jtolle

5 ms·

1.
by jtolle 12y ago
Not directly related to the piece (from 2010, although still interesting), but the first comment has a link to Brad Templeton's website, which was nice to discover!
2.
by jtolle 12y ago
I've liked other stuff by William Bernstein. His book "The Birth of Plenty" is excellent. I haven't read the pamphlet mentioned in the article, but I just downloaded it. I'll be interested to see what his advice is
3.
by jtolle 13y ago
Isn't there an old saw about every big "Web 2.0" business being something that took what people were already doing but made it "social"? So Facebook made blogging social, Twitter made texting social, etc. 10+ years
4.
by jtolle 14y ago
A round of applause for the Clean Air Act!
5.
by jtolle 15y ago
I remember being so excited that my brother and I skipped school and "snuck in" to the ACS meeting in Dallas. This was after their first announcement, but they came and gave a big talk to a packed hall. I seem to recall it was hurriedly put
6.
by jtolle 15y ago
This is an interesting article by someone who went through the actual coffeeshop version of the coffeeshop fallacy: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/200...
7.
by jtolle 15y ago
How awesome would it be if pi + e were found to be rational? Maybe everything starts cancelling out past the zillionth digit...
8.
by jtolle 15y ago
I am now going to lock myself in the bathroom until I can prove that pi + e is irrational. I mean, how hard can it be?
9.
by jtolle 15y ago
Relevant link: http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2009/03/23/functional-in-the-s...
10.
by jtolle 15y ago
But Spain and Italy are in a much different situation than Greece or the other smaller "peripheral" Euro economies. Basically, Greece needs a bailout or must leave the Euro. Italy needs non-insane monetary policy: http://krugman.blogs.nyti
11.
by jtolle 15y ago
You need to go get yourself a recording of Rubinstein playing Chopin's Nocturnes. Hurry! EDIT: I seek no arguments. Wikipedia says nocturnes are generally thought of as "expressive and lyrical". Surely that should be of interest to hackers.
12.
by jtolle 15y ago
I was going to mention that article too. It's a great explanation. Money and monetary systems are human creations, not laws of nature.
13.
by jtolle 15y ago
Your point about language mattering is spot on. If your language has the right features (even just `typedef`), I don't think you need any flavor of Hungarian. In the right context, though, it can be useful. For example, I do a lot of Excel+
14.
by jtolle 15y ago
I don't have any particular profound comments myself, but this is a constant tension in my own work, and I'd like to see what others have to say. I build a lot of one-off models in conjunction with end users. There is often managerial confu
15.
John D. Cook: Usability versus composability(johndcook.com)
5 points by jtolle 15y ago|1 comments
16.
by jtolle 15y ago
I don't know, maybe "20% of 2010 U.S. income came from..."? I don't have editing powers, though.
17.
by jtolle 15y ago
Actually the article is talking about income. The current HN title is wrong. According to the linked article: "Close to $2 of every $10 that went into Americans’ wallets last year were payments like jobless benefits, food stamps, Social Sec
18.
by jtolle 15y ago
This of course exemplifies why it's impossible to declare almost any technique categorically "good" or "bad". Sometimes early returns make code shorter and more clear. Sometimes the opposite. To borrow from Stroustrup, experience and taste
19.
by jtolle 15y ago
But surely the condition that it's hard to make more of something is necessary but not sufficient to make that something a good "money" candidate. People expect e.g. gold to continue to be money-like mostly because of its multi-thousand yea
20.
by jtolle 15y ago
Wait a second. Maybe I need some reeducation myself here, but you're pinning the mass-murders of the 20th century on "intellectuals"? And then saying that's the explanation for the present day trend of distrust in science? (Well, that plus
21.
by jtolle 16y ago
That's funny, because I look at that and think it's too bad I don't know anything about COBOL. It's not like I'm planning to learn it or anything, but it's quite different from anything I've ever worked with. So, questions: I know I'll neve
22.
by jtolle 16y ago
Plus, decent building codes can actually enhance overall efficiency. Lots of things in the code don't really "cost" anything. They just enforce hard-won "it's best to do it this way" knowledge that, shockingly, many builders are oblivious t
23.
by jtolle 16y ago
I think this is key. I answer questions to help other people. I also answer them to help improve my own ability to explain solutions to programming problems. Usually the problems are ones that I myself have dealt with before. I tend to answ
24.
Craig Ferguson explains the appeal of Dr. Who (through dance)(youtube.com)
1 points by jtolle 16y ago|0 comments
25.
by jtolle 16y ago
After I read that I poked around and also saw this about using "push" and "pull" to describe "framework" vs. "library" and I like it too: http://pchiusano.blogspot.com/2010/09/push-libraries-vs-pull... And this... http://pchiusano.blogsp
26.
by jtolle 16y ago
I thought it was an interesting article, and the research sounds interesting and worthwhile, but I also couldn't help thinking of this: http://xkcd.com/793/
27.
by jtolle 16y ago
Plus he's the only "mainstream" author I know of who regularly uses D&D/gaming references while making "serious" points, which is awesome. I just love this: "Inducing them, and those in between, to change class, to trade their plate for
28.
by jtolle 16y ago
There is no mention of programming or technology in the piece, but it struck me as relevant anyway. I'm an engineer with one foot in the software world and sometimes I have trouble shifting smoothly. And as a bonus, there is a great D&D
29.
Changing your cultural armor is hard(theatlantic.com)
13 points by jtolle 16y ago|3 comments
30.
by jtolle 16y ago
Hey, someone has to stick up for the lolcats! I'm only half joking when I tell people that computers were invented so that my wife and her family and I can sit around drinking margaritas and watching Jan Terri videos on YouTube...

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