peterjs

Some time ago I took the "Developing iPad Applications for Visualization and Insight" course from CMU [1]. Honestly, I do not remember much from the "visualization theory" part. I have learned more about the tools needed to build those visualizations (programming the iPad).

I think it is one of the instances, where you learn by doing and reflecting your work with theory and users. It is not a linear process, you must be willing to build stuff, then go back to the theory again and improve. Without that, the message of these courses will be reduced to mantras like "good design should be simple".

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/developing-ipad-applicati...

I don't really think that the colors are working out that well. I'm having a hard time imagining the continuum of colors between red and blue. Mapping the variable (percentage of votes for either party) to saturation or brightness of a certain hue would be more straightforward and intuitive. Although, it would make for a pretty lousy political statement as compared to purple :)

Another way to make the two basic colors more interesting could be the delta between the state and 50% and mapping it to saturation in both directions, i.e. CA dark blue, OH light blue, UT darker red… but I'm pretty sure some news outlets already did that.

I don't think that "creative" people would fail the test. Creativity has nothing to do with finding smartass solutions to puzzles. It has little to do with even solving puzzles.

Creativity is seeing, connecting and coming up with things other people don't. The main prerequisite is usually grunt work. We only see the results, not the messy process behind James Dyson's vacuum cleaner with thousands of prototypes, or Bob Noyce's integrated circuit. What made him so creative was his knowledge and understanding of the world of semiconductors and the ability to question things.

I strongly believe that any inventor with a similar story would score high on an IQ tests and would not manifest his creativity by making up unlikely theories. Admittedly, its a sign of intelligence to understand the question and the context in which it is being asked. The world is full of opportunities to show ones creativity. Picking one of 4 answers in a test is not one of those.

I've recently came across a project from Stockholm [1]. They went live before the UK announcement, so I suppose they set up a US entity.

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/martinkallstrom/memoto-l...

What does CoW mean? As in "GC breaks CoW & caching". There are quite a few acronyms and supposedly even some animal with these three letters.

Personally, I'm looking foward to a future where the display of my phone does not get scratched by the keys in my pocket. It will happen, and it will be a good thing. Admittedly, getting rid of my phone would solve the problem equally well.

Which would be the companies mentioned in the essay? I have tried to search for a list of yc companies, but the sites I've found were quite outdated.

Well, at least I learned that the Queen has a daughter. Is she a household name outside of the UK?

I've been programming a 3D application in Objective-C for a few months. There are things I like, dislike and find really confusing about the language. The thing is, you have to learn and understand it before making assumptions based on "hello world"-like pieces of code. The best "feature" I found so far is not even a feature. It is the way the language is designed simultaneously with the framework/os. It feels more compact and makes reasoning about programs easier.

The second is the way in which complex applications are built. Some programming languages are known for having many design patterns around them, which often feel artificial. Objective-C and the Cocoa libraries use only a handful of them, but they come very natural.

David is from CVUT/Open Informatics - http://oi.fel.cvut.cz/en/home. I'm not sure about Tomas. I met him some time ago when they were working on a web app with David. These guys are really passionate about building things on the web, that's for sure :)

Would you mind getting in touch? My mail should be in my profile. It's always nice to meet people from HN in Prague :)

Is that irony or ignorance? There are plenty of things worth doing that do not have a viable business model. How would you achieve the goals of the two nonprofits mentioned in the article? There are really no short term benefits from protecting the environment or helping families become self-sufficient. It takes years for trees and families to grow and measuring the economic value of these investments is not straightforward.

http://www.shelternetwork.org/ http://canopy.org/

Are they planning to introduce a pro version of the application? Some multitenant upgrade? It could apply advanced machine learning techniques to identify which of your girlfriends/spouses is using the phone and hide all the other communication. Not that I would need it, but it could significantly lower the divorce rates :)

It's the CS193P. The lecture videos are on iTunesU.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/

http://itunes.apple.com/itunes-u/ipad-iphone-application-dev...

I'm "taking" it right now, so I should get back to work instead of reading HN :) I like it so far. If you have prior experience with object-oriented programming, it is a good resource. The basics are enough; understanding the concepts of classes, methods, etc.

It's such a huge amount of money. Patents are what they officially say. Obviously, they have partners and they don't want to lose them in the short term, so protecting them seems pretty harmless. But they will inevitably compete at some point in the future. That seems to be one of the reasons behind the "patent story".

The other two might be that they are making so much less money on every device they sell than Apple. It could possibly become a reasonable source of revenue (Google almost always talks about market share of Android, not the revenue).

The last thought, is the big picture of utilizing the emergence of tablets to become a predominant player in the industry. Beyond search. And somehow surpass Microsoft and Windows as the omnipresent platform. That seems really tough.

Time will tell.

Thanks for sharing this insight. It really struck me with its simplicity. It happens all the time. When I have a clear notion of how to continue, I can't wait to start coding the next day. Just the opposite happens when I am left with a "blank page", and I have to force myself to start working.

That's an easy one. The best known Dane is obviously Peter Schmeichel :) The bubble of football/soccer fans is a quite populous place.

“Founder unfriendly conditions” do not compare to the way oligarchs operate and the consequences of their actions.

Much of the authenticity that comes through in your essays is based on being truly committed to the things you talk about. They are often controversial and authoritative (in a good way), but the possible discrepancy between what you say and what you do could easily undermine that authenticity.

Saying that other VCs do not care where their money comes from, does not make sense here. They are not judged as authorities on topics you write about.

Do you disagree with any of these points?

- You can use the profits from investing tainted money for further investments, but the money still stinks.

- The money that came from DST's partners is tainted.