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It does amaze me that a colossal nation such as China, with all the manufacturing resources at its disposal, has only one carrier. It almost feels like they haven't even bothered.
Perhaps building such ships would actually harm their international relations because it could be seen as a precursor to aggression. | The Chinese leadership has possibly looked the costly Imperial wars like Iraq, Vietnam, Algeria and Afghanistan for both the USSR & USA and decided that power projection is costly and counterproductive.
Also they might be waiting for UAV launches from nuclear subs. Might be cheaper and about as effective. |
Yea... I'm still confused as to the whole point of pure/near-pure functional programming if we're not getting better code density/more productivity against other languages which I (and some others) find easier to work with.
I guess all I'm saying is "convince me!" :) I'm all ears. | what converted me was having to do highly stateful, real time statistical models. you have data coming in from multiple sources and you have to do lots of computation on them. if you don't have persistent data structures then it becomes so easy for the program to use data from the future or excised noise and your resul... |
https://www.dropbox.com/help/247/en
On the first I was like "ops, said bullshit"... but actually it seems like it's GPL. | That is only nautilus-dropbox (file manager integration) and the installer. Dropbox itself is distributed as a binary blob. |
People who are really good at their jobs obsess about their tools- artists obsess over their paint, carpenters obsess over their power tools, cooks obsess over their knives.
PHP is like buying a chef's knife at Wal-Mart. You can create a 5 star dish with it, it cuts perfectly fine, but it doesn't inspire the same passi... | That's fine if you're starting a project or a business from scratch. Choose whatever tools make you happy. But if you work for someone else, chances are you will be stuck using the language they use. And if you are professional, you do it. And you still try to do a good job. Like Tiger Woods switching to Nike clubs. |
The simplicity and flexibility of Excel make it great for one-offs and random hack jobs that don't require a new application or full-fledged report. At the same time, it has some minor idiosyncrasies that can be infuriating and make me wary of trusting it in the hands of average end-users who need to enter/analyze impo... | Depending on how you want to use the data, you may be able to get around this problem by adding a ' infront of the number. It won't show on the cell display and acts as an instruction to hold leading zeros. |
I'm skeptical of this unnamed company's actual abilities. In the initial email how are they able to identify anything about your visitors before you've installed the tracking code? Since they apparently can see search terms used to reach your site the only thing I can think of is their code is running on some site that... | The initial email comes with what it calls a mock example. I think that's what you're referring to. |
I must be missing something basic here: If someone refinances their student loan, that means they get a loan from someone and uses the proceeds from that loan to pay the federal government back the balance on their student loan, right? So they're saying that people paying back their student loans will cost the paxpayer... | What's happening is that lenders are saying "we'll pay back your loan and offer you a lesser interest rate". So they pay the government the 200,000 you owe at 6.9% APR and then send you a bill for the 200,000 with a 4.4% APR. The USG loses all the interest since everything is paid back immediately and these lenders poc... |
I don't get this trend at all. Something is wrong with priorities and perceived risk vs. real risk.
It's pretty difficult to assault someone physically over the internet (http://bash.org/?4281). On the other hand, woman broadcasts her gender when in public. Will x years from now we all be walking in some kind of unifor... | Lets propose that you have a child, and in your wisdom, decide that letting your child roam on the streets is low risk and thus ok.
Do you then proclaim to everyone that they must let their children roam alone on the streets as the real risk is low?
What is important is people have a choice to act on their perceived ri... |
backups are for suckers. keep the data on a few different spinning disks. if you can solve data synch between two sites, just keep your data synched.
it's much better to ask yourself how long to replicate your existing system then how to back up. pxe boot to a kernel that you can install over the network with, bcfg2 to... | A real-time mirror won't help if your data gets corrupted (via a fat-fingered shell command, errant script, or a compromised system). When it's appropriate, it's awesome, but I don't think it's a replacement for a static "offline" backup, |
Since you only support IE9+, I don't see how any serious project would pick your charts. IE8 is still #3 most common browser version in the world. IE7 is #5.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201105... | You'd be surprised how many serious projects aren't all that interested in IE7 and 8 users.
Edit: I work for a funded startup. Let me give you some numbers:
3-5% IE users, a fraction of those using <9. Demographically, very few/if any of those are our customers.
Disproportionate effort for very little benefit to our us... |
http://imgur.com/VuSH2j5 | Haha, epic response. |
I don't understand the presentation.
Allow the user to choose nationality from a drop down box, then show a world map colored various ways:
- green no visa
- blue for easy to obtain visas
- red for difficult to obtain visas
On a side note, it should probably be "United States citizen" and not "US". Also, US -> China is... | To be honest, I don't think that easy/difficultis that helpful, especially when people usually know where they want to go. Although this text-based answer is not as impressive visually, and could be improved with automatic linking or perhaps using a map to select origin and destination countries, I think it's better to... |
Once in high school, I asked a few Asian looking guys about where they're from, they said "We're Canadians". I went "wtf?" in my head, and instead asked them about where their parents are from.
