skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>How do you know you just aren't conversant with "the way most engineers would do this"?

I don't use the term "intuition" in the exact way I use the term "intuitive" wrt a UI. I warrant that you're correct that my thought processes could align to some extent with those of the creators of any interface that I'm attempting to grok and that this appears as if the interface is intuitive.

Intuitiveness (rather than "intuition" to make the distinction I hinted about above) in an interface that relies on metaphor (affordance of buttons enhanced by shadow, etc.) is simply about familiarity.

A previous comment mentioned a simple light-switch as being possibly lacking in affordance for a jungle-dweller who lacks knowledge of our technology. I'd agree that they're unlikely to intuit what to do, but the interface to my mind is intuitive in that once one tries it then the feedback leads to a ready analysis of the effect and enables rapid understanding of the superficial workings.
But isn't that where it goes astray?

If we all called it "Class Oriented Programming" we'd come closer to an accurate name. "Class Oriented Programming" as a name might take away the emphasis on instances, and put emphasis on designing classes.

Or not. There appears to be no bottom to human stupidity.
Really? Can you cite a source for this rather absurd claim?
Live Watch Soccer: Slovenia vs. England Live Streaming Online TV Link Here
The first time I saw one of these titles I rolled my eyes; I still haven't stopped doing that...
In addition to the usual work-day schedule, I expect all of the members of the group to work evenings and weekends. You will find that this is the norm here at Caltech.

Then you're doing it wrong at Caltech.

We are often quick to assume that MoreHoursWorked = MoreWorkGettingDone. This is true up to a point, but false beyond that point. Personally, I believe that evenings and weekends are usually beyond that point.

I used to work 90 hours per week. But when I decided that I needed to get more done, I started working 60 hours per week. Results per hour and quality of results have both improved dramatically, so I'll never go back. And I would never work for anyone who doesn't understand this.
The entire IT outsourcing industry is built on this principle.
Apple must prevent Android from becoming widespread as soon as they can. Once more phone makers adopt Android and start sharing enhancements, Apple will be unable to out-innovate and will be relegated to a niche.

Apple can, possibly, spend more money in R&D than HTC, but it can't outcompete the whole industry.

HTC's move could be to convince telcos Apple's move hurts the whole industry (for AT&T, an HTC is no different from an iPhone and they really don't care which one you use as long as you are a profitable client). You can try to picture Apple trying to sell unlocked iPhones with no subsidies and trying to compete with every HTC and Motorola and Dell and Samsung subsidized by every telco.
I think you are using the term intuitive differently to how most people use it in relation to user interfaces.

In your helicopter example, the interface is (your) intuitive because it can't be done by thinking, you have to just "intuit" what to do.

However, people would say the helicopter is highly counter-intuitive, since there are four main controls and four degrees of freedom, with obvious linkages between them to anyone who has a passing knowledge of 'copters or 'planes. Despite this, every control affects two or more degrees of freedom, which is highly counter-intuitive, since everyone is used to vehicles where the controls affect only one degree of freedom.

TL;DR: You are using intuition to mean "unconscious competence", but generally, intuitive is used as a synonym of "obvious."
Single-sex classrooms the answer?
This article FAR understates the vast superiority of Saccharomyces. Until some other organism that can pack as much punch per square nanometer comes along, it will reign supreme!
Design porn for tech geeks
Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
I always find these hiring threads interesting, but haven't seen one in a while. As it happens, this time around I am actually considering changing jobs, and am based in London. But in the interests of being community-spirited, it's great hearing from any interesting companies who're hiring at the moment.
Kall8 (complex routing rules available) or ifByPhone (ditto + API)
Twilio (all about API)
Ovi Lays an Egg
A new World for Gamers is up now
Which absurd claim?

EDIT: I can't reply to the thread below so I'm putting my reply here. I have activated a half dozen iPhones on my Mac for friends that don't own computers. While it may not be the smartest thing (no backups), it is certainly doable and both the iPad and the iPhone are still very much useful without a computer.

The only unbiased, quantifiable data I can come up with is a simple Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22iphone+without+computer%22

It appears that there is quite a bit of interest in using the iPhone without a computer based on the resulting articles and forum posts.
Currently wrong? The letter is dated 1996.
I'm really disappointed that you're getting voted down so far. You're absolutely right, and hopefully the people who don't get that aren't married with kids. My wife and I both grew up in families where our parents gave a damn, and I can't begin to express how grateful I am. Living in a family where my parents both just thought they could do whatever they wanted without regard for anyone else would have been hell, and probably wouldn't have survived long.
Granted I am only a student but I made a similar move by quitting my internship and an Office Space like software company and finding a part time job and doing freelance work on the side. I couldn't be happier.
Is this a US thing? a CalTech thing? or just one crazy professor? I know several research scientists in various places in Europe and they have nothing like this. Sure, when deadlines need to met they work longer or they get swept up in their work they end up sitting until 3 am and sometimes you have to drop by the lab on a weekend to check on an experiment, but all that is an exception rather than a rule.
But what happens when kids find that their favourite band embedded the 'Easter egg' that one of their songs played backwards tells them to worship the devil? How will the recording industry recall/patch those music files?
Over people in their research group, yes.
and why do so many of google's properties not work in chrome? like adsense? and google analytics (well some days it works, others it doesn't)

and gmail is slow. and calendar is unavailable half the time.

