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dunstadon Eusociality

I find it interesting how the social structures of animals are independent of their intelligence, to an extent. I always associate the societal structure humanity has achieved with our intelligence, so seeing examples like ants and termites breaks me out of that habit.

Really quite interesting to think about how our world might be different, if we were equally intelligent but had an alternative social structure.

dunstadon Optimizing an Important Atom Primitive

For me specifically, Atom was mostly replacing Notepad++. At the time I was testing out Atom, I found that it didn't consistently save the documents you had open during your last session. There may or may not have been other things, that's the biggest one I remember.

Neither it nor Notepad++ could handle gigantic text files, which is a real shame as well, though not a point of comparison.

dunstadon Optimizing an Important Atom Primitive

I tried out Atom a few weeks ago. I loved the UI! Absolutely fantastic, beautiful, nothing but praise there.

But I had so many issues with stability, and really missed small but important features that were present in my other editors. I also found that most of the plugins worked either poorly or sporadically.

In the end, I decided that it was not worth either using Atom or spending time contributing to it when I have some "pretty close" solutions today. Definitely looking forward to the 1.0 version though, and hats off to all those spending their time contributing to it. I'm sure it's going to become something great!

dunstadon Only 4% of Languages Are Used Online

Here's a list of some of the most thriving languages, measured in the study by their OS support: English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese (both Brazilian and European), Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian (Bokmål), Danish, Finnish, Russian, Polish, Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), and Korean.

Taken from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

dunstadon Generating Magic cards using deep, recursive neural networks

This actually uses the same neural network discussed here a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9584325

dunstadon Psychohistory

I wasn't aware this was an actual field of study. I fully expected to be directed to the article in the disambiguation at the top, about Asimov's Foundation series.

They make an interesting pair, with this real life version focused on the motivations of an individual and how they shaped our world, and the fictional version focused on the motivations of large groups, and how they will shape the world to come.

dunstadon White House Sides with Oracle, Tells Supreme Court APIs Are Copyrightable

I don't know if I'm failing to read regexes or failing to see the humor. Can someone explain/kill the joke for me?

dunstadon A Pixel Artist Renounces Pixel Art

It was interesting to see that the game Aero uses very nice looking (high resolution?) pixel art. I'm familiar with it in old games and in newer ones that choose to adopt a retro look, but I'd never seen someone attempt what they did. I probably would have been one of the people complaining about the game's 'pixellated' art, as a result.

That said, I quite enjoyed the article, and some of those modern pixel art pieces linked were very impressive. I think overall his decision to make the switch is a good one though, if I can consider myself any kind of sample of his audience.

dunstadon Ask HN: How do you decide to learn something new?

Usually there's some specific thing I want to build, or some skill I'm excited about gaining, and I learn mostly as a necessary consequence on the way to those goals.

dunstadon [dead]

Just google the article name to find an accessible version. For instance, this worked for me: http://www.wsj.com/articles/heres-a-thing-coders-can-skip-co...

The company described in the article sounds like it's working toward the same goal as Starfighter. Good to see lots of people getting into this space.

dunstadon One Professional Russian Troll Tells All

I see what you did there. (Tip to others: Read the article first.)

dunstadon Ask HN: What new skills are you learning?

One belief I hold is that I can become proficient in any skill if I put the hours in. While maybe not 100% true in every case, it certainly helps more to think this way than to not.

I first became really convinced of this idea while studying Japanese using Anki. I've been doing that for over two years now, and have reached a comfortable level of comprehension. No plans to stop soon.

I've also started learning the violin recently. It's nice to be able to look at my other skills and realize that if I just put in the hours, I can become as good in this, even though I'm terrible right now.

dunstadon Psychology of music preference

I found it interesting how extraversion and openness to experience were separate here. I've always parceled those two together, and anecdotally there seems to be some correlation there.

dunstadon Can education change Japan's 'depressed' generation?

I get the feeling that the first paragraph or so is trying to make this Japanese school sound somewhat dystopian. I can't help but be amused by that, thinking back on reciting the Pledge of Allegiance every day in gradeschool.

dunstadon Images that fool computer vision raise security concerns

My understanding of the incompleteness theorem is that, for a given set of axioms, there will be unprovably true things. Changing the axioms would change which things were unprovable.

That being said, here is a much better resource than I am: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_t...

dunstadon Ask HN: Does anyone else value the comments more than the link?

I wouldn't mind seeing this as a poll. A significant number of people do clearly read the comments first, but perhaps those who don't are not responding. A ratio would be interesting.

dunstadon Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

I believe the footnote states that he changed his mind after having written the article. I also failed to see it the first time I read through, though I appreciate your desire to get the facts out there.

dunstadon Dear Dr. Stallman: An Open Letter

https://stallman.org/stopping-terrorists.html

In a footnote at the bottom here, he says he believes (believed?) Cheney played a role.

dunstadon The Ken Thompson Hack

It's really interesting to think about how impractical it would be to ensure that you can trust a piece of software. Unless you go down to the lowest levels and validate what every machine instruction is doing (which I certainly don't know how to do, nor plan on doing), you really just have to trust that it all does what you expect.

Good thing people are trustworthy, right?

dunstadon God's Lonely Programmer

I find this guy's moments of clarity amazing. I'm not very familiar with mental illnesses in any form, but it surprises me how clearly he understands how the rest of the world views him. It makes me think about what the world might be like if we reverse the situation, and the article were about the only man who can't hear the voice of God.

dunstadon Spaced repetition for study and learning

From my personal experience, using such a method doesn't cause problems. I studied the kana using Heisig's Remembering the Kana, where it connects each character and pronunciation to a mnemonic story. I'm long past the point where I actually need the stories to read kana, the sounds are simply tied to the characters now, with the stories available for recall if i have a brain flub and can't remember one for a bit.

dunstadon Give people an iPhone 4S, tell them it's an iPhone 5

I'd say a case taht stops a phone breaking when it gets run over by a car is worth hearing about.

dunstadon Show HN: Iorad - the tutorial builder

What would you think about prompting the user to sign up after they make their own tutorial (so they can save it or what have you), rather than before they start?

dunstadon Coding Skill and the Decline of Stagnation

How did you learn programming on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic?

dunstadon The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project

If I'm not mistaken, the reply button takes longer to appear the more deeply nested a comment is, to discourage long, drawn-out arguments which detract from the value of a thread.

dunstadon "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

You'll probably have the best luck dissecting a program you're interested in.

dunstadon The pi is a lie… Happy Half Tau Day!

>>>"...understanding that sin represents the y value of a point on a unit circle..."

Wow, I'm enrolled in a college trig class right now and your comment just made me realize that. Thanks for the heightened understanding :)

dunstadon My fellow geeks, we need to have a talk.

"Every once in a while we need to reinvent the wheel. Not because we need more wheels, but because we need more inventors."

dunstadon Favimon: web game in which you battle and collect website favicons

4chan easily defeated HN. It's a dark world we live in...

dunstadon After A Four Year Run, Firefox Is No Longer The Top Browser On TechCrunch

The things that lead to the most innovation are the things that don't seem sensible to do at first. For example, if you mean raytracing in the sense of computer graphics, improving its performance would lead to a possible greater presence of 3d applications on the web.