albeec13

I was wondering the same thing. As a teen I drove a small car, and at least once or twice while playing around with shifting gears (mind you, this was an automatic) I accidentally shifted into reverse while in motion, causing everything in the car, including the engine and power steering to shut down. All I did was quickly turn the ignition key to restart the engine and all was well.

Yes power steering loss makes the car very sluggish, but really you're just coasting at that point and turning the ignition switch quickly is second nature. I'm sure it could be a little more frantic at highway speeds.

I wonder if this is something that should be taught in driver's ed?

(Regardless of my above comments, I do agree GM is responsible for sweeping this under the rug)

I guess that is one valid point, assuming it can harvest more energy with day and night operation than solar panels during the day, which I doubt.

Haha, ok good. Because I've been in relationships like that, and they never end well. I just didn't want to be the bearer of bad news :)

And this is better than photovoltaic solar panels because?

Everything in the article indicates that the power generated by both proposed methods is both negligible and difficult to achieve.

I'd rather they focus on improving something that's known to work rather than trying to resurrect technology that's been failing for 50 years.

Interesting concept aside, if your wife gets that angry because you forget to respond to a non-critical text message, she really needs to relax.

Why don't you, you know, CALL them on the phone? They have a customer service line for a reason. Twitter isn't exactly that.

Interesting analysis nonetheless.

Technically speaking, Jeff Bezos owes your friend absolutely nothing. He offered the producers of 60 Minutes half his fortune and a trip to Vegas if they could guess his announcement. He didn't offer your friend anything.

That's gotta be the most egregious product placement I've ever seen.

The only thing I want is to be able to choose the "main" desktop. Right now, this is reserved for the first desktop to the right of the Google Now page. So, when you press the home key, it takes you to that desktop.

Prior to installing the GEL, I had two desktops on either side of the primary one, but pressing home would take me to the center one. Now that Google Now took up residence to the left of the main desktop, I had to move the previous "left" desktops to the far right, which means two more swipes than before. The only reason I had to do this was because GEL thinks the primary desktop is the leftmost one after the Google Now page.

If they update it to allow choosing a primary desktop, the problem goes away.

Glad to help! (also I meant "through*" in the original post, but you got the point...haha)

MiniDLNA works extremely well on linux, and a quick Google search shows links for how to get it working (albeit hackily) on a Mac. It might be worthwhile to run a VM on your Mac with an easy linux distro like Ubuntu to run MiniDLNA.

I use it daily on an Arch Linux server as well as occasionally threw an Ubuntu VM on Windows 7. Works seamlessly in either case, and better than most other DLNA servers I've tried in terms of file format support and reliability.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/minidlna/

Doesn't posting your public key for all to see on the internet mean any authorities you're trying to avoid giving access to your data can simply use said public key and get it anyway?

Would you care to elaborate on how they're a "very rich company"?

(Edit: I actually read the article after my post and saw the section about Benchmark Capital's $13 million investment. The rest of my comments still stand...)

Now if you meant they have built such a large following that a buyout is inevitable, and/or they stand to make a lot of money by introducing a business model into the equation, then I'd agree. However, that does not change the fact that the owners are incredibly greedy not to accept a $3 billion cash offer, especially considering the fact that there's no guarantee they can come up with a viable business model at all. Now that they've turned down an arguably hugely inflated offer, they may have made a huge mistake in the long run.

Let's not forget that Snapchat isn't exactly a difficult product to clone, and the only thing going for them right now is user numbers. If they introduce a poor money-making mechanism into it, users will not hesitate to flock to the "next big thing" instead of forking over cash or dealing with intrusive ads.

This appears to be a reaction to Google Hangouts more than anything else. From the Play Store description for Facebook Messenger, it sounds like you can indeed send messages to friends based on their phone number, but it does not appear to be via SMS. It's more similar to something like Snapchat, where it uses your phonebook to find people who have registered their phone numbers with the app.

Furthermore, last week, information leaked regarding Facebook dropping SMS support due to lack of uptake. One source for this: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/10/29/facebook-testing-new-m...

Long story short, this appears to be a data-only messaging app, not unlike pre-SMS Hangouts or some of the other apps people in this thread have mentioned (Kik, Whatsapp, etc.).

Curiously missing from this post and most of the subsequent comments is AMC's Hell On Wheels.

Maybe I'm the only one watching it, but it's one of the better shows on TV, in my opinion.

I was up to 500 before missing two in a row, but then I encountered a bug where the audio track seemed to not download properly, so hitting play caused the progress bar to jump straight to the end without playing anything. Pretty cool idea overall though.

The vast majority of the computer-using population, on a daily basis, has zero need for programming in order to use a computer. The same cannot be said for reading and writing.

They do, however, need to know how to use a computer. This is an argument for computer literacy, not computer programming literacy.

Why? Most people can't even use a word processor or spreadsheet right now, let alone comprehend algorithms and programming.

