Hacker News Reader

iyulaevon Why You Need To Work For A Big Company

"team foundation as source control versus git"

How much experience do you have with TFS? It's a different animal than Git, but my TFS-using colleagues really, really like it.

iyulaevon Website not converting – any ideas?

You know patio11, sometimes I read your blog posts and get a feeling of lingering doubt, like, "there's no way this guy can be as clever and successful as he claims." And then I see a comment of yours (like this one) and any trace of doubt evaporates.

iyulaevon Five consecutive quarters of sliding PC sales mark a new industry record

For myself (and most engineers I know) the tablet vs laptop issue is a no-brainer. I depend on my laptop for my livelihood. The tablet is more convenient for reading and such but it is a content consumption device. The laptop can be used (slightly more awkwardly) as a consumption device but is also a creation device; I mostly only get paid for the latter.

iyulaevon Notes on computer science, math, research, programming, and industry

I'm really confused. This looks like someone's private notes on various tech subjects. Kind of like the notes I might keep in my notebook. Very little context, and hard for me to make anything out of this. Am I approaching this wrong?

iyulaevon In Head-Hunting, Big Data May Not Be Such a Big Deal

What is the difference between kill and kill -15?

Well, for one, the second isn't syntactically correct.

I can't decide what's worse, brainteasers or brainless trivia questions.

iyulaevon Lockheed Reassigns Workers to Fix F-35 Software

sometimes do so automatically without physically crashing the jet

I hope by "sometimes" you mean "almost every time!"

iyulaevon San Francisco

2 engineers at 100k/yr gets you right to the figure you mentioned. $200K down payment is rough but not nearly impossible given the figure in the first sentence and willingness to maintain a college-ish lifestyle for a few years.

iyulaevon Algorithms from the “Book”

"All models are wrong, but some [models] are useful." - George E. P. Box

iyulaevon German Girl Turned Away at Border Due to Private Facebook Messages

What sort of "correspondence" was this?

iyulaevon U.S. Software developer wages fall 2% as workforce expands

Wasn't the same thing said when we went from hard-wiring programs to writing machine code, then from machine code to assembly, then to 3rd generation programming languages, and so on?

iyulaevon Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

The sad issue is that most people would gladly spend that time doing other things rather than reading :(

iyulaevon Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

If you can get the content of the speech from a PowerPoint deck - the deck author is "doing it wrong."

iyulaevon Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

PowerPoint is a presentation tool, and like any tool it can be misused to the point of frustration. At best, PowerPoint offers a good way to provide a visual aid for a presentation. People who present crappy PowerPoint decks would have no trouble delivering a similarly crappy speech, or writing an indecipherable memo.

One great book on delivering awesome presentations - Presentation Zen (http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-Editi...)

iyulaevon Automatic: Your Smart Driving Assistant

Congrats guys! This product has come a long way.

iyulaevon Microsoft restores transfer rights for retail Office 2013 copies

This restriction had me looking back to office 2010 for my upcoming PC purchase. Glad to see it was lifted.

According to the old license, you get office for the life of your PC. If I drop my PC in the sink 1 week after purchase, I need to fork over another fistful of $$$ to use office again. Pretty lame.

iyulaevon LayerVault Sends DMCA Takedown Letter re Flat-UI

"Heavily inspired" != copyright infringement. Sorry. Patent infringement would be closer but it is not copyright infringement.

iyulaevon The Myth of Japanese Longevity

The headline of the article is proposing an average, though. By saying "the myth of x" they insist that x is false. In this case, this is equivalent to asserting that Japanese life expectancy is not above the average in Western nations. Seems like simply a case of a misleading or exaggerated headline.

iyulaevon The Myth of Japanese Longevity

Weak article. They assert there is a problem with the data, point out at least one flaw, conclude that the entire data set is wrong and then attempt to draw conclusions from it. The author seems to be trying to use negative evidence, i.e. induction, to prove something, like in the following example:

Argument: The average age of a population is 10.

Counter-argument: At least on one of the numbers is greater than it should be.

Conclusion: The average age of a population is 8.

iyulaevon My Dad's Underwear

This has been drummed up over and over, and frankly the trends aren't promising. We aren't graduating any more STEM grads than we were in 1985, despite increased college attendance on the whole [1]. I don't know how to interpret this, other than there aren't very many engineers on the margin.

[1] http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/11/col...

iyulaevon The Chromebook Pixel’s best feature

Windows key + (left or right arrow)

Works fine in Windows, I use it all the time.

iyulaevon Amdahl's law in reverse: the wimpy core advantage

This isn't correct because in either case you're almost certainly sharing the same memory controller, which still has to service requests one at a time (if they are randomly dispersed in memory). Furthermore if the memory access takes long enough the single-core can context switch to another process and run non-blocked instructions there. The 4-core version doesn't magically have 4 times the memory pipelines, and the 1-core version won't stupidly sit waiting for a memory access to return.

iyulaevon The x86 Power Myth Busted: In-Depth Clover Trail Power Analysis

What about tablets like the Lenovo thinkpad tablet 2? Atom powered, gets 7h+ battery life, weight and power comparable to arm tabletsa, and can run x86 code.

iyulaevon Firefox introduces PDF viewer

Interesting. I was wondering why I had to re-enable FoxIt viewer after the latest Firefox update. Maybe it works well for some PDFs, but the first two I happened to open were formatted pretty badly.

iyulaevon A Most Peculiar Test Drive – Follow Up

In Germany, if you ask your employer for a job reference, he has to write it in the most positive words...

The US, in my experience, is no different, whether it be job references or letters of rec. Good writers will be able to use nuance to make their meaning clear, and good readers must be able to interpret the nuances appropriately.

iyulaevon Why cyclists enrage car drivers

It's sillier than that. Note that I said the average speed is 20mph or less; that's not the speed limit, that's the real-world speed a car will see. So they pass you, just to have you catch up to them or pass them at the next light.

iyulaevon Why cyclists enrage car drivers

If you think that that auto registration and gas tax covers all of the costs of road ways, you're sadly mistaken.

iyulaevon Why cyclists enrage car drivers

Weak article. I expected a statement about cyclists being dangerous to themselves and others, but instead it's about how cyclists can do things cars can't and car drivers are upset about it. Boo hoo.

The reason bikes often take the lane (or at least should) is safety. Rear endings are very uncommon amongst bicycle accidents. Much more common are cars turning across a bicyclist's right-of-way, either a left turn from the opposite direction or a right hook. Taking the lane increases visibility and makes these accidents less likely. We're weighing inconvenience (or maybe, as the article points out, moral insult) against safety and it should be obvious which is more important.

iyulaevon Why cyclists enrage car drivers

Either I slow down to 15 mph or I commit dangerous driving.

Tough call, considering the average speed on surface streets in most towns/cities is about 20mph or less.

iyulaevon Tips for work-life balance

Solid post and there's a lot to agree with. However, one statement was difficult to digest.

If factors like "health", "happiness", or "family" rank below professional goals, your long-term priorities are not stable.

The second factor, happiness, is probably the most difficult of the three to qualify. Professional goals and happiness may be intimately related for many people, and activities that bring more immediate happiness may be ones that detract from long-term satisfaction. Maybe a more accurate way to put this would be to avoid pursuing professional goals if it involves sacrificing life goals.

iyulaevon Test drive: DC to Boston in a Tesla Model S

I think the number I heard for heating the battery was 1.3kW. The model S battery is long and flat and hence has lots of exposed surface to lose heat. Also, it was in the teens when the original reporter left his car outside. So, is plausable.