if people are having problems with safari, it might be a webkit issue since i'm seeing the same issues in chrome.
Well, violence was the norm for most of human history, too :-) Violence is as much a part of the human psyche as sexuality.

If you start human history from, say, 2 million years ago (or even about 100K years ago, which is the assumed date for the rise of language), yes you're right. However, by the time of Greeks at last, who were big proponents of nudity (men only, of course), this behavior was not the norm, in Greek sources it is often mentioned that other nations express shock at them for their cavalier attitude.
I don't know... I've always found the command line to be easiest to use. Certainly, it is very far from aesthetic, but very functional. There are no stupid metaphors to deal with, just commands. what do you want to do? then type that command in. it's like math.
I want my friends and contacts to claim chunks of work, and I'll pay them for their work after launch.

I'm looking for advice on how to organize the work, for one -- if they were all developers, I'd set up a wiki, but I want something easier to annotate and edit for non-technical people.
Sounds like a bug to me. I redownloaded eBooks I had purchased on my iPad just fine.
I was under the impression that the policy says that you agree to let them share your data if you do not go to the website and opt-out.

Which to me, implied that the app store doesn't care (or even know) if you've opted out or not.
oh and don't get me started on their contact sync with the iphone
This article reeks of bitterness.

I find it curious that he seems to knock 'Dick' for not being well-rounded enough for his tastes. If his company doesn't pay him to develop Linux products, why on earth would he learn about developing for Linux? Or other languages. Or tools.

I'm all for picking up new languages (learning PHP changed some of my approaches to C++), but there's a lot to be said for sticking to your tools and learning them thoroughly. I can either be highly productive in C++ or flail around in a functional language/new platform. I'll stick with the productive one until someone wants to pay me to flail.
Flash 10.1 final available for smartphones with Android 2.2
Failed miserably. Parts of the software install, parts don't and, in general, it seems dysfunctional.
I don't need to get people from craigslist to use it -- I actually have tons of actual music teachers and students that I already work with who will be happy to test the MVP -- but I'm trying to set up a way to use the great network I have plus pay them for their help.
Awesome. It was actually called "4D" on my old 386, and I haven't thought about that game in years. I spent countless hours building tracks and driving on them when I was 11 or 12 years old.
I don't have any references from the top of my head, but I bet you wouldn't find articles describing effects of drugs on 5 year-olds, either. But this is precisely my point: we don't know for sure, but even if there's a small chance that my child's psychology will be disturbed, I don't want to risk it.
So the glass is just Gorilla Glass from Corning, same as the Motorola Droid, Dell Streak etc. I wonder if that's what they're using on the back too?

edit: quick Google suggests maybe not, since someone managed to scrape the back, which is pretty hard to do with Gorilla Glass:

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/23/yes-you-can-certainly-scr...
While I hate a lot of the restrictions that Apple places on things, you have to entertain the possibility that the content industries (music,movies,books,etc) heavily push these types of these things when negotiating distribution deals with Apple. As others have mentioned, the things that Apple does control (e.g. Apps) don't have the 'rebuy to redownload' restriction.
I don't know any chem PhD/Grad students to ask this question, but I'm curious: is this work schedule specific to Chemistry researchers? From my experience in college chem classes (I was premed before CS) their research involves lots of experimentation and waiting on reactions to run; a lot of butt-in-seat time might be necessary for them to do their research.
Does anyone else here notice the wonderful reporting "neighbors have mixed feelings on nuclear reactor". Yes, most people will be terrified to know that there is a nuke-of-sorts being built next door. Few know that nuclear reactor != the same stuff used for the a-bomb and Chernobyl. So yes, people have mixed reactions. I wonder how many people are actually aware of the difference between Fusion and Fission.

The reactions are: They don't understand WTF the guy is doing, and therefore think they got a nuke in the backyard. Or. Yay we don't need no stinkin' oil.
Yeah I miss the days of programming on linux, having my code run on one distro but not the next.

I miss the days without visual studio when I actually had to look up the documentation for most every data type to see what functions I could use, and when I had to look up how I named my variables and functions in my own classes.

