HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

slay2k

370 karma · joined August 15, 2009

I'm in LA, trick.

romy@ucla d0t edu

submissionscomments
slay2k··on Deep Voice: Real-Time Neural Text-To-Speech
How soon before you make an API available? In other words, how do I make use of Deep Voice for my own applications?
slay2k··on Why tab navigation sucks in Chrome, pt 2
First off, I don't care about IE because I don't use it. Second, how's it way better ?
slay2k··on Why tab navigation sucks
Have 50 open right now, I use them as combination todo / for-later lists, and know many others who do the same.
slay2k··on Show HN: My startup: code4cheap.com, a code marketplace
Two things. One, I think 30% is a very high percentage to be charging for a fee, which inevitably will affect how questioners feel about paying it and the growth of your site. Second, if you don't actually charge until the transaction is ready, then few should object to paying say, $60 for a $50 question (20% fee) for an answer ready to be read.
slay2k··on LA Hacker News Live Stream
Working okay for me, post a screenshot ?
slay2k··on Want a job working on mongoDB? Your first online interview is in this post
Did you mean (N*(N+1))/2 ?
slay2k··on Ivan Kaspersky kidnapped
I feel bad reading these, having spent the first 10 years of my life in Russia before it all went from shit in disguise to outright, oh-the-audacity type of shit (~1990)

But this is the rule, not the exception, and it saddens me to say that Russia's the last place I'd want to start a company.

slay2k··on DuckDuckGo and Wolfram Alpha are now official partners
Awesome job. Ignore the haters.
slay2k··on FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names
Um, no, US citizens don't know that.

If they did, smart professional players like Durrr and Ivey wouldn't keep multi-million dollar bankrolls online that are subject to loss at any time.

That's just common sense.

slay2k··on FBI seized PokerStars.com, FullTiltPoker.com, UB.com,... domain names
A number of sites completely withdrew from the US (Party, Pacific, etc), either out of fear or because of their particular company's corporate setups / locations.

A few big ones remained operational for US players, the biggest being Stars and FullTilt, with the only change being refusal to accept credit cards as a deposit method. I'd venture to say millions of bank deposits have occurred since then within the US, and the legality of it all was never black and white, and certainly not enforced in any way.

slay2k··on The Montessori Mafia
I've been thinking about how I'd educate my own kids, and currently it's a tossup between the Harkness approach a la Phillips Exeter, the entirely home-schooled approach, and something like this which seems like a hybrid.

If anyone has experience with any of the above, I'd love to hear about it.

slay2k··on Ask HN: I'm an unemployed programmer in SF that will work for minimum wage
Generalizing ryan's logic further:

"Can you write code and actually get things done? Do you have examples of your work that look good?"

If the answer's yes, freelancing is now just one of many options available to you.

slay2k··on Ask HN: I'm an unemployed programmer in SF that will work for minimum wage
A: "I don't know memcached that intimately. Why is it not good enough, what seems to be the problem ?"

If I was conducting the interview, I'd be thrilled to hear that kind of response given the candidate's self-admitted lack of domain expertise.

slay2k··on Redis Sharding at Craigslist
Thanks Jeremy. I'll choose to post here as I didn't intend for my original comment to come off hostile, so I'll try and clarify what I meant.

The comment stemmed from frustration at the fact that, for a very long time, CL has been killing all creative efforts to improve or build on it. Mature sites used by millions shut down after years of operation, despite loud user protests[1][2], and those killed in utero[3] have been the norm. I realize that it's easy to point to the TOS and call it a day, but the TOS is neither consistent[4] nor clear.

Friends of mine are running startups that get some of their data from CL, and try to stay under the radar because of fears and uncertainties. They aren't doing anything remotely shady. To them, CL's decision to kill a site comes on a whim, and nobody really knows what's considered okay WRT the TOS and what isn't. I mean, if Craig himself can't provide a definitive answer[5], then surely you can see how this could become frustrating for developers.

I'm not used to any kind of openness coming from CL on the dev front, and your post has been the first one I've seen in that category, so I want to apologize if you caught the brunt of my frustration.

[1] http://blog.claz.org/#post-94

[2] http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2007/06/08/jim-buckmeister...

[3] http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/01/craigslist-yahoo-pipes-flip...

