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navan

57 karma · joined March 15, 2009

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navan··on Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?
I host a single page that makes it easy to explain ROC curves. http://navan.name/roc/. It does not need a server as there is no backend. It has been linked from wikipedia, many course materials and youtube videos. So I continue to host it on my server.
navan··on You can now buy used Ford vehicles on Amazon
Tesla had to fight in court in many of the states for the right to sell directly to customers.
navan··on Cure ID App Lets Clinicians Report Novel Uses of Existing Drugs
Just today I read about this in the book "Who is Government" by Michael Lewis where he presents the case on how it can help find cure for rare diseases. You can read his article at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/mic....

Also highly recommend the book.

navan··on ASK HN: What’s a small thing you’ve purchased which has made your life better?
It is illegal to wear headphones while driving covering both ears in many states in USA.
navan··on Tell HN: '' in Vim moves cursor to recent line
g; has been more useful for me than this one. It goes to the most recent change location. I edit a little, then move around in the same file for reference or check signatures and then continue editing by going to previous edit location using g;.
navan··on Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?
My soniccare is more than 8 years old and is working fine.
navan··on A Vim Guide for Advanced Users
There are lots of useful g commands. See also thread above talking about g commands. My favorite is g;
navan··on Chessguessr – Wordle for Chess Games
I have seen some other language wordles use yellow or green coloring of upper diagonal part when the consonants is right but wrong sound. That could be an approach. See how to at https://solladal.github.io/wordle-tamil/. (I don't think there is translation. But pictures should give the idea)
navan··on Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews
I also have not had this. But a critical review of Dell monitor got deleted after a few months.
navan··on Time-lapse of a single cell transforming into a salamander (2019)
This reminded me of a beautiful animation of "Mitochondria: the cell's powerhouse" which I recently watched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkYEYjintqU

navan··on On Learning Chess as an Adult – From 650 to 1750 in Two Years
Totally agree with all your points. I also have a rating little over 2000 USCF. New players tend to over-emphasize on openings. To this day I know only names of about 5 openings. I do not know more than a few moves in them. I have generic replies for most of them.

Majority of the games of new players are decided by some stupid blunder. Blitz games do not help improve this area much. Like you said game reviews and puzzles are best.

navan··on Amazon Review Scam
I posted a 1 star review for a dell monitor with pictures because bands appeared in the middle of the screen after a month. Dell gave a refurbished unit as replacement. Amazon deleted my review after two months and blocked me from posting any further reviews for that monitor. I used to post regular reviews both positive and negative on Amazon. After this I just stopped posting any reviews to Amazon.
navan··on Understanding Programs Using Graphs
Interesting article and good question about whether we should program using graphs. In a different domain, languages like halide, tvm and tiramisu or in a way letting programmers create graphs for high performance.
navan··on Major book publishers sue Amazon’s Audible over new speech-to-text feature
The title is correct. The issue is about creating captions (text) from audio.
navan··on How I Finally Hit 2000 on Lichess and Improved My Rating
I love lichess website too. I used to play on fics server. Once I switched platforms for my computer, I could not find a good client for fics. lichess is easy to use and get some quick chess time everyday. I like their tourney format also. Easy to get in and out unlike other places where you cannot get in after it started.
navan··on How Big Is Amazon? Its Many Businesses in One Chart
Agree. I thought the length of each box may have some meaning. But it just seems to be stretched to fit the text.
navan··on Training in chess: A scientific approach (2005) [pdf]
I have a similar USCF rating and I agree with everything you said. I would also add, when buying chess books, get books of the form "My best games" of top players and go over them. Try the side variations in those books as much as possible in your head. Do not buy opening books. Instead go over master games whose common openings match yours.
navan··on Show HN: “Who is hiring?” Map
You beat me to it. I was working on this and downloaded all the items using firebase API. Great job. How did you parse the location? I thought that would be the hardest part.
navan··on How To Think About Chess
I have an expert level rating. I agree with everything in the content. My games are very similar to what he describes. I have not memorized many openings. I just know a few moves in common openings and how to respond to a few quirky responses to them. I want to get to the middle game or out of my opponents memory as quickly as possible. I also sometimes deliberately make some opening weak moves to get out of opponent's memory.

