xcombinator

Who cares?

I don't care if this is normal or not, and honestly, I don't know you. How am I supposed to help you?

You could be: A bad programmer. A good programmer. A non social person, and hate socializing with colleagues. A social person and hate writing code alone. A good leader that wants to decide by himself. A bad leader that just want another relationship with his boss.

You want to be happy in your live, don't you?. So go to a good psychologist or read books and fix that by yourself. You are a grown up human. Take responsibility.

innovation

in - nova - tion

nova = new in latin language

This is good news!!

I started using e long long time ago. Now I use gnome(ubuntu). I love e, but it was not practical for me:

+ I use (and program) a lot of gtk-qt that looks so bad under e. It needs a wrapper that uses e widgets.

+ Raster is over perfectionist. He didn't wanted how skype and other icons looked in the notification are. His solution? Remove the system tray(notification area) and make impossible to use apps like instant messenger or amarok(I'm sure there must be a way, but not easy).

+ If you look at raster and e team screenshots you will find they use (and care)the terminal, gimp, inkscape a mIrc program and a memory mapper, so it's difficult for them to understand other people needs(not developers).

+ When compiz was introduced again raster thought it was not a good idea to include it. Other people included it, I don't know if raster dropping the link to elive(http://www.elivecd.org/) in his personal site have something to do with that.

+ Raster default widget theme was a little... how to say it?, I don't know if this is the word in english: tacky.

No, it was not my schoolmates, it was my father's ones, as I wrote before.

Yeah, american people are different to european, here and in asia education (and specially memorization) is very important. Some american people will find it difficult to understand that in Spain you could get to be public worker(and can't be fired) just making an exam.

I'm talking about groups of birds here, they are very real. E.g, the pilot of a big plane saved the lives of the passengers when a big group(thousands) of flamingos take off from Doñana national park in Spain, he did what the book says not to do, put the plane in full-power and fly over them.

There is a rule in engineering, never underestimate a 900km/hr projectile. And I have seen myself engines birds test that are mandatory on every turbine.

Sorry for the typo.

Fishes die everyday because they eat polymers and can't digest it, their stomachs fill and there is no space for food.

It's normal to discover dead sharks and whales with their stomachs filled or nearly filed.

A very good idea. Start growing an open source web platform.

Vim, paper and good quality colors pens. Valgrind, grep, gdb, inkscape for drawings...

Typical american mindset: Everything is money. Use something, throwaway when don't needed, bury it, contaminate the soil, the seas, it's cheaper.

Of course they are external cost to recycle, what he doesn't say is that THEY ARE EXTERNAL COST TO NOT RECYCLING. Nature knows that since long long ago, she recycles everything.

The Pacific is filled with polymers just because people love to use plastics and don't recycle them, fishes dye (external cost) every day because they confuse it with jellyfish. Jellyfish plague the seas(external cost).

Plastics additives are getting to our food chain(external cost). Our water contaminated by flame retardants and biphenols A when you bury it are affecting us (external cost).

If you want to make new paper you need to contaminate the rivers (Think about International Paper corp.). Making aluminium from oxide, instead of melting takes an exorbitant quantity of energy(external cost).

This article is pure demagogy, if he want to be serious he needs to put numbers over the table.

I don't like this kind of journalism. He cites something like "Apple is not proud..." in two lines and we have three paragraphs from other person interpretation, telling whatever he wants. Just give me the entire conversation and don't get out of context.

Classic trick for manipulating information.

When Carmack says Apple is not proud on the iPhone I believe is about Steve Jobs when he thinks that computers are powerful machines and you can use it for doing amazing creative and scientific work but you can use it for wasting all your time too.

I'm trying to remember the exact real interview he said that, I think it was in the famous Playboy magazine interview, long long time ago.

They get a ton of money from that, but feel more proud of other things.

I disagree, I know people who is a "natural" with other people, without studying and have technical skills too. People like them, and buy from them.

Working in the industry I met a guy who was a very good mechanic, but really good with people. He started selling products while he worked as a mechanic. He become rich, and he didn't wanted to sell!!! People trusted him because they knew he was not going to trick them.

I would choose the large apple. You know, the body is not stupid, eating 110 kcal doesn't mean storing fat.

In fact, Apple(look at the nutritional values): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple - Sugars 10.39 g - Fat 0.17 g

Peanut: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanut - Sugars 0 g. - Fat Saturated 9 gr!! - Fat monounsaturated 24gr!! - Fat polyunsaturated 16gr!!

