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thornkin

25 karma · joined October 28, 2009

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thornkin··on Ask HN: I learned useless skill of prompt engineering, how relevant will it be?
How would an LLM do prompt engineering for you? At some level, as others have stated, prompt engineering is about specifying the important details so the LLM can do the job. If you don't specify those details, how would the LLM know them? Some may be arbitrary and so whatever the LLM makes up might be good enough, but at the end of the day, you have to specify the important details.
thornkin··on Pharo 5.0 Released
Self was definitely an influence. It's where the prototype inheritance came from. Not sure that's a good thing. Smalltalk was more traditional in its inheritance model even if it was all duck typing.
thornkin··on Pharo 5.0 Released
That was my frustration. I made a game in SmallTalk at one point but there was no way to distribute it to people without giving them my whole image. I just wanted a simple .exe to hand out.
thornkin··on What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
Boyd's ideas are laid out really well by his acolyte Chet Richards in his book Certain to Win which applies the military theories to business. If interested at all in this space, check it out.
thornkin··on Computer Chronicles: a complete archive
As a teenager in the early 90s, this show was gold. Before the internet, getting information like this was hard and the show did a good job keeping things interesting.
thornkin··on TypeScript: New Compiler and Moving to GitHub
That doesn't help if (as stated above) there are a lot of duplicate issues. You still have to figure out which test case applies to each report.
thornkin··on Ask HN: What are some high-impact books on leadership you've read?
Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan.
thornkin··on Snap Out of It: Kids Aren't Reliable Tech Predictors
What this means is that kids' tastes change and as they grow up, so will their tastes. Being popular with kids does not the next Facebook make. Instead, you are more likely to be ChatRoulette, MySpace, LiveJournal, etc.
thornkin··on BlackBerry to cut 4,500 jobs, predicts 2nd quarter loss of $950M
They had two CEOs. Let each take one platform.
thornkin··on Microsoft almost bought Nokia
Blackberry went with the "future OS" and now has cratering market share (under 3%). HTC went with Android, and had a head start over Nokia, and it too has less than 3% market share. Motorola is owned by Google and has virtually no market share.

Everyone seems to assume that Nokia would do well if only it had used another platform. Why? Most of it's competitors haven't.

thornkin··on The Internet Just Made Microsoft Kill a Car for a Faster Horse
What's the old saying? You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time?
thornkin··on In 8 months at Microsoft, I learned these things
How, after 2 summers as an intern, do you know how many times people were promoted? Microsoft doesn't let people sit around for 12-18 years.
thornkin··on The declining value of the MS in Computer Science
This is what I did. I have a BS in Politics and a MS in CS. Before taking the MS degree, I read a lot of the books one would read for a BS in CS and did a lot of programming. This prepared me well. I met others in the program who didn't and it showed. Taking Masters level courses without background will get you lost really fast.
thornkin··on The rise and fall of AMD: How an underdog stuck it to Intel
What do you think is the moat that will keep Intel from doing to Arm what they did to the RISC chips? Intel has better process and very capable designers. They are quickly moving down-market. Why assume that Arm moves into Intel's territory before Intel moves into Arm's?
thornkin··on Bitcoin Is Fundamentally Flawed
Why couldn't loans be made which devalue at a rate pegged to a basket of goods? We track the rate of inflation today, we could just as easily track deflation and loans could be pegged to that. Doesn't that solve the loan problem?
thornkin··on Bitcoin Is Fundamentally Flawed
That is only true if the loss is actually permanent. If the system comes to assume that there are only 10,000,000 coins in circulation, what happens if a substantial portion of the "lost" 11,000,000 shows back up? Now you just had a 50% inflation overnight...

Of course, the chance that huge amounts are lost together is quite low.

thornkin··on Bitcoin Is Fundamentally Flawed
The analogy to gold isn't gold that was once possessed that has been lost, it is gold that is newly discovered. A new find of a big gold vein, gold on an asteroid, etc. would be a similar shock to the system.
thornkin··on Adobe Creative suite CS2 (including photoshop $ illustrator) is free now
Site seems down now.
thornkin··on Surface Pricing Announced - $499 USD
That's the 16 GB model. The surface has 32 GB. The version of the iPad with 32GB and 3G is $729.
thornkin··on Surface Pricing Announced - $499 USD
The Office apps that come with the Surface are the real deal. It's the Home and Student version according to the web site.
thornkin··on Goodbye cheap Windows 8 tablets: Windows RT costs OEMs $85 a pop
You actually do have a choice. If you buy an OEM copy from, say, Newegg, there is no support included. That's part of the reason it is so much cheaper than the retail version.
thornkin··on How do I get started with Node.js
This question demonstrates what I think has gone wrong with StackOverflow. They have such a narrow view of what constitutes their code mission that they are killing off useful posts like this one.
thornkin··on A "real" user proves Windows 8 fails on the desktop
They were replacing things like Symbian, Palm, and Windows Mobile. They required a very different way of thinking than the previous generation of Phone OS's.
thornkin··on Are Apple 'stealing' Open Street Map data?
A company like Apple does not start using a large set of data without management and legal asking where it came from. It may be that no one completed the circle and added the attribute they were told to by legal or that legal somehow thought attribution was unnecessary, but legal was consulted. That much is almost certain.
thornkin··on I Hate My Smartphone
Sounds like what he really wants is Windows 8.
thornkin··on Chrome to take No. 2 browser spot from Firefox
That is only true if web authors use that feature. If they do not, there is no penalty for failing to support it.
thornkin··on Why Google and Android Must Deal with the Mobile Protection Racket
All the time: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=google+one+trick+pony
thornkin··on Ask HN: Can someone please recommend interesting startup/tech documentaries?
Project Aardvark: http://www.projectaardvark.com/
thornkin··on Ask HN: Can someone please recommend interesting startup/tech documentaries?
Pirates of Silicon Valley is a great movie. Noah Wyle makes a great Steve Jobs.
thornkin··on 20 minutes with my Chromebook
Except that it does. Try left clicking on the volume icon in the tray and changing the volume.
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