One main thing I found in my experience is, majority of the games in amateur level are decided by blunders. I am not talking about small positional bad moves. These loose pieces are get mated in one move. If you are an amateur first focus on avoiding them by studying tactics before memorizing anything else.

navan··on Is it really 'Complex'? Or did we just make it 'Complicated'? [video]
In a way both are fixing bugs created by someone else.
navan··on How to Get Good at Chess, Fast
I agree with almost everything in that article. I have been playing chess for 20+ years. During that time I have spent several months at a time seriously spending all the free time to improve my chess. I have read numerous chess books, many of them multiple times. I have an expert level rating (USCF) now. I wish someone has told me to concentrate on tactics before going after openings or strategies. Nowadays for any new beginner once they learn the rules I tell them to practice tactics.

Learning positional strategies and all the fancy openings from the books was great. But was useless to improve my results when I was beginning. When I analyzed my games with the help of computer, I found 90% of the games were decided because me or the opponent missed a simple tactic which is just 1 or 2 moves deep. If this is the case in your games you should study tactics until you can find all 1-2 move tactics. It sounds easy. But I have seen a number of class A players miss these simple tactics numerous times.

Finally you will understand opening and positional strategies only if you can spot tactics in them. Once you do not find any tactical mistakes in your game you start to play positional chess. You will appreciate making good positional moves when you do not make silly mistakes.

navan··on Are You A Typing Hacker? Prove It
Awesome game. While most commenters want it faster, can the game creator make another level to start even slower for kids. My 5 year old wants to play, but ends up crying because she can't keep up. This game would be great for her to learn the keys.
navan··on Chesscademy, a free chess learning site
I am not sure what specific activity you are asking for. There are play sites, news sites, forums, learning sites etc. I like chessbase for news. But I play at fics which is a chess server.
navan··on In times of change, make tires
Another guess: batteries
navan··on Gmail: Introducing Actions in the Inbox
This is usually done by generating different URLs for different emails. The URLs need to carry access token parameters. See https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/limited-....
navan··on Ask HN: Best book you read in 2011
Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science by Wheelan, Charles

Economics explained in the most intuitive way.

On a related note I started an account at goodreads.com at the start of this year. It is great for keeping track of what you read and to find books for future reading.

navan··on Best Buy’s bizarro world Xoom ad « The Orange View
While the table in the ad does not say which carrier for the 3G plan, the ad does contain a Verizon logo.
navan··on Free Android App maker
It was pretty good for simple apps. But you cannot upload the apps created to Android market.
navan··on Why Can’t Tablet Makers Just Freaking Ship?
There are many cheap 5" and 7" tablets. But very few 10" tablets. ViewSonic gTablet or viewpad10, Archos 101. They all have pretty good hardware with many of them with two cameras and comparable price with low end iPad. Processor manufacturers like nVidia gives them good frameworks to start with. In addition to several things mentioned in the comments, these tablets had problems like,

1. Almost all except Samsung Galaxy lacked direct use of Android market. 2. Some had software problems with bad out of box experience. (For example: http://www.engadget.com/2010/12/18/viewsonic-g-tablet-pulled...) 3. Regular apps built for Android phones did not give good experience on the tablets

For the future tablets, waiting for Android 3.0 may not be a good reason. They always can release the hardware and then update the software later. HTC flyer is following this approach. There is a risk of users turning away if the first impressions are really bad. Announced prices for several of them are on the very expensive side. Among the announcements I also notice that very few come with wifi only option which is another reason for high price.

I collect tablet information at tbltpc.com.