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nc17

104 karma · joined September 12, 2009

Ruby Hacker. Reluctant Java code monkey.
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nc17··on Lisp is Not an Acceptable Lisp (2006)
Of course, but Clojure didn't exist in 2006. I wonder what Steve Yegge would say today.
nc17··on Other people's data
"It goes without saying that all pages shown to logged-in users should be served over HTTPS"

You're not logged on to that page, it's a blog. There's nothing to gain by serving it over https.

nc17··on Other people's data
These are good points. However, as a user of Dropbox I just don't care if they encrypt my data or not. If I back up anything sensitive, I encrypt it myself. For stuff that's not that private (e.g. pictures that I've shared) I assume that anyone at Dropbox could look at them.
nc17··on Ridesharing startups hit with cease-and-desist by California regulator
If I were the rental car lobby, I would be putting pressure on regulators to make things as hard as possible for these companies. They are startups, so it's hard for them to put up much of a fight.

It would be very different if Google was behind ride sharing. It took someone the size of Apple to work with the music industry to sell mainstream music legally to the masses.

nc17··on Facebook's Release Engineer
Moderators, could you please edit the title to reflect what the article is actually about? The original title is extremely misleading, to put it mildly.
nc17··on Programmer Competency Matrix
The problem is that you're relying on interviews to hire someone who will hopefully work with you for years to come. Would you interview and pick your wife or husband in one day? Would a table like the above help?
nc17··on Association between violent video games and aggression among adolescents
A link is not enough, you'd have to show causation. If not, you might as well be banning the sale of umbrellas because they are linked to rain.

That's the main weakness in the study, btw. It could well be that kids who are prone to violence are more attracted to violent games.

nc17··on What Happened to the Facebook Killer? It's Complicated
It's not that complicated, especially if you have been following Diaspora here. Too much spotlight, not enough traction, a suicide, no more money.
nc17··on Why Google+ Still Has Huge Potential
I don't understand how this article talks about the future of Google+ in the enterprise, yet it makes no mention of LinkedIn.
nc17··on Jack Dorsey and Twitter: Can you have a part-time product visionary?
Betteridge's Law of Headlines applies to this article.

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

nc17··on Why Do We Dump Our Greatest Projects?
Maybe you only think those projects were the best because you dumped them. Had you stuck with them, they may not look so good know. How do you know it's not hindsight bias?
nc17··on Programmer Time Translation Table
This article can be summarized as follows:

Programmers tend to underestimate tasks.

Software estimation is an extremely complicated topic, this post barely scratches the surface.

nc17··on Fend Off Trolls, Bots and Jerks With ‘Empathy’ Test
I can see this idea used to keep out people who don't conform to groupthink. You could ask questions about abortion, god, taxes, etc.

The problem is that the questions need to be very clever to avoid giving away the site's bias (and thus the answers).

nc17··on Automatically Check In To (get an awesome seat on) Your Next Southwest Flight
Normally you want to create an application that becomes more valuable as more people use it. This would be the opposite.
nc17··on Twitter, PayPal reveal database performance
Your company is easy to find on Google. It's not stealth, and it's venture-funded. Curious why you can't or won't mention the name here.
nc17··on Does everyone hate MongoDB?
You have been a "technology manager" at Bank of America in North Carolina since 1998. Do you try new technologies such as MongoDB professionally? What are your qualifications to make such a vague statement? More importantly, what is the lesson to be learned?
nc17··on Google Surveys: Know What You Are Asking
Suppose I want to run a survey, and I want the responses to be as unbiased as possible (not like in the video). How can I learn to do it "the right way" ?
nc17··on OnLive assets acquired by newly formed company
You typically have 90 days to exercise. The question is whether it would make financial sense in this case, only insiders would know.
nc17··on Why isn’t Twitter charging for their API?
Have you ever worked at a company with xxxx employees? They would have to create a new product, perhaps a new business unit. The best developers may want to work on the API biz, even though it may make 1/50th of what ads make.

If you're a b2b customer paying $$ or $$$$, you would expect an SLA, customer support, etc. (think AWS). All that is expensive, and if the revenue would not be in the ballpark of ads then Twitter won't do it now. They need to find their cash cow before they can explore smaller markets.

nc17··on Why isn’t Twitter charging for their API?
Because they ran the numbers. It wouldn't justify the valuation their investors demand, and it would be a distraction. Ads are their only hope. Draw your own conclusions.
nc17··on With great sadness we announce the closing of Fluent.io
Judging from the post, I would assume they tried and failed.
nc17··on Cassandra 1.2 Startup time improvements.
This is nice, but the main reason I gave up on Cassandra was the difficulty of operating it. It's a far cry from, say, MySQL in terms of devops-friendliness. Curious how much work is being done in that respect.
nc17··on "Hello, Want to Buy IPO Shares?" 13 Years Ago I Said No.
I'd like to see a chart of how IPOs perform in their first year compared to the rest of the market. No luck with Google.
nc17··on Are You in a Bubble?
If he can sell the shares, it makes no difference. They are public and liquid, good as cash.
nc17··on Are You in a Bubble?
It's not just tech bloggers, here's an article by the Washington Post about Facebook and traders betting against it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/could-facebook-fall-a...

nc17··on Build a “Serverless” search engine with IndexTank and SimpleWorker
This is neat, but what is a good use case for this? I would assume most people needing search functionality already run their webapps on a server somewhere.
nc17··on An interview with Apple's first CEO, Michael Scott
On topic, an old interview with John Scully about Steve Jobs. I believe it's been posted to HN before.

http://www.cultofmac.com/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full...

nc17··on How I wrote a Twitter timeline search app in two days
Good point, hadn't thought of that. I do wonder if proper search would affect people's time on Twitter. I don't find myself coming back for fear of missing out on something, but I do scroll down a lot when I visit. This must be expensive to them, as it causes lots of unnecessary db queries.
nc17··on How I wrote a Twitter timeline search app in two days
Thanks, this is useful. I don't understand why Twitter itself doesn't provide this option. I can search for tweets near me, people, tweets with links, etc. but not what I missed when I wasn't online. Could you combine this with other services such as Facebook or email?
nc17··on How I wrote a Twitter timeline search app in two days
I just tried your app but some of my tweets don't seem to be showing up. Does it have a lag or did it just miss them? Will they show up?
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