violating free speech, to me.

EDIT: I have to admit, however, this line was gold: “people are at least as interested in group sex and orgies as they are in apple pie.”