Hacker News Reader

sadlyNesson Kenya is using the earth's heat to power the country

"Geothermal is currently at 533.8MW (of which 81.1MW is from the innovative wellheads technology raising geothermal capacity to about 32% of the total installed capacity. Our total thermal capacity is 253.5MW while wind comprises 25.5MW.

Following the full operationalization of the 280MW Geothermal plant in Olkaria, the national electricity consumption by mode 47% geothermal, 39% hydro, 13% thermal and 1% wind."

Source: Kengen.co.ke

sadlyNesson Saudi Money Fuels the Tech Industry. It’s Time to Ask Why

Is it fair/unfair to chalk this down to plain objectivism? That the source of money isnt that important as long as it gives me a chance to Change The World™..?

sadlyNesson Anthony Levandowski, self driving car whiz who fell from grace

Read you some Kevin Mitnick. 'Social engineering' as he calls it is very effective as an intrusion technique.

sadlyNesson Essential has sold just 5,000 phones since launch

It's supposed to be a long-term purchase, which is how they will explain low sales volume. But this makes it hard when they'll want to release a better version of the phone. Or not. Not sure though about their long-term pricing strategy.

sadlyNesson Payment Request API

There's been a debate for a while now about this. Clay Shirky, Walter Isaacson, Jakob Nielsen, Norman Hardy, Kevin Kelley and others have expressed arguments for and against(mostly for) micropayments. But there's yet to be a success story, most early implementations failed(BitPass, Ezcash, Peppercoin) but that was before cryptocurrencies. Now there's a new crop(Steemit, 21.co?, etc) that are trying again. Interesting to see how this will all pan out.

sadlyNesson We've failed: open access is winning and we must change our approach

By 'better than free', are you referring to this[1] by Kevin Kelly. To quote from it:When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied. And goes ahead to list 8 qualities of what can be sellable once distribution is no longer the value-getter. [1] http://kk.org/thetechnium/better-than-fre/

sadlyNesson WhatsApp Cofounder on How It Reached 1.3B Users Without Losing Its Focus

I think WhatsApp is where Twitter was during their Ascend-to-protocol Vs Just-push-Ads phase[1], only that WA is dead-set on not going down the Ad route. IMO their options are whether to become an app platform for businesses(Service delivery, payments, shopping) or to become a user-data source for FB. KIM that they are naturally competing with IG & FB.com in generating revenue for FB Inc and subscription isn't working for them(mostly because of almost zero app-buying & digital payments culture in places where WA is popular).

[1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been

sadlyNesson E-commerce will evolve next month as Amazon loses the 1-Click patent

Hope its going to be added to the payments ISO standards. If that's a fitting home along with the W3C move, is it?

sadlyNesson Don't Take Security Advice from SEO Experts or Psychics

Sidenote: Which parses better: buzzfeed-esque, buzzfeedesque or buzzfedian?

sadlyNesson Researcher Who Stopped WannaCry Ransomware Detained in US After Def Con

Any direct relation(real or hypothetical) between the arrest and the movement of the ransom coins? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14918545

sadlyNesson How the Collison brothers turned ‘seven lines of code’ into Stripe

Erm, how does taking money off the table when raising a round work? (just never heard of it)

sadlyNesson Minitel: The Online World France Built Before the Web

Not failing to mention how handy that 'Menu-523' came in handy when the dpad wore down(usually the first keys to fail on a feature-phone). It kept me from having to buy a new phone for months.

sadlyNesson Kenyan girls who code: Mentors spur African tech innovations

There's this http://imgur.com/a/livAB . They go around schools and get kids to work on simple electronics projects. Just started and only concentrating on primary schools, but I think they plan to expand to high schools(and thus engineering & programming) if they get funding.

sadlyNesson Why the Oil Price and the US Dollar Are Negatively Correlated

Related Read: Paper Money (1981) by 'Adam Smith' George J. W. Goodman.

sadlyNesson The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of happiness (2014)

It's true that it's useful but its the same mathematical talent that was (ab|mis)used by Losada, according to the article. What was useful here was Brown's scepticism, borne by him being an amateur(having no bread to lose over it).

sadlyNesson The Plane-Builder of South Sudan

Or give him a drone(or parts/instructions to build one). That could be a better starting point I think.

sadlyNesson Over 20 designers have copied my website and I don't mind

Related: On that left-brain right-brain roles split(it's not really that way): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8989685

sadlyNesson Instagram Asking For Your Government Issued Photo IDs Now, Too

FB & G+ are pushing so much to have data on their users actual identities, I wonder what they want to do with that database. Considering the move polarises some users.

sadlyNesson Aaron Swartz commits suicide

This reminds me of an episode in Medium(Patricia Arquette) where people regretted jumping from buildings but only after they had jumped. i cant recall the exact plot(google effect?).

sadlyNesson Elon Musk: Vegetarians only on Mars colony

so we can start farming kyrt...and psycho-probbing spatio-analysts...[1]

if only Asimov was around to see these events start to unfold.

[1] Currents of Space - Isaac Asimov

sadlyNesson Show HN: my useless weekend project, add speech bubbles to images

In what is usually described as a sweet spot or what Steve would call good design.

sadlyNesson Why I Recommend Against Hackety Hack

What does the government want to achieve with this program? Has it been done elsewhere (Im thinking India but its not the same, is it?) You're right, visual appeal is key but I'd go lower and start with something physical, lego-like and kid-friendly, meant to filter for those who can, at that age, program something. Then work up thru scratch etc to actual coding. But the biggest problem will be to get the teachers used to teaching it. Would like to read more about it, any links?

sadlyNesson Why I Recommend Against Hackety Hack

1. Make programming a compulsory subject in high/secondary schools.

2. Hope that some of those students become teachers after their tertiary education where programming is included. Now you have 8 year olds being competently taught how to program.

3. Realise that teaching every kid to program doesn't work. The nerds now do hardware.

4. Government decides that all kids should learn to tinker with arduino.

My point is: not all kids needs to learn to program, only to know that it is something they might be interested in.

sadlyNesson Why I Recommend Against Hackety Hack

Is this abandonment a side effect of the 'work on a popular OS project' advice I've seen around?

sadlyNesson Why I Recommend Against Hackety Hack

Almost every item of 'suckery' listed is something that can be fixed or rather, finished. And it's OS.

sadlyNesson Show HN: Designing Web Applications

It's nice seeing how you actually used the feedback from previous HN submission & made changes(and havent been rementioned here).

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703380

sadlyNesson Ask HN: Please stop using TL;DR

What is a TL;DR anyway? The core of an article in fewer words, an alternative title, an excuse for laziness, a tool for busy people, a bird's perspective? Some people like writing a TL:DR, it's an attempt to reverse the article's conception, it's game-like. The problem is when we assume TL:DR to be a perfect distillation of the article and comment on it. And, do writers mind being TL;DRd?

sadlyNesson Marc Andreessen: Not every startup should be a Lean Startup or embrace the pivot

> Know when you're attacking a difficult problem and you won't get quick feedback.

Good TL;DR .

sadlyNesson Kim Dotcom

The dont-vote-for-Obama bit reminds me of George Bush's "pre-war intelligence failure" fiasco.

sadlyNesson What does the African startup scene need?

Well, most damage(to hacker-mindedness) is done in high schools and universities, that's a place one can start with. I'm thinking our hackspaces need to have good libraries so a book donation inititave would help.