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0xdefec8

Re:The truth about grit on Sunday August 02, 2009 @12:53PM (#737681)
Growing up, my best friend was always one of the smartest and successful kids in the class. But he also had an annoying habit of going around making offhand remarks about how he hadn't cracked a book until 10 minutes before the finals and still aced it, etc...

Although I shouldn't have let it get to me, it definitely did since we were always competitive. And it took quite a few years before I realized how stupid it was to believe that he could possibly be relying on innate intelligence to know things like obscure Gettysburg lieutenants or isotope neutron counts, whatever.

Anyways, as it turns out, we became roommates after college and I finally got to see the man behind the curtain. The kid's a workhorse! Sure he's still brilliant, but I had no idea how intense his work ethic was. His job requires all sorts of certification exams, and he would be locked in his room 10 hours a day for weeks at a time just memorizing, memorizing, memorizing...

Anyways, I'm sure Einstein wouldn't have wanted people to know that he used flashcards either :)

Re:When I died on Friday July 17, 2009 @02:53PM (#710497)
It's funny feeling like the doc has you open in gdb or something. I had my aortic root and a valve replaced a few years ago. However, I had been monitored for years prior, so I avoided the surprise you got. Anyways, glad you came through ok. The trauma of surgery becomes just another inconvenience from the past with a year or two of hindsight.
Re:Dormitory converted into gigantic Tetris display (2007) on Tuesday July 14, 2009 @12:38PM (#704024)
you gotta wonder how difficult it was to convince each and every person in the dorm to agree to this...
I haven't tried it since upgrading to OSX 10.5 but http://trac.kismac-ng.org/ always just worked with the AirPort built into the MBP. With an idiotproof Mac GUI to boot.
Re:The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @04:06PM (#681479)
Not sure I understand the question, you mean could they install Windows on the same machine? It was running XPsp2 prior to Ubuntu 9.04.
Re:The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @03:12PM (#681352)
Keep beating that strawman, you're sure to make a point eventually.

The argument isn't whether or not Linux is useful to a bunch of nerds, myself included, or whether or not I should kiss rms for bestowing this gift unto humanity for free. It's whether it's competitive against its better known closed source counterparts on the Desktop. And you basically answered that question in your first paragraph.

Re:The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @02:10PM (#681241)
and therein lies the predictable attitude that will keep linux a distant 3rd on the desktop.
Re:The One in Which I Say Open Source Software Sucks on Tuesday June 30, 2009 @01:11PM (#681106)
As a dude who just tried Ubuntu for the first time in 5 years to see how far they've come, but couldn't because the fucking liveCD didn't have a driver for my cdrom, this rings true.

But for what it's worth, after a few grueling days getting the p.o.s. up and running, I was shocked to have all the UI fluff my macbook has, plus the infinite list of other great stuff that's inherent to Linux.

The moral? Just shrinkwrap all OSS with a CS degree holding nerd who has a couple days of free time.

It has as much to do with the community it attracts as the articles themselves.

Every social news site has it's unspoken core values that can't be parsed out (easily :) with a script. HN has it's libertarians, reddit has it's contrarian only-I-took-the-red-pill mentality, and 4chan has its poop and kiddieporn. Go against the respective grain, and get ostracized.

