Hacker News Reader

thefalconon Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

You don't have to convince me. Writing HTML e-mails, especially for higher ups that have no concern for the limitations of the platform, is awful. This is why I just insist on using Mailchimp templates these days[1]. They've done the hard work, it just works (usually), let's just focus on content.

[1]Pick your poison, but I find Mailchimp a great mix of easy to use, flexible, and functional.

thefalconon Bitcoin has crossed $6,000 USD for the first time

And if people are buying them for $5000 last month and $6000 this month...?

thefalconon Plain emails not only save time but work better (2016)

You will never convince me that Microsoft rendering HTML using the MS Word engine is a feature.

thefalconon AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch

You can already buy an insurance plan that will pay for it in some states, and that's reasonably priced. In my case religious family members would never let it go down though even if the finances were solved.

thefalconon AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch

A great resource for "watching" AlphaGo's games: http://www.alphago-games.com

thefalconon AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch

Here's a self-play game: AGZ v AGZ - http://eidogo.com/#u2UdsDFJ

thefalconon AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch

The concept of locality is nothing but a human weakness in Go, the best AI must read the whole board with every move.

EDIT: From the paper: "Surprisingly, shicho (“ladder” capture sequences that may span the whole board) – one of the first elements of Go knowledge learned by humans – were only understood by AlphaGo Zero much later in training" I'm surprised by the author's use of the word "Surprisingly" here.

thefalconon AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch

I'd certainly be surprised if I ever woke up from being cryopreserved. Which isn't to say that I'd object to the process if I had the disposable income and an understanding/cooperative family support structure, which I do not.

thefalconon AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch

This seems like something DeepMind could create, given the incentive. They were able to train AlphaGo to predict human moves in Go at a very high accuracy (obviously not with AlphaGo Zero, but the inferior human-predictive version is how they determined that AGZ is playing qualitatively differently).

thefalconon AlphaGo Zero: Learning from scratch

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-18/deepmind-...

Indeed.

thefalconon The Transaction Costs of Tokenizing Everything

Matt Levine has been musing on the topic for a while, and I appreciate his take on things. Here's a decent primer: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-15/blockchai...

thefalconon A Pre-History of Slashdot

If they don't already, they will probably soon view the mobile app as "the main site" and then it's only a matter of time before the desktop site devolves as you fear.

thefalconon A Pre-History of Slashdot

22 years ago: "You could sit at home, and do like absolutely nothing, and your name goes through like 17 computers a day. 1984? Yeah right, man. That's a typo. Orwell is here now. He's livin' large. We have no names, man. No names. We are nameless!"

thefalconon Show HN: CoinHub for iOS

TIL; thank you.

thefalconon Bloom Filters for the Perplexed

I'm also always having to perform the manual translation in my head from shader effect when I read this term.

thefalconon CryptoMaps: Cryptocurrency Market State

This is fantastic, thanks for sharing! It's especially nice on a mostly green day like today, which is to say on a day when BTC is up, since as BTC goes so the alts follow.

thefalconon Amazon announces new Fire TV with 4K and HDR

I wish they sold a version with a bundled controller: not because I had any trouble buying a MiFi controller separately, but because the fact that I had to do that means that there are far too few games that are built expecting me to have a controller. If there was a bundle, I imagine it would booster developer support as well. Also I think it would help justify its comparable-to-console pricing to many people.

thefalconon FaceID Security [pdf]

I believe the probability for identical twins is 1 in 1; they mentioned in the keynote that some people will have to stick with passcodes, including those with "evil twins". (Presumably if you trust your identical twin to not be evil, you don't care if they're able to unlock your phone.)

thefalconon iPhone 8 Plus: The best smartphone camera we’ve ever tested

I so wish Apple would make a full sized camera. Include the A11 and a touch screen and even cellular if you want, I don't care how much it costs. Imagine all this hardware and software applied to a real image sensor.

thefalconon Toys ‘R’ Us Plans Bankruptcy Filing Amid Debt Struggle

Yeah, and Amazon often offers better prices with instant gift cards and several days grace period to ship your games to them on their dime. GameStop is only a good deal a few times a year during specific sales.

thefalconon Toys ‘R’ Us Plans Bankruptcy Filing Amid Debt Struggle

It's possible to enforce MAP pricing (minimum advertised price) online that matches in-store prices, but if you're a small player you'll lose out on the business of some of the larger buyers who are used to getting their way, and then you run the risk of getting yourself put out of business by trying to help out the little guys.

thefalconon Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of U.S. Criminal Probe

> I think we are up to the Seventh Law of Insider Trading. The first six are: (1) don't do it, (2) don't do it by buying short-dated out-of-the-money call options on undisclosed merger targets, (3) don't text or email about it, (4) don't do it in your mother's account, (5) don't do it by planting bombs at a company and shorting its stock, and (6) don't do it while employed at the Securities and Exchange Commission. I hereby declare the Seventh Law: (7) If you are going to insider trade, don't Google "how to insider trade without getting caught" before or after you trade.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-13/main-stre...

thefalconon Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of U.S. Criminal Probe

The point is you're still going to be investigated, and it's not going to be fun, and probably not going to be worth the relative small gain you'll make even on the off chance you manage to get away with it. [That said, if it's me, I'm making a point of disclosing all future stock sales well in advance just to make sure this kind of thing can't come back to bite me.]

thefalconon Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of U.S. Criminal Probe

Silicon Valley did it best, and it's funny because it's true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTbNKWw7Zs

thefalconon Equifax Stock Sales Are the Focus of U.S. Criminal Probe

He also said this (which, scanning through this thread, appears to be a rare voice of reason):

> Also, though, I found it hard to imagine that those Equifax executives were consciously insider trading. It would just be too dumb. Equifax's press release reporting the breach says that it "discovered the unauthorized access on July 29 of this year and acted immediately to stop the intrusion," though it didn't announce it until yesterday because it was still investigating. The three executives filed Form 4s reporting sales on Aug. 1 and 2, days after the discovery. You could just about imagine them learning of the security breach, panicking, and selling everything -- except that they didn't sell everything. One sold about 4 percent of his stock holdings, another about 9 percent, another about 13 percent. Why do such comically obvious insider trading if you're only selling a small percentage of your stock? And indeed the company explained that these executives "had no knowledge that an intrusion had occurred at the time." I guess the time between "tech person discovers a security breach" and "top executives discover it's a huge embarrassing crisis" is more than a couple of days.

thefalconon iPhone X

Oh yeah, I forgot that I had to change that setting. I definitely hope it's the same with Face ID - I don't use home screen notifications for anything.

thefalconon Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches to Steal Signs Against Yankees

The pitcher has final say, but a good battery (pitcher-catcher combo) is especially valuable because it lets the pitcher focus on throwing his pitches (and tracking runners as needed) instead of also involving him in the batter-pitcher mind games. Smart catchers are very under-rated by most casual fans, and can tell you why they called every single pitch in every single at-bat in a ball game (which will run well over a hundred pitches a game).

thefalconon Boston Red Sox Used Apple Watches to Steal Signs Against Yankees

Which is why signs are obfuscated whenever a runner is on second base.

thefalconon Google AMP is bad for e-commerce

There are many people out there demanding their eCommerce websites "get on AMP" ASAP. The author is performing a valuable service to employees of such people.

thefalconon Lab hidden inside a famous monument

I can't help but think fondly of the Baroque cycle when reading about the likes of Hooke and Wren.

https://www.nealstephenson.com/baroque-cycle/