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buggy_code

284 karma · joined March 26, 2009

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buggy_code··on OTOY to render the games on cloud.
Short of them having some complete breakthrough of where the server can do some massive massive pre-computation to alleviate client side computations, I don't see this happening.

Between the computation / communication tradeoff, this would have to be a huge breakthrough for rendering.

buggy_code··on GitHub Firewall Install (your own github)
what's the best open source alternative to git hub? (no, I don't want to host my code on third party servers)

the best I've used so far is trac, but their git support were flaky when I last tested it (only ran well with svn at the time)

buggy_code··on Why Accountants are Dull and Guitarists are Glamorous
As a Chinese American guy with great grades, I believe your friend is full of BS (unless she's "Chinese" in that she actually lives in China). In HS / College, I've never seen good grades = popularity.
buggy_code··on Ask HN: What (do you think) Scribd / DocStoc uses to convert pdf/docs into swf?
edit: some variant of swftools ? others have more info?
buggy_code··on Ask HN: Who is your role model for startups besides Paul Graham?
Jim Clark. Read "The New New Thing"

BTW, the question implies PG is a role model for me. As awesome as he is, he's not.

buggy_code··on Verified Extortion
Why all the downvotes? (I don't mind downvoted, just curious about an explaination).
buggy_code··on Verified Extortion
Thanks for the tip.

I can't up vote you enough. Almost tempted to create new HN accounts just to up vote you.

buggy_code··on Verified Extortion
Are people still making money from facebook apps these days? I thought it was over a while back (and thus why the mass exodus to develop on the iPhone although apple's approval process sucks.)
buggy_code··on Amazon WS Crypto Sigs v2 Broken (Even Amazon Can't Get Crypto Right)
Crypto, in general, is really hard to get right.

With 'normal' code, if it's broken, something doesn't work, and you know to fix it. With crypto, if it's 'broken', all the valid requests still work, and you don't know that anything's wrong.

In fact, as far as I know, the only way to know if your crypto code is 'working', is to prove it ... in the form of, if you can somehow break my crypto, you will also be able to break problem X, where X is a problem the crypto community has generally accepted to be hard to solve.

buggy_code··on Ask HN: How to make smalltalk?
I am. Order not crossed up at all; this is just divide & conquer approach; figure out what end goal is, then divide it into smaller problems, and solve each of those. :-)
buggy_code··on Silicon Valley/Entrepreneur/Hacker Poker Night: Wed 5/19, 8:00, Mountain View
I didn't say the bots had to play well ... if at the end of every competition, everyone rises up to the level of the winner, then I think the bots would also improve drastically :-)
buggy_code··on Silicon Valley/Entrepreneur/Hacker Poker Night: Wed 5/19, 8:00, Mountain View
Can we have a poker bot competition? I'm not a great poker player myself (in fact, I don't really even know the rules) -- but I think it'd be another cool way to socialize; especially if people are required to release the source later, and we can all chat about what worked / didn't work, etc ...
buggy_code··on Larry Page on Real Time Google: We Have To Do It
Can you explain this more? Why would HN comments vanish? Doesn't google follow all links?
buggy_code··on Ask HN: Hacking Learning Chinese
first link was awesome
buggy_code··on IPhone App Developers Threaten To Sue Apple Over Late Payments
Can anyone on YC share personal stories? If you're afraid of being identified, maybe you can create an anonymous account.

I've been thinking of going into the iphone market myself, and more info will certainly help.

Thanks!

buggy_code··on A Sneak Preview of Wolfram Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine
I would argue that the hard problem is not "reasoning" (taking absolute truths and deriving other truths); but rather dealing with noise.

The former problem -- logic -- ended up giving us the AI winter, and it's the later (with machine learning) that is driving Google and modern robotics.

If this is just Mathematica + Prolog + A giant hand tuned database, I think it'll be a disappointment. (Look at the Cyc project -- led by a former Stanford professor, lots of funding, supposed to revolutionize human knowledge -- where is it now?)

buggy_code··on How To Live Forever
My favorite variant on this is:

every 20 years, have science advance enough to extend everyone's life by 30 years

(doesn't take care of things like getting hit by bus, but takes care of 'regular' life extension)

(iirc, there was some ted talk on this)

buggy_code··on IMVU’s CallStack API Now Open Source (super useful if you ship software on windows)
I don't get it.

Instead of "Let's get C++ easier to debug"

why not:

"Let's only write performance intense parts in C++", and have the rest in an interpreted scripting language, where things like this (and more) come much cheaper?

buggy_code··on The 48 Laws of Power
I found this book far more insightful than a bag of tricks.

Clearly, anyone who practices these rules religiously will end up living a very lonely, paranoid life.

However, as a nerd that doesn't understand social dynamics very well, I've found this book to be of immense defensive value -- I started seeing how people utilized these rules (either consciously or subconsciously) around me, and have been able to avoid being influenced / controlled by them.

buggy_code··on Ask HN: Have you created alternate accounts to post questionable responses?
Somewhat OT -- how do you have negative karma? I thought you can only vote up on hacker news.
buggy_code··on Ask HN: Obsessive Asian Parents
I really appreciate your comment. For a while, I thought it was an Asian thing (never as an Immigrant thing); you logic makes sense. From personal experience all the things I labeled as "Asian" that's causing pressure, actually, in reality, can probably be associated with "Immigrant" instead.
buggy_code··on Is a Shorter Web Address Worth Big Money? bit.ly Raises $2M
Dumb question:

I understand how URL shorteners work (hash the URL)

however, how do they make money?

buggy_code··on Ask HN: What to do after selling startup?
Are you a professor or a research scientist now?

I have pondered this route, but it seems that in general, the research community / academia tends to "shun" those that don't do straight undergrad -> research.

buggy_code··on Ask HN: What to do after selling startup?
This sounds alot like the "Monk and the Riddle" philosophy. Is this what you're getting at?
buggy_code··on Ask HN: What to do after selling startup?
Where would you live? In your own house? On your own island? Or somehow work in a company that lets you spend your free time working on an open source project?
buggy_code··on Ask HN: You're a recent grad that's working full time on your startup. How?
Talk to your parents.

It's amazing what the response to

"I just recently graduated. Instead of going to Europe to get drunk for a year, I'd like to go home for a year and write software for my startup."

can be.