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xlnt

602 karma · joined March 21, 2008

Want to discuss something I said? email me:

curi@curi.us

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xlnt··on 6 Y Combinator Startups I Would Have Invested In Back Then
Maybe the system should actually check what's at each page.

And you should read more carefully. I did not suggest the thing you say is a bad idea.

xlnt··on 6 Y Combinator Startups I Would Have Invested In Back Then
The point is that we don't want duplicate content, even if it's at slightly different URLs.
xlnt··on How big an opportunity is the external memory?
First they'd need to have an idea of what intelligence is. At which point they could probably write a simple AI anyway.
xlnt··on Who are the candidates to be Apple's next leader?
me
xlnt··on The Trolls Among Us
I hope no one is shot.
xlnt··on KDE 4.1 delivers the next-gen desktop experience
Don't feed the trolls, especially not with long posts.
xlnt··on 10 Skills You Need to Succeed at almost Anything.
Lists are for authors who can't figure out what's important and emphasize it. It's just a long, monotone drawl that abdicates some thinking.
xlnt··on The Pirates Can't Be Stopped
dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=113050
xlnt··on The Myth of Moderate Exercise
So how do you move it down? Fast for a few days?
xlnt··on Ask HN: How do you keep motivated?
> Since when do people have a choice?

Free trade.

xlnt··on The Myth of Moderate Exercise
Just don't eat when not hungry.

Most people eat large quantities of food all at once. Stop half way and wait 20 minutes and you might not be hungry anymore. If you eat too quickly then you don't know at what point you'd eaten enough to satisfy your hunger.

xlnt··on Walt Mossberg (WSJ) loves Xobni
Why do you close outlook...?
xlnt··on Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008, biggest drop in 66 years
I'm going to have to blame the parents, then. They sent their children to schools that bad. :(
xlnt··on Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008, biggest drop in 66 years
I'm going to have to blame the schools, then. Anyone who bases their view of nuclear power on The Simpsons obviously needed a better education. ;p
xlnt··on Is Money Useless to Open Source Projects?
ok i agree
xlnt··on Is Money Useless to Open Source Projects?
How is it possible to "generalize" from one data point? The normal method of generalizing is finding a similarity shared across many data points, and proposing it applies more widely.

Perhaps one could generalize badly with 2 data points, but isn't it just impossible with 1, and therefore he must actually be doing something else?

xlnt··on Americans drove 9.6 billion fewer miles in May 2008, biggest drop in 66 years
Who's fault is it that we don't have more nuclear plants?
xlnt··on YC is a cult
The way he "compared" them was to say the list of criterion applies to both of them, and that it clearly shouldn't apply to the other things. What's wrong with that?
xlnt··on Spreeder.com | read 300 words/minute instantly
If it has certain merits, and certain demerits, then as long as you carefully select which things to read normally, and which to read with it, it will help you.

If you want to skim or go back, don't use it. But there are sometimes things you read where you don't need that.

xlnt··on Knol getting preferential placement in search results?
Guy is amazed you can get 28th on google in no time.

You can get first on Google for obscure terms just by commenting on YC. The site you are on matters, the issue is only whether knol gets special treatment or matters in the normal way.

xlnt··on Are You Popular?
I'm not. Should I /slit?
xlnt··on Home warriors
Not the same.

"Depending on the number of screens used, these high-definition video teleconferencing systems that deliver life-size images of the participants used to cost $500,000 or more per room."

Life-size video chat!

xlnt··on Why Won't Google Video Just Die?
so the limit doesn't apply to old accounts, even if they post stuff today. thanks. don't see why that'd be bubble bursting or anything. i wanted to know.
xlnt··on Why Won't Google Video Just Die?
The article says youtube vids are capped at 10min, but

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EsEYpJMYIIw

30min vid

xlnt··on Bug? Or can you downvote stories on Hacker News?
I think that was when I downvoted all the congratulations in your wedding thread. :)
xlnt··on Bug? Or can you downvote stories on Hacker News?
For a day or two my votes didn't count. Maybe they were on moderation when they submitted?
xlnt··on Coding Without Comments
I agree with you that !, &&, || aren't the best idea ever. I wonder if the reason behind them over words is so you don't have to put spaces around them. Omitting spaces seems to be popular with the infix crowd (e.g., they happily give up *,+,- from identifiers just to leave out some spaces).
xlnt··on Coding Without Comments
You said you use "unless" in English as if that proved it was good to use it in boolean logic too. It doesn't. For example, I am happy to use !, &&, and || in my code, even though they aren't English. The criterion for what makes good code is different than what is good English.

My point was that I think an explicit not is clearer than unless in cases sufficiently complex as to require stopping to think about it. If you're trying to keep track of multiple negations, then having one be in a different form than all the rest does not help. (And meanwhile, there is nothing wrong with a habit of always using if).

xlnt··on Coding Without Comments
I love ruby, and use ruby at my job. I just don't write unless. Certainly there is no cause for someone to say a statement is mistaken just because it used if+not. Nor to guess that someone won't like ruby just because he doesn't like unless.
xlnt··on Coding Without Comments
I don't parse/think-about boolean logic like English.
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