It was wonderful. This whole auto complete functionality and when I press . is just to powerful. I also miss having to worry about garbage collection and debugging with printf statements. Not to mention the CLR taking care of buffer overflows and all sorts of other things.

Microsoft just has made it to hard on their programmers. </sarcasm>
Cool constraint, I like it. Though I had to rewind many sections to catch what he was saying: he used an invisibly small font to meet the page limit.
Good read, thanks. Here's similar :

http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/using-adwo...

http://blog.stevebarsh.com/barsh_bits/2009/01/5-surprising-w...

http://blog.stevebarsh.com/barsh_bits/2009/01/5-surprising-w...

http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-do-resea...
I think (I'm only guessing) he means this "[L]et's face it, there are a lot of people who don't even own computers now because their iPhone and/or iPad suffices."

To the best of my knowledge you need a computer with iTunes installed to start an iPad at all. A home without any other computer means that your iPad is a flashy paperweight. Also, it's really far too early to tell if the iPad (which is being sold in huge numbers) will replace other things or (as I think Apple hopes) supplement other devices.

Edit: Please notice I say "iPad" above. You respond by talking about the iPhone. They're not the same in this regard, I think. The iPad requires a computer with iTunes to start it initially.

All of that said, I agree that their current model really should change. (Also, the pop-up message in the blog is stunningly obnoxious in wording. It's approaching the "bomb + ok" level of bad.)
When choosing a field of work, it's important to look at the pay. I want to work at something I love, but I also want to get paid well for it, and no matter how much I love a field, I don't like being abused. If a field is money-poor, it just is. Some industries are awash in money, some aren't.

Next thing is how many people are eager to be in the field, no matter the cost. Don't enter a field overcrowded with good people. Sports, acting, anything glamorous. For reasons that escape me, science fits in this category. Find an area where you're genuinely appreciated. If there is no money involved, the appreciation is fake.
It's interesting that you measure Wolfram's behavior by entrepreneurial standards. Indeed, I have much respect for his commercial successes, Mathematica is a great and useful program. And I have no real qualms about him boasting that Mathematica and Alpha are the greatest inventions since sliced bread, that's to be expected of anyone trying to sell a product.

But Wolfram is also a scientist, and the ideals in science are a bit different. A scientist is supposed to be humble, admit the limitations of his work, and acknowledge the contributions of others. This is expressed in the famous quote by Isaac Newton: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants." Of course scientists are only human and don't always hold up to that ideal (maybe Newton least of all), but it's still important to recognize the difference between a scientific argument and a sales pitch.
It's true. And yogurt is just plain awesome.
Original Pac-Man Drawings
> Visual Studio programmers that can write a makefile are not many

I'm curious why you think it would be important or valuable for a VS developer to write makefiles.

Your subsequent statements seem to indicate that you believe it allowed MS to put more project complexity, hidden by the IDE. I don't particularly see anything wrong with that, but maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

My view on this is: I write code to create sellable product. I don't sell makefiles.
Perhaps we should abolish all property rights? What exactly are property rights anyway? The government can use eminent domain to take them. The white people can take them from the aboriginals.

Property rights really only apply if you are powerful enough to ignore them or defend them yourself. Those home owners in Connecticut weren't powerful enough to stop the corporations from using their property to build an apartment. The same is true of patents. You can get the patent and own it legitimately, but if a more powerful corporation has better lawyers, they'll take it. It's like laws don't really exist. Laws are written to those in power as we go along. As the power shifts, the laws shift toward the powerful.

I read this morning that states are reducing pensions for people who have paid into them for years. Isn't that pension, essentially their property as well? That's been taken away.

Do property rights really exist?

I was also thinking about it from another perspective. Say you create a park and want to charge people to enter it. You only want to let 5 people enter the park, but 10 people who didn't pay to enter, enter anyway. They don't take anything from other people. The park is still there just as the movie is still there if it is pirated. Nothing is lost except revenue for tickets to enter.
You have to own a computer in order to use an iPhone or iPad so I really don't see your point. Owning a computer is a requirement to use both devices.
No, his "basis for morality" does not say that.
How long since the last time you actually did anything you imply you once did?
> It's tempting to assume that the HTTP verbs line up nicely with the SQL CRUD verbs: [...] They're superficially similar but they're not identical, and treating them as such leads to this kind of gotcha.
As always, the best solution is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Everything has a cost. YAGNI has a cost of rework later if it turns out you do need it after all. Architecting For The Future has extra up-front and maintenance costs, which is wasteful if it turns out the future wasn't as you saw it.

