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nplusone

51 karma · joined June 2, 2011

Figuring it out.
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nplusone··on How to Succeed as an Introvert
It's fitting that a story that hit the front page on Hacker News about introverts has no comments. </meta>
nplusone··on Don't Give Your Users Shit Work
Still, it would be nice to be able to create groups to watch and filter repositories and users on GitHub.
nplusone··on Steve Jobs has passed away.
It is. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3078285
nplusone··on Ask HN: grammatically wrong title on landing page?
"Your entire future in one place" is clearer.
nplusone··on How Whole Foods "Primes" You to Shop
That's exactly how averages work if you're using the median value rather than the arithmetic mean. If the median age for an apple is 14 months, then you have the same chance of selecting an apple that is either older or younger than 14 months.
nplusone··on JavaScript is Not Web Assembly
If I recall correctly, Scott Hanselman raised the Assembly analogy in a post linked from this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2783060 . While discussing the unreadable JavaScript behind Google+ and similarly large-scale sites, Erik Meijer said

"JavaScript is an assembly language. The JavaScript + HTML generated is like a .NET assembly. The browser can execute it, but no human should really care what's there."

JavaScript generated by CoffeeScript is very readable and thus does not exactly correspond to that concept of JS-as-Assembly.

edit: formatting

nplusone··on The Totally Unofficial Ruby coding style guide
This Ruby style guide is based on https://github.com/chneukirchen/styleguide/blob/master/RUBY-... , as stated in the introductory paragraph. That style guide also contains these conventions for one-letter variable names.

Many others have forked this guide and made modifications according to their tastes.

nplusone··on Why Haskell is Kinda Cool
Parent is possibly referring to the blog's horrendous color scheme, not Haskell as a language.
nplusone··on How LinkedIn used Node.js and HTML5 to build a better, faster app
You can, but one reason nginx isn't used as much is that it does not fully support HTTP 1.1.

As a result, for example, although it's possible, it's not trivial to proxy WebSocket connections, which are commonly used with node.js apps. Streaming uploads/downloads have similar challenges.

nplusone··on How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit
I wonder how many people who paraphrase Taylor's "Principles of Scientific Management" have carefully read it. Taylor exposes several insights that are antithetical to the commonly paraphrased version "Faster is better. More hours are better."

At least in the context of moving pig iron slabs, he observed that highly-qualified (for the job) and better-paid workers produced better results working fewer hours than less qualified workers working longer hours.

This point is perhaps better paraphrased as "better management, better workers, fewer hours, and higher pay produce measurable improvements in output."

nplusone··on 58,000 Sign Up for Stanford AI Course
These lectures are also available on iTunes U. It would be interesting to compare the number of YouTube views to the number of iTunes downloads. I watched the first two classes on YouTube, and downloaded the rest on iTunes, though admittedly I'm still only on lecture 6.
nplusone··on Stats About Startup Success
Both the original paper (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=933932) and the blog post are from 2006.
nplusone··on Veteran developer Steve Lacey (Google, Microsoft) Killed in Auto Accident
That is exactly what cars are. They are weapons loaded with ammunition and ready to be fired. It baffles me that many people don't seem to be aware of this material reality.
nplusone··on Linus Torvalds proposes a change to the Git commit object format
Change last name to 'Torvalds' (edit: name in title changed)
nplusone··on Netflix introduces new plans and price changes
To those who are unhappy that customers are whining, I'd like to offer some context:

The instant viewing section is almost unusable since they launched their layout redesign in early June. The only logical explanation for introducing such a poor UX is to restrict users from accessing content in the first place, to reduce costs.

There continue to be a substantial number of complaints following that redesign, to which Netflix never adequately responded. Now they are raising prices on an already reduced customer experience. It's possible that Netflix could have gotten away with raising prices (with a reasonable explanation for doing so), but this change is happening in a broader context where Netflix is essentially taking its customers for a ride.

I suppose I could be completely wrong. The redesign might offer a wonderful experience that somehow I can't grasp. But that seems unlikely.

nplusone··on (debunked) PayPal vulnerability allows access to any account within 30 seconds
The opening statement (and URL) of this post is rather interesting: "I just accidental hacked PayPal" followed by "it took 30 seconds and I had total access to someone else's account".
nplusone··on New Look and Feel for the Netflix Website
There are exactly 5,000 comments on this blog post right now. It appears almost all commenters oppose the new design changes. It will be interesting to see whether Netflix will roll back their changes.
nplusone··on What to Say To Someone Who is Sick
Perhaps the most irritating aspect of the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is that it is a truism from a scientific point of view. Of course, everything happens for a reason. But the phrase is usually meant to imply that a higher power has a reason for causing events, and that there is a reason in a cosmic sense for events to happen, as if they were part of a larger plan designed specifically for you, the victim.
nplusone··on Code Quarterly's Interview with Rich Hickey
In doing, there is a lot of reading. Every line of code you write you will likely read dozens of times. And if you are writing anything significant, they will be read many more times by others.
nplusone··on What Safari’s Reading List means for Instapaper
Indeed, Marco's initial reaction seems to have been http://twitter.com/#!/marcoarment/status/77796293510037504

He's clearly thought of this possibility, as evidenced by his post in late April about the potential impact of Reading List on Instapaper.

nplusone··on A brief Sony password analysis
Using pie charts with any color combination is unreadable. See Edward Tufte's Visual Display of Quantitative Information for a detailed explanation.
nplusone··on Why RubyGems Needs Loren Segal
I'm hoping for a friendly SlimGems/RubyGems merger for Christmas 2011.
nplusone··on JQuery WormHole
Also, the title of this post should read "jQuery," not "JQuery."