drenei

dang/mods: The title here has a small typo: it misspells algorithm.

Bad for performance as primary keys.

But, still provide strong value as a unique identifier which is what makes them popular.

I’ve used integers as primary keys, with UUIDs as alternate keys for external-to-the-data-store queries.

If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend his book: https://bookshop.org/books/the-food-lab-better-home-cooking-...

It’s a pragmatic, and opinionated general purpose cookbook.

Do you have a quote for this? This is the first I’m hearing of it and a simple search online doesn’t pull anything up.

This. I used to be a strong proponent of owning music, until rd.io. I loved rd.io, and used it as a sandbox -- If I really enjoyed an album / song / artist, then I would get the files. But, after a few years with rd.io I started to get a bit more cavalier about ensuring that I had a copy of the music.

Fast-forward to the end of last year: rd.io shutdown. I've tried a few other services since, each with its own share of problems (I'm currently on Google Music). Now, anything I like, I download. With hard drive space, and backups, it seems significantly simpler to assume that any song can disappear tomorrow.*

* While a service disappearing is a relatively rare event, content churn has always made missing songs a somewhat frequent event. However, for me, rd.io's shutdown emphasized the general incompatibility between the expectations I have for music, (anything I have listened to in the past, I can listen to in the present) and the realities of what a subscription service can deliver. And so, previous annoyances turned into a line in the sand.

Not sure if you're on the OS X / iTunes ecosystem...

You can have a playlist that is made up of other playlists by creating a smart playlist and adding a rule that includes songs from source playlists of your choice. This will atomically include any changes you make to the source playlists.

I manage my music with genres — and to a large part, stay away from smart playlists — however they can be a powerful feature.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

There is something verifying and controlling what the watchers do (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellige...). The problem is, that system hasn't been effective at stopping the abuses some of us would like stopped.

I hear it differently: Focus on mastering the material, not on a grade you want to get.

As you said, with mastery the rest should follow. Though, in my experience, testing itself needs to be mastered. For some of us that comes quite naturally, but for others it takes a bit of time.

Edit: Sorry, I didn't see aestra's comment before I posted.

Kahneman and his research is fascinating. Vanity Fair had an short article that serves as a goodish introduction to him that is worth a quick read. (http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/michael-l...)

You can see a prototype parachute in action in a test the company filmed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHPedpE70Es.

+1 for cargo cults: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult. Its a great idea to keep in mind for a creator/designer/programmer. People/users/everyone all too often intuit through imitation.

I haven't tried Crate. I use Cloudapp. I prefer the idea of an app that sits on my menubar — for myself. But for a 1 time solution for someone else, Crate seems like a better solution. It also offers more storage and less limits for a free account.

A year ago while still in a closed beta, Google Voice had 1.4 million users, with 570,000 using the service 7 days a week.#1

Skype added 39 million users in Q4 2009, to come to a total of 560 million accounts.#2

Its still early for facetime, but I wouldn't discount Apple, especially with over 120 million iOS devices sold.#3

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#1 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/business-week-14-million-googl...

#2 http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/skype-q4-2009-number

#3 http://mashable.com/2010/09/01/apple-ios-downloads-stat/

"The results surprised me. Apparently the optimal number of digits to include is 1, and the more digits you have the more likely it is to be registered. In fact, it appears that someone has registered every dot-com combination of 4 digits."

It shouldn't be completely surprising. The more characters (c) than digits (d) in a name, the more options available. 3c1d has more options (26x26x26x10=175760) than 4d (10x10x10x10=10000).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial

EDIT: And also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability_theory

You gloss over the treatment of patients at the "mental institutions". It was truly horrendous and deinstitutionalization arose out of that. I don't think anyone would argue that we've arrived at a solution.

Also, "the right" today is much changed from the 70s.

Oh privacy, I knew you well. Does anyone have insights into any specific methods [x+1] would use?

