HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

artemisyna

357 karma · joined December 22, 2015

submissionscomments
artemisyna··on Ask HN: Can you work out how this is done? (repost)
If we know what k is, we've got an upper bound on the value of the roots. Since we can express p(k) as (k-x_1)(k-x_2)...(k-x_n) (with x_i as roots), we know that each (k-x_i) must be an integer factor of p(k).

Based on these facts, I'd probably just brute force it. Figure out the prime factorization of p(k), then figure out all of the ways to express the x_i.

Note that this does also prove that the algorithm will not uniquely define an expression for p(k). For example, if p(10) = 12, then (x-4)(x-8), (x-7)(x-6), among others, satisfy.

This is mildly interesting to think about as someone who never was a math major but maybe should have been. There are some interesting side bits (for example, disproving uniqueness) but it does feel like there are more "powerful" statements floating around this type of algebra.

artemisyna··on Ask HN: What were/are you doing at age 25? What would you change?
Even with all the negative articles about them on HN? ;)

On a more serious note, I don't have any opposition to the open office layout in themselves... But they do have a feeling of "cows in a cowpin" that rivals the fields of cubicles of old.

artemisyna··on Ask HN: What were/are you doing at age 25? What would you change?
To be honest, I've always been "good" at math (cue memories of learning how to cont to 100 as a 3 year old, being forced to memorize multiplication tables at age 6) so I never "got good".

That said, years of math competition did teach me how to study. You don't just go through problems blindly - you have to first diagnose what is at the cusp of your knowledge and then do those problems over and over again, reading the answers if need be until you understand that "class" of problems.

Sadly, the"over and over again" bit is the part that I seem to have issues with these days...

artemisyna··on Ask HN: What were/are you doing at age 25? What would you change?
Well, this falls nicely into the "bucket of common experiences lots of people can talk about". :P

Turning 25 in two-ish weeks. Currently just past my 3rd year at a FAANG after failing to figure out a "path more interesting than just a software job"* during college.

Life isn't rainbows and unicorns, but I'm building a nest egg while figuring-out-what-I-acutually-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up, learning, and playing with pixels (aka "doing AR stuff at work"). I've got a handful of (less close than I'd like to be) friends, my family is doing okay (even with a breast cancer-y mom; thank goodness that got caught early), and I'm managing to stay reasonably active. I'm probably going to break up with the person I'm seeing soon; the "breaking up" part probably won't be so fun, but least there will be some good memories.

The formerly straight-A student, state champ mathlete me sometimes wishes I could just be that good at things, that easily, again. But life is life, and I really don't want my existence to have peaked at high school. ;)

As for advice to 25-year-old me.. seeing as how I'm not there yet, I can't really say. I'm just hoping to glean some advice like the rest of us youngin's in this thread. :P

*18-year-old me knew she'd be good at CS, but wanted to avoid the cubicle life that both her parents had. Almost-25-year-old me... is fine for now, but there's something about fields of open-office desks that makes a person feel like a cog. Maybe I'll go to grad school or join in on a startup (assuming I can find/make one that I don't cynic-the-idea-to-death) in the next few years.

artemisyna··on Apple is rebuilding Maps from the ground up
This has to be part of Apple's AR play. I'm pretty amazed they didn't do this sooner, honestly.
artemisyna··on Ask HN: Your favorite syntactic sugar from any language?
Array slices make array/string-parsing coding interviews so much nicer. @.@
artemisyna··on Ask HN: Your favorite syntactic sugar from any language?
Haskell has way too much syntactic sugar some of the time, but I really appreciate its anonymous function syntax.

If I need a quick-and-dirty map over a list of something, a

  (\x -> x + 1) a
is much nicer than a

  std::for_each(a.start(), a.end(),
   [](float x) {  
            return x + 1;  
        } // end of lambda expression  
   )
or whatnot that I have to do in C++.
artemisyna··on The US military is funding an effort to catch deepfakes and other AI trickery
Alas - the 200 years or so by which humans had visual 'proof' that something did or did not happen is rapidly about to end. :)
artemisyna··on Facebook was Caught Secretly Deleting Mark Zuckerberg's Sent Messages
Repost. Also, more dead horse beating?
artemisyna··on A Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg About Data Privacy
The NYT's report update was becaese Alex Stamos tweeted pointing out how they were wrong.

https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/975926737111367680 https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/976175174314635264

You'd think the news sites would maybe be a little bit more transparent given all this fake news rabble, but they can't even bother to update with primary sources apparently...

artemisyna··on Facebook suspended the account of whistleblower who exposed Cambridge Analytica
Given how the guy took data then refused to cooperate when asked, I think his account being suspended makes sense...

https://www.facebook.com/boz/posts/10104702799873151

artemisyna··on The Truth Is Catching Up with Tesla
On one hand, missing stated production timelines is not great.

