PotatoEngineer

Joined 17 years ago

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229
Submissions
128
Member since
Aug 7
d13b2ac1c6b22c9a1557ee5a5dd4f41855f65133
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Recent submissions

Comment · 9 years ago
If the advertisers can see the MAID for each ad impression, then there's no need to be too specific about who you target - it'll just cost you more. On the other hand, if the advertiser doesn't get to see the MAID-per-impression, then the easy solution is to supply your one target MAID, plus another 999 bogus MAIDs (or, if the platform verifies that MAIDs are accurate before allowing you to use them, then you use 999 MAIDs from Liberia or some other country that your target won't visit).
Comment · 9 years ago
If you like something, upvote it. If you're only saying the equivalent of "+1", please don't post - it's just (well-meaning) clutter.

Also: check the guidelines link at the very bottom of the site (in tiny, nigh-unreadable type!): don't talk about votes, either up or down.

Comment · 9 years ago
Outcomes! Right, that's what they were called. Thanks for naming it.
Comment · 9 years ago
This question of "what skills are students missing?" reminds me of the new teaching methods they were trying out as I started high school. The new teaching program centered around objectives. The idea was that each objective was a skill that the student needed to learn, but the upshot was that you had to score more than 70% on every single quiz to pass the class, and that you could retake every quiz you failed, repeatedly.

The implementation varied between classes - in my World History class, there were a large number of objectives, and each objective was met by a small quiz that tested ~one skill. (There were a lot of retaken quizzes in that class.) In Biology, there were about 10 objectives for the entire semester, so you could still pass while missing a few small skills, as long as those missing skills were spread out among different units.

My high school used that "objectives" system less and less as I moved up the grades -I assume that most teachers got tired of it pretty quickly and just decided to make their usual teaching material "look like objectives" rather than rebuild their curriculum in later years.

Comment · 11 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
No; I lost the starmap when I still had some 5 1/4" diskettes that said "Star Control II" on them.
Comment · 11 years ago
Star Control II uses a starmap as copy protection ("tell me the constellation at these coordinates..."). I lost the starmap at one point, but if you can remember just one of the answers, you can just keep running the game until that answer is the correct one. (The copy protection is at the very beginning, and the game won't bug you during play.)
Comment · 12 years ago
Using a socket wrench rather than, say, a crescent wrench means there's more nut in contact with the wrench at any given moment. So the wrench doesn't have to be quite as strong, since the torque is distributed over a larger surface area and thus a larger volume of wrench is available to absorb it.
Comment · 13 years ago
The current knowledge of jellyfish intelligence is "we've figured out they have memories." Jellyfish are extremely simple creatures; the "brighter" ones are known for their ability to avoid obstacles. [1] These are not particularly sentient creatures.

[1] Coates et al. 2006 "The spectral sensitivity of the lens eyes of a box jellyfish" JEB

Comment · 13 years ago
You convince your loved ones to switch to something else. If they won't, then you must realize that, deep in your heart, you love freedom more than you love your loved ones, and must switch to non-video calls or other methods of communication.
Comment · 13 years ago
Maybe the market is small enough, and the transactions small enough, that the competent hackers are attacking other systems.
Comment · 13 years ago
Almost every single non-reply post on this article is criticizing how much the app isn't AirBnB. Maybe the new measure of success on HN is finding the excellent discussions under those criticizing posts? Those criticizing top posts always have a huge amount of discussion under them.
Comment · 13 years ago
It's not just jacking up prices; it's about keeping competition down to reasonable levels. If you have the world's best restaurant that everyone needs to eat at, then great; but most restaurants are going to be in the middling end of the scale, where they're vulnerable to having "too much" competition. If you serve decent Mexican food, then your revenue will be damaged by every "decent Mexican place" that opens in your vicinity.

Don't get me wrong; there's plenty of room for "decent Mexican places," but if too many of them open, then they might all end up with not enough customers to survive. Limiting the number of restaurants means that there will be enough customers for most of them.

Comment · 13 years ago
I wouldn't expect most "handshake deals" with a friend/spouse to require that level of formality - unless money is changing hands.
Comment · 13 years ago
That first one reduces your privacy even further: not only does Group A track you, but now everyone knows that Group A is tracking you, allowing Group B to ask Group A for data on you.

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