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nikatworkon Why the Japanese Don't Litter

It was the South-West end during the daytime, the crowd seemed mostly business people. I get the feeling that Kabukicho and Golden Gai are treated as their own little walled gardens of sin :)

I was also surprised by the number and condition of the homeless. I had expected a communal minded society would look after such people.

nikatworkon Why the Japanese Don't Litter

Last time I was in Shinjuku (2009) there were actual cigarette police in special uniforms who followed smokers around and publicly chastised or fined them if they littered. I saw 3 salarymen get busted within about 15 minutes. The fact that this system even exists indicates that the Japanese do litter.

On the flipside, all the fast food joints had wastebins sorted by garbage type, and I did get death stares when I accidentally put some rubbish in the wrong one. Eating while walking also got dirty looks, but conversely you could buy beer and snacks on some of the trains and drinking alcohol in public is allowed.

Site has been hugged to death, cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oIkNRIM...

nikatworkon What was Alan Turing really like?

I understand why, and I know how most of us are. But it does make me sad that these harrowing experiences get smothered by polite conversation. FWIW my grandparents escaped the Soviet gulags and were likewise reluctant to discuss it. So the stories and lessons are lost.

nikatworkon What was Alan Turing really like?

> young, self-absorbed, ignorant, but believing I was clever and knowledgeable.

Well, don't beat yourself up too much. It is existentially wrenching to think about the missed opportunity but such is the folly of youth. Equally Preston could have shared more. Like tears in rain and all that.

Though I look at that statue of Turing and I really want to shake his hand and thank him. Sometimes life is terribly unfair.

nikatworkon PSD Viewing and Diffing

Image data is big by nature. If you are working with print-resolution files you can multiply that figure by ten. Each PS layer can contain a large amount of image data. It has nothing to do with the file format, if that is what you are implying.

nikatworkon Who am I: A mind reader (don't forget to view source)

Hmm, I was: 1. technology 2. programming 3. history 4. politics 5. design 6. architecture

And it was dead-right.

nikatworkon Why did it take so long for Windows to support multi-monitor taskbars?

It can be argued that opinionated design is more successful that design by committee. I think the most effective approach is to begin with opinionated design prototypes then triage and refine using A/B testing.

MS can be accused of relying too heavily on user surveys, making their designs a bland blending of averages that please nobody (see: the Office Ribbon). Thus the Ford quote gets trotted out, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

nikatworkon HomeKit

You didn't make an actual point. You just spouted Slashdot-esque vitriol.

This is the exact same reason most anti-Goog comments are heavily downvoted. No cogent point, no interesting questions, just "lolz dae M$ and Goog is le devil" - often including a whiny edit accusing HN of being Google apologists.

FWIW I think Google is making a serious effort to deal with the huge conflict of interest created by their defacto monopoly position. However it would be impossible for Goog to escape all negative consequences, nor are they without flaws, so intelligent discourse is welcome.

nikatworkon The Aviator's Heart

>Santos-Dumont would then land in front of his favorite café, tie the guide rope much like one might tie a horse to a hitching post, and walk in for a meal. It must have been quite a sight.

Okay, now I want my own personal dirigible for commuting. Kickstarter?

nikatworkon Perl 5.20.0 released

Matz admits that he might have stolen too much from Perl and got some "whale guts" over his shoes - but only a little.

From the obligatory Yegge rant: https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel

nikatworkon Whitewood Under Siege: Wooden Shipping Pallets

Not to mention the whole sustainability and foreign oil dependency issues of plastic. Whereas plantation timber can be grown locally in the US, keeping the jobs and money on home turf and lowering the risk of ecological issues from oil drilling.

I guess fire and contamination risk is much more immediate to the company bottom line, unless the material origin could be turned into a branding/marketing factor - "We only use goddamn all-American pallets!"

nikatworkon Boosted's Electric Skateboard (YC S12)

That Marbel board has a nice form factor, interesting to see the different choice of material for the deck. It's great to see some competition in this space. Hopefully someone will put a spring bushings option on one of these products.

nikatworkon Alcohol as a social technology to check the trustworthiness of others

AskHistorians does not agree with you. I find their sources quite credible.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1w3e4v/how_dr...

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/health#wiki_drink...

nikatworkon Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter?

I haven't used one of those myself, but yeah that does sound dangerous - however you could just tell the Googlebot to ignore the link in GA and it should be fine. I've seen people do similar things to create infinitely deep directories to screw with evil crawlers, since the Googlebot should obey your directives.

nikatworkon Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter?

You are correct that manual penalties can be applied, I worded my previous comment badly. What I mean is they don't appear to "manually" tamper with the result weightings eg by using a whitelist of upweighted domains.

While they can slap a manual -50 penalty on your domain, from memory you are notified of such penalties in Google Analytics so it's not a silent and nefarious manipulation. MeFi should know if they have such a penalty. I also admit that the "get out of jail" process is even more annoying than dealing with an Apple app store rejection.

nikatworkon Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter?