What astonished me is how the seemed to "reject" their roots. Or at least that's how I interpreted it. I would seriously hate ... | One of my favorite professors told a story about a phone interview he gave. The interviewer asked, "So, 'Chan', is that a Chinese name?"
"No." He said. "It's a Canadian name".
His family had been in Canada for multiple generations, he identified as Canadian. Why is "MacKenzie" a Canadian name and not "Chan"? |
I gotta say I don't buy this. I was the token conservative on a lot of issues in grad school and I never got flack for saying my opinion on gender or race or economic issues as an Asian male from a privileged background. Not being an asshole about it works wonders. | >Asian |
Winning moments of truth
We strive to win more of our members’ “moments of truth”.
Those decision points are, say, at 7:15 pm when a member wants to relax, enjoy a shared experience with friends and family, or is bored.
They could play a video game, surf the web, read a magazine, channel surf their MVPD/DVR system, buy... | Their roku app does not support trailers. I don't know if their other apps suffer the same problem.
Browse > hunt for trailer on youtube > cast to TV > if thumbs down, launch netflix app again > find where I left off > goto step 1. |
The problem with verbosity and repetition is not that it takes longer to type the code, at all. The problem is that it creates dependencies which you have to manage by hand.
Changing `Foo a = new Foo()` to `Bar a = new Bar()` doesn't seem that bad... except when you have to propagate that change through the code base. ... | In the strongly typed language Scala you get the same benefits as in the duck type languages, and even better :-) You can do:
val usersById = HashMap[UserId, User]()
if elsewhere you have defined: `type UserId = String`. This is very readable I think :-) And changing the type of UserId is done in one place only. |
All this great content and their website is designed in a way that discourages people to peruse it. They really need a re-design and "relaunch" of their brand to flaunt the great things that they're doing. | I for one could care less if they don't have TheLatestFad.js installed. Give me the data. |
> What motivated you to leave academia to join Morgan Stanley?
$$$
Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with that, he's earned it. But the whole spiel about wanting to get back to solving real world problems... Come on, now. How about Google? NASA? Tesla? Plenty of real world problems to solve there tackling difficult pro... | Completely agree with you Morgan Stanley is a bank not a tech firm and it falls under various fed laws which slows your pace of development like raising a ticket to login into a dev database or a dev cant push his own code into prod etc.The aim is to audit everything and be risk averse. Try getting any open source soft... |
I remember when I was a very young dad, and 15 minutes with my very young son was torture. I see myself in much of what he tells. Much of it by imagining the now dad of a 10yo as a dad of 4 months old son.
But there's one thing I can tell for sure. A father can not replace a mother. I wouldn't take offense if a woman a... | Do you have an example of how she handled it differently? (Other than the emotional sitations.) I'm always curious of how others solve situations in a different (ie better) way than I could. |
> As for Detroit, come on, we have thousands cites like that, actually, all except Moscow, Spb and Novosib.
Obviously you know nothing about Russia if you say that...I can list you hundreds of cities where life is much better than many US cities and city areas...I am myself from a city called Pyatigorsk (Stavropol Regi... | Obviously.) |
If the demand for adoption outstrips supply, and if (big if) a man and a woman parent substantially better than two people of the same gender, it might make sense to have a blanket preference for heterosexual couples when choosing parents. There could be something innate in each gender that contributes to a child's upb... | And what may that innate quality be? And what about gay children? Aren't straight parents the wrong setup for them? |
This just shows my ignorance with regard to this topic, but is the speaker cutoff from plugging in headphones always a hardware switch? I.e., can software override it and direct sound to the speakers even if one has headphones plugged in?
Of course, if one were playing music or something, it would be obvious that the s... | http://i.imgur.com/ip6zwes.png
On Linux you can choose different behavior; so it's apparently software. At least, on machines I've worked on. Depending on that dropdown, I can plug in headphones and the built-in speakers will continue to output. |
the hard part of it
This is absolutely false. I agree that discovery isn't easy, but you know what's even harder? The other 90% of the work needed to finish it and make it a reliable product. Chomsky trivializes the work of synthetic organic chemists, the engineers that set up and keep production lines going, researche... | Chomsky trivializes the work of synthetic organic chemists, the engineers that set up and keep production lines going, researchers that test the drugs, and so on.
Because private companies would be willing to throw money into the wind to fund research. The concept's been proven, the risky part is over; although not nec... |
This is a superb article but it's scary how many of the points made apply directly to the US economy as well: zombie banks, real estate bubbles, a declining currency, faith in the bureaucrats and so on. | We're already a zombie... |
Regardless of your thoughts on the actual Home product, this product page is incredibly well designed and thought out. | It's pretty, but I left with no idea what exactly the product is. |
This practice just seems absurd.
