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grantismo

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Tactics are more essential for initial improvement than strategy for the simple reason that you cannot execute sound strategic plans if your execution contains tactical flaws.

chesstempo.com has the best library of free tactics puzzles IMO. They also support alternate puzzle modes like blitz (time to solve affects your rating) and mixed (some positions require finding the only defensive move which doesn't lose).

Cross Chess 8 years ago

Do you play a fair amount of chess? Your love of opening theory stands in contrast to the majority of chess players as far as I'm aware. Rich strategic themes emerge from complicated tactical positions. This is as true in variants like chess 960 as it is in standard chess.

It seems like the value of a human life should be greater (than solving male baldness) in financial terms in addition to humanist terms over the long time period. Wouldn't it make more sense for Gates to make a capitalist argument for why investing in malaria research should be more profitable than investing in male baldness?

Whether or not the government should pick winners and losers is separate and unrelated to the question of market efficiency. Why can't I simultaneously acknowledge that externalities produce less than efficient markets and that government subsidies produce deadweight loss?

Cheddar 14 years ago

How about this for motivation?

You assign a due date and a dollar amount punishment when you create a todo list or task. When you fail to complete your tasks on the due date, your account is charged the punishment amount.

"How do you verify that the task has been completed?" you might ask.

You don't. If users "cheat" then they're just losing out on the motivation service, otherwise you get the motivation required to do the task on time.

ReCaptchas are generated by failed attempts with OCR, which means the computer has no idea what the word actually is, and consequently can't know how it should be oriented. ReCaptachas are actually digitizing unknown text, so they serve a pretty meaningful purpose in contrast to competitors. http://www.google.com/recaptcha/learnmore

It seems like the journalist never realized that his personal situation doesn't apply to everyone. We could use the same anecdotes and say something far more meaningful, like "life is too short, do something you value."

A career isn't mutually exclusive with a life goal. For some, a career is a means to that goal, for others, it is the goal. To each his own.

I couldn't agree more. In my personal circle of friends (college kids), I know maybe 2 or 3 people who regularly use these applications. Geosocial information has immense potential, but I don't think the current generation of LSBN has found the right approach yet.

I completely agree. Let the market decide debates. Reduce the number of features you're immediately developing so you can launch and iterate faster. Get something out there pronto.

I'll be interested in seeing how turntable.fm evolves. I love the idea, but if I'm interested in background music, I find it can often be inconsistent. It'd be cool if more rooms had a single DJ, so at least you knew what to expect.

In today's domain ecosystem, you're not going to easily find a name which is easy to spell, pronounce, remember AND is free (or affordable) to acquire as a domain name. The vast majority of non-technical users are just going to google for your company, so your example seems a little contrived.

The first part of the conversation would go more like this:

Hey, what's your new site?

grinnit with two n's. So grinn dot it.

However, there is definitely a problem when a search for "grin it" on google doesn't find your site. Moreover when a search for "grin it photos" or "grinit photos" is also unsuccessful. That's definitely a problem. If the spelling of your website isn't immediately obvious (a la reddit), you just need to ensure that users can still find your site.

I don't think it's a horrible name. Seeing it in print makes it instantly memorable which is always helpful, they just needed some additional work on seo for the typos of their name. Calling it "piss poor marketing" is disingenuous and unnecessarily inflammatory.

Pi explained 15 years ago

>Pi is the wrong constant.

Seems a bit pedantic. The post was about illustrating pi after all. I do enjoy the argument for tau though.

Only if we operate under the assumption that lulzsec is a group of younger people and not older guy(s) also trying to sound 'hip.'