Hacker News Reader

mikegrecoon DiyPresso: DIY Espresso Machine

Thank you so much for breaking this situation down with such clarity. I've had the Gagguino mod on my personal project list for a while, and when I saw that they went closed source I was flabbergasted. Your writeup is the first I've seen that puts the situation in context. And honestly... it's tremendously disappointing. I may end up selling my old Gaggia classic rather than keeping it around just for this.

mikegrecoon The “Granny Knot”

One of the best way to prevent cable knots is to use the over-under technique. It helps prevent knots, and lets you unravel a cable extremely fast. I learned it in the audio industry, but it works great for cables of any size. This is a good and straightforward tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yPcJD7RVuY

mikegrecoon Yogi Berra, Master Yankee Catcher With Goofy Wit, Dies at 90

Yogi was in a league of his own in so many ways. He was the greatest catcher in the history of baseball, but he's remembered for his wit and character.

I met Yogi once, when I was a teenager. This man had a thousand accomplishments to his record, and a museum built in his name, and he still took the time to talk to a young man and give him advice on how to achieve his dreams. He was a uniquely good person, and he will truly be missed.

"If you can't imitate him, don't copy him."

mikegrecoon Tim Cook Speaks Up

Intelligent =/= Tolerant

mikegrecoon Count to ten when a plane goes down

If you go with this line of reasoning, whoever put him in that position should also be fired, and their boss should be fired for putting someone in charge who made such a poor decision in the first place.

mikegrecoon Count to ten when a plane goes down

The author states they felt it was appropriate when they were fired. In what world would it be appropriate to get fired for a single, simple, incredibly easy to make mistake? Doubly insane when there were exactly zero safeguards in place to prevent the mistake from being made.

mikegrecoon FOILing NYC’s Taxi Trip Data

There are 2 possibilities:

1. People aren't tipping 2. Cab drivers aren't reporting their tips.

Being a native new yorker, legality aside, I'd bet most cash tips go unreported. Reporting a tip makes that tip taxable, so there is a very strong incentive to bury it if they think they can avoid trouble or suspicion.

mikegrecoon Vessyl, the smart cup that knows exactly what you're drinking

The FAQ states the inside is made of glass

mikegrecoon Rolls-Royce is designing drone ships to challenge $375B freight industry

I can't even replace an o-ring with gloves on, I cannot imagine the frustration of trying to do such a task with a tele-presence robot. I really don't think the technology for something like that is here yet.

mikegrecoon The Pied Piper Effect

There is no reference or comparison to the fable in the article. This is pure link bait. Absolutely deplorable.

mikegrecoon Blue Bottle acquires Tonx

That actually makes me feel much better about the matter, good to know!

mikegrecoon Blue Bottle acquires Tonx

I agree. The beauty of Tonx is that it's all about the coffee itself. No milk, no sugar, no dilution. Blue Bottle seems more about the coffee drink and less about the coffee

mikegrecoon Blue Bottle acquires Tonx

I'm really conflicted by this.

The good: Tonx is awesome. Blue Bottle is great. I can't imagine coffee quality will decline due to a merger.

The bad: Tonx has lost a lot of agility. Will great and potentially risky campaigns like the recent Starbucks campaign [0] still be possible with a retail infrastructure to support and worry about?

The ugly: Tonx brings to the table two amazing single origin roasts every single month. Blue Bottle seems to be focusing on expanding their digital presence with this deal [1] and at least in my experience, that is NOT what makes Tonx so fantastic.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.

[0]: https://tonx.org/better [1]: http://blog.bluebottlecoffee.com/post/82020818086/welcome-ab...

mikegrecoon Can You Spot the Snipers Hidden in These Photos?

I love how many comments in this thread imply that they would be able to spot a sniper in real life, due to depth perception or whatever other factor.

There's a reason snipers are so feared in warfare. They tend to be very good at what they do, and what they do is kill people while avoiding detection.

These pictures make me respect sniper camouflage even more than I already did... if I can't spot them in a cropped picture, how would I ever spot them in a 360 degree landscape over an area of indeterminate size?

mikegrecoon Keurig Will Use DRM In New Coffee Maker

If optimizing 57 seconds of your day makes such a drastic difference, you are doing a vast number of things wrong.

mikegrecoon The Silicon Valley-ization of San Francisco

Wealth, on a scale of being in the single digits percentage-wise, often has a lot to do with skill. Some skills, such as empire building, get you there faster than others. See Bill Gates as an example. First he built a tech empire, then a charitable empire. The man is very good at enacting world wide change.