What is the practical purpose of this type of post? Several people have written pieces enumerating their various income sources and listing their enviable accomplishments, and have gotten on the front page. These just seem unbelievably self-congratulatory and conceited. Moreover, why do... | I view it as a subtle way of showing others that if he can do it - others can too. He's making more revenue than 98% of most valley startups - and he's showing you how. (That statistic was 100% fabricated). |
Q: How am I going to make money on Medium?
A: Not right now. We haven’t solved that problem quite yet. [...] Will do turnkey premium-content option–with a paywall. We’ll also enable advertising.
So what's the benefit of Medium over the website of my newspaper, where the newspaper has 100% control of the appearance, con... | >The last time you bought something on eBay or Aamzon Marketplace, do you know the actual shop's name within the marketplace? Probably not. This is not desirable for publishers and thus, I don't believe that Medium will be the future.
I agree.
As Ev enters the b2b space, he is making some crucial mistakes RE: understan... |
If you read the full report, the automaker with by far the largest gap between its claimed improvements in fuel economy and its actual on-the-road performance is General Motors. Much worse than VW and Mercedes (who also did very poorly), by this measure.
A reckoning is coming.
source: see page 13, here
http://www.trans... | If you read carefully then the report actually does not provide any data about fuel economy.
While they speak about fuel consumption and even speculate with numbers, this is not backed up by the data.
Report contains only data about CO2 emissions. |
A lesson for people who want to do a demo of their product: if you're not a native English speaker and want to demo in English - please, please, please pay some British/US/... girl with a sweet voice to read the text for you. I survived only ~40 seconds of that screencast. We already suffer call centres in India, becau... | I don't like the same thing on every website. I enjoy the variety. |
Eh. They can keep it.
• Average engineering salary in sf: 116K / year [1]
• Average rent for a one bedroom: $2,700 / month [2]
After taxes you're coming in around 72k / year - 32k / year for rent
You'll have roughly 40k to play with. That may sound like a lot but factor in food, health care, travel, energy, internet, p... | Are you sure that the average rent for 1 bedroom is $2,700? I lived on Market street in a studio apartment with a pool and a gym in our building and I paid only $1500, that was couple years ago tho, but I dont think that the average rent is $2,700...sorry |
This is a little bit of a tangent...
Why, in the US, are IDs immediately ignored when they expire? You often read about people being unable to vote, buy alcohol, or travel because their driving licence expired last week.
But realistically the whole point of ID checking is to determine if someone is who they say they ar... | Aren't you really just asking why IDs have an expiration date at all? |
"ban senseless and stupid drug testing for jobs that don't actually require 24/7 sobriety (eg software engineering)."
It should be my right as an employer to hire anyone that I wish (just like it is your right as an employee to not accept a position or quit).
You say it has no effect, but you can't tell me it has no ef... | Half the people in silicon valley are stoned nearly every night. Including all the ones that work at Google, FB, Twitter, whatever.
Trust me, I've known a lot of pot heads too.
Whoever you are, stay the hell out of California please. |
I know this isn't obviously startup related, but it is. Please read. | It was indeed beautiful. About the last statement - "Please be good to each other, and your self."
As a developer who has always been short on resources, incurred huge financial losses due to false startup promises and has met two separate incidents of street violence in a span of 4 months, I wish people were nicer, he... |
1. Register an Amazon AWS S3 account - https://aws-portal.amazon.com/gp/aws/developer/registration/...
2. Download my S3 backup script (or anyone's S3 Backup script) - http://github.com/leftnode/S3-Backup
3. Set up a cron to push hourly/daily/whatever tar's of your vhost's directory to S3.
Spend, like, $10 a month. Tha... | Thanks for the tip. I've been doing the same thing Atwood has been doing. So I just installed your stuff and have it running.
A tip for folks using leftnode's setup: I didn't notice $gpgRecipient hidden at the end of the config file and chased around a bit looking for it. |
A couple of years ago at a Linux conference in Germany I had a discussion with a Microsoft employee at their booth. At that time I was a 'hardcore' linux user with no trust in Microsoft at all. The discussion with the employee went like this:
Me: "Hello. Could you tell me what Microsoft is doing at this Linux confere... | paranoia is good :) |
Sigh
"The 5-mile test track is estimated to cost about $100 million, which Hyperloop Transportation Technologies hopes to pay for with its initial public offering (IPO) later this year, according to Navigant's blog."
