Hacker News Reader

markbnineon Where My Money Goes: A visual receipt for your taxes.

It would be nice to compare the break-out to other countries. Perhaps you can finish this tonight?

markbnineon Gamers make faster decisions than nongamers, just as accurate

Am I missing something? All the tests were based on interfacing with a screen.

markbnineon Gamers make faster decisions than nongamers, just as accurate

Both were shown a screen that had a set of randomly moving dots, and asked to determine whether there was any coherent motion, meaning that, despite the apparent randomness, the dots had a tendency to head in a single direction

This article should have been titled, "Gamers make faster decisions than nongamers at video games." Duh.

markbnineon Ask HN: Would you employ a developer who talks to himself during work?

Sounds like the newest in agile techniques - pair programming for one. Write a book and start your consulting career now.

markbnineon Why the US keeps minting coins people hate and won't use

A nice example of designing features that nobody wants.

markbnineon [dead]

Nice use of tabs. Although an accordion may have worked better. Or better yet, a timeline thingie showing an increasingly older and angrier William Shatner.

markbnineon Google - Mars 500

I guess Mars doesn't need women...

markbnineon Senator Al Franken Facebook privacy settings

He should do a Stuart Smalley skit to get his point across.

I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, I have ten thousand friends, and doggone it, people like me!

markbnineon Typography for Lawyers

His follow up should be user interface for lawyers. This site needs better nav below the fold.

markbnineon Obama ends NASA space race with slow road to Mars

Fake moons? Phobos and Deimos? Not sure how they are fake.

Yeah, gravity sucks, but I find a trip to Mars far more interesting than one to an asteroid, E.g. the geology, water resources, valles marineris, the potential for life, colonization. Why not be obsessed?

markbnineon Every Black Hole Contains Another Universe?

I like that this article is filed under Daily News.

markbnineon 300,000 requests / second

If their speed goes over 600,000 impressions per second, does their data center blow up? Where's the red zone?

It is cool, I suppose, but also vapid. It's a meaningless boast. Reminds me of the McDonald's how many billions served signs.

markbnineon Everything I Ever Needed to Know About SysAdmin, I Learned from Superman

I like this, but perhaps not for the reasons the author hopes. Associating oneself with Superman is a common form of narcissism. Perfect for some sysadmins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_complex

markbnineon Optimizing Your Wife

The title is off. This is a wife-selection algorithm. If anybody has real ideas for optimizing a wife, please post.

Also, if you do apply this method, don't tell your perspective wife. She will drop you like a rock.

markbnineon Unemployed, a grad student rethinks the world of work

she can't be doing so bad... she just got published in the csmonitor...

markbnineon Stop writing bad web copy, startups

Nice job adding the word "startups" to the title... It's sort of like adding "in bed" after reading a fortune cookie. Soon everybody will be doing it.

markbnineon Digital Gastronomy - could 3D printing be the next revolution in cooking?

I feel like a good percentage of the stuff you find in today's supermarket can be made from printable goo. Consider the frozen foods aisle. Industrial plants often reconstitute ingredients to make fairly normal looking piece of "food." Frozen chicken, for example. Why is always the same shape? This device just brings the technology into the home.

markbnineon New Chatroulette Stats: 13% are Perverts

UK. . . what's up with the high percentage of perverts? Too much BBC?

markbnineon On the Shortness of Life - Seneca (50 AD)

50 AD for a somewhat relevant post... that's going to be tough to beat.

markbnineon Reflections on Avatar by Ray Kurzweil

I thought the low-tech choices for the military were kind of fun. Especially that huge knife for the exoskeleton. That's not something I've seen before. Also the detachable gun.

markbnineon Résumé (C.V.) using Google Maps

I would have embedded the map in another page, and designed around it. The Google cruft doesn't seem resume worthy.

markbnineon The Panic Status Board

Yeah, you're right. And the number lost some of its luster after the hack. Eventually we stopped using it. So lesson learned. Don't undermine your own tracking system.

We had two problems. One, the developer who wrote the algorithm was the sort of guy who needed to constantly tweak the system. He was a great coder, but he also couldn't produce unless he played a few tricks or hid an easter eggs. So, he kept screwing with the score, making it blink red or suddenly drop and return to normal. We joked that he needed to sell his algorithm to Google. It was fun, but doomed.

The second problem was that marketing started taking the number seriously. They love the numbers, don't they? We were a web shop and at constant war over real estate and advertising. The unwritten law was, anything that marketing took seriously, needed to be screwed with.

markbnineon The Panic Status Board

I like the idea of having a big number to represent your "score."

Once I was on a team using Flyspray and one of our developers hacked it to display a real-time score. He had some convoluted algorithm that took into account percent completed, criticals, and priority. Everybody started working the number, trying to get it higher. It was great and become quite competitive. We'd even talk about our score with marketing and clients. The only problem followed a beta test when the client opened a ton of fixes. The number sank like stone. Not a big problem though. The developer tweaked his algorithm and bingo. . . our score was soon back where it belonged.

markbnineon To Cut Calories, Eat Slowly

when a group of subjects were given an identical serving of ice cream on different occasions, they released more hormones that made them feel full when they ate it in 30 minutes instead of 5

A half hour to eat one serving of ice cream? Madness...

markbnineon How To: Read more books

Maybe instead of actively alienating people and getting rid of hobbies, you can find people who share the hobby of reading?

markbnineon It's Not Just Microsoft Against Google

[Google] has said that it penalizes some, but not all, vertical search engines because they are essentially spam, gathering content and links from other sites to generate traffic and ad revenue.

I thought this line was funny. Thinking about pots and kettles and the color black, etc.

markbnineon I miss Steve Yegge

Start your own. . .

markbnineon Ask HN: Anyone from Iowa?

if you build it, they will come. . .

markbnineon Bell Labs, building 2, 5th floor: main occupants for each office over the years.

No mens room? That explains a lot.

markbnineon [dead]

Gee, this is almost exactly what I take on a backpacking trip (although I'd substitute a tent and sleeping bag for the tarp). Calling this list a bug-out-bag is stupid.