Spyckie

Won't this just make consumers hurt at the end? The most reasonable option as a developer is just to mark up the prices by 30% and then say if you want it the normal price, too bad - Apple needs its cut.

:) rant appreciated. I actually harbor the same suspicions, but for the sake of general understanding it was the best way I could frame the issue.

Sorry, this is not your type then. I would definitely spend some more time to look into the applicant.

Yes, for pure coders, this is a terrible resume. It looks like she is using the right side of the brain for something left-sided. But, that's the point.

How many coders do you know can show an interest in both design and code (same for designers)? To have an aptitude and interest in both code and design is something very hard to find, and to be able to express the fusion of the two is a challenging process for many who are aching to stretch the boundary set by text heavy, information-only resumes that do not communicate nearly what you want it to. (How much design skill, creativity, and passion can you communicate with just information?)

Yes, I would never hire her for algorithm optimization, but if she was building a website that doesn't innovate technologically but rather creates social, cultural, aesthetic or other value (which the majority of startups do) - I would take a second look.

For what its worth though, I do think the graphs are a little hard to read but not hard to navigate, especially if I'm looking for a particular skill to hire for. Its easy to see if she has Ruby skills, for instance - but its hard to see the overall picture of what skills she has without spending a lot of time on it.

Its missing the social aspect right now - I can't find anyone (much less my friends).

Figuring out yourself is probably the best thing that you can do. A lot of people have the thought that their potential is limitless - this is wrong and dangerous if you equate happiness with fulfilling your potential.

What helped me a lot is learning my personality type based on the MBTI model (or any model, they're all pretty similar) - study it and find out your potential compared to other types. This gives you a more accurate scale to view your potential, and a more accurate scale will give you a more well defined measurement of success.

For instance, personality typing predicts varying degrees of hard-workingness based on nothing else but your disposition. A lot of people can't accept this even though life itself seems to indicate it and have wrong expectations for themselves. This is very unhealthy if you put all your hopes here and can't manage to fulfill it.

I already wrote my thoughts on this here: therubyway.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/how-to-view-yourself/

I used to play with scratch to test it out. I really like it - it is a real programming language, but the big difference is that the blocks tell you all the options you can do while a text editor only shows you white space. The blocks also enforce syntax (prevent spelling/usage errors) and allow you to witness the execution of the program step-by-step (see how your program runs).

I think most of the mental barriers and frustrations of learning a new programming language is not knowing what you can do with it, not knowing the right syntax, or not knowing what the program is doing during execution - the block interface removes most of these problems while still preserving a programmer's mindset. Hopefully this will convince some of the 'hardcore' programmers that it is a legitimate language, even if developing with it is a bit slower than typing.

I haven't played with it for a while - they were planning to add function blocks, but I don't know if they did.

Also - lots of kids actually have played with scratch. If you look at the website, there are 1.1 million projects and 150,000 members. So - this next generation is really poised to make this platform their own. Maybe it will be their TI-83?

The git or mercurial teams should build a Google Wave robot that comes with the software. Not because I want them to, but because its a killer feature. :)

Also for syntax highlighting - take a look at codemirror. I've used it before and have been very satisfied with its performance and functionality.

I had a similar idea, but create the whole IDE on wave. Several advantages:

1) Programmable - you can add in functionality to the IDE much more easily by adding gadgets or even robots.

2) It gets rid of the concept of 'local copy' altogether, and makes your development project accessible from anywhere by anyone. It also means that you only have to set up one test environment rather than everyone's local environment.

3) You can have as many test servers or production servers as you want. One robot to manage multiple servers at once. This robot is essentially a remote command line connected to serveral test/production servers. This makes cheap servers (100$ wall servers anyone?) useful.

Try PhoneGap or Titanium Mobile. Both of them use Javascript, HTML, and CSS to build apps that can be run on both phones and have access to the native controls.

This observed pattern can be described by personality typing. I like to think of it as 2 classifications of how our brain explores - depth-based vs breadth-based search. Problem solving vs random walk. Directed vs discovered. Convergent vs divergent, etc. Essentially, one type enjoys digger deeper (defined by getting closer towards a goal) into a topic, while another enjoys expanding outward (exploring a topic, no goal required).

The majority of people enjoy doing one type of thinking and hate doing the other, which causes this culture difference. Depending on the class of problems that a field has to tackle, the community may be dominant in one or the other. Mathematics is a field in which a random walk style of exploration can yield fascinating results, while an engineering field is much more likely to benefit from a focused approach. Usually, the type of thinking that yields more results becomes dominant in the community and gets the right to snub the other.

The difference and contention, I think, arises purely out of the dislike of doing the type of thinking that you're not naturally inclined to. This dislike is rooted in unfamiliarity and a strong sense of worth that parallels our inclinations. The contention is rarely settled by arguments of logic, efficiency or practicality - it is not that people don't believe in logic, but rather because the arguments don't address the core issue. The core issue is our natural inclinations, which at its roots, are innate or at least solidly ingrained in us by the end of childhood.

Or an open source alternative?

It looks like flowplayer built custom animations for themselves and decided to release it as a library. Good publicity and a well designed website.

I think the library itself has great video support but not much else.

"Seeing you type" is the same thing as talking - only introverts don't like other people seeing their thoughts, while extroverts prefer it. The thing is, extroverts comprise the majority of the population. Also, while seeing you type may not be preferred in conversation, it will be preferred in a document collaboration environment.