Run away, run far far away. They might as well do a kickstarter. Seriously, what sort of "business" is ... | I want this to succeed. I want to engineering team(s) to crush all the issues that people have raised here and elsewhere. That being said most cutting edge engineering projects like this don't make money for a very long time and I wouldn't invest any money I want to see a return on. |
I'm actually interested to know what the HN community does to achieve parallelism in Python? Do you use multiprocessing module, Stackless python, PP module (parallel python)? | I'm using QThread for PyQt GUI applications.
However the GIL makes it impossible to execute _Python_ code in parallel. I can understand the reasons for that, however it doesn't change the fact that it makes my application inherently slower and is therefore something I dislike.
Apart from that I really like Python. |
Few thoughts:
> and opened the decibel meter on my iPhone
These are notoriously inaccurate. To get accurate decibel readings, the mic must be calibrated to absolute known levels (something your App can't do). The App's are basically just comparing relative sounds (this sound is more prominent than this other one, and t... | definitely true on the inaccuracy.
however, in the absence of anything else it is an indication. |
Because other people have given good answers, I just wanted to add.. the Web was so much better linked together back then. Prior to Altavista made searching useful most of the time, it was common to rely on jumping from one site to another through plentiful link pages, web rings, and lists of resources that people had ... | >There was also Usenet which people often posted links on and which was sorted by topic and a handy way to find stuff.
When my college roommate showed me how to download a graduate student's thesis from Usenet, I thought my head was going to explode I thought it was so cool. Here I am, halfway across the country, and I... |
The author calls out med students for approaching physics through rote memorization. It reminds me of an experience my older brother and I had with a doctor friend.
Our friend, an OB/GYN, mentioned how hard her work is, because "the average baby is born at 3am."
We laughed, but then my brother asked, "What does 'avera... | You can still say "average" (mean) for distributions over cycles (eg. on circles, von Mises distributions are analogous to Gaussians).
von Mises on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Mises_distribution |
I feel like there was a fast slide to content-free echo chamberism a while ago. HN was starting to become painfully predictable if it didn't talk about:
- Apple in glowing terms
- a LISP
- how massive overvaluations were not a bad sign
Certain HN rockstars would receive hundreds of upvotes for the most minor of comment... | So people talked about Apple positively in the past. Now they don't. That somehow reflects on HN... why? |
That four-year-old submission has just two comments: one expressing doubt, one expressing optimism.
Interestingly, despite growing worldwide adoption of Bitcoin, comments about it on HN continue to be more or less evenly split between doubters and optimists. And I wouldn't be surprised if comments to this submission a... | Religious in outlook; faith based. If we must have faith based psuedo-discussion its more fun to talk about evolution.
One interesting observation about the two comments, is both authors are still occasionally posting to HN, if you click thru. Its a long lived community. |
Wow. This is low.
The statement is absolute bullshit too: "In this instance, the New York City team was a bit too ambitious and we'll make sure they tone down their sales tactics."
No, this is unacceptable. This sort of fraudulent behavior deserves consequences larger than "hey, stop that".
I live in NYC. The Uber app ... | You hire a sales team to sell your product. They're the least invested in the overall business, they have the highest turnover rate of any other department. Typically, they're young, inexperienced, right out of college. Typically, this isn't their only job. Most care less about the overall viability of the company ... |
This post highlights the issue with overly zealous mods on SO who marked the question as off topic. Nothing about this is off topic, and it turned out to be very interesting answer. | I once asked how the old DOS games was written, and they closed because it was not specific enough, although it gained enough upvotes and more than 5 good answers. |
> Richard Feynman, who many acknowledge to be the last great American genius (his IQ was a merely respectable 122).
I've always wanted a quick, one-line, anecdote as to why IQ is bullshit. I think I just found it. | Likewise, vos Savant's score is a bit dubious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_vos_Savant#Rise_to_fame...
There's something to the IQ scores, but error bars are large and the meaning controversial. |
While Amnesty is doing the right thing here, the organization shouldn't be supported as a whole. They for example refuse[1] to defend historians who go to jail for politically incorrect opinions. Therefore they don't advocate for freedom of speech but rather opinions that fit their own world view.
1. http://www.jta.org... | http://www.meredithtax.org/taxonomyblog/gita-sahgal-feminist...
Here's another interesting story I came across - basically, Amnesty sacked one of their staff because she, an outspoken feminist, criticised their cosy relationship with radical Islamists. If anyone reading this has time, follow some of the names in that a... |
have a few side projects.
here's a fun one:
http://ShouldIDrinkThisFuckingBeer.com
it is making absolutely zero money (yet), but the engagement on the site is INSANE. also, the site itself, and the people who come to it (and email/tweet/blog/instagram/vine/smoke signals/carrier pigeon/etc about it) are passionate and... | Just don't input Keystone Ice ;) |
Reading the comments, I'm guessing I was the only fan of SGI who saw supercomputers used XFS (or variants), figured it would handle my lowly workloads, put it on my machines, worked around its few weaknesses, and just never thought of filesystem choice again aside from boot partition.
