abstractwater

Right now the iPhone platform just looks a lot simpler than Android. One hardware, well known frameworks, centralized distribution. Development costs are lower. Android offers more freedom, but also more complexity.

In any case, both platforms are here to stay for quite some time.

Enough with these 0 content posts already!! They are ok on TC not here!

When google came out, search was already hot. Google made it hotter.

I kind of agree with the end results of your thoughts, but I think for very different reasons.

You mention "trust", "steal", "juiciest parts (of ideas)". You seem to imply that ideas (without execution) have a huge value and so must be protected somehow like a treasure. I think this is the fear that a hacker might listen, secretly record the conversation and swiftly run home to implement your idea before you. This is unlikely to happen. Chances are that if your idea is so good to get a hacker inspired to do something about it, a truly brilliant hacker might actually ask you if he can join you instead of going on his own. If he decides to "steal" it, chances are that he is not such a great hacker after all.

But anyway. An idea without execution is close to nothing. I don't think you have anything to fear to talk about it with anyone: non-tech people might help you to think outside-the-box and provide a different perspective; your peers might become interested, give implementation advice, or even join you. And you might as well talk about your idea at least to understand it's not shit.

If you keep your idea to yourself, it's just you and your brilliant, closed, lonely idea. :)

I agree, San Jose is too spread out for my taste: it's like a giant suburb. I lived in San Jose for about a year (Glenview neighborhood) and for pretty much everything I had to take the car.

I find the East Bay much more livable, in particular the nice parts of Oakland and Berkeley. Streets seem to be designed for pedestrians (or bicyclists) instead of cars. Plus the weather rarely gets in the 90s, which is invaluable for me.

Yes, I remember that. It was innovative and very useful actually. The new twitter-summize seems not that impressive, not ground breaking at all, and far less useful. Plus we already have tweetscan.com.

Is twitter search that important? I think the value of twitter is in the instant, not in the history.

After the first 2 items of the list I realized it was indeed a list until the end: from that point, knowing the structure of the article made the reading even easier.

These are the impressions I got after 40 minutes of tests:

- The UI design is visually distracting, bulky, complicated. There's too much going on at the top, 3 differently colored bars with the powerset logo, tab(s) and huge search bar. The search bar is omnipresent, even in the individual Wikipedia page you chose. Ironically, Google has a similar structure in its result pages, but feels completely different because the background is all white and less invasive.

- The Factz are often distracting and presenting useless stuff. E.g.: http://www.powerset.com/explore/semhtml/Simple_DirectMedia_L... presents around 25 factz. I counted 3 or 4 factz that are actually useful. The meaning of the other factz in the context is either obscure ("parameters": which ones?), deceiving or incomplete ("functionality", "ports", "operations", etc), useless ("needs" (??), "SDL", "The Video"), or all of the above.

- The way you actually use the Factz is terrible. First you clik on one fact, then after being flashed with the fade-out bling on the right column you actually have to move the mouse pointer all the way there, then the animation scroll, then probably move the pointer to the left to click on something actually useful or go back up to select another fact because the one you chose was wrong anyway (why? see above). After 5 minutes of this I feel dizzy. Who designed this stuff?

- massive waste of screen real estate with large white space on the right column, either entirely (results page) or partially (actual wikipedia result page you selected).

I do think there are some cool things, but so far it seems hard to use IMO.

recent, pretty good discussion also here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=168491

Before moving to Silicon Valley 5 years ago, I grew up and worked in Italy and I confirm those numbers. The only employment available in Italy right now is basically temp contracting paid a fraction of the relative full time position, with no job security. These "precarious" employees are often Master's Degree holders forced to accept those shitty jobs because, well, they are the only one available -- either that or leave the country, as many do. It you're thinking "why don't those smart people start a business then?", suffice it to say the government makes it extremely complicated. There's a lot of bureaucracy involved that is a big deterrent for many.

I second that. Another great feature is how close and tight the plastic keys are to the metal base: very few things can slip underneath them, and the keyboard stays exceptionally clean.

Unfortunately, trolls are able to find invitations where there are none.

All I care about is reading great stuff to build great products.

on my MacBookPro: 74 ps 47 kill 44 ls 33 cd 27 sudo 18 pwd 16 ping 16 open 12 cp 11 scons

I never used MSN search. (For some reason I don't think I ever will.)

I also had to learn C++ fast, and "Accelerated C++", by Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo was great. The book assumes you are a programmer, it's not dumbed down and most importantly it's only around 300 pages. In the time contraints I had (a month) I couldn't afford to deal with Lippman's C++ Primer or Stroustrup bible (both reknowned books, but over 900 pages). You don't even need to finish Accelerated C++ to start coding in C++. http://www.acceleratedcpp.com/

For STL, I recommend Josuttis's "The C++ Standard Library". It's a STL reference book, very complete and easy to browse. There are also brief examples on own to use the classes and templates. http://www.josuttis.com/libbook/

just got it too! I'm old, but very excited. :)

I work for a large company and I also feel the way described in the article. What baffles me the most is the constant need of approval in case I'm about to do something that goes a little beyond the "company policies", like setting up a public repository for code that's going to be released anyway.

Often these mysterious company policies are not explained in the first place, yet I'm supposed to adhere to them. So I find myself pondering, "Is it ok to do this?" Engineering-wise (and by common sense) it would be a no-brainer. Then I waste time and energy asking approval. Sometimes I get denied and so I wasted my whole train of thoughts related to an otherwise obvious choice. What bothers me the most is that the majority of people seem numb to these problems.

Why did you hire me if basically you're questioning my trust, and why are you blocking me from doing what I'm supposed to do? Then why you invite me to "fun" events afterwards?

Blender and Second Life. I also started some work on GIMP but I haven't submitted anything for GIMP yet. To get started I just sent an email to the relative mailing lists.

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico Philosophicus" (the extremism of the idea, the solemn (poetic?) tone that nevertheless emerges from the sentences of such a rigorous work)

2. RMS reflections about morals in software programming (I may not wholly agree, but he taught me a whole new way of thinking about software)

3. Prolog declarative approach (instead of describing how to solve a problem, just describe the problem)

I work for Logitech