Maybe that doesn't tell you anything but 100 gr olive oil has more calories that 300gr of sugar.

Eating apples is natural for human beings,like many other fruits, eating peanut butter is not(apple has a lot of water with their sugar what makes it easy to process, and converting its sugars to fat would take energy).

They are other reasons for storing fat, e.g cold protection and cell and arteries protection from acids(produced by sugars burning).

The calories approach is an oversimplification.

Today, no passenger wants the computer to control the plane. They are right.

Today planes can take off and land using only software and radio signals, even when the pilot can't, like no visibility when cloudy.

The problem is that computer understanding of the surroundings is NULL. Today there is no software that could understand(well) that there are birds(or small planes) on the way that are going to be eaten by your engines, and damage it.

The only technologies that work are active, like LIDAR, this is going to change, but first on vehicles with less degrees of freedom. Trains(1FD) before ships(2FD) before cars before planes.

Me too. I started reading Reddit when I read a PG easy, I think he was talking about how he didn't liked the name or so, but then was great and simple.

I stopped reading reddit when I found the more serious Hacker News, and saw Reddit as the site of reunion of "We are superior, rational people, reason is the only important thing in the world" male character. Cult of radical Misogyny and Atheism.

Well, maybe it sounds like when I say "had enormous problems" that they didn't pass courses, or were stupid, they passed(with great pain through) and they were not, but I'm talking about boarding school with military discipline(and physical punishments) in Europe.

I think is difficult to understand this, specially for american people.

The fact that some people don't quite understand is that making a successful restaurant or company is as difficult or more difficult that study and fill an exam.

I think one can't say to himself he is brilliant, this is so dangerous.

My father tells me how much surprised it is when he sees back their school mates,now that he is retired, they expected the brilliant people in class to success.

This is what really happened:

The brilliant people(3 hipersmart guys) took a normal job and lived a normal live. People that had enormous problems in school, became presidents of big companies, made their own restaurants chains,got political power, became famous as scientific researchers...

Wow: Nobody would have expected that!!

I think those brilliant people were very good at learning and memorizing when the answer is known, but not so good facing risk and failure, fighting against unknown.

PS: There was a time I got 10 over 10 score in some exams like math when a lot of people didn't pass. I felt great(and superior) about being considered intelligent, but at the same I felt frightened about losing my position, so I stooped asking stupid questions (what would they think about me).

Later I discovered I love asking stupid questions, and I love testing new things, often it goes bad, so I felt liberated making enough grades and not being ultrasmart, but feeling this stupid man can kick some smart asses if I work hard.

Of course, you pay property taxes, but with the money you pay you are paying the VAT other people pay(the person who sells you the house needs to, and all the chain).

Of course, you trust people, and companies trust people, but they want to control in witch ones they trust.

They need to send their network and security code to NSA for inspection, they look at it and MODIFY, they don't know in some cases what does the modification does.

It has been that way from 1995 days(I had family members working in MS at that time).It's normal, they are a US company after all.

I'm too lazy for citation, just search by yourself, here you can look at the "there are good contributions from NSA" probe: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01...

You know, we "can be all terrorist" mentality, like the printers mark, they need some way of accessing any computer just in case.

Hey, who you trust more?:

a)A program that is in your own servers - computers. b)A program that is on others computers.

So difficult to understand why people trust A more than B. Whatever they promise you, they can look at your data if they want, not so easy in A.

E.g The NSA have the option to see whatever they want in the USA, they have it so easy to do industrial espionage against other countries(they did it with airbus, with national security excuses).

Google can't say no to NSA. Microsoft either(they let them put backdoors in their software), but is not so easy.

I have. My office leather chair was bought in IKEA more than ten years ago. It was cheaper than alternatives, I bought the alternative because I wanted something good that last. It lasted 6 months of use, I had used a lot of chairs in my life,and all broke fast(I'm tall, maybe that's it) I think my IKEA is way way better in terms of quality, not only price.

I have lived in places with old mahogany furniture(from Congo), strong, beautiful, heavy wood, I prefer IKEA furniture for living, I don't need to care if I broke it, is lightweight, and I don't feel bad about the environment.

Having someone do something using his own hands doesn't mean is better, in fact, it uses to be worse, compare a Toyota manufactured with robots to a handmade car and tell me.

My advice is for you to find something you need writing, but is new, this way you are not competing with Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Stefan Sweiz (man, they had been good writers out there).