Re:Your web site as an ASCII art on Sunday June 07, 2009 @01:45PM (#646102)
Was hoping it would also convert the images...nope.
Re:Oh Yeah? Where's Your Patches Zed? on Saturday May 30, 2009 @08:17PM (#634238)
I know I'm missing the point, but my main reaction to this is naive admiration that Zed can complain about a language in a blog post and get flamed by the freakin' creator of said language.
This could be revolutionary, however email is the way it is because that's just how we've communicated as a species for eons, all the way from letters to tablets to cave paintings. You think carefully about your message, create something representing it, and share it. It seems like Wave is essentially condensing that process into one step, more like a conversation. I'm not sure everyone will welcome that.
Re:1964 Antique modem surfs the web on Wednesday May 27, 2009 @09:23PM (#629539)
I am drooling with hacker nerdocity. A beautifully organic 45 year old still-working box passed on from a protohacker connected to a defcon-stickered terminal browsing the web on a cli....I need to look away
Re:Malicious hackers completely destroy flight sim site on Thursday May 14, 2009 @10:38PM (#609927)
not sure if I'm more annoyed by the dumbass crackers or webmasters...
Re:The Glider: A Universal Hacker Emblem on Tuesday May 12, 2009 @12:36AM (#604888)
you must support terrorism _and_ love Windows.
Re:Advanced Regular Expressions on Thursday May 07, 2009 @01:40PM (#598329)
indeed. grep -P is your friend. (except older grep versions seem to segfault on me constantly with various -P regexes)
Re:Ask HN: Are internships mainly for college grads? on Sunday May 03, 2009 @02:51PM (#591122)
That is true...I'm not too sure at all. I guess my plan is just to see what's out there and what sounds cool to me. If you know of a few internships or jobs, I'd love to hear about them, 0xdefec8 at gmail dot com Much appreciated, thank you!
Re:Ask HN: Are internships mainly for college grads? on Saturday May 02, 2009 @08:26PM (#590359)
That's actually an option I hadn't considered...taking time off to work on something myself, as opposed to an internship. I know a lot of people around here can operate on 5 hours of sleep and pick up their personal project immediately after 10+ hours of working for the man, but I just don't have the energy reserves for it. I will consider doing that, thank you.
Re:Ask HN: Are internships mainly for college grads? on Saturday May 02, 2009 @05:48PM (#590245)
Because that's what I find interesting I guess. Having a living, active product is just sort of fascinating to me. But I'm sure there's non-web stuff out there that I would dig too. The question was more about the internship thing.
Re:Ask HN: Are internships mainly for college grads? on Saturday May 02, 2009 @05:33PM (#590235)
Not sure on specifics honestly, but it would probably be a web based business (facebook, reddit, amazon) and use python. But maybe it's naive to narrow my search by what language they use.

Ask HN: Are internships mainly for college grads?

I hit my 3 year first-post-college-job anniversary a few months ago, and I want out of my industry because it bores me to tears (storage, fwiw). Not sure what's next, but I've had a lot of fun lately playing around with Python (it's C/C++ at work). I'm thinking maybe a hip, young web biz is a better fit for me, but I have nothing on my resume remotely related.I know some common advice might be...

( Read More... | 9 comments | 5 points | on HN )
Re:Hacker News Disease on Friday May 01, 2009 @01:32PM (#588811)
sounds like an appeal to authority just got countered with a tu quoque
Re:Why Developers are Switching to Mac on Monday April 27, 2009 @05:56PM (#582192)
Whether they'll admit it or not, that comment is probably the #1 issue holding back more hackers from switching to a Mac. Hackers :: Linux as Hipsters :: ObscureIndieRock. Switching to a Mac is like admitting you listen to Nickleback.
Re:How Dumping TV Allowed Me to Quit My Job on Friday April 24, 2009 @03:18PM (#578042)
For me, TV is the opiate of the masses that numbs my brain after a long day quicker than booze, god, or exercise. Replacing it with a second job is about as likely as giving up weekends and vacations.
Re:"But how will Google ever make money? There's the rub." on Saturday March 21, 2009 @02:25AM (#525999)
hrm that post was a good BUI (browsing under the influence) test...it took me about 3 paragraphs before I had to check the date on the article. time for bed I think.
I can't say firsthand whether this is true or not since I was in diapers during it's heyday, but I'm told that when DEC died, it's unwieldy, monolithic culture leaked all over the northeast. With 150,000 employees, it was basically the anti-startup. And it's pretty shocking the percentage of older programmers that were at DEC at one time or another here in Mass.
Re:After the newspapers die, who will watch the police? on Monday March 02, 2009 @12:03PM (#500299)
Valid points. I guess I just get hung up on the relationship between things society values economically, and things of intrinsic value to society. Personally I believe the relationship between the two is too loosely coupled to let the market make decisions for us.
Re:After the newspapers die, who will watch the police? on Monday March 02, 2009 @10:47AM (#500195)
What part of my comment says I like the public sector? While it does seem to be a money burning machine nowadays, it has made unmatched contributions to mankind in the past; that's also just a fact. It thus does not inherently "retard the future".
Re:After the newspapers die, who will watch the police? on Monday March 02, 2009 @10:03AM (#500143)
The parasitic public sector also put us on the moon and built the bomb.
Re:After the newspapers die, who will watch the police? on Sunday March 01, 2009 @01:43PM (#499179)
True, but is it better for a paper to be afraid of its sponsors and popular opinion than to be afraid of the government? The need to appeal to the lowest common denominator to maximize profit is what's brought us such gems like USAToday and 99% of the garbage on television. On the other hand, some of the only watchable programming IMO is on PBS, and we know where that money comes from.

I don't have the answer; papers funded by the government would be a disaster like you said. But I don't think profit is the panacea to the world's problems.

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