[4] http://www.housingmaps.com/ -- one of several that has been up since 2005

[5] http://romy.posterous.com/dont-be-evil-craigslist

slay2k··on Redis Sharding at Craigslist
No disrespect towards you, Jeremy, you're pretty awesome in my book (literally.. my High Perf MySQL book).

But with Craigslist being the most closed-minded and developer-hating organization I've ever come across, I don't particularly give a rat's ass what it's built on.

I wish it wasn't so, because I generally love posts like this, but if a dictator's employees start giving tours of the mansion, you certainly won't find me dazzled by the motion-sensor water fountains..

slay2k··on How Microsoft mobile tags are killing QR codes
Right, and where exactly will you get both the specs and license for reading proprietary MS Tag codes ?
slay2k··on How Microsoft mobile tags are killing QR codes
"every Microsoft Tag can be read by every Tag Reader, so there is no consumer confusion"

Hah, yes, much like every ActiveX-enhanced website could have been viewed by every IE6 browser. There certainly won't be any consumer confusion, what with none of the top barcode scanning apps supporting MS Tag and all.

slay2k··on How to be 100% sure your startup idea is good
Also, fix the typo on the about page -- 'lot of arcticles'
slay2k··on DecorMyEyes Merchant Vitaly Borker Arrested After NYT Piece On Google Rankings
But think of all the traffic DecorMyEyes is seeing right now!
slay2k··on Protect yourself from FireSheep with Amazon EC2 + OpenVPN for $0.50 a month
Ah, so easy! Only 28 steps filled with remote Linux shell commands, certificate creation, and downloaded software! I'm sure that's exactly what his wife wanted to hear when she asked how to avoid being Firesheeped.

Whatever happened to good old ssh -ND ? Wouldn't that solve 90% of most casual hotspot users' problems ? And I'd be wary suggesting even that one-liner to someone who isn't a techie, which I'm assuming his wife isn't since she asked the question.

slay2k··on Hell Freezes Over As MySpace Fully Surrenders To Facebook
This certainly made me giggle a bit, but I wouldn't define using FBConnect, pulling user data and pushing updates to be fully surrendering.

Fully surrendering would be more like MySpace outsourcing the social networking to FB. In the meantime, dying as they might be, I still think they have a different vibe.

slay2k··on World's Richest Man: 'Charity Doesn't Solve Anything'
Not to mention the purchase was allegedly laden with government kickbacks and various forms of corruption.
slay2k··on PadMapper Maps Out Crime Levels of Cities
Hi sir, big fan here.

Was just wondering when you'll be coming out with a mapper for everything else on craigslist ?

slay2k··on The Adaptive Function of Masturbation in a Promiscuous African Ground Squirrel
"All 20 of the males observed masturbated to ejaculation and consumed the ejaculate."

I genuinely don't understand either point.

slay2k··on Co-founder search
This. I think utility goes waaaaay down without being location-centric.
slay2k··on Newark Public Schools To Get 100mm Donation.. Courtesy of Zuckerberg
Would love to know why this is downvoted. Thought I was asking a legitimate question ?
slay2k··on Newark Public Schools To Get 100mm Donation.. Courtesy of Zuckerberg
Wow, random. Would love to hear from someone on the economics of this.

Where does the money come from ? Facebook's taxes that would otherwise have been paid to the government ?

slay2k··on $250,000-a-day Minecraft strikes indie game gold
Holy. Shitballs.

My hat's off to this man. Perhaps the thing I envy most here is the fact that this guy's achieved this doing what he loves. According to his personal page, he's been building games for many, many years, and has entered dozens of small competitions. He seems to genuinely love building games, and would almost certainly continue doing it regardless of money.

slay2k··on Courtney Love does the math (2000)
Meh. I don't consider myself sexist but I had a similar reaction as the author of the comment you replied to.

This is the first time I've read something this profoundly insightful and moving about the music industry, and Courtney Love is the last person I would have expected to see as the author.

slay2k··on VideoJS (Zencoder, YC W10) re-launches with new site, new features, still free.
Just curious, what does "re-launches" mean here ?

It certainly doesn't look like you guys are pivoting away from Zencoder, since the overlap between the two seems minimal.

This is a side-project, correct ?

Page 1 of 3Next →