Hacker News Reader

EzGraphson A proposal for improving HN : it should cost a user Karma to post

Despite occasional complaints from users being down-voted, I have appreciated that in most cases when a user is down-voted and asked for an explanation he is given it.

EzGraphson Entrepreneurship is hard but you can’t die

Music performance is an interesting analogy. It is simply impossible to learn music without making mistakes. One of the things that separates amateurs from pros is the ability to recover from a mistake, failure or disruption. Regardless of how great things sound in a practice room, the goal is the performance.

Its funny, failure in front of an audience is rarely fatal, but a huge fear for many.

EzGraphson Reveal.js - HTML Presentation Framework

Good point - easy to forget with all of the fun visual effects.

EzGraphson Visual programming means anyone can be a coder

When I hear "visual programming" I tend to think of Microsoft IDEs or GUI drag-and-drop tools, but this article cites a really interesting project posted previously to HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3951255). It's kind of mind-bending from a UI standpoint. See:

http://recursivedrawing.com/draw.html

Not so sure that it will really "democratize programming"

EzGraphson Coders Can’t Put Writers Out Of A Job Yet, But We’d Better Watch Our Backs

Looks like someone is selling it: http://www.narrativescience.com/technology/

EzGraphson Coders Can’t Put Writers Out Of A Job Yet, But We’d Better Watch Our Backs

No doubt automation will eliminate certain tasks that are currently done by humans. But there are only so many where bots can replace people. Best I can see for the near future, bots could very capably create "news spam." More tweets anyone?

There are just too many aspects of human language that comprise an actual piece of literature that are not dealt with in a particularly integrated way by current AI/NLP techniques. Narrative structure is a really fuzzy thing in certain respects and has an immense impact on a reader. Symbolism, metaphor, and various idioms are learned through personal interactions and require a sensitivity to the author's role and intended audience.

Of course I just may be out of touch. Have there really been such significant advances in computer generated journalism/writing?

EzGraphson Google Adds "People Related To" Google+ Results

... and if you do a search for Ruby, _why shows up at the top of the list.

EzGraphson Your Scientific Reasoning Is More Flawed Than You Think

Worse than simple ignorance, naïve ideas about science lead people to make bad decisions with confidence.

This is the reason these articles capture my attention.

A related problem not discussed in the article is the tendency to use so-called "scientific" explanations to a non-scientific area of life. A better understanding of the scientific method itself in education is essential. Simply prefacing a statement with phrases like "it has been scientifically proven that..." or "statistics show..." is used to lend a vague scientific credibility various claims. It shows up in a slightly more sophisticated form in political diatribe and in educational settings as well.

Although of course there might be a flaw in my scientific reasoning about the article ;).

EzGraphson DHH: Speaking Again and Making Way to Many Assumptions - Curtis McHale

Agreed. I am not even sure they are talking about the same thing.

DHH:

- formality is bad

- boring businesses are bad

Bottom Line:Formality stifles innovation

curtismch:

- rules are not necessarily bad

- boring businesses are not necessarily bad

Bottom Line: Society needs structure and people need to make a living.

EzGraphson Arrays in Postgres

There are probably some useful applications for this, but I am not really a fan of databases supporting complex data types. It's not because of a commitment to any particular normal form or theoretical construct. It is because on a project that involves multiple developers over a period of time, this sort of special functionality provides "surprises" that are not terribly pleasant.

- Nonstandard SQL is required

- Database specific functions are used

- Later developers can be confused by the use of a non-standard data type

- SQL Commenting does not happen much in practice in my experience

- Array data can be handled using existing SQL constructs, so it is never an absolute necessity

- Other languages are better equipped for handling the data types (in my fuzzy subjective assessment)

My experience is mostly with Oracle, which has been adding various data types for years (XML, Objects, Arrays, etc). I can't think of a specific case where their use proved to be a real specific benefit to a project... though the usual argument is improved performance.

EzGraphson How Gen Y is changing the corporate workplace

Article Summary seems to be: Generation Y has different expectations/work ethic, therefore the workplace will bend to their demands.

In some cases, employers refuse to provide positions to those who don't fit their current corporate expectations. This might partially be reflected by higher unemployment rates among this age category:

http://bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea10.htm

Not saying this is necessarily a good thing in every case. I work with folks (in Software Engineering) from around the globe. There are many people from other countries who happily work extremely hard and make sacrifices that some Gen Y folks from the U.S. would consider unacceptable.