On the other hand, people ought to be used to Elon Time by now. That'd be a problem if the other car manufacturers were closer to catching up with Tesla, but it doesn't seem like that's the case.

artemisyna··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2017)
On one hand, that is a nice one-sentence line. On the other hand given how likely no one knows what the phrase "Identity Cloud" means here (networked service for identifying people? database service for storing information about users? aerial service that recognizes itself?) it may be worth describing things in a bit more detail. :)
artemisyna··on Facebook Scraps Plan for New Share Class
If I had to guess, Zuck is still planning on selling 99% of his shares over his lifetime. As part of that, he wants CZI to be funded for the next 20 years. The part of his shares over 50% (which by definition, is less than 99% of his wealth) can do that, so he is going to fund CZI from that in the immediate term.
artemisyna··on Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study
A less sensationalist report: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...

Link to original study: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara_Yankey/publicat...

artemisyna··on Marijuana use holds three-fold blood pressure death risk: study
1200 person study is a pretty big study. That said, the authors of the study themselves listed some pretty big caveats.

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2017/08/study_lin...

artemisyna··on Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud
If you don't mine me asking, are you actually a lawyer or are you just speculating?
artemisyna··on Voice Is the Next Big Platform, and Alexa Will Own It
I find the thesis of this article interesting especially in contrast to some of the criticism Zuckerburg brings up in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13212976

Even if Amazon continues to put its eggs in the voice-as-primary-interface bucket, it seems like it will be unlikely for Facebook to go that route.

artemisyna··on Ask HN: I'm depressed, what should I do?
// For me it was not about the money, but a show of how much a company appreciate me and how they think of me. //

Never think this. Never assume this.

Talking to a company about salary is a business transaction. It's a negotiation. Unless you're somehow at the type of unicorn where they're not only small, but already have a lot of $$ (basically nothing out there right now) there isn't going to be any amount of "oh yeah, we like you" that will significantly impact your compensation.

// However, all of the offer were with not-that-interesting tech stacks and really bad compensations. // How 'bad' is 'bad' here if you don't mind me asking? Also, mostly startups or what?

artemisyna··on Facebook blocks links to B.S. Detector, fake news warning plugin
I just saw a link to the site on my feed and it was working fine for me -- anyone else seeing it blocked?
artemisyna··on Snapchat Seeks to Raise as Much as $4B in IPO
And I bet we'll be seeing our first Spectacles-based-sex-tape scandal within a year, once someone figures out how to short-circuit the indicator light. ;)
artemisyna··on On the hunt for Facebook’s army of fake likes
I would think yes. If they didn't, why would an advertiser spend money with them, knowing full well that part of it was being thrown away on fakes?
artemisyna··on Mark Zuckerberg Gets to Control Facebook a While Longer
Under the previous stock arrangement, he wouldn't have been able to both donate his stock and keep control of the company.

I can see how the headline could be interpreted as Zuck being detrimental, but I don't think that was the intent.

artemisyna··on Mark Zuckerberg Gets to Control Facebook a While Longer
Zuck still is running the company. This change means that he can keep doing that while also donating 99% of his stock to charity.
artemisyna··on Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned about Management
I think that depends a lot on your perspective and background.

For example, consider someone who grew up 'macho'. By that, I mean an environment where not looking weak is more important than being efficient, the word of the boss is king, etc, etc. It's an archetype that definitely exists in the world -- if you start with someone from that perspective, a lot of the stuff in the article is definitely unintuitive.

(Not saying your perspective is invalid, of course. There are probably other archetypes that I could've picked to try to illustrate the same effect but hopefully 'macho' gets the idea across enough.)

artemisyna··on Beijing is banning all foreign media from publishing online in China
Bao zi = buns, like pork buns.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baozi

Basically, he's got a nickname that resembles "little piggy". (By intent, not literal translation.)

← PreviousPage 4 of 4