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intractable

83 karma · joined September 15, 2011

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intractable··on 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)
This is true, to a certain extent. But it doesn't mean that masters for vinyl always have more dynamics left intact.

More often than not these days, the same compressed master is used for the vinyl. To combat the groove-jumping problem, the overall level is simply dropped.

intractable··on 'Hackers' at 20
> Robert Redford, Sydney Poitier, River Phoenix, James Earl Jones, Dan Aykroyd

Don't forget Ben Kingsley, another Oscar winner.

intractable··on The next version of DuckDuckGo
> I find the contrast to be perfectly fine.

Which is why you chose to write your comment in a low contrast colour.

intractable··on Ask HN: What do you use to organize your knowledge?
I use Gitit [1] as my personal wiki for notetaking. I've been pretty happy with it so far, as it uses the excellent Pandoc as the backend. I have not heard of Vimwiki until now - can you tell me your favourite features?

[1] http://gitit.net/

intractable··on The slow death of purposeless walking
The article brings to mind this wonderful short story by Ray Bradbury, "Pedestrian" [1]

    "What are you doing out?"
    "Walking," said Leonard Mead.
    "Walking!"
    "Just walking," he said simply, but his face felt cold.
    "Walking, just walking, walking?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "Walking where? For what?"
    "Walking for air. Walking to see."
[1] http://mikejmoran.typepad.com/files/pedestrian-by-bradbury-1...
intractable··on Project Tango
> But in absence of this conflict, or the external meaning that is the cause of the (perceived) conflict, they wouldn't know what to do with their own existence

What nonsense.

> "Google" is nothing more than a tightly-bound collection of humans.

Yes, and collections of humans tend to exhibit emergent properties / behaviours which are not necessarily ideal in all respects.

Discussion of these properties / behaviours, and their desirability, is not a bad thing.

> They see the world in a black and white. "Us" and "them".

This is humorous to see in a post expounding a false dichotomy between the "two" types of people in the world.

intractable··on How Much to Charge as a Freelancer
I'm interested to know how you manage the risk inherent in project-based billing.

In my experience it is simply unworkable: the client will provide the vaguest of specifications and providing them with a set-in-stone price raises unrealistic expectations. The requirements are simply too fuzzy at the outset of a project to be able to price it accurately.

Of course the solution only becomes more concrete as the project progresses and requirements change and crystallize based on feedback. This is expected behaviour of course, but I've never been able to reconcile it with project-based billing.

Do you simply allow a certain buffer zone and take the good with the bad?

intractable··on Emacs is Dead (2010)

    > underline an arbitrary line of text with '=' characters. In vim that's 11 keypresses across 3 operations
Sounds like a vimgolf challenge to me. Here's my entry:

YpVr=

intractable··on Pin Payments is Australia’s first all-in-one online payment API
I would imagine that it would be much easier for Stripe to acquire local Stripe equivalents and rebrand, rather than trying to navigate the labyrinth of financial regulations in each location. Maybe that's the game plan for Pin?

From another Perth guy, more congrats to the Pin team (I actually discovered them when I had the same idea, googled it and found that it existed already - in my own town!)

intractable··on Always Be Coding – How to Land an Engineering Job
OO is a subset of imperative.

Can you name me an OO language which doesn't support imperative programming?

intractable··on Florida Teen Charged With Felony After Science Experiment Goes Bad
No, the analogies are spot on.

Anything in the preceding comments which seems ridiculous has been introduced by the concept of "zero tolerance", which precludes common sense.

Zero means zero. If the rules are enforced as written - arguably as intended - this is what you get. The preceding comments just take the concept to its logical conclusion.

intractable··on You know, Google, the web already had this feature
More than any other here, your post makes me nostalgic about the old days. Kudos.
intractable··on You know, Google, the web already had this feature
> And how is Apple waging war against openness?

This does not need to be an either / or proposition.

_Both_ Apple and Google are doing "evil", in their own way. Along with a bunch of cool stuff, too.

intractable··on The Internal Memo That Allowed IBM's Female Employees to Get Married
> Mandatory urine testing

I don't think these are the "IP issues" to which he was referring.

intractable··on Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges
In my experience, one of the most significant hindrances has been access to and communication with medical personnel:

- Medics, especially specialists / surgeons, have extremely busy schedules, often holding down both public & private patient responsibilities as well as performing duties for their specific colleges etc.

- The level of IT-savvy amongst healthcare pros is generally low.

- They seem to have a different logic to us IT folk, answers are nebulous for non-medics and hard rules are very difficult to pin down. Ask the same question n times and you will get n different answers, from the same respondent.

