matrix

The initial graph is misleading in a fundamental way: the usage of most of the Microsoft Office apps has barely changed - this is really an Outlook -vs- Gmail story, the results of which are no surprise to any of us.

I agree wholeheartedly. I come here for information, and noise like this stuff dilutes HN's value just as surely as any non-hacker content like political articles, "8 Beautiful Pictures of Slugs", or "VB 101".

PG: any chance we could have a temporary (or permanent) ban on John Gruber posts?

Kudos to the person who came up with that title. Those of you who haven't seen the similarly titled movie or read the book are probably baffled, but I assure you, it very nicely sums up the ridiculousness of this particular program of the TSA (a cynic might even go so far as to say it describes the TSA as a whole, but none of us here are cynics, right? Right? Guys...?)

I enjoyed her articles too, so I know where you're coming from. However I feel she did not handle things well when it came to the "crazies" and that greatly damaged her credibility in my eyes.

My loss I guess, since she can be very thought-provoking.

This is a nice validation of Steve Blank's customer-focused model for creating start-ups. It's the kind of article I want to see more often on HN.

I would like to see more detail about what was done in terms of customer and market research for the more successful efforts though. I'm sure there's some valuable lessons to be drawn from that experience.

This has been my experience too. Currently I like Python for quickly banging out web apps, and Java for building the back end stuff.

Sure, Java has some baggage, but it has a lot of benefits too, such as much better tools for deployment, performance profiling, libraries galore, the JVM, and more. I find it's often the best tool for the job when there's heavy lifting to be done.

Pretty neat! I wish it was access log based though. Using the access logs means being able to see anomalous activity such as spikes in particular status codes, performance issues, that sort of thing. I do have a project I could use as the base for that, but I suspect I might be one of the few people who cares about that sort of info.

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm thinking Flash bashing has pretty much reached dead horse status. Possibly even "red smear on the ground" status.

Worrying about what the pundits say isn't going to help us execute, unless the pundit is someone with hard-won expertise and experience in what you're doing/building. Just pick the right tool for your product and market and run with it.

I am surprised to see a Lyle McDonald article on here. His stuff is always well worth reading if you have any interest in nutrition and training.

The high-intensity training fad he refers to in this article is probably better known to most people as 'crossfit'.

Business writing (the kind that tells you about best-of-breed, market-leading solutions) is awful because it is written by people who do not understand their product, their market, or worse, both.

You'll notice that business writing of this type says very little in many words. That's because the author doesn't know what to write, so they resort to vague phrases that say everything and nothing. Technical documentation sometimes suffers from this too (e.g. "Fznoozlator: Fznoozlates the document").

Someone who truly understands the business benefits of their offering and their customers will write text that reflects that. That's why the Woot and Saddleback Leather examples are so good. It's a lot harder to write this sort of widely compelling content for enterprise software, but a skilled marketer can still communicate the value proposition well. Problem is, most skilled marketers would rather slit their own wrists than work on that kind of boring product.

A quote comes to mind:

"[She] lived in the kind of poverty that was only available to the very rich, a poverty approached from the other side."

    -- Terry Pratchett, in "Men at Arms"

I was curious where the data came from, since the article didn't really explain it. Here's the details:

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

I found it curious that they omitted J9 too. That said, I haven't kept up with what IBM has being doing with it lately and I've always been under the impression it is a closed project that isn't likely to influence the overall direction of Java.

I wish Microsoft would make the CLR open source and OS agnostic. That would make things really interesting.

Its merits notwithstanding, I suspect the Dragon Book was at included at least partially as a dig at Jeff Atwood.

(Disclaimer: I haven't read it myself, and don't plan to. My reading stack is close to overflowing as it is.)

You say you don't have a choice, but really, you do. It's not an easy choice, but nevertheless it IS a choice. Sure, making that choice might mean going back to your country, but it's your decision to make. There's a good chance that if you (politely) threaten to walk because of that clause, they'll take it out of the contract. Have a letter of resignation written, and ready to hand them - the threat has to be credible.

Most people face these sorts of big, tough choices in life. Many let the situation make the choice for them. Those people are generally not entrepreneurs. Make a conscious decision. Make it and mean it.

Another good one is: http://dearadobe.com/

PS: Adobe people: please read that site. Especially the bits about your updater.

A possible idea for improving that: Maybe it might make sense to allow users above a certain reputation threshold to vote stories down? Or even just limit story voting to people above a certain threshold.

