HN user

pook

684 karma

I all too infrequently blog at http://zipwith.blogspot.com/

pookleblinky on FreeNode ( #[xmonad|lisp|zsh|emacs|conkeror|haskell|scheme|uzb|ruby|lojban|polyphasers])

I have Woz's complete inability to comprehend business, without his skill.

I am a man of little wealth, poor taste, and a huge .emacs. Furthermore, I am so depraved that I don't see anything wrong with this state of affairs.

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www1.idc.ac.il 13y ago

From NAND to Tetris

pook
1pts0
en.wikipedia.org 16y ago

False Vacuum

pook
1pts0
www.nootropics.com 16y ago

List of articles on nootropics

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2pts0
www.youtube.com 16y ago

Chimpanzee human-like behaviour montage

pook
1pts0
news.cnet.com 16y ago

Why digital license plates are a great idea

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2pts2
ieti.org 16y ago

Invitation to Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence

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1pts0
www.scribd.com 16y ago

Nikola Tesla's FBI file

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62pts11
www.abc.net.au 16y ago

Caffeine: an interview with Prof Jack James

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1pts0
www.3d7software.org 16y ago

The 12480 writing system: a binary syllabary

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5pts1
en.wikipedia.org 16y ago

Color Phi Phenomenon

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1pts0
plato.stanford.edu 16y ago

Dutch Book Arguments

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2pts0
en.wikipedia.org 16y ago

The Rosenhan Experiment

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2pts0
zshwiki.org 16y ago

Start[ZshWiki]

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2pts0
polyphasicsleep.info 16y ago

Polyphasic sleep wiki

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5pts0
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: Pomodoro Technique advice?

pook
2pts6
lwn.net 16y ago

How Google Uses Linux[2009]

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39pts4
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: Who Celebrated Quit Facebook Day?

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2pts1
lesswrong.com 16y ago

Measuring Optimization Power[2008]

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1pts0
www.ece.iastate.edu 16y ago

Haskell Quotes

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2pts0
www.modern-psychiatry.com 16y ago

Modafinil: Stimulant Drug in Sheep's Clothing

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1pts0
llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.com 16y ago

The longest single word .com domain name

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1pts0
rationalwiki.org 16y ago

Poe's Law

pook
56pts12
en.wikipedia.org 16y ago

The EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File

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1pts1
www.newyorker.com 16y ago

The Secret Life of Elevators[2008]

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2pts0
blog.wekeroad.com 16y ago

Do Androids Dream Of Modal :Sheep?

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2pts0
english.lem.pl 16y ago

Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad

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3pts0
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: Making saved stories public?

pook
3pts0
demos.thejit.org 16y ago

A linux module dependency visualizer

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18pts2
www.vimeo.com 16y ago

Eliezer Yudkowsky: Cognitive Biases and Giant Risks [video]

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7pts0
felidware.com 16y ago

The Bat Sex Story

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1pts0

Point #2 is the Little Coder's problem _Why spoke of: a beginning programmer is likely to be discouraged by the vast difference between the toy programs displayed in introductory books, and the real code that inspired them.

I think any purported attempt to teach programming which does not end with the student creating a non-trivial, cool app, is a shame. What went wrong between SICP and current (non-Hartl/Shaw) beginning texts?

Everyone has great advice.

I recommend learning a language or 5. Ocaml, Erlang, Lojban, Japanese, Quenya, etc. Use Mnemosyne and Smart.fm for quick, cumulative study sessions, translate webcomics and such, play golf with old programs in new and differently powerful languages.

Also, read more. You'd be amazed at how many great SF novels you can read in a year, or how quickly you can devour Misner's Gravitation at a few pages a day.

I think the overwhelming point of all this advice is to have fun. Do things that induce flow.

"I have no recourse because we split the venture 50/50 (no vesting). If I want to continue on the project without him, he can block it. I've tried buying him out and he insists he's committed and will not sell under any circumstance. My only recourse is to quit and block him from taking the idea and running with it. Neither of these are admirable outcomes and I'd rather run the business as far as it can go with a lazy co-founder than end it in such an ugly fashion."

I'm sure someone here would absolutely love to work with your "co-founder". Hell, they may even give him some common human dignity as well as an interesting project.

I'm reminded every time I hear about QM being "weird", of Eliezer Yudkowsky's Quantum Physics sequence.

"I am not going to tell you that quantum mechanics is weird, bizarre, confusing, or alien. QM is counterintuitive, but that is a problem with your intuitions, not a problem with quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics has been around for billions of years before the Sun coalesced from interstellar hydrogen. Quantum mechanics was here before you were, and if you have a problem with that, you are the one who needs to change. QM sure won't. There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/

This is a great idea!

It would be interesting to see this combined with a project management system. I imagine being able to snap your whiteboard, have the image cleaned, and placed right onto a project wiki, in one move (similar to Posterous, perhaps).

How long before someone hacks this to flip off the other drivers in style?

This is definitely one of the least thought out proposals I've heard in a while. At least when it gets completely subverted, it will only embarrass those responsible rather than introducing catastrophic data loss as with the proposed Internet Kill Switch.

[flick switch] "FUCK... YOU... FUCK... YOU"

The asymmetry in money spent and effect achieved between the two sides is staggering. Call it the # sign versus the $ sign. The flotilla organizers spent almost nothing and won the day; Israel spent huge amounts of money and ended up with egg on its face.

If you don't find this incredibly fascinating and inspiring, you're in the wrong business. Hell, the wrong world-line.

Cory Doctorow welcomes you to his capital-F Future.

More importantly but less vociferously, by Google switching to an open source OS, it means anyone, anywhere, can fix vulnerabilities. Not just Google.

Considering the difficulty of patching security holes in proprietary software versus patching holes in open software, Google indeed would hugely benefit by drastically reducing the difference between the cost of defense and the cost of cracking.

It's not so much levelling the playing field, as removing Harrison Bergeron's buckshot-filled equality harness.

This is a great idea.

It reminds me of daf yomi in studying talmud, "a page a day".

A page a day is barely a burden, yet in 3 years you can have thoroughly read Misner's Gravitation, Programming Erlang 3 times over, and any number of grad-level textbooks. In 1 year, you will have read a good-sized textbook at almost no perceptible time cost, and with very high comprehension.

If he can give this a 43things style UI with publicly stated goals, integrate it with book lists and codebase repos worked on, it could be amazing.

[dead] 16 years ago

" For me, it was more than just male bonding and mayonnaise in my sweltering hot basement. That was probably the best summer of their lives."

I don't know whether this is serious, trolling, or a damn good sense of humor.

We should make a Tiny Fork Day.

A day where X people fork, make at least one contribution, and request a pull.

Set up a cool site targetting people who are interested in coding, but haven't yet gotten the courage to contribute, and you could have something.

Pro tip: every single man who ever married the woman he loves, has no fucking idea how he managed to attract her. We're all completely baffled when a woman decides to spend her life with a yog-shothoth like us.

Take the bag, fall in love, and do something worth staying around for. Have children, invest in singularity-inducing tech, fight pirates on the open seas.

You'd be surprised how powerful the urge to live, despite daily I-can't-take-this-anymore frustrations, is when you've got a child's life to look forward to.