_gd3l (u/_gd3l) - Readit News

_gd3l commented on Government Surveillance and Internet Search Behavior papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pape... · Posted by u/mo

rscott · 11 years ago

The quality of writing in this paper is quite terrible. I'm not sure what kind of review this went though, but I'm kind of shocked it got approved with data points named "After Prism Revelations". Revelations is an emotional word for that data descriptor.

_gd3l · 11 years ago

"Revelations" is not emotional, it's a form of "reveal".

"After PRISM Revelations" simply means "After PRISM was revealed", since it was hidden from the public before. So, Snowden revealed the existence and scope of PRISM to the group of people whose search behavior this study is analyzing (the general public).

Not an emotional word and, overall, not bad writing in the study.

_gd3l commented on How I Became the Most Hated Person in San Francisco for a Day brianmayer.com/2014/07/ho... · Posted by u/bmmayer1

_gd3l · 11 years ago

Don't lie and pretend to be an individual just making a reservation for a night out on the town.

Maybe this has value, is good or bad, whatever: but be clear with restaurants that you're a for-profit scalping business making money off their inventory.

The douchiness of scalping reservations can be argued....

But there is not a single logical defense for LYING to the restaurants about being an individual. Writing a blog post about why you're lying doesn't make it okay, either.

Be clear with businesses about what you're doing with what THEY broke their backs to build, and let them opt in if they want. Cool, could be a good service and help some restaurants out or something.

But stop lying. That is douchey, is unethical in every way with no justification, and is worthy of all negative media — regardless of how overkill SF media can be sometimes.

Stop lying.

_gd3l commented on Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/wmeredith

ozborn · 13 years ago

It isn't overlooked, follow the link to the technical report.

http://www.tappi.org/Hide/Events/2012-Nanotechnology-Confere...

_gd3l · 13 years ago

It can't still be illegal here in the United States if it wasn't overlooked; ask the average person if non-psychoactive marijuana was used to make cars at one point and most will look at you with confusion, if they even answer.

The history and incredible, incredible use of hemp is extremely overlooked in general. Good luck finding it mentioned more than in passing in a high school text book, or finding a politician aware of the fact that it's almost incomprehensibly better for paper, clothing, and could create - oh my god - so many jobs, the thing a lot of politicians seem to be talking about and promising; but directly preventing (this is both parties, by the way).

_gd3l commented on Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs” unfinishedman.com/nootrop... · Posted by u/cbarnsdale

ScottAS · 13 years ago

It's too bad that this reads like spam. Anyone care to share links to legitimate research?

_gd3l · 13 years ago

There are a lot of shitty survey-type studies, but there is some good mechanistic research you can turn up just by searching the specific chemical names on Pubmed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed)

_gd3l commented on Nootropics – The Facts About “Smart Drugs” unfinishedman.com/nootrop... · Posted by u/cbarnsdale

stephengillie · 13 years ago

Unlike in athletics, academics isn’t necessarily a zero sum game. While in a race there is necessarily a winner and a loser, nobody in academics is held back if another student is better able to retain their information.

No, but the doped student's advantage could cause her to be selected over another (undoped) student in college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions.

Does this mean we'll soon see articles about how the Ivy League and most hacker dens dope more than the Tour de France?

_gd3l · 13 years ago

Who cares if thinkers use drugs? They have since the dawn of time, and it's helped all of us by letting already brilliant people get an extra boost. Whether it's psychedelics, marijuana, or nootropics, we know substances can not-insignificantly impact our creativity and inspiration.

Nevermind what a specific college or professional sports organization has to say about this; maybe someday they'll start thinking themselves, perhaps with the help of some substances, and realize that maybe the "college entrance exams, program entrance exams, and other educational competitions" are themselves a bit silly in the context of trying to truly find important ideas.

_gd3l commented on Why wood pulp is world's new wonder material newscientist.com/article/... · Posted by u/wmeredith

_gd3l · 13 years ago

Sad that hemp is overlooked, it's truly a wonder material. So much so that it sounds fake.

http://www.informationdistillery.com/hemp.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Wears_No_Clothes

_gd3l commented on A Front End Engineer's Manifesto f2em.com/... · Posted by u/hdragomir

_gd3l · 13 years ago

anyone more interested in the "brain hemispheres" bit (http://f2em.com/#brain-hemispheres) should check out Miyamoto Musashi's collection of writings called "The Book of Five Rings" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Five_Rings

Just some great writing on this idea of being a "balanced" human, and how that influences, informs, and improves your skills. His skills were as a samurai, but the principles apply pretty universally. I got a lot out of the book, you can find it free on iBooks, Kindle, etc.

EDIT wow, I actually didn't find a free version on Kindle, but here's a few formats for free from Archive.org -> http://archive.org/details/MiyamotoMusashi-BookOfFiveRingsgo...

_gd3l commented on How to be a growth hacker andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/... · Posted by u/akshxy

freshhawk · 13 years ago

This attitude annoys the creative person in me as well, who loves writing software.

But you can't be mad at the business people moving in, optimizing the process because they got into the business because they saw an opportunity to make money.

I'm sure tv writers felt the same way about the first rise of infomercials and televangelists. Hucksterism works and it's good capitalism. And it always annoys the creative people who see themselves as artists or artisans.

_gd3l · 13 years ago

You can definitely be mad at them.

If they're stupid and sacrificing the quality of the actual art/software/website/thing, that's not good. It's easy to get mad at this.

And when there's so many of these types of people doing so much damage and causing so much waste, that's really not good. It's very easy to get mad at this.