The robot thing is not inane because it is part of the distributed/federated document editing, and it has media elements attached to it rather than just text. In IRC, you only talk to people for the most part, so bots in IRC are centered around facilitating that purpose. With Wave, you talk, work, and plan with data that can take any form - a much broader scope that allows robots to do much more than just 'user logged in, user logged out'.

The reason why I think it is a strong alternative to project collaboration tools is because of 'see as you type' and its robot capabilities. Yes, it has a nice document model, but that isn't the key feature for me.

Please put a tldr - cultural upheaval, the generation gap, and dynamic business shifts (like energy and the internet) create a transition period that devalues the older generation's skills and production faster than the newer generation can come in to replace them. In turn, the older generation resists the change using their existing political and investment power, which further disrupts economic activity.

Nice try - it needs some work before it is an essay. I think I would agree with the conclusion, but there is way too much rambling, anecdotal evidence, and personalization - and you sound like you can't contain yourself at some points, which makes it sound on the whole unprofessional. Also, give us a summary in the introduction - we don't want to read it all as it is way too long for its own good.

I would add that the original article is the perfect example of why a top-down argument is a not a valid argument. In general, you should never start from examples and work your way down to a bottom line - as this post shows, you can easily make correlations that are flat out wrong or can be explained in other ways that are more substantial.

If you want to learn how to properly draw conclusions from examples, learn statistics. Stats is all about making sure you have sufficient evidence (large sample sizes, small p-values) to back up a correlation.

Its long but there's a lot of good information in here about future policy and funding for science - at least in the first 10 minutes.

I think its different for every person. You should find out what your tradeoff level is for comprehension/wpm, and how many phrases you can skip while still understanding the main points of the section.

I think everyone can pick up reading by phrases to a certain extent. Scanning full pages or even paragraphs is probably a innate skill that isn't learnable.

I think you're being close-minded. There's an underlying thought process that leads to these conclusions that you're missing out on. You're applying your view of the world to his conclusions and thinking them ridiculous.

This essay is based on a top down view of economics. A top down view runs a game theory thought experiment based on the properties of money, trading, and investing, and ends up with the conclusion that bankers end up with all the wealth as time approaches infinity.

Watch money as debt for an introduction to this kind of thinking: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

It makes me wonder if he is pleading guilty to a ponzi scheme to hide something more criminal... I mean, taking investors' money and putting it in a bank is the least wrong you can do - you could just downright spend it, or use it in all manner of ways that could be off record and hidden by a 'fake split strike conversion' strategy.

Who knows, he may have been this close to curing cancer before investigators came in...

My first thought was, is it April 1st already?

"Since I did not want to make it too complicated, I only used the USD/EUR future to make the rats experts in this specific market segment, but other rats can be trained in other markets as well. I trained the rats for about 3 months, starting with 80 Sprague Dawley laboratory rats, 40 males and 40 females with the intention to cross the best of them to genetically create the best traders through select breeding."

Sounds like a pigeonrank algorithm to me...

Great. Now you've actually gotten me interested in knowing what Erlang is all about... and I've already got enough side projects to do in my spare time.

could someone postulate on the physics of this? What causes them to remain stable... I've never seen a bubble not float upward...

From what I understand, these scientists are merely saying that there is not enough evidence yet to instantiate the hypothesis of man-made global warming into fact. And by evidence, these guys are looking accurately descriptions of several known phenomena that affect our climate that are not yet well understood.

The scientists bring up 2 good points for science's sake - first is that scientific models need to be 'tuned' because its impossible to deal with all of the complexities of nature - this makes them susceptible to selective tuning to make them support the hypothesis. They also imply that this hypothesis is unscoped, meaning that solar, aerosel, or other factors haven't been adequately taken into account. If you want to prove the link between carbon and temperature change, prove that that observed effect isn't caused by anything else.

I also think this title is completely link-bait, because they aren't suggesting that Global warming isn't man-made. They are merely saying that the scientific evidence is not conclusive, and won't hold up in a scientific forum if there was no humanitarian agenda attached. I think its healthy for the scientific community, frankly.

hmm is it romantic or pragmatic if you think of your spouse as a good friend/cofounder you can split work with and help each other out?

I'm beginning to see no point in love - only solid, mutually beneficial friendships.

Yes, but do remember most of these houses were bought during a bubble period. I doubt many houses will ever reach the value that they were bought at.

Especially if you've read "how the crash will reshape America" recently posted on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=485036), you'll realize that many places where economic growth was fueled solely by home value will never fully recover (Arizona, Las Vegas, etc).

This is a perfect example of how you should release new versions of code.

A well written explanation and good visualizations and statistics of what changed (with the appropriate credit due).

It makes me want to upgrade instead of begrudgingly do so.

on another note... why is google ocean the 5th search result on google?

So... these are the guys that don't start web companies but build companies based on real science, research, and products?

Well, right now if you want to move quickly and often, the hassle of moving in and out often makes it not worth it to mobilize, and hence you choose not to take a job that is somewhere else but utilizes your skills more effectively (allows you to produce more output in economic terms).

Don't know if a good solution exists... housing is a very messy optimization process because people want vastly different things in their homes. I guess you could focus on niche groups so you can get some standardization going.

This article is well worth the read.

This is a perfect example of what makes history fascinating - its ability to make sense of the present and the future.

His conclusion, for those who can't get through it: housing is a dead end investment. It's a liability, not an asset in economic terms because it discourages mobility and doesn't have good (any?) returns. We should abolish policies that promote each man his own home, encourage renting, and come up with housing infrastructure solutions that are economically stimulating (in terms of mobilizing the workforce and bringing talent together).

The housing market seems ripe for technological innovation. Any ideas?