Viewing profile — alf

Which begs the question... If they don't know enough about rockets to build them, how can they possibly know how to safely repair them?

MediaCrossing, Inc. is hiring a full time Senior Data Engineer/Data Architect. The position is in Stamford, CT, or full-time remote. Several members of the engineering team are wor…

Are you referring to skiing? Tribes is an interesting example of a "hack" that completely re-invents the game (in most people's opinions, for the better). For those not familiar, a…

I fell into this trap too. I got a stress fracture on my shin from a tendon pulling on that area much more than the bone was used to. It took months to heal. The feet are a complex…

It looks like the GoPro and the remnants of the balloon helped it. The extra mass of the GroPro body allowed it to fall flat with the camera and ballon allowing it to spin on it's …

The page mentions "This is an experimental course that will probably have some bugs and kinks. It may or may not be related to the plenary talk I'm giving at PyCon'2012 (wink ;-)".…

Coincidentally, preparing for my compilers class this semester, I was just wondering if it would be easier to write in Python instead of SML, which the class uses. I was just looki…

As a programmer, would I choose to be a member of a community based on open and free information, one where contributions are open to all of humanity, or a community built to feed …

I couldn't finish reading this either. It was too disturbing. Before anyone jumps to vilify the China or the Chinese for this, remember that these kinds of evils have historically …

Direct link to HTML5 version. http://www.baroque.me/ Beautiful.

I like Louis C.K., was made aware of his new video through this posting, and just bought the video, but I don't think this belongs on HN.

I think I first read it here on HN actually :) I think this trick is so great because it's so counter intuitive to a person in the mindset of getting something done. Stopping when …

The Hemingway Trick: Stop in the middle. Never stop working at the natural barriers. They next time you start working, the barrier will be the first thing you encounter, and you wo…

I do mostly C and Python in Emacs, but have recently switched to using Emacs in a full screen terminal (iTerm). It works pretty well, and is the only environment I can make consist…

I have a '10 MBA 13. It's really an almost ideal laptop. Pros: -It runs a Unix based OS, but one that I don't have to install and configure myself. -It's thin and light -Battery la…

What incentive would hardware venders have to provide open source drivers for a tiny enthusiast operating system? No other OSs have had that requirement. It's hard enough to get wo…

Really interesting question. I wonder if there are any small countries willing to give it a try. I bet there are more countries without a military than ones without military secret…

This is really more AMD throwing in the towel vs. Intel. It's really disappointing to see a competitor leave such an important market. I'm much more disappointed to see the X86 mar…

Agreed. Societal norms are needed to build the trust required for all large enough groups to function efficiently. This is why there is less crime in mono-cultures: everyone is a m…

Visual proofs are uniquely beautiful. See the 2 & 3 proofs of Pythagorean Theorem: http://www.cut-the-knot.org/pythagoras/index.shtml

It hardly matters to these birds. http://animal.discovery.com/birds/ocean-gyre-birds/albatross... The argument that the ocean is so vast that you can dump anything in it without il…

What if a million people throw one bottle?

People have been about the same intelligence for a long time. Steve, Dennis, and John were no smarter than their predecessors, they were just applying their intelligence in an area…

So did I. It's odd that something that can't be found in 10 minutes is now considered "hard to find".

Having used Amazon Cloud Player quite a bit, as well as other similar web services (lala, grooveshark), I can say that Cloud Player is the worst web based music player I've used. C…