Secondly, 5% producing 99% sounds very reasonable. If you ever have the misfortune of having to work with code written by contracted companies, you would realize a LOT of code is slapped together with no care at all. The average person contributing to open source or participating on hacker news cares. The average person coding is looking for a paycheck, and doesn't give a single damn.

mikegrecoon ThinkGeek: The nerd company at a crossroads

I very fondly remember ThinkGeek's early days, if you start a new venture, let the HN community know! I'll definitely be in line as a customer and I'm sure many others here would be too.

mikegrecoon Amazon takes away access to purchased Christmas movie during Christmas

The exact verbiage on Amazon's website is "Buy movie in HD 1-Click® $$$.$$". Its easy to lecture to the hackernews crowd on the evils of DRM, but do you really think the average consumer understands what they are getting into? Even on the "learn more" pages there is no indication that your content can be stripped from you if a license expires. Using your analogy, I just brought home a pack of bologna and wanted to make a sandwich, but my box was empty on Saturday because the pork farmers said their product can only be consumed on weekdays. If that happens I am 100% going to blame Oscar Meyer AND the pork farmers!

mikegrecoon ThinkGeek: The nerd company at a crossroads

A swirl of other high-level staffing switch-ups also occurred, including a handful of layoffs. Two of the people let go were the remaining co-founders: Vadnais, who essentially invented ThinkGeek, and Frazier, who coined the ThinkGeek slogan: “Stuff for smart masses.”

The idea of being a founder doesn't seem to mean much to them, so I think the scales tip towards the "not entirely surprising" side.

mikegrecoon AmazonFresh Has Launched in Bay Area

It isn't available in Santa Clara, so it's certainly not the whole peninsula.

mikegrecoon OK, Milt Olin, I'll start writing again

This doesn't really tell the whole story. Riding bikes is dangerous, but the real danger here is driving a car.

When you're driving a car you are in charge of a multi-thousand pound hunk of metal with more momentum than most people can even comprehend, and the slightest jerk of a wheel can send it careening off in a completely different direction in milliseconds.

On a bike or walking with your own two feet, you're always in danger when the operator of a car isn't performing their due responsibilities.

To Sivers, I'm sorry for your loss. This article is an inspiration, and a remarkably poignant commentary on how to best make use of our fleeting time.

mikegrecoon Why having an MBA is a negative hiring signal for startups (2012)

I can't speak for Jack, but I can speak to learning both programming skills and business skills. When you self teach programming, you usually don't end up shipping a product that you're not sure will work. Most of the time, you can try things and the compiler and some basic QA will tell you if it worked. Unless you don't test your implementation at all, you know how well you did when you push your code.

In business decisions, there is no test bed. Your choices play almost exclusively in time, money, and human capital. You can definitely try to self learn in that environment, and many successfully do, but it's a lot easier to screw up to the point where you can't continue.

mikegrecoon Work versus Life. Greatness versus Family

Hold on... you live and work in silicon valley and you claim you can get by on 30k a year expenses?

Horseshit. The cheapest rent I've seen around here is 1500 a month, and that's almost 20 grand a year right there. Add standard utilities, food, insurance, and commuting costs and you're already pushing 30k. That's assuming you don't have student loans to worry about.

I totally agree that the power is in our hands, but it is far less simple to make that work then you are letting on. There is a reason salaries in the valley are so high... it's damn expensive to live here. If you're in a position where you may get fired for not putting in 60 hour weeks, more often than not your options are work 60 hour weeks or hope you get another gig before you're forced to move out of the valley.

mikegrecoon Steve Jobs Ponders His Legacy In Never-Before-Seen 1994 Video

The work of a lifetime is paradoxical like that. It is very rare that someone achieves something truly memorable when they set permanence as their primary goal.

mikegrecoon Nitpicker – an overly picky language style checker

At this late hour I made a note to comment on this in the morning, when I could make my thoughts more succinct. I then realized the inherent irony in that action.

I love this tool.

mikegrecoon Mac Pro

In that case it's a given that you will continue to shake the thing, intentionally or not, and the ports will continue to be lit.

mikegrecoon WWDC 2013 Expectations

> Not really. 90% of Mac users don't care or know what Unix is.

This is exactly why it is brilliant. The average user is NOT a unix user, but the average developer is. The reason OS X is doing so well the same reason Facebook Home bombed. Developers are actually using the systems they are writing code for.

mikegrecoon FiOS customer discovers the limits of “unlimited” data: 77 TB a month

If you read the article, his data usage wasn't the reason he was cut off. He was caught because of it, but the reason he's being forced to business class is that he's running a server (multiple actually.) Residential has it in their TOS, no hosting servers on that connection. If anything Verizon should be applauded compared to companies like Comcast... they didn't even throttle him before they called to find out what was going on. He willingly gave himself away.

mikegrecoon AOL Is Still the Weirdest Successful Tech Company in America

What this is saying is that subscriptions are making more money for AOL overall than the other ventures are losing, so they are making profit above and beyond other losses (as opposed to breaking them even.)

It's a shorthand way for the writer to say that subscriptions are such a cash cow, it really doesn't matter what the other divisions are doing.

mikegrecoon Thinglist: a want to-do list for iPhone

I feel like this app would just make me depressed at my lack of free time. There's nothing like a nice, colorful list of things you "could" be doing to make you feel horrible about yourself when you're in a cubicle on a Saturday morning.