Disqus - Latest Comments for randomwalker

Re: grab the pitchforks!… again

randomwalker — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 14:32:05 -0000

Thanks for airing this view.

A related point is that people like to pretend that the security-usability tradeoff doesn't exist. Dropbox optimizes for convenience, and security-wise this is absolutely the best they can do, and people need to get used to it.

For most users, myself included, convenience trumps the benefits of client-side encryption. What would be good though is if they offered a specific folder that had that capability.

Re: The Cicada Principle and Why It Matters to Web Designers

randomwalker — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 13:38:38 -0000

It's a sad day when "relative primality" has to be renamed "cicada principle" for the benefit of a math-challenged audience.

Edit. In response to the comments. I grew up in a country with a different—dare I say better—K-12 math curriculum, so it's surprising, and yes, a little sad that most people don't know what relative primality means. Including, apparently, everyone whose profession isn't math, physics or "complex engineering."

Second, I'd have no problem with the analogy if it were accurate, but it misses the mark a little—the pixel widths don't need to be prime but only relatively prime.

Re: the difference between privacy and security

randomwalker — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:09:41 -0000

Hmm, I don't think there's nearly as clean a dividing line as that.

The main reason why the average Facebook user needs HTTPS is to prevent someone at the coffee shop from snooping. And if you asked the average Facebook user which term better fit this use-case, I'd bet it would be privacy nine times out of ten.

Edit. Oh, you already mentioned the coffee shop thing. I have no idea why you say "it has little to do with privacy."

Edit 2. Thinking about it a little bit more, I guess I can see where you're coming from. You have a clearly-defined access-control model in your head, and wireless snooping violates this model. To the average person, these lines are fuzzy at best. Coffee shop snooping, then, is no different from looking over someone's shoulder. Your characterization would probably elicit a reaction such as

"But I'm not a hacker! I was just trying to see if she'd mentioned me to her friends yet."

Re: The Geomblog: Are open tech report sites taking off in CS ?

randomwalker — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 01:11:51 -0000

The one potential flaw I see is that people may have started tagging arXiv papers more liberally (i.e., multiple categories) over the years. In fact I think there's a good chance this is happening, because the arXiv categories are growing much faster than ECCC.

Re: infoKonnect: An Indian Stanford Student Co-creates 'Do Not Track' Software

randomwalker — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 14:21:48 -0000

I'm not sure why it matters that I'm Indian.

Besides, I'm not a student, but I've given up trying to get reporters to understand that.

Re: Measuring Measures - blog - The Next Silicon Valley

randomwalker — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:37:41 -0000

Fantastic article, guys. Mad props.

Re: The never-ending finite loop

randomwalker — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:28:47 -0000

I meant that my statement about arrays was wrong, because recursion is another way to get memory.

Re: The never-ending finite loop

randomwalker — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 18:15:33 -0000

I would suggest defining an arbitrary lower bound on running time like 10^100 or 10^200 or whatever, to make the problem definition concrete, instead of the baryonic mumbo-jumbo.

It seems clear that an array is necessary -- a program with b bits of memory must terminate in 2^b or fewer steps, if it terminates at all. So any solution will have to use roughly the same principle as yours. (Edit: I was wrong.. recursion. Duh.)

A previous comment suggested running it backwards. I haven't checked if that works, but if it does, you should be able to get it down to 44, since x[0] can be expressed as *x.

Re: Superfeedr : Fun Numbers

randomwalker — Thu, 06 May 2010 02:57:33 -0000

Whoa! I've never seen that symbol before. You learn something new every day...

Re: Superfeedr : Fun Numbers

randomwalker — Wed, 05 May 2010 21:08:21 -0000

Very impressive numbers!

BTW, 0.8% is 80 out of 10k :-)

Re: Netflix Privacy Research

randomwalker — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 02:20:34 -0000

I think we have met before, but I cannot recall where. Was it at PLSC? On another note, I notice you have an article coming out about behavioral advertising. We did some work in that space as well (although from the technology perspective; not very related.) But FWIW: http://crypto.stanford.edu/...

Re: Google’s cross-platform advertising strategy is in shambles

randomwalker — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:40:43 -0000

The expression is "X is a shambles," not "X is in shambles." Shambles is a singular noun in this context. Nobody uses that word anymore, but the expression has survived.

Re: The Price of my Dreams - $60 a Week

randomwalker — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:24:49 -0000

This is brilliant. My time is very valuable to me, and this is something I'm going to look into. For now, I've figured out how to make healthy food in just 3-5 minutes. And I save on grocery shopping time by stocking my fridge once in two weeks. And I make a trip to the sandwich shop down the street once a day. The down side is that it doesn't taste that great and I don't get as much vegetables as I should.

Re: DEMO 08: High tech hitchhiking appears, with Mapflow’s iPhone app

randomwalker — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:08:27 -0000

I wrote about this idea five months ago :) Props to Mapflow for commercializing this.

My take on what Mapflow will need to do to succeed.

Re: Polls vs Markets

randomwalker — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 04:22:57 -0000

In addition to what andy said, intrade *has* been getting tighter in the last few days -- it's now around 55-45 obama, not 60-40.

BTW, Andy -- a three point lead by itself doesn't mean much, you need to know confidence intervals to turn that into probabilities.

Re: Venture capital: Still white, still male, but getting better (maybe)

randomwalker — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:22:44 -0000

I did think an attraction to risk-taking behavior is a pretty important quality in a VC, but you know more about the subject than I do. I haven't even met with any VC's yet. And yeah, I have nothing to say on the subject of race.

I guess your last statement pinpoints where we disagree -- I say if some people are happier/more productive in some professions, let them be :-)

P.S Disqus needs some UI improvements! If I make a mistake logging in, it takes me to a registration widget and I lose my comment (unless I want to end up creating a second account). This is the second time :(