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Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

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141–150 of 253 posts

Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

#142

Whether you consider these things amazing is up to you, but I'm happy about them. * I obtained a government apology for the mistreatment of Alan Turing * I wrote an original book * I went to Oxford after my state school told me I wasn't up to it, I stayed and did a doctorate there * I learnt to swim when I was 21 * I learnt to speak French fluently as an adult

To learn French, did you take classes? self-taught? What did you find was the most effective approach?

Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

#143

* I built a distributed search engine for my final year college project, when my teachers and friends told me I was taking on too much. It survived two project mates walking out, and some rather dumb ones pushed in. I got a 97 for it, and consider it THE accomplishment of my college years. * Wrote an indexing program in C that crashed a Netware network. :P * I've read the Bhagwad Gita, the Koran, the Bible and the Ta…

Speaking Hindi is not a necessary condition for one to be considered Indian. Tao te ching is not a religious book.

I disagree about the Tao Te Ching not being a religious book. It is the primary book of Taoism.

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao"

That is a paraphrase from memory of the opening of the book. Which seems to me a lot like the Jewish refusal to speak the formal name for God because it is too holy and they couldn't speak it truthfully.

Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

#145
post #56
post #2

I don't normally mention this stuff, but since you asked... * I started at university when I was 13. * I won the Putnam Competition. * I hold a world record for computing Pi. * My bsdiff binary patching tool is used on tens of millions of computers and has saved several hundred human-years of waiting for software updates to download. * I found a security bug in an Intel CPU. (Osvik/Shamir/Tromer also found it, but I…

but you didn't figure out about canadian sales tax yet ;) http://www.tarsnap.com/legal-why.html#NOCANADIANS

Uh-Oh.

You can't just say "I don't sell to Canadians" and therefore avoid GST and the CRA.

The last thing he should be looking for is an expensive audit.

Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

#146

I played at CBGB.

I once read that bands should not list CBGB as an achievement because of the sheer number of acts that perform there. It makes me wonder if that is intended as a humorous comment.

Regardless, my musical career never took me that far.

Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

#147
post #2

I don't normally mention this stuff, but since you asked... * I started at university when I was 13. * I won the Putnam Competition. * I hold a world record for computing Pi. * My bsdiff binary patching tool is used on tens of millions of computers and has saved several hundred human-years of waiting for software updates to download. * I found a security bug in an Intel CPU. (Osvik/Shamir/Tromer also found it, but I…

Dude, I saw Dan_Sim's comment below and I think you're headed for a world of hurt pretending that you are GST exempt if you ignore Canadians.

You need to speak with an accountant - if CRA decides to audit you (as they would seeing that you are declaring income with no GST remittance) you could be in a world of hurt.

See here: http://blog.9thsphere.com/blog/are-you-billing-gst-correctly...

Oh, and your list makes me feel unworthy. :-)

Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

#148
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intelligentsia in Chicago. Only the best my friend :-)

Intelligentsia isn't bad, but there's always Metropolis and Asado :)

Metropolis and Asado are kind of hard to get to if you don't live on the North Side. Intelligentsia is nice for those of us who live/work in the loop.

Re: Ask HN: Cool Things You've Done (Brag Thread)

#149

* Taught myself pascal at 12 and many other languages since * Skip a grade in primary school * Got a 82(top 10 uni in UK) for MSc dissertation * Discovered the British museum algorithm while meditating * Sold tamarine balls when I was 5 for a quarter

Rather rediscovered british algorithm independently
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