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analyticsjam

30 karma · joined August 29, 2014

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analyticsjam··on Show HN: Amazon Search on Steroids
Personally I like the interface and think dumbing it down would be a mistake. I would recommend adding a "minimum reviews" filter, as I sometimes sort by avg rating but get things with 2 or 3 reviews that are probably fake anyway.
analyticsjam··on The TV antenna is making a comeback
Silicondust is releasing their DVR in the next month or two. I'm in on the kickstarter but not at the level that is currently testing. There are also dedicated devices for people less tech savvy.

https://www.silicondust.com/products/hdhomerun/hd-homerun-dv...

analyticsjam··on The Simple Proof of the Tetris Lamp
I recently read a similar case in Simon Singh's book Fermat's Enigma http://www.amazon.com/reader/0385493622?_encoding=UTF8&query... about the 14-15 puzzle. It was similarly unsolvable and provable the same way.

Interestingly, his account is rather different than that on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_puzzle Singh claims that Sam Lloyd created the puzzle, secretly proved it was impossible, and offered rewards to anyone who could solve it.

analyticsjam··on Submarine Cable Map 2014
Yeah, the other funny thing is that there are only a few boats in the world that can repair breaks. So if there are too many outages, you just have to wait for them to finish and then sail across the world.
analyticsjam··on Submarine Cable Map 2014
I spent a few years supporting these from the financial end. Modern cables are built in a loop so that they automatically fail-over. For instance, most Trans-Atlantic cables have pops in New York, Florida, England, and mainland Europe. If there is a cut in one segment, traffic automatically switches to the other.

Most customers these days are also on products that mux across these cables. So, if your Trans-Atlantic cable has two simultaneous outages, your traffic would automatically route itself across the Pacific. Your latency would go up, but your service would continue.

When I was there, construction was beginning on SMW-4, which had the dubious honor of being the first billion dollar cable. They are typically incorporated via international treaties between states and companies that are roughly about 100 pages long. Each partner has to cover maintenance on the part between the main cable and their drop, while everyone chips in on the main part.

It really is fascinating; outages are typically caused by boat anchors close to shore or large earthquakes. Once a guy in Hawai'i cut the Southern Cross wire with a pair of clippers while doing yardwork.