Still my favorite filesystem for w... | Yes. XFS just works. |
That's also why there's no need to put on a seatbelt when you're sitting in the back of a car. I rarely do. | And that is called irony. |
> This is a result that will have major practical consequences, and is likely to save thousands of lives.
No, companies will stop doing research now. | I literally can't tell if you're serious or if you're being sarcastic |
But why are they so uncivilized? The main mission, supplying medicines in the face of oppressive government regulations, is a noble one, one that people can get behind. Just look how the alcohol gangsters of the 20s are idolized.
If they were focused on the core mission of delivering and only killing people as needed, ... | > If they were focused on the core mission of delivering and only killing people as needed.
What? The mission statement is a smoke-screen. As with so many hyper-violent people and groups, unrepentant savagery is the main objective, not a by-product. |
>Southern North America (eg. Mexico)
>Northern part of South America
>Souther part of South America
Looks needlessly fragmented and imprecise. What is 'Southern part of South America'? Cono Sur? Then Brazilians from Minas Gerais and Porto Alegre are in different groups? Was that the intention? Why 'Southern North Ameri... | I wasn't aware of that scheme, I'll remember it for another time, it would pollute the data too much to change it all now. |
I don't understand how Grooveshark can be compliant and/or considered "acceptable" when companies like Youtube actively work to prevent restricted music from being uploaded and yet anyone can upload Rihanna's latest album to Grooveshark and they do nothing about it. How can that be considered reasonable?
They're not ev... | YouTube does that at great expense and, I believe, partially as the result of a legal settlement, unless I'm mistaken.. Your suggestion would create a one-way ratchet wherein everyone would have to do as much or more than everyone else, in spite of the law or the cost of doing so.
The standard they must adhere to is t... |
Would you mind to elaborate on what you mean by playing tactical vs. strategical? (part of my yearly "now I'll get started with Chess again") | I'm no expert but here's a mid-game example.
strategical: I wonder if I can machinate to end up mostly on white squares by the end-game, then I could let his black bishop take this pawn for free, while I work on getting my pawn structure to become invincible on the other side, effectively nullifying his bishop by the e... |
It's always a safe bet that the top Hacker News comment will always be "won't work, it's too hard." It's like sitting around for a year trying to sell a project at my current employer, with everybody and their lead telling you "that'll never work," then you implement in a weekend and those same people start nitpicking ... | Thank you for your detailed explanation of why people should not make any attempt to apply their judgment, experience, or knowledge of the world to press releases, and instead accept them uncritically. |
Why shouldn't the government keep tabs on a group whose professed ideology is the elimination of government? | on a group whose professed ideology is the elimination of government
Hmmm - yes, why not: http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Reforming/#Item4 |
His Medallion Fund seems to have done really well. From another article:
Simon's flagship fund, Medallion, requires aminimum investment of several million dollars and charges a 5% management fee and a jaw-dropping 44% performance fee. The fund is closed to new investment and has returned an astounding annual average ne... | I also wonder why those limits exist more generally, not just for this fund.
Maybe those limits affect the timelines on which money is invested and in which it is withdrawn, where-as actually having rules about such things would not work as well. |
"collect it all"
But I wonder why we don't have application isolation as a basic design principle. Imagine an OS where applications/serices each get their own mini-filesystem, without ability to access each other's data. Would that work? | do you mean chroot. Unix had that in 1979. |
To put it in perspective, the disparity is equivalent to polling 10K americans and extrapolating to all of america (which, for better or for worse, is what most pollsters do). | If you haven't read Asimov's Election Day, I highly recommend it. |
Why is there so little non-porn advertising on porn sites? If CPMs are low, and conversions are good enough, what's up with the ROI gap? Is this really the cost of social outrage? I'm really curious to see if anyone has any theories/answers... | Most companies don't want to be associated with pr0n...especially big companies whose market base depends soccer moms and children |
Why is Loudoun County, Virginia so prosperous? It has a median household income of $122,000, but I don't see any meaningful employers in the area, and it's a large population of around 350,000 people. | I've known people who commuted from as far as Winchester WV and Richmond VA for their DC job. |
DiP3 is not a very good book. (Neither was DiP.) I don't know how relevant that is to sales, though, but considering that some of the bigger Python groups actively recommend against it, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an impact on sales from that alone.
Edit: I don't recommend learning Python from a book. I recomm... | Why's it not a good book? And who are the bigger groups that recommend against DiP3? |
> Thanks for your comment.
Perhaps I am having a bad day, but is it really necessary to thank someone for their question? Seriously, this makes me feel like I am dumb for asking a question.
