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katamole

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[dead] 17 years ago

When you have that many books it's a pain to find one if they aren't organised in some fashion.

To clarify, 'vacuous' was describing the way these people are portrayed, rather than how I think about them.

Additionally, there are so many similar replies, I can't be bothered replying to them all.

[from the comments]

whenever I tried to explain anything technical to her, her eyes would cross and the she’d get impatient, flustered, and frustrated.

I keep hearing this bullshit, both on HN and on other news sites. Do you really choose to spend your time such vacuous people? Or is it just that most explanations given are needlessly complex, so that programming and computers appear magical?

If you can't explain something properly, you probably don't fully understand it yourself.

But anyway, computers are hard. Let's go shopping!

Is Taleb a crank? 17 years ago

You can tell he's read Taleb's work with a chip on his shoulder (as many have).

Did it occur to you that Taleb's frequently inflammatory tone might have something to do with this?

Good ideas, it seems, need to be repeated.

Absolutely not. Ideas that are diffuse and unoriginal, on the other hand, are often repeated because they are uncompelling.

I've read The Black Swan, and although it was entertaining, I didn't feel like I learned anything of value.

[dead] 17 years ago

This is completely untrue and it's rather surprising that Wired perpetuates this nonsense (whether tongue in cheek or not).

Pure coincidence. I often look for definitions as a way of remembering certain keywords in text (sort of like taking mental notes).

The submission on reddit now has over 1200 upvotes which is crazy: it isn't that funny. Not to flog a dead horse, but the quality of that site really has gone down over the last two years or so.

I submitted this to reddit as opposed to HN thinking it was too low-brow / off-topic for here. I suppose I was wrong!

They are having lots of trouble selling ad space in various territories. Though I agree that the article should have mentioned it.

Sounds like if I were targeting your accounts specifically, I'd have a pretty easy time of it. As soon as I get hold of one or two of your passwords I can work out the algorithm and then start calculating your passwords myself.

While it might be a better approach than just using the same insecure password on every site, based on the attack suggested in this article, there isn't much benefit from your approach.