In the 2 minutes I've spent on there I've seen a number of artists I don't know (which could be unsigned garage bands) and number that I do including Of Montreal and Animal Collective — both well respected and successful groups. I'm not sure what quality control they have, but it doesn't seem like all they're looking for is unsigned groups.

One vertical to begin with isn't a bad strategy. I think the one they've chosen is a good vertical to start with — the genre has a strong online community looking for new things. If it works with indie music, Mixest can broaden out.

Of course this might not be what they're intending to do at all.

The actual NASA article is about a 'space weather-forecasting' conference as solar weather looks like its going to get increasingly active. It is much more informative than crunch gear's chicken little piece.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2010/04...

To figure this out all you have to do is follow the money. :) I love the last part of the story:

During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman.

“You need more training,” the general said.

First, India isn't mostly vegetarian (about a 1/3 of the population is vegetarian).

Second, India has had and continues to have horrible acts of violence committed against various social and religious segments of the population. See: Partition of India, Ayodhya, Caste System violence.

Third, I haven't seen any study, nor any evidence that suggests that violence is unique to non-vegetarians.

I see a simpler and arguably better search-find-consume cycle that includes more sources like the TV channels you subscribe to, PPV, etc.

I'm not sure if thats enough though. I guess that would depend on the price point + execution. Right now I already get what seems like the same results it promises — all of my video is sourced online and I just feed the video from my computer to my TV setup.

But I don't find cable valuable. Maybe this is more valuable for people who do?

Agreed. Best thing for me so far has been climbing. Its physical, social, is relatively cheap, involves problem solving and I have fun doing it — a great combination for me. Feeling myself grow with something that is so different from my work is also pretty awesome.

Me too. Any chance this would happen? Or are import/export laws too restrictive to make it feasible?

I really like the left side bar. I prefer it to the top bar when it comes to focusing my results - its closer and has more options. As for the design — it feels cleaner, but thats subjective.

> Most computer users just browse the net or read/write documents and spreadsheets.

Which is what the iPad was created to target.

> your free or shiny OS doesn't mean shit if I can't run my apps on it

The only application I know of where I prefer the Windows implementation to what is available for my Mac is Quickbooks. There might be other narrow verticals (CAD?) where you don't have best of breed software available for Apple's OS, but by and large in 2010 worrying about software availability for a Mac is a moot point.

The best process for me at the moment seems to be using 3 tools in the following way. The 3 tools are: Google Reader (through a mac app - Gruml), Instapaper (a bookmarking service thats great for text) and Diigo (a bookmarking service).

- I go through Google Reader once a day scanning for useful things. Anything that I can't go process in a few minutes or don't want to deal with immediately I save.

- Anything I come across during the day (from emails, friends, colleagues, etc) that I want to look at later also gets saved.

- I save things in two ways: articles/text to Instapaper, and everything else to a 'temporary' bookmark folder on my browser.

- When I have some time, 3 to 5 times a week, I'll read through the articles on Instapaper. I'll archive the articles after I read them on Instapaper, deleting any that weren't useful.

- 2 to 4 times a month I'll go through the 'temporary folder'. Deleting anything that isn't useful and and using diigo to archive everything that is.

- The key thing so far for me is to make sure I relentlessly remove anything that I am reasonably sure isn't useful especially from my RSS reader.

Its not as simple as I'd like it to be, mostly because I'm using two archiving services. I like instapaper's ability to easily convert articles into a readable format. At the same time for organizing and archiving everything else diigo works great.

I can't speak for where you are, but here in North America (well Canada & the USA) to go from [cell phone customized for service provider] to [cell phone customized for you with apps that you selected to use] was never a simple process - perhaps easier on a blackberry but not simple.

The device makers simply didn't have enough leverage to make the process simple.

The wired article goes into more detail and is also quite interesting. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/10/ff_demandmedia

Its unfortunate there wasn't a better solution for your colleague. The half hour ride in the morning isn't at a hard enough pace to make me a sweaty mess, though if it did, luckily, we have showers (along with a gym) at the office.