b3eck

Re:Ask PG: What have I done wrong? on Friday January 15, 2010 @12:24PM (#1055300)

One suggestion to try: for a young comment whose score has not stabilized (i.e. high recent variability), then no score is displayed except for an indicator for users whose recent comments have low recent variability and high score.

(Edited for brevity)

Re:Ask HN: More types of flagging? on Monday December 21, 2009 @05:22PM (#1008726)

During the experiment of not displaying points on comments, was the voting less volatile, with smaller voting swings? If it was, then hiding the points until a few minutes or hours after the comment is posted (i.e. until the volatility becomes reasonable) could replicate the effect. If not, then maybe the voting swings are inherent as a statistical property of any sufficiently large community, in which case you may want to display a confidence interval of the voting score instead of the score itself.

Re:What Startups Are Really Like on Monday October 26, 2009 @03:04AM (#902756)

The reason not to put your all your eggs in one basket is not the usual one, which applies even when you know which basket is best.

The last paragraph of 7 has an extra 'your' (but otherwise you're not repeating yourself ;-)

Re:Experiment: No Comment Scores on Saturday September 26, 2009 @04:25PM (#845993)

If you're trying to prevent the wrong sorts of attractions, you might also try it on a selective basis. For example, if a thread hasn't received a vote in the past hour or day, or if a user isn't logged in and can't vote, you could continue to display the votes in that thread.

Re:LaTeX vs. Word vs. Writer on Monday November 24, 2008 @12:25AM (#374482)

As scott_s suggested, LyX is a prominent LaTeX WYSIWYG editor. I use TeXmacs (http://texmacs.org) on Linux because I input a lot of Greek characters and do a lot of Maxima computations while taking class notes, and the ease of Ctrl-Enter makes it like Mathematica notebooks but much faster for writing. It doesn't save natively in LaTeX format like LyX does, and doesn't implement all of LaTeX, but it's an option worth considering if you're in a similar situation.

Re:Use BitTorrent to Upgrade to Ubuntu ‘Intrepid Ibex’ on Thursday October 30, 2008 @11:57AM (#348780)

I've been using this program to update my Debian Lenny system for the past month or so, without problems. The status page says that the total number of users in the distributed hash table is still pretty low, but it's probably because the software is relatively new. The program mentioned in the article, apt-p2p, doesn't actually use bittorrent, although the author of apt-p2p, Cameron Dale (http://www.camrdale.org/), previously wrote a monolithic apt bittorrent plugin called DebTorrent (http://debtorrent.alioth.debian.org/). As far as I can tell, with both programs apt performs checksumming as it normally does, though it checks using hashes from the Packages.gz file downloaded via the programs.

Re:Ask HN: Have you used iptables to prevent procrastination? on Saturday May 17, 2008 @09:05PM (#193066)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but here's a guess at a Mac OS X version of the commands:

  sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80
  sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 500Byte/s

Re:Ask HN: Have you used iptables to prevent procrastination? on Saturday May 17, 2008 @07:53PM (#193036)

Yes, fortunately they're still up at port 6881 and have a ways to go to get down to 80 :-)

Re:Ask HN: Have you used iptables to prevent procrastination? on Saturday May 17, 2008 @07:46PM (#193032)

Glad you didn't procrastinate this time around...and glad I wasn't the only one to think of it :-)

Re:Ask HN: Have you used iptables to prevent procrastination? on Saturday May 17, 2008 @07:42PM (#193030)

Yes, my router provides access restrictions by day, hour, website, and keyword, but I wanted a throttle for my own computer that wouldn't effect the rest of my family. If you're the only one using the connection, then controls at the router or at Comcast's routers makes sense. Also mentioned on the other thread was Freedom ( http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/freedom/ ), a Mac-only application that disables access for a specific period of time or until you reboot. However, throttling sounded better to me, and other iptables modules (e.g. time and owner) can match packets for certain users and certain times of the day. I haven't thought it all out yet, I'm seeing what helps the most to improve my efficiency. (RescueTime, feel free to implement this feature :-)

Re:PG: Disconnecting Distraction on Saturday May 17, 2008 @06:26PM (#192968)

After reading your comment and others', I realized that iptables might be able to help out here. I wrote up an Ask HN ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192953 ) which shows my current setup for throttling internet usage. Granted, storing pages in the browser cache is one great way to access documentation, but throttling might allow one to add pages to the cache while keeping procrastination at bay.

Ask HN: Have you used iptables to prevent procrastination?

Posted by b3eck on Saturday May 17, 2008 @05:58PM
from the ask-hn dept.

After reading the comments on today's Disconnecting Distraction essay by PG (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=192654), I realized that I wanted to throttle my internet usage, not relegate it to a few times during the day. That way, I could still spend some time online, but the "Unable to connect" page would set off alarms. Is there anyone out there who uses iptables to prevent...

( Read More... | 10 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Re:Poll: Ban Valleywag? on Friday April 11, 2008 @03:15AM (#160836)

How about time-regulated voting for a)? ( see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=147383 ) Presumably, people who go on an impulse voting spree do it without much thought and would be greatly discouraged by periodic voting prevention, whereas those who take the time to make thoughtful votes and comments wouldn't mind the regulation as much.

As if the horse isn't already dead enough

Posted by b3eck on Wednesday March 26, 2008 @06:58PM
from the self-post dept.

"Once again the top story is an embarrassment to News.YC. And unfortunately it is mostly the recently arrived users who voted it up. Maybe it's inevitable that I'll have to turn on some form of vote weighting." -pgConsider the effects of regulated voting (i.e. removing the voting links after a user's vote for a period of time, e.g. 1 hour for submissions and 5 minutes for comments) and...

( Read More... | no comments | on HN )