I understand you trying to be extra polite, but I am sure you won't start a conversation with "thank you" every time your wife, so... | ok then can you give me any reasonable calculation behind why this is 5cents, not 6, or 10, 15 or 1 ? |
As a 501(c)3, the Wikimedia Foundation is legally required to stay out of politics, and has limits on how it can lobby Congress on specific pieces of legislation. This is why, for example, the Sierra Club is not a 501(c)3.
Changing Wikipedia, and tying it to a specific bill like SOPA, would likely tread very closely to... | As is seen on the Jimbo Wales user talk page, the WikiMedia Foundation already hires paid political lobbyists... |
Wrong.
wrong. wrong. wrong. wrong. wrong.
A rebuttal -
1. It Defeats User Expectation
This only holds true if A: your user has never seen a mobile site before (and if they are on a phone thats true for about ~0.5s), or B: if your responsive design is poorly implemented. A well designed site will be intuitive.
2 - It Co... | Extremely relevant - http://analytics.blogspot.com/2012/09/mobile-friendly-sites-... |
In these situations, I believe there are two types people:
A: "Wow, things are really messed up. I'm out of here."
B: "Wow, things are really messed up. There's opportunity everywhere."
Either can be right, depending on the person and situation. | ok coach. |
I'm not on Oracle's side in this case, but can someone explain how can a judge just toss out 98% of the claims in a patent case without any explanation other than (apparently) that it will take too long to try them all? | It sounded to me like the judge doesn't expect this case to go to trial. He sounded like he fully expects them to settle and this was his way of encouraging that. |
Hey, everyone — I'm David Marcus, and I've been running PayPal for the past 5 months. Hard for me not to comment on this thread. PayPal brought a lot of goodness to millions of merchants, and hundreds of millions of users around the world. But yes... as the company grew exponentially we were met with growing pains. And... | too late, mate, paypal must die. for you, mister, it is not the time to play marketing games with the people you have betrayed - it is time to go into prison. your company has destroyed too many lifes of innocent people to give you a second chance - all you fincial scum guys will go to prison, and you will be happy to ... |
"Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality, and access to contraceptives is the only way to secure a sustainable world."
I suppose I'm one of the 0% (rounded) who disagree with putting contraception in this list. When this gets thrown around, it makes me feel like an ... | Could I ask why? Would you, for example, ban them in our own society? |
I love it. Quite often logo redesign processes gets completely out of hand, but this was a significant improvement over the older version: Cleaner, more modern and beautiful in all its simplicity. Bravo! | edit:
I agree ... but this is just the price for showing up at this level of the game. It is of course a major effort for those professionals who executed on it, and is beyond my capabilities - but it's not strategic level stuff - just like stealth fighters are not strategic level stuff anymore.
(My previous and clear... |
Only crazy people put sugar in cornbread:
10" round (iron) skillet
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup cooking oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 teaspoons baking powder (not baking soda)
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached white flour (or 1/2 whole wheat + 1/2 white)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees:
In a large bowl, beat together the eggs,... | I loathe sweet cornbread, but 1 tsp honey didn't make it sweet to the taste and may have helped it get a nice crust. As did cooking it for just 10 minutes on very hot coals of course.
I think next time I'll try with much less (or no) wheat flour. |
This is insane. I can't think of an industry that google is not trying to compete in. Auto industry, space industry, internet of things industry (Nest), internet/media industry, cable/internet provider industry, automobile industry, robotics industry, software industry, smartphone industry, pc industry now the telecom ... | You forgot healthcare [1,2], but point taken. ;-)
[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/introducing-our-smart...
[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-collect-data-to-define... |
After hiring committee one day, we digressed into a discussion of the value of a high GPA from university. One of my colleagues made the point that the value of an individual with a high GPA from a four year degree is that you know the person will get done what needs to get done.
To have a high GPA, a student needs to... | I wish my parents had shared this view with me at the beginning of highschool, as opposed to the standard "knowledge is the path to a better life" mantra. I now try to explain to any young student I know that school is a game where you have to win despite the arbitrary information, inconsistant rules, social games, and... |
I like the idea, but is "forgiving yourself" even a thing you can consciously do? Probably, but I'm not sure. The study did not ask people to actively choose to forgive themselves, just whether they had forgiven themselves. That's a rather different thing.
If I rationally decide to say "I forgive myself for having slac... | According to My Little Pony[0], just believe in the forgiveness of friends who believe in forgiving you...
[0] https://youtu.be/9hpPOZGpHFk |
Programmers know when they've been more productive because they feel it. This is not the kind of measurement that is accessible to metrics and formal studies, but that doesn't mean it isn't real. It does mean that the measurer and the measured have to be the same person, or people working closely together. | I think part of the "feeling" is knowing - internally - how much you have learned during that particular programming session. How much did you produce is one thing, but how much did you improve you capability to produce more another. |
"No interface" actually means "no mobile phone interface". Let's not kid ourselves... interface is still important.
