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walkon

541 karma · joined December 5, 2009

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walkon··on What Happens When One of Your Coworkers Dies
I don't think this article is just about how people react to a coworker dying. It's an observation that regular presence of someone, particularly in the workplace, doesn't automatically lead the relationship past an acquaintance level. Obligatory social routine and superficial small talk might make us feel comfortable with each other, but beyond that, there might be nothing deeper there. Some of us our surrounded by familiar faces and conversations each day, while entirely disconnected and alone.
walkon··on A CNN Viewer Has Questions for Mike Rowe
> The trades are physically hard labor

Mike Rowe agrees with you, so what's your point? Of course it is hard. Mike's point is our culture is becoming increasingly averse to engaging in hard, physical labor, even in the cases where compensation greatly exceeds that of many other fields.

walkon··on Facebook has just invited me to interview and now I’m pissed off
In case you missed it somehow - we live in a society that abandoned slavery, feudalism and even factory sweatshops more than a few years ago.

Facebook isn't requiring him to do this. They are asking him to if he wants to get further in the candidate process. Clearly a bad approach by the recruiter (perhaps a mistake?), but to liken this to slavery is a reach. Just withdrawal candidacy since you weren't very interested anyway.

walkon··on The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free (2009)
Indeed. The ROI on providing coffee free of charge to employees has to be huge. All that (free) caffeine works wonders for helping people stay awake and productive.
walkon··on Bootstrap 3 is mobile-first
Font Awesome's license makes it effectively free:

http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/license/

walkon··on Tesla: a little bit Apple, a little bit Google, and about to be huge
So we'll just ignore that one gear in the box and the several that make up the open differential?
walkon··on Tesla: a little bit Apple, a little bit Google, and about to be huge
I would classify one as more than none.
walkon··on Tesla: a little bit Apple, a little bit Google, and about to be huge
No gears? That seems incredible (and false).
walkon··on Dwolla Raises $16.5M from Andreessen Horowitz
Veridian is indeed a Credit Union and a member of the NCUA.
walkon··on Bitcoin exchange rate reached $100 USD per BTC
> The reason it's bad is that deflation makes it more profitable to do nothing than to invest. When this happens, people react by not spending money. The market dies.

If this is holds true, why do people buy from markets where prices regularly decrease? Wouldn't it follow that they will wait in perpetuity and never buy that new phone/laptop/etc?

walkon··on Python.org Redesign Preview
Sorry, I wanted to add that I agree with several others that the secondary nav is flawed, but couldn't really decide which comment to reply to. Most of the reasons to why it isn't very good have already been stated, but I agree my specific comment was bad because it didn't add anything new or helpful, other than "someone else doesn't like it."
walkon··on Python.org Redesign Preview
Has some nice aspects, but that secondary nav is horrible in almost every way.
walkon··on Teach kids to farm, not code.
Are you implying that the drive and burning desire described by edw is something women are incapable of feeling towards programming? Or that they need extra hand holding and encouragement to be able to succeed in this field?
walkon··on Vim users: stop using hjkl
You are mostly missing my point, which has nothing to do with vim use magically making what you code perfect. Not sure why you are trying to say that is what we are positing. All I said was that it takes some of the mechanics of modifying text out of the way making editing a bit more efficient in that regard (once you become proficient). You can still efficiently code crap, of course. Who is saying otherwise?
walkon··on Vim users: stop using hjkl
Imagine if there was a way to edit text entirely through just mentally thinking what you wanted changed? No physical overhead whatsoever, but just having the text change as soon as you mentally think, "change this parameter name to ___" and it happens. Being proficient in a good editor, like vim, makes that slightly closer to reality than using traditional, non-modal editors. Even so, this slight difference can have the major effect of helping the editor "get out of the way" and just let you make the changes a bit more proficiently - essentially freeing your mind up a bit to think about what you are changing instead of how. Physical traveling to the cursor/arrow keys to move one character or row at a time is wasting your time and a bit of mental energy, since you can't quickly and efficiently get to where you want to edit immediately (e.g. your brain has to do more and wait longer in between thinking, "x should instead be y" and it actually being changed).
walkon··on An Unremarkable Event in the Tenderloin
> I figure, every single person who's out there begging is in need.

Then you've figured incorrectly. There are absolutely a high number of these people who are scamming. A major reason they persist and misdirect resources from those that are truly need, is because of those who blindly assume "every single person" is in need.

walkon··on Django with Visual Studio
> Are you going to deploy Django on Windows? You would not be wise to do so.

Is there something about Python on Windows that isn't stable or are there specific package/modules that Django requires that have issues?

walkon··on Tesla says it lost “hundreds” of orders after New York Times controversy
> Except you're comparing apples to oranges.