EzGraphson A small project - need some feedbacks

It is nicely laid out and has a decent listing of mobile web frameworks. Seems like a nice starting point for developers who are trying to decide which framework to use for a new project - or for framework developers to publicize their creations.

EzGraphson Dozens of Plagiarism Incidents Are Reported in Coursera's Free Online Courses

Dozens? Out of 39000 students? Even if there were many dozens this is a small percent of the total student base (390 = 1%).

The number of students cheating at higher institutions is frequently reported to be much higher. For instance:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/is-student-cheating-dr...

The problem is not Coursera. The problem is people who cheat. And I am not sure that this is much of a story at this level.

EzGraphson Saylor Foundation: Computer Science

Accurate Title: Take Free Unaccredited Self-Study Online Classes that are part of many standard C.S. programs.

EzGraphson How To Get On The Frontpage of Hacker News

I agree with you in principle - good content is what makes HN great. That said:

"you need to write something interesting"

As long as you include the link title as the most important bit your write. Unfortunately, hits, votes and comments are often largely based on the title. In many cases the actual article is not even read.

EzGraphson How To Get On The Frontpage of Hacker News

Three votes seems to be the lowest threshold to initially make it to the front page. Not sure on what sort of time frame or criteria is needed. Exception is the posts hiring for YC Startups which start up on the first page when initially posted.

New entries display in orange: http://hn4d.com/

EzGraphson Show HN: HackerNews reimagined without tables or center elements.

Thank you - reported to the design team :).

EzGraphson Show HN: HackerNews reimagined without tables or center elements.

The problem I have with HN style by default is:

1) It is hard to tell what has changed recently (new comments, votes, changes in ranking)

2) The information is kind of crammed together and not lined up.

3) I hit refresh every few minutes

Am not a a designer, so had my son who has an eye for it help out on styling: http://hn4d.com/

EzGraphson A Physics Lesson: Why Cats Land on Their Feet

For the higher math involved: http://count.ucsc.edu/~rmont/papers/cat.PDF

For the humor value: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/87351

EzGraphson Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

The general risk-adverse vs. change-oriented paradigm makes a lot of sense. The problem is that it not limited to the technical realm in most organizations. Technology decisions often need to be justified by management who don't necessarily use purely technical criteria for their choices.

Some rather simple criteria can be used to group languages - age and popularity. Perl, JavaScript, Java, Visual Basic are conservative in that they are popular, well known, established languages (even though they cross the Yegge's whole spectrum). Haskell, while extremely conservative technically, is extremely liberal in many organizations - where there are no currently implemented projects using the language and no programmers experienced using it.

EzGraphson Steve Yegge: Notes from the Mystery Machine Bus

Some of the tendencies depend upon the nature of the organization. Startups tend liberal (want to change the world). Corporations tend conservative (want to avoid major mistakes). The selection of tools does not always reflect this immediately though.

Also some classification of technology as conservative or liberal depends upon the competing technology it is running against. I was a bit surprised to see Python classified as liberal - but it makes sense when comparing it to Java. If it is being compared with Ruby it is very conservative ("do things one way").

There are some non technological risks that influence technology decisions. Visual Basic may be "Hardcore Liberal" from a language perspective, but it is pretty conservative politically (backed by Microsoft, lots of available experienced programmers).

Steve as usual has interesting insights. I am not sure that this is a paradigm that completely fits - but it does provide a perspective for understanding fundamental beliefs that can lead to disagreements in software projects.

EzGraphson Textmate2 Goes Open Source

+1 for using 1 and missing drawer. Never upgraded to 2 because of the bad press, and because 1.5 is good enough. It chokes on large files - and long lines, so I use vi instead for these.

I really like a few features:

* View your whole project from the root directory: mate .

* Open a bunch of files in arbitrary locations at once: find . -name 'something.' | xargs mate

* Write a script and run it using command-R

* Banging out html using tab complete

* Compared to any IDE it is ridiculously fast.

* I wrote a bundle (for Oracle Databases) that I used for awhile.

Kind of cool stuff.... might be available in other editors but I found 'em for the first time in TM 1.5.