Take the author's critical example of a smartphone app to unlock your car. Yes, that's terrible. Now, let's look at the actual interface - the key. I've owned two Subarus now. I loved the keyless entry de... | Well, no. I think this example show that the best interface is no graphical interface. If the key of my car were some physical button or combination on my phone it would be better than real keys. Real keys are better than an app because I can feel then in my pocket, take them out and own the door, fire the engine witho... |
So here's the part about this that deeply disturbs me.
It's reasonable to assume at this point that Mozilla's next CEO will have their political opinions thoroughly vetted, overtly or covertly. In fact, it's reasonable to assume this will become a higher priority at all tech companies. Who wants to be the next Mozilla,... | The thing is, all this is decidedly not against anybody's rights. He has a right to say and do what he wants, anybody has a right to speak out against him and organise a boycott, and any employer has a right to ensure that a new hire will not negatively affect their image.
Nobody's actually forcing anybody to do anythi... |
You know who I like?
Marissa Mayer. She's doing this right. It's the velvet glove on the iron fist. She starts with food and modern cell phones. She tosses out the bad execs. She eliminates the dumb trademark symbols on all the physical signage. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief – these changes are good news.
The mess... | Sorry but have you EVER worked at a large company before ?
Because none of what you said makes any sense. There is no evidence that people at Yahoo are more or less "checked out" than any company. And it is ridiculous to think she can magically weed out those select few who are not committed to the company's mission.
A... |
Oh my god is that embarrassing.
Some meaningless marketing spew, some social network stealth tracking widgets, and not a single link to any meaningful information. After the recent interresting design choices, the unity disaster and now this it is probably time to look for a distribution that doesn't think of it's user... | I would suggest Mint as an option, too. They have a version based on Ubuntu, and one built straight on Debian. |
Time Flies Straight - a game of fractal time starring Carl Sagan
Step out of linear time and experience fractal time in this strange raycasted adventure that will open your mind. And probably make you feel a little ill.
Web: http://mrspeaker.net/dev/ld27/
LD entry: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=p... | wow awesome. Thanks for sharing. |
Exactly my feeling. My thesis is that FSF achieved its popularity in the heyday of Microsoft monopoly serving as a counter-force, and as Microsoft's hegemony declined (thanks in part to FSF's efforts), it has become less relevant. Open source (I intentionally do not want to use Stallman's language on this) is thriving ... | We use MySQL at work. After a major infrastructural change I think I'll be able to get us to move to Postgres. It might depends on whether or not we have any fires to put out at that point but we'll see. Postgres is better supported by the framework we're moving to. shrugs
I'm not sure what, if any, contributions I can... |
I'm pretty effective with vim, so much that other 'normal' editors like sublime & other modern gui editors make me feel a little crippled. That is a problem, because you need to be flexible about things in life.
Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary? I'm especi... | > Has anyone succeeded in deliberately changing editors, even when not feeling like it's necessary?
I don't see the point in changing your editor if you don't feel it's necessary. Surely one should gain something from a change of editor... |
Some of you here must meditate.
What is the form of meditation you practice? Can you elaborate a little so the novice could benefit? | I don't know if this qualifies, but I get into a meditative state during my daily brisk walks (usually 3 20-minute walks a day as I go about my business). I become very conscious of the movements of my body, the flexing and relaxing of my muscles, the swell of my lungs filling with air, the rhythm of my stride. It gets... |
I still don't understand the appeal, which is obviously my problem, because there is certainly appeal. I've given the game some time, and I consider myself quite an avid gamer, but I just don't find it all that fun, interesting or entertaining.
Can someone explain why this thing exploded how it did? | At its core, it has an intensely addicting game loop where you mine for minerals and always feel like you are one block away from finding diamonds.
Beyond that, the world is very immersive and lets you create elaborate homes and environments (think HGTV for gamers). Now with more multiplayer features and it's fast beco... |
I had a friend in Santa Monica ask me a few years back if i wanted to get a burrito, so we get in her car, get on the 10, the 405, and another freeway towards downtown. After driving 40 minutes, i ask her, "are we getting close?", she says, "of course, don't be so impatient" | During that time, you can easily make them from scratch and have fun doing it. Hm. |
An open note to Nick's Employers -
1) If you are a technology company, this is Harakiri (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku). You are alienating every developer who is worth her salt. If you have a recruiting arm, and they are trying to recruit, god be with them. Ofcourse, you think people will never come to know, bu... | They may be a very good employer.
This may have been uncomfortably close to his closed-source day-job.
Without details we don't know.
And eventually everyone moves on. Company loyalty is dead. |
> That's plausible, but if I were at Microsoft I'd be sending out my resume right now.