So a Tesla can fly, eh?

walkon··on Your Tumblr is broken. Fix it.
With this approach, visitors that are viewing a blog post's dedicated (permalink) page may not find an obvious way to get back to the root of the blog as the logo links to the associated company site. To me, this can be just as annoying, since I don't want to get into manual-address-bar-truncation mode. Explicit links for each (blog root and company) in the footer are nice, but often not to be found.
walkon··on Emblem.js: concise, indented alternative templating language for Handlebars.js
I'm surprised by the number of people who don't like using technology for what it was invented to do: make your life easier.

That's my point - I don't see this being much easier or particularly valuable, considering I will always have to be highly competent with straight HTML regardless. To me, this is a mental switch with little payoff (handlebars + HTML is fine).

walkon··on Emblem.js: concise, indented alternative templating language for Handlebars.js
Interesting, but I really do not like the implied HTML tags (+ blocking via indentation) going on there. Mentally parsing HTML isn't that bad for someone with a bit of experience. This would add a new wrinkle (i.e. friction) to design.
walkon··on I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora
The iOS version should be easy since they actually send all the answers to the client and hide them. This works with my pretend iOS 5 iPhone (via Chrome):

  javascript:(function($) {
	$(".app_promo, .app_install_dialog").hide();
	$(".answer_text").css({'margin-left': '110px', 'width': '88%'});
  }(jQuery));
walkon··on I'd like to use the web my way, thank you very much Quora
That's not a bad idea. Here is some bookmarklet code that retrieves and displays the actual answers when hovering over the blurred out answers. The downside is, it cannot do anything about the answers that do not have a permalink (clickable datestamp).

  javascript:(function($) {
    var $answerTextDivs = $("div.answer_text:has(.blurred_answer)");
    function heal() {
        $answerTextDiv = $(this);
        $answerLink = $answerTextDiv.find("a.answer_permalink");
        if ($answerLink.length === 0) {
            showError($answerTextDiv, "could not find answer - no permalink.");
            return;
        }
        $.get($answerLink.attr("href"), function(d) { 
            var $permaAnswerDiv = $(d).find(".answer_text");
            $answerTextDiv.empty();
            $answerTextDiv.append($permaAnswerDiv.first());
        }).fail(function(e) {
            showError($answerTextDiv, "ajax call failed - " + e);
        });
    }
    function showError($container, message) {
        var $errorDiv = $("<div>");
        $errorDiv.text(message);
        $errorDiv.css({
            'background-color': 'red',
            'color': 'white',
            'padding': '2px 6px',
            'position': 'absolute',
            'margin-top': '38px',
            'z-index': 2000
        });
        $container.prepend($errorDiv);
    }
    $answerTextDivs.one('mouseenter', heal);
    $.ajaxPrefilter(function(options, originalOptions, jqXHR) {
        /* this is to prevent annoying UIX usage tracking POSTs to Quora */
        if (options.type === 'POST') {
            jqXHR.abort();
        }
    });
  }(jQuery));
walkon··on The Charges Are Flying Over a Test of Tesla’s Charging Network
How has this fallen of the front page so quickly, yet the story from Musk's perspective is treated as irrefutable? Right now this is still mostly in hearsay mode, proving the bias in HN readers (at least those ostensibly flagging and down-voting this story into oblivion).
walkon··on The Charges Are Flying Over a Test of Tesla’s Charging Network
> And consider the consequences if Musk reported something different than the records show -- and Musk knows this. Why would he knowingly sabotage his own company?

Wouldn't a privileged DBA be able to make the data look like just about anything? Also, the location logging system as a whole isn't necessarily infallible.

walkon··on Getting Started with Django
Upvote it and it will show in your "Saved Stories" page (link on your profile page).
walkon··on Why the Fuck?
Should neurosurgeons make good money?
walkon··on If you have a file called todo.txt on your computer, you're in the right place
The few apps I've granted access to my Dropbox always get (or take) full access to all my files, which is disconcerting. Is it possible for apps to be granted access to only the certain directories or limited areas of my Dropbox?
walkon··on Peter Thiel’s Unorthodox Management Philosophy of Extreme Focus
To me it sounds like you are using the same illogical mix of correlation and causation assuming that Thiel's success must be solely attributed to luck instead good methodologies, hard work, etc. It is wrong to assume his methodologies must be bogus only because he's been fortunate in other ways.
walkon··on Sales down, Microsoft raises prices radically
> The company is repeating the one still working play they have [raising prices], circling the wagons around the enterprise market, effectively raising the barriers to exiting.

Raising prices lowers the barrier to exit because the costs of switching to another platform become that much less expensive relative to staying with the Microsoft stack.

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