And so, it becomes a cost-benefit analysis. C(YAGNI) = C(develop a simpler version) + C(rework) x p; C(AFTF) = C(develop) + C(maintain). Where p is the anticipated probability that you will actually need that feature (and realizing that you're probably going to guess higher than the actual probability).
No, but there are Chinese companies that make cheap reproductions of Pink Floyd CDs, and sell them (very cheaply) in Asia, and also (occasionally) in the US. Needless to say, they are sometimes sonically inferior, and lacking the proper packaging (which drives the Floyd guys crazy, believe me.)
Using maps and GIS tools to support decision making.
When I was working in CS research in the UK in the 80/90s the prof I worked for probably wouldn't have noticed until someone had gone missing for a few weeks.

Some people worked long hours, some didn't, there wasn't any correlation between hours in the office and how successful people were.

However, other profs were known to be fascists. It all depended who you worked for.
I've got a couple of non-techie friends who have pretty much stopped using their computers in favor of their iPhones. They'd cut the computer out entirely if they could.
Seriously, if it were in english, I would look forward to it. I remember - I think it's the magic bus? (that's a french translation) -, I thought it was awesome to understand how the body works. I mean, book like that can really help unmotivated students to focus and read whatever they have to read each days.

And while I'm here, I do think that actual games could inclure a bit more of educationnal purpose so that teenagers playing it would learn important stuff by osmosis.
just ignore the nodejs part, then you don't have to like the whole article...

(btw, nodejs and ringojs are on the same side: SSJS)
I can read my Kindle books on my iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Mac, and Windows computer (and soon Android). It's still Amazon's software (which, for the desktop computers, sucks), and it's still DRM'd, but you don't have to have a Kindle to enjoy the Kindle library.
You write code to make sellable products and every avoidable complexity, every thing you don't understand in your code or build system will eventually come back as increased cost when you need to extend, adapt it to the next Microsoft OS or simply debug it in an environment that looks like what your clients use.

Of you don't understand your build system, you really don't know what you are shippin.
The absurd claim about the "iPad only home", given that the iPad requires a computer to activate and manage.

Apple has gone out of its way to make sure the iPad is treated as an additional device, not a sole device for a user. This is important because it allows (or at least helps to allow) the iPad to be judged on its own merit for its own uses, not as if it were the general-purpose computer that some (critically: not Apple) like to claim that it is, much to the iPad's detriment.
Then again, you'd have to be pretty dumb to buy Xanax in the first place considering it costs $135 compared to $5 for the generic.
define: bootstrap not taking VC (friends/family money is OK)

why? for control, to be the boss, to have freedom. A lot of pain to go through

save money

team takes years, so start thinking about it now. Who's going to be on your team? How are you going to finance this? eg. consult, sell your car

market Bootstrapping won't work for every kind of business. Best way is to sell to business, can sell for a lot of money, so you only need a few sales to reach profitability

product who pays money already? Sell to someone who's spending

use it yourself; be in your target audience

beta free, let everyone you know in, make it seem exclusive, but don't really make it exclusive; then use this as your free research. This is how you find out what are good ideas and what are the bad ideas

what are PEOPLE doing? It's one thing to sit around thinking about what would work, but when you see what people are really doing, that's how you get a really great product. eg. what are they clicking? It's different from what they say they're going to do. Gives you great ideas about what is the product, what defines the product.

what are YOU doing? you're the user. would YOU pay for it?

steal a business plan copy competitors, charge less

launch it Means charging money. as soon as you can charge money, launch your product. Be lean. NOT 1.0, every feature imaginable, pie-in-the-sky, perfect app. But keep 1.0 in mind

course correct then start heading towards 1.0. You might not even hit it

add features launch, and then start adding features. Along the way, from watching users, you can tell which ones are important and which one's aren't, and prioritize your stuff that way. Use those ideas you already have for 1.0, if you can roll them out incrementally, you'll make "super-fans", really excited about the product, they want to help you, they want you to succeed

flickr photographers are referred to it by other users

youtube marketing without money: a youtube link to a funny video goes into your brain. same as seeing a coke ad on a billboard. For some businesses you can't just advertise with google words, you need to think of ways to use the internet

facebook gets better the more of your friends are on it. Same with twitter [network effect]; build something that gives people a reason to invite their friends

be cheap don't buy stuff you can't actually afford until you can actually afford it. Sounds simple but it's surprising how many people blow their money before they even have the money. "PAYG and you won't have to go"

be smart use your brain at all times. don't do what I'm saying just because I'm saying it, think about all the decisions and think of how it applies to your business

don't give up change and adapt, always be adapting and correcting your mistakes, because there's going to be a lot of mistakes

[transcript ver 0.5]
Warms my heart to see someone finally thinking of the children!
Great quote, but without the opening, "It's like a finger, pointing at the moon." It doesn't really make sense...
good question...
well, probably because of the current status of IT industry here...