Find something you are unique and good and follow that, books that could help you: "Rich dad,poor dad" "think and grow rich". Is not about being rich, is about changing your internal way of thinking you get used to think from a life with your parents, family, work...

Good luck

I live in Spain, like California:

1) We are frontier with way less developed countries. Africa-Europe frontier.

2)We have good climate all over the year.

3)We got in debt for buying houses. Tens of years of loan debt were given to the government in the form of taxes. E.g, you got 35 year loan and paid right now 16% taxes.

4) The government got used to spending the money, thinking ill will last forever.

5) People stopped paying loans. They had the same money that before, taxes grew because debt grew. Today we have millions of unsold houses.

6) Government spends way more that come in. They don't want to stop spending so they, as an state, go in debt too.

7) Government is in trouble. We are near 20% unemployment rate, gov is constantly trying to lower the official rate making statistical tricks, like not considering unemployed those that don't work but go to a employment class.

8)To be continued...

I agree with most advice here:

a)Do Meditation and relaxation, yoga, self help books, fill your mind holes. b)Exercise regularly, this is important, if one day you don't have time to run, just go out and run for 5 minutes, but don't stop. c)Talk with friends about it.

For the kind of work I do, just putting myself to work won't help, e.g if I broke with my gf I can't help but I will be 85 per cent of my time thinking about her, or if someone of my family dies(my mind just says: F*CK THAT stupid work thing, this is more important!!.

Only when I solve the issues, I'm free, just look at Graham Chapman funeral: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsHk9WC7fnQ&feature=playe...

No, a long hike is not hard work, just ask Tim Ferris, or Miguel De La Cuadra Salcedo.

If a relationship requires hard work, then you have not the right partner to you, it's just natural, like hiking.

I think is way harder and unnatural to spend your time programming in front of a machine that hiking and loving someone, but maybe that's me.

Is not a mistake is design is correct, it seems that we need Apple to rethink what exist to make people realise that other worlds exist. It happened with the touch in Iphone(a phone without keyboard is a huge mistake...), and it will happen with the Apple tablet.

Take into account that actual UI are designed for mouses, but there is not such a need. Humans find way more natural to use pens and fingers than keyboards.

My experience with pair programming:

It is so great when the other person is very good/smart at programming. You sense that your work is way more than the sum of the individual parts. It is like an explosion of creativity because you don't stop when you have a block and the other has not, or he has a block and you have not.

It is not great when the other person is not good/smart. You make all the work, the other can only spot the obvious, and makes the sum way less than individual parts. Feels like an endless drain that won't finish ever.

In world war they experimented with airplanes pilots: creating groups with the best ones, letting other groups with the not so good. It was fantastic for the elite groups, but bad for the mediocre ones.

They mixed groups with good and mediocre people and it made the mediocre turn good, but the good didn't became elite.

So I think this has pros and cons, and is not for everyone.

Agree, think in the Descartes coordinates, it was Descartes looking at the corner. How many corners had people looked at before seeing before?.

Microsoft is not the best company to talk about patents. They are a software company and in a lot of places in the world mathematical concepts, ideas and software could not be patented.

This is the main issue Microsoft wants to change making an universal system, in fact what they want is to export the American system over the other countries.

Patents favor the powerful, witch get a monopoly, witch makes money to the powerful, who spends money on new patents, new monopolies. That works great for Microsoft(witch was created when USA software patents didn't exist),and maybe some USA states(all world software needs to be done on Seatle or California), but is bad for the rest of the world, we became a colony, like USA were from Britain.

Imagine you are not American, you are an intelligent, smart person of the rest of the world. Would you give external people the monopoly over what you make? Am I not going to think because you bought the exclusive right to it?.

The earth magnetism is static, it doesn't change in practical terms(in a window of a second), neither periodic or not.

To hear someone tell: this is like the earth magnetism, this is not radiation, is trying to fool people, I'm sorry but I feel very upset about it. If they use let's say 50Herzs, they are emiting photons, not in the visible range, but they are photons anyway, but they are not going to use 50Hz, they will use MHz and more, and that could resonate with proteins and destroy it.

There are millions of proteins out there with different sizes, and shapes, to probe that one of them is destroyed by this this is impossible, but given the right size and the right frequency it will happen because everything has their characteristic frequency.

The same way when you put water in the microwave oven it heats up because it has absorbed the energy and translated it to mechanical energy because of the characteristic frequency of the water. With lower frequencies than mw oven you are going to resonate with bigger structures than water, water is small compared with proteins that could be thousands or millions of times bigger.