A link loop as in a dynamically generated menu structure that creates an endless loop for the crawler, or accidentally makes large numbers of very similar pages with similar URLs, etc. (Yes this can happen legitimately and by accident on retail/commercial sites).

nikatworkon Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter?

A high bounce rate is unlikely to produce the massive dropoff shelf in their traffic profile. They have likely tripped some flags and are getting a site penalty.

nikatworkon Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter?

I sifted through a lot of traffic data, and it must be noted that I saw zero evidence of El Goog manually weighting any results. Everything was 100% above board - they might donkey-punch you, but it was algorithmic and not manual.

I bet MeFi could be fixed in a few months if they hired a real SEO expert, ie someone who understands the underlying ranking algos and not just the usual voodoo bullcrap. The site is probably just tripping a few red flags, it could be something as stupid as an accidental link loop in their dynamic content.

I'll give it to Google, once you find your sin and fix it, your traffic will come back, maybe not 100% but a significant recovery. (Unless you have done something really dumb/blackhat like paid links.)

nikatworkon Why Has Google Forsaken MetaFilter?

And this is why I got out of organic SEO. You have essentially one client, and that is El Goog. A site can see product sales revenue drop 50% overnight after a bad Google dance, and it can take weeks to work out how you've offended it. I only used whitehat techniques mind.

Most people bleat "just write good conteeeeent" and have no idea how Google ranking actually works. I guess what was most galling was seeing certain retail sites getting away with blatant spam while your own sites got mysteriously slammed.

I don't blame Google though - it's a direct result of having a single player market. So go, duckduck, go :)

nikatworkon Babun – A new Windows shell

Megacorps. FIRE. Standard Operating Environments.

While I am actively infecting my org with FOSS, those of us working in corp land are often forced to use a Windows box behind an NTLM proxy and are blocked from installing vbox.

nikatworkon Babun – A new Windows shell

Unless your asshole infra team configure the SOE to actively bork vbox installs because everything is a "security risk". (But are still running EOL WinXP).

nikatworkon Found after 500 years, the wreck of Columbus's flagship the Santa Maria

Wind power is also being used as a supplemental power source for cargo shipping. The first commercial shipping voyage using a computer-controlled kite saved an estimated 10-15% fuel (up to $1500 USD per day).

[1] http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080208/full/news.2008.564.ht...

nikatworkon Found after 500 years, the wreck of Columbus's flagship the Santa Maria

Rum.

nikatworkon Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher Asking for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

Crass, informal writing is not a modern invention. Graffiti was the twitter of yore. Behold the tweets of Ancient Rome: (NSFW language) http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2...

  VIII.2 (in the basilica); 1880: 
  The man I am having dinner with is a barbarian.

  Herculaneum (on the exterior wall of a house); 10619:
  Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here

#pompeii #swag

nikatworkon Symptoms of Dysfunction in Software Teams

The hero is called in to patch up some flaming wreckage. Mgmt never allocates the resources to actually fix the root cause. Thus the hero is seldom at fault, otherwise they would be Jane Doe. There is a specific type of hero who deliberately creates this situation, but IME they are not the rule.

Source: I was That Guy for about 8 years at three different gigs. Now I specifically negotiate no afterhours support in my job interviews, and turn off my phone when on holiday.

nikatworkon Ask HN: Reasons behind renaissance of functional programming languages

Renaissance means resurgence, not dominance. Re = again, naissance = birth.

10 years ago I would see the very occasional article about Lisp. Now FP discussion is everywhere. Whether it's being used in prod systems or not, FP is certainly gaining attention.

nikatworkon Better bash in 15 minutes

Modularity is nice, but it's generally easier to debug a program in a single context.

I work with some deployment systems that chain together small scripts in a bunch of different languages. They are a nightmare to troubleshoot.

I'd much rather the spaghetti was all on one plate than follow it from table to table...

nikatworkon Inside the Soviet Army (1982)

How does the US doing bad things justify Russia doing bad things to a territory independent of both? That makes no sense at all. And the fact that Russia can get away with it does not ethically absolve their actions.

If we followed your ideas, the Baltic states would never have broken away from Russia. That actually worked out quite well for them.

nikatworkon Software eats software development

At a megacorp, as a developer, you have as much chance of changing the culture as you have of stopping a hurricane with a fart.

nikatworkon Inside the Soviet Army (1982)

> The USSR is not Russia or the Russian Empire; it is not an empire at all.

> The Soviet Union does not need new territory.

> A communist regime cannot feel secure so long as an example of another kind of life exists anywhere near it, with which its subjects can draw comparisons. It is for this reason that any form of Communism, not only the Soviet variety, is always at pains to shut itself off from the rest of the world

This is a massive insight. Most current analysis of Putin centers around a WWII Lebensraum perspective of his actions. Modelling his behavior in terms of neutralizing breakaway territories seems a much better fit.