When you find a medic who is willing / able to help and towards the positive on all the above axes, you must hold onto them with a death grip.

intractable··on The Future of Markdown
+1 for Pandoc. It's awesome.

Also, it needs to be mentioned that Pandoc supports its own set of (IMO) sensible extensions / defaults to Gruber markdown [1].

[1] http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdow...

intractable··on Things in C# you might have missed
This is one which had escaped me for years:

    private static bool GreaterThanOne(int @int)
    {
        return @int > 1;
    }
However, it would seem to me to fall into the "never, ever use this" category.
intractable··on The Joy of Quiet
I agree 100%. I too walked the Camino de Santiago, in 2009.

Probably the best thing I've ever done. I came back centred, happy, relaxed and motivated. I met great people, had great times (and trying times - like walking 40km, into a town with no spare beds, and then walking another 10km to the next town, to again find no beds) and really challenged myself.

Walking alone through those fields is something I'll never forget. Hours of walking brings about a meditative state, and inner quiet which is rare to find.

Start by yourself, this will bring you out of your comfort zone and you'll meet more new people.

It's a great metaphor for life - you meet people, you lose people, you say goodbye, you learn to rely on yourself.

I recommend it to anyone.

intractable··on Plugins you should put in your vimrc
The rage these days seems to be to keep your own dotfiles repo, complete with some kind of install mechanism.

My own is here [1] but it covers my whole homedir, not just VIM. I use Rake tasks (originally inspired by @holman, I believe) for install / update / clean.

There is a bootstrapping problem when using Vundle with many plugins [2]. The only way to have your Vundles install cleanly the first time is to split up .vimrc into two separate files, which is what I have done.

[1] https://github.com/anthonywilson/dotfiles

[2] http://www.gmarik.info/blog/2011/05/17/chicken-or-egg-dilemm...

intractable··on Plugins you should put in your vimrc
I agree.

But, I must say: no matter how repetitive these articles, I pick up something new in the HN comments every single time.

intractable··on Plugins you should put in your vimrc
Every time an article like this comes up, snipMate seems to be mentioned. This particular author even pointed to the old repository which appears unmaintained and has not had a check-in for two years.

Where's the love for UltiSnips? [1]

UltiSnips is actively maintained and well documented, not to mention supporting many more features, such as Python interpolation. More info at [2].

[1] https://github.com/SirVer/ultisnips

[2] http://fueledbylemons.com/blog/2011/07/27/why-ultisnips/

intractable··on Mac Pro gets half-assed “update”
Not to mention VIM has been available on Windows for many years, so the gp has probably already eliminated it as an option.
intractable··on How to overcome resistance to work
I have the same thought process as you, and I find it quite debilitating. It often manifests as a need to know everything about a problem space before even starting on a solution.

The upside is that on the whole I produce code that is logical, consistent, maintainable and relatively bug-free. But it takes a long time.

intractable··on Want good programmers? Then pay them.
Absolutely. After all, that is what most employers will do when the pendulum swings their way.
intractable··on What every programmer should know about memory, Part 1
Ahh, the "What every programmer should know about X" articles.

So, Ulrich Drepper thinks everyone should know about the intricacies of DRAM refreshing. Zed Shaw thinks we should all know statistics. Some other schmoe thinks we should know about SEO. Et cetera.

Posts like these should be titled "I worked hard and feel good about myself for knowing X, therefore everyone should know it."

It is blisteringly stupid. Every programmer needs to know WHAT THEY NEED TO KNOW.

Nobody can know everything. Why don't we all just learn what we need, build the things which interest us, and stop telling others what THEY need?

Having said that... interesting stuff. Just needs a title change.

intractable··on Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled
It's definitely wrong.

According to [1], 614,631 kg were mined in South Africa (which accounts for about 80% of world production) between 2002 and 2009.

Density of platinum = 21.45g/cm^3 = 21.45 * 10^6 g/m^3 = 21.45 * 10^3 kg/m^3

=> total volume mined 2002 - 2009 = 614631 / 21450 = 28.65 m^3 approx.

So that's about 28.65 * 35.29 = 1011 cubic feet, JUST in South Africa and JUST between those years.

Other estimates visualise the total ever mined as a cube of 20 feet per SIDE ([2]), which sounds a bit more like it, given the numbers above - but still feels a little bit low.

[1] http://www.indexmundi.com/minerals/?country=za&product=p...

[2] http://money.howstuffworks.com/question213.htm

intractable··on Urban Airship: Postgres to NoSQL and back
Glad to hear I wasn't the only one...
intractable··on Google Flight Search means little for Adioso & Hipmunk
Yes. It's the Italian Restaurant argument all over again.

There's room in town for more than one, and everybody you ask will have their own favourite.