orp's comments

On: Shortcomings of Amazon Mechanical Turk May Threate...

[orp]

My startup, tasq.ai, was founded to solve this exact problem, as we have a live, successful product with all of the features you describe and more.

We're happy to have a conversation - feel free to reach out to me via my profile email or you can find our contact details at https://www.tasq.ai/

On: Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star

[orp]

A similar concept was used in Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny, but with fantasy elements.

https://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Rediscovered-Classics-Roger-Z...

On: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality finish...

[orp]

Thank you, Eliezer. It's been a great run and the last few weeks have been indeed special

On: Scala Best Practices

[orp]

Hi,

Quick comment on item 2.3: SHOULD NOT update a var using loops or conditions.

you conclude that this expression is the best option: val sum = elements.map(_.value).sum

This expression is not equivalent to the previous options in performance and memory, as the map expression will create a entire new sequence.

For large sequences, a better option is to write: val sum = elements.view.map(_.value).sum

On: Rum Deal: America’s booze laws are terrible

[orp]

Fun fact about the UK. In order to get a license to drive a taxi in London, applicants need to pass an extensive test. Passing the test takes years of preparation and multiple attempts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_the_United_Kingdom#...

[rhizome → orp]

There's a documentary about that called "The Knowledge:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYZcG2mY9Fs

[dublinben → orp]

I bet you could write a bot that pastes that link any time a comment mentions UK and taxis in proximity.

[twic → dublinben]

Just be grateful it's not the one about MRI showing black cab drivers have significantly enlarged hippocampi.

(for those not familiar with cerebral anatomy, the hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for racism, swearing at cyclists, and tax evasion)

On: Edward Snowden nominated for Nobel peace prize

[orp]

According to site you're citing, the nomination was actually an attempt at satire by a Swedish MP:

"Apparently though, Brandt never intended the nomination to be taken seriously. Brandt was to all intents and purposes a dedicated antifascist, and had intended this nomination more as a satiric criticism of the current political debate in Sweden."

No need for complex explanations when a simple one is given.

On: Ask HN: What's your speciality, and what's your "F...

[orp]

For the interested, some links to Bayes' theorem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes'_theorem

http://yudkowsky.net/rational/bayes

Useful if you want to know (or need a good way to explain) what a posterior probability is and how it's different from a prior probability

On: Callbacks as our Generation's Goto Statement

[orp]

Akka adds something similar in Scala land (and Java) called Dataflow concurrency.

http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/snapshot/scala/dataflow.html

On: Brand new Scala-lang.org

[orp]

You should take a look at scala's OpenHashMap - a mutable hashmap in the scala standard library that is often as fast as ju.HashMap. Link to scala doc: http://www.scala-lang.org/api/current/index.html#scala.colle...

[trailfox → orp]

I have used OpenHashMap, but the results are mixed sometimes is much faster, other times it's much slower. It really depends on the use case.

On: Ask HN: Who is hiring? (March 2013)

[orp]

Meta comment - as somebody who recently introduced Scala into an organization as our preferred language for new development (co-existing with a Java code base), I'm really happy to see all the demand for Scala engineers here.