Besides, we all drive cars and we all use refrigerators and air conditioners daily. Not everyone knows how those work or is able to fix them. If they did, we'd be a world of "jacks of all trades and experts in none." That's not what got us to this point as a technologically advanced civilization.

It's far more important for everyone to know how to drive properly and safely than it is for them to know how to perform maintenance on their cars. In fact, having everyone do their own car maintenance would probably be just as dangerous as putting programming into the hands of people who don't know how to avoid phishing attacks and computer viruses.

>I assume you mean a world where some people know more than others.

No, not exactly. I'm referring to the tendency for most people to be experts in one or two fields and mostly ignorant in others that are not related to their core competency.

>We've accepted that the ability to read and write are basic to a functioning modern life. It's now true that the ability to compute has the same status. That doesn't mean everyone needs to know how to write a computer program, but print literacy never meant that a person should be able to write a novel.

That's exactly my point. People should know how to use computers effectively, but that doesn't translate to "should know how to program" just like knowing how to read and write does not translate to "being a novelist", nor does learning math translate to "being a calculus professor."

The important distinction is that knowing how to read and write is a basic skill everyone needs in order to be an effective human being.

Similarly, everyone needs to know math and problem solving skills (the major basis of programming) to be effective human beings.

In other words, I fully support the push for STEM, but force-feeding programming into the agenda is both unnecessary (as those interested in math, problem solving and computers will tend to go into programming fields) and potentially counterproductive (having many unskilled "programmers" trying to touch important software could be catastrophic in many cases.)

It's kind of like the groups of script-kiddies who consider themselves "hackers" but really aren't doing anything but utilizing tools real hackers have created. This is how NoFlo (from the article) strikes me.

Absolutely agree with you. There are basic skills at the root of every industry that we should all be exposed to and taught in school. I'd argue that "algorithmic literacy" falls into the "math" category, and those who are interested in math will often pursue computer science. I just don't see why there should be huge initiatives to teach "everyone" programming, like the quoted portion of my post claimed.

Regarding IFTTT, I have to say it's a wonderful service and does an amazing job dumbing down powerful APIs and interconnecting them. However, I would love to see a study of how many non-technical people utilize it, and/or how many recipes come from people who are otherwise uninterested or ignorant to programming and computer technologies. I'm willing to bet it's very low.

It's easy to understand an IFTTT recipe in plain English, but it's a whole other ballgame trying to come up with them yourself.

We already live in that world, and it's been that way for centuries.

If all the automobile designers and mechanical engineers were to vanish today, do you think lay people would be able to hop into the driver's seat and take over the job? The same is true for nearly every industry, and always has been.

The only reason we've come this far as a civilization is because we record what we learn and pass the knowledge on to future generations of people who are interested in that knowledge.

Not everyone has the same interests, and barring an apocalypse, no one needs to know it all at once. Programming is no different.

Sure, things like reading, computer literacy, math, biology, basic problem solving, etc. are important base skills for everyone to know. Once those foundations are in place, delving further is a matter of preference, and not everyone should be pushed to learn computer science any more than they should be pushed to learn quantum mechanics.

I agree with you to a point. Yes, I think computer literacy is very important, and far too many people think of computers/tablets/phones as magic boxes that show pretty pictures when you click/touch things.

Your Excel example, to me, falls into that category. Learning to use a word processor or spreadsheet application is something that is increasingly necessary in today's world, and I am often surprised by how few people (including, shockingly, many software developers) know how to effectively use them. I just don't feel like taking it all the way to "everyone must learn to program" is a good idea, any more than "everyone must learn to perform open-heart surgery" is.

Based on your comments, I think we actually agree.

You'd be surprised :P

"I am all for getting more non-programmers programming..."

May I ask why? I completely disagree with that statement and all the initiatives pushing that agenda.

"'What we need is not more programmers. What we need is to enable non-programmers to participate in the creation process, not just the ideation process,' says Kenneth Kan, CTO of a company called Pixbi and a recent convert to flow-based programming."

Could not disagree more. I'm so tired of these initiatives to "get everyone coding!" Everyone can't be a programmer, just like everyone can't be a doctor and everyone can't be a mechanic. There are certain skills, mindsets, and desires that drive people to do what they do.

Already posted multiple times, such as here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6246498

Either way, it's still crap.

Maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't the design spec that Musk released describe a very small (on the order of millimeters) clearance between the pods and the tube walls? The 3D-printed mock-up appears to have enough room for almost an entire second pod above the roof of the first pod.

Besides the fact that this is an obvious publicity stunt, what's so special about it? Couldn't anyone with a 3D printer, some CAD experience, and a lot of time on their hands have done this just as easily?

At least it's for a good cause. Sure beats crowdfunding already-successful game developers or movie stars who shouldn't need crowdfunding but are too scared to dip into their own pockets for a project.

Wake me up when they create an app for remoting into my Android phone (with full functionality) from Chrome on my PC. Now that would be useful.