EzGraphson Why a career in computer programming sucks

As to the "Temporary nature of knowledge capital"

Some programmers want to learn a language or technology and continuously repeat the same basic project over and over again. I have been at it for more than a decade and am not using the same skill set that I started with - although some (*nix and SQL) have been in heavy use for quite awhile.

I know programmers that started "back in the day" and tell horror stories of stacks of punch cards being knocked to the floor. They are now coding in a modern language or helping to port legacy applications. In programming - and many other professions, you need to stay current and adapt.

Not to mention, you generally learn a lesson or two by simply dealing with people, working through large scale projects, and seeing technologies come and go. Some employers value this. Others opt for the cheapest salary available - and have results that prove that this is their approach.

EzGraphson MySQL now includes memcached, and a plugin that allows fast NoSQL-style access

Relevant excerpt:

The MySQL server now includes the widely used memcached in-memory caching system, and a plugin that allows fast NoSQL-style access to InnoDB tables through the memcached protocol. This access method avoids the overhead of SQL parsing and constructing a query optimization plan. You can store the underlying data in a single InnoDB table, or spread it across multiple tables. You can read and write data through both memcached and SQL. For example, you can do fast single-key lookups through memcached get calls, and do statistical reports across all the data through SQL.

EzGraphson Getting your heart rate using R and Ruby.

Interesting read. I think that the combination of Ruby (for data aggregation and preparation) and R (for calculation and visualization) is great. For instance, in the related-but-not-exactly category:

http://www.r-chart.com/2010/10/max-heart-rate-calculations-c...

It seems like folks who use R tend to be from a scientific community where Python has greater respectability and acceptance. But I see some similar "Lispiness" in R and Ruby that make them somewhat natural to use in conjunction.

EzGraphson For More Pianos, Last Note Is Thud in the Dump

Very sad to me. Digital pianos are a great innovation in many respects but are sort of analogous to microwave ovens in cooking. Work well enough to be widely adopted, but are unlikely ever to be the means of producing a masterpiece.

The relative lack of (touch) sensitivity and the more limited variation in timbre are immediately noticeable. One of the other qualities of a traditional piano that I instantly miss in even the best digital simulations is sympathetic vibration. Holding the sustain pedal down will not simply allow the notes to play longer. Other strings that freed up begin to vibrate as well. It produces an effect that - the last I checked - is not well emulated in a digital environment.

Reflective of the values of our age I guess. Small, relatively portable, low maintenance wins out in many other arenas. Why not music...

EzGraphson Hand-crafted integers

For the uninitiated, a very elaborate joke: (unique) integers as a service:

http://brooklynintegers.com/about/

EzGraphson Palm Pilot Graffiti

When I first saw that Graffiti, I thought it would take a big investment of time to adjust my writing style. As I recall, I was able to get by with just adjusting the way I wrote a half dozen characters or so, and just printed the way I had learned as a kid. This was sufficient for the small notes I entered into the Palm.

For all of the coolness of the iPhone, I don't enter notes into it often. The little type-writer kind of feels unwieldy. It is usable, and it may just be my perception (comparing typing on a full size keyboard to typing on the on-screen iPhone version). Makes my kind of miss Graffiti and using a stylus.

EzGraphson China Economic Data Questioned as Electricity Use Slows

China has issues gathering data in the first place, some of the problems are evident by doing comparisons between their own reported numbers.

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-12-28/markets/30564...

EzGraphson China Economic Data Questioned as Electricity Use Slows

Statistical and data mining techniques have been used to detect fraud in elections and financial statements.

http://www.economist.com/node/8733747?story_id=8733747

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Analysis_Techniques_for_F...

The NY Times reported last month that

Studies by Goldman Sachs and other institutions over the years have strongly suggested that Chinese statisticians smooth out the quarterly growth figures, underreporting growth during boom years and overstating growth during economic downturns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/23/business/global/chinese-da...

So private corporations (who granted have their own agenda and biases) make assessments of economic numbers reported.

It would be surprising that there is not publicly available studies that report the general reliability of economic statistics reported by a country. It would even be interesting to reported statistics aggregated in a way that allows for easy comparison between numbers reported by different countries. Something like the Index of Economic freedom: http://www.heritage.org/index/default

(I am not an economist - so can't say I have done an extensive analysis of available sources...)