No -- most people who work at a big company know _exactly_ whether they're in danger or not. We're speaking about 5% of the original (pre-Nokia acquisition) workforce. You must know whether you're in the bottom 5%, or if your product... | Yes, employees can tell when their project is not a high priority. I don't think they have any visibility to whether they are in the bottom 25% or the bottom 5% though. So that's a quarter of the work force feeling the threat of layoffs. |
Parenscript, a javascript generator, eh?
I don't understand, why would anyone want to generate javascript from S-exprs? I understand this is fashionable in the CL world, but I've never seen any good justification for this practice outside of saying, "Now everything is in lisp."
But this isn't a terribly compelling argu... | Good points, KD. Clearly, you've been there. Is there a good writeup somewhere of the deviations from "nice" web design that are needed? |
The Netherlands. The only requirement is that you learn Dutch at a very basic level. Apart from that everybody, and I mean everybody, speaks English and the standards of living are among the highest in the world. Sure beats living on a mattress in some illegal housing in L.A. | And the work visa requirements would be? |
I'm not leery of Google shuttering its Gmail service, but I can imagine a scenario where they cut off my access to Gmail and I have no way to plead my case to the search behemoth.
I am baffled at how people continue using such a service for something as important as e-mail in 2012, while still being fully aware that th... | I think about this, but I find it far more likely that my domain goes bad for one reason or another, or my server crashes than that gmail shuts down my account. |
What I like about the effective altruist movement is the research they provide.
What I don't like is the cultish behavior, and inherent bias that what I think is good is "universally" good. Effective altruism is nothing more than a rebranding of utilitarianism, and suffers from the same moral quandaries.
Should I kill ... | > Should I kill someone if it is the best way to increase child mortality rates in Africa?
Did you mean "decrease" here? |
Wildly inaccurate. What the article is doing is comparing the 40 year return at 7% to a 40 year return at 7% minus 2% management fees, and noting that your total return in the second case is about half as much as your total return in the second case.
Of course all that tells you is that it's stupid to pay 2% management... | "Of course all that tells you is that it's stupid to pay 2% management fees if you can get the same return with lower management fees."
It is a bit more nuanced than that, basically it's saying you don't have any control over what sort of fee structure your 401k has in place, and goes on to suggest that banks abuse tha... |
I was just about to sign up for Spotify (was on the things to do today list I have in front of me), and now this. Well they can forget about that. | I'm sure they will go bankrupt now because you decided not to sign up. |
All of this is absolutely true. But what we need for the idea of basic income to take off is a positive rationale for it, as opposed to a negative one of the 'if we don't we're fucked' kind. The reason this matters is that the disruption won't be overnight, so you're looking at more of aobiling-frog scenario where the ... | Indeed - the left needs a unifying story. Right now we've mainly just got positive solutions for isolated demographics.
http://weeklysift.com/2014/12/08/can-we-share-the-world/ |
The death penalty is required. The judiciary just needs to have conclusive proof of the crime.
For example, right now, in one of India's jails lies a man named Ajmal Kasab. He is one of the terrorists involved in the 26/11 attack on Mumbai. He was caught on tape mercilessly killing people with his AK47.
If you do away ... | Why do you see execution as the only option here? |
No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant ... | Franchise restaurants are terrible avenues for money laundering because of all the internal controls put in place by the parent company. Cash registers are linked directly back to central servers under control of the parent company, so that the franchisee does not gain an opportunity to skim on the revenue share that i... |
Why do people think that it's OK to allow kids to drink soda? In fact, why do people think that drinking soda is something that anyone must do?
I used to drink soda. Gave it up many years ago. Have not missed it. Have much less of a sweet tooth now; don't eat desserts very often, and when I do, a very small portion is ... | >Why do people think that it's OK to allow kids to drink soda?
Because it is "okay". Why do people think it's okay to tell others what is okay?
>It seems to me that so many people have this idea that sugary drinks
What idea is that? Some people just like the taste of Mountain Dew. You, or your choice of coffee and b... |
Google: "We want to scan your body with our amazing new technology and possibly add 20 years to your life!"
Haters: "No thanks, way too intrusive. I don't want you tracking me/selling my data/showing me ads." | It's not about ads, it's about healthcare insurance premiums, and heuristicly predicting who should pay more or be uninsured.
And they'll call it "fair", because that word does not mean what it used to, at all. Fair use. Fair treatment.
Fair division of the equity of your being between the vultures. |
If you want to have data storage that's secure from the NSA then you are going to need to do client side encryption. Moving your data to a company/country that promises not to access it isn't going to cut it. | Yes. If you want your data to be secure, secure it yourself. |
The thing about Uber I don’t understand is how they are going to defend their monopoly once they acquire it. Assuming they eventually win all the legal battles and drive all other taxi and taxi-like services out of business then how are they going to stop anyone else from entering their market?
Each transport market is... | It's pretty much a natural monopoly and very difficult to compete against once in place. |
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