Hacker News Reader

gerbalon Nitrous.io raises $6.65M Series A

I've been using Nitrous.io to teach an intro to python class for non-programmers (librarians, management, other "Information Professionals"). It's fantastic to be able to get everyone on the same page and same development environment from day 1.

The collaboration feature is still too rough to be useful for a novice level class. Also it gives full access to the collab box with exactly the same permissions as the box owner. If they add some features and some tools for gating access and user privileges it will be useful for my class.

gerbalon Why I use non-American English voices in my text to speech

As an American a strongly regional American Midwestern or Rural Canadian would probably be pretty nice. weird enough that it just sounds odd rather than machine-ey.

gerbalon Atom: Now with pair programming

Is it really "now with pair programming" when the software hasn't been released?

Wouldn't it be "Atom: Eventually with pair programming"?

gerbalon Acid-bath stem-cell study under investigation

Good, any incredible result should be doubted until it can be replicated.

gerbalon Mayer Is Aiming to Bring Back Search Tech to Yahoo

Google became popular because of their excellent performance on the long tail. Yes ~30% of all queries are for the same 50 search terms, but 50% are unique or nearly unique queries.

gerbalon About Ukraine

Because even educated people aren't educated in every area of knowledge. Your average American newspaper reader doesn't know too much about Ukraine. That's not a good or a bad things, just a fact. Much like I don't expect an average European newspaper reader to know too much about Kentucky or Paraguay.

And in the service of serving the audience, providing some background in an approachable listicle format is quite useful. Especially considering that many readers probably know that Ukraine is in the midst of turmoil, but they may not understand the root causes.

gerbalon About Ukraine

The government of Ukraine doesn't have enough money to pay its debts. It needs to borrow money to pay its debts or default.

gerbalon An award-winning LCD with an Arduino built-in (using only 2 pins)

I'd never though I'd say this, but 320x240 may be enough resolution. Especially at 3.5 inches and for hobbyist projects. All the projects I can think of to use this are for simple notification-style display and maybe one finger interaction.

gerbalon Coursera blocks access to students in Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria

If you have the option writing it to look for instances of US blocking that only incidentally finds local censorship may give you some ass-coverage.

gerbalon Technology and wealth inequality

It's closer to 16% for the lowest quintile.

gerbalon Keep Emotions Out of Your Startup

This guy seems like yet another smart person who assumes themselves supremely rational and really is just bad at coping with their emotions.

As you said, running any successful enterprise depends on being aware of your emotions, your customers emotions, your collaborators emotions. You can't treat emotions as some alien thing you can ignore until they go away. All that will do is poison your project.

gerbalon Why isn't People-Centric UI Design taking off?

Given that it is first and foremost my device, or at least a UI oriented at me, I shouldn't have to go inside my self to find my stuff.

People centric design is great if all you do is communicate with a set group of people, however if you're more asocial, then it's just sort of sad and hard to use.

gerbalon Reasons to use a paper-based task manager

The Affordances of paper are quite significant. We're still years, maybe decades, away from digital technology as easy to use, as intuitive, and adaptable as paper.

gerbalon Will robots steal our jobs? The humble loom suggests not

Unless of course there are 10,000 Freds and only 1000 jobs like Fred's.

gerbalon “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”

"To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape"

* Sun Tzu(544-496 BC), The art of war.

>This does not mean that the enemy is to be allowed to escape. The object, as Tu Mu puts it, is "to make him believe that there is a road to safety, and thus prevent his fighting with the courage of despair." Tu Mu adds pleasantly: "After that, you may crush him."

gerbalon Google Shuts Down Schemer

More than half of those are either totally gone or have been quietly rolled into other projects.

gerbalon Swatch Internet Time

Jan 1 is a entirely arbitrary demarcation that's not actually terribly useful to the way we actually experience time and the year. IMO a better place would be one of the solstices or equinoxes (I'm partial to the spring equinox).

Also breaking the year into quarters, from equinox to solstice would be a better match for to scale we live an think on. Also it's just the right amount of time for a good portion of a large one-man project.