What good newspapers, periodicals, etc have in common is very good editors that set the overall tone. The crowd, on the other hand tends to go for the sensational, populist and mediocre consensus. I appreciate all your efforts to evolve HN to try and avoid that though.

This article is completely content-free. The book is just a company (culture|inside-joke|aren't-we-awesome) thingy. Which is nice for them.

My recommendation: your time is better spent elsewhere.

Ah, but there's a catch: many of the jobs require security clearances. You need to be a US citizen, and usually need to be cleared already. If you're cleared though... it's a license to print money (heck, you might just BE printing money).

It doesn't have to be an either/or thing though. The big advantage of VAT is that they are much simpler (cheaper) to administer and greatly reduce tax evasion. So, having a VAT combined with a reform of income taxes could make a lot of sense.

A VAT alone would be far too regressive but combined with a sensible income tax (and credits) to counter-balance the regressive effects could be a big improvement over the system today. I don't think I've seen anyone propose having a VAT replace income tax.

I've always felt that a factor holding back more widespread adoption of Ogg Theora (or Vorbis for that matter) were the product names. I'm very glad that someone out there was providing a royalty-free codec, but it's frustrating to see them get held back by a decision that made their battle harder than it needed to be.

To some extent - especially in the last decade - a codec is/was a consumer-facing technology, and I feel short, simple names like "FLAC", "MPEG", "VP8", etc make it easier to brand things than a long foreign names that leave most users puzzled.

I read jalopnik from time to time, and I can't say I've noticed that the comment quality has been anything special.

The best comment model I've seen is the NYTimes, which combines moderation and featured comments (the user recommended comments are too heavily biased towards what was posted first to be useful).

I second this. I found his books interesting, but a sizable portion of the content is opinion rather than facts that are demonstrated via studies and the like. They're fun to look at, and there's a few important principles in them, but they're more of a coffee table book than a real reference.

I strongly agree that the normalized/aggregated results should be at the top. The first graph confused the hell out of me (like erlanger, I thought "D? Seriously?").

Think of it as putting an executive summary at the start of an article or paper.

I don't understand all the naysaying on here. I think this new plan has a pretty good chance of growing the business well.

Mind you, I'm a bit unclear exactly what the sources of revenue are. I'm sure very targeted advertising would be one revenue stream.

I should have qualified that: by "high rep" I meant in the 10 - 12 rep range, as opposed to, say 5 reps. It's true that some training protocols call for much higher reps, but those are not typical.

The appropriate references supporting this can be found in "Practical Programming for Strength Training" by Rippetoe, amongst other resources.

Oh boy, does the first paragraph ever press one of my hot button issues. The US Treasury FBAR (foreign bank account reporting) rules represent very bad law. The rule requires that all foreign accounts be disclosed. The penalty for non-compliance is $100,000 per year or 20% of the amount of undisclosed funds, whichever is greater. It was intended to catch people who have large off-shore tax shelters. That's a good idea in principle, but they severely botched the implementation of this law.

The threshold for reporting is $10K. This means that if someone is not aware of the requirement as has $11K overseas, they can be hit with a $100,000 fine. The penalty is grossly inappropriate. Worse, the definition of "account" is so vague that it is very easy to accidentally be in non-compliance.

I inadvertently ran into this problem myself and now I need to find a tax lawyer to help me, even though the cost of the lawyer will probably be at least half the almost-nominal value of the assets involved.

PS: Can anyone recommend a good tax lawyer experienced in handling FBAR issues?

It is well established that higher rep workouts better promote hypertrophy, and heavier low rep workouts promote neuromuscular efficiency. However, average trainees get both effects from any workout. The effects really only start to matter for more advanced trainees.

Whatever you do, don't rush out and start doing heavy 5 rep sets of squats without proper coaching. Heavy, low rep exercises must be done with impeccable form because otherwise the risk of injury is high. Developing good form takes time and carefully performed lighter high rep sets to train your body to maintain that form.

Diet, of course is also an essential component.

Sounds interesting, but I find these very high alcohol beers to be something of an acquired taste. A Scottish beer I really enjoy and recommend is Grozet Gooseberry & Wheat ale.

I'm totally willing to believe that I'm an out of touch yuppie. I've been living in the city way too long... heck, I'm one cinnamon soy latte away from getting an electric bike.

(Wait, if people upvote this, does that mean I AM an out of touch yuppie? Uh-oh.)