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aouton Apple blocks Google from running its internal iOS apps

The thing is: my mother bought an Apple device not to think about data, security, backups and all these "InternetS" things. She doesn't even know what hardware is. If she did, she might have bought an Android phone or something else :)

aouton Show HN: LonelyPage – One page is all you need

Though : would that lunch be as expensive as $10 per month or would it be almost free like $0.1 per year ? I consider that to be pretty much free :)

aouton Show HN: LonelyPage – One page is all you need

Well, since it's distributed / decentralized you wouldn't depend on a particular company (or service). This way you wouldn't need to worry about it being shut down.

aouton Scribble – Convert handwriting into digital text

Do you need links or proofs if I tell you the sky is blue ? OCR has been around for decades. This approach is only interesting if it improves OCR via NN. Would love to learn more about this process (the improvement, not the training...).

aouton How to Overthrow a Government [video]

Some was done by hackers. Remember that to topple a gov you need air and ground support, he just covers the tech part :)

aouton Facebook is wrong, text is deathless

"Plenty of people can deal with text better than they can spoken language" That's a joke right ?

aouton Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

I do agree with you. Preaching the converted doesn't require that much effort.

Now to nuance a bit this over-simplistic sentence I just written: do you think I am interested in mathematics teaching? I did read the article anyway so you might be right but I felt a bit overwhelmed by all this "jargon" when an example would have been so simple to understand.

After all, Mr Minsky was a teacher, certainly a mighty good one :)

aouton Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

There is something quite interesting about the form of the article. While Mr Minsky talks about teaching using the "deck of cards method" and why it might not be the best approach if the child wants to advance to more complex subjects he also wants us to learn about his experiments (which are quite good!).

Having read the article I find it well written but WHAT THE HELL?! Why doesn't he use pictures? simple diagrams? "sexy" stuff?

It seems that I'm having the same problem as the child is having: the form does suck and it discourages me from reading a boatload of articles like this one. If the presentation of the subject was better I could read 10 more and maybe, finally, take an interest in "teaching methods" that would lead me to being curious and accept any "bad form" of content :)

aouton France’s Economy Minister on French Startups

Then meet me. I can also give you a list of french entrepreneurs that love Paris, France and hire a lot of people. Just look at Save, BlaBlaCar and Criteo. Also, remember that our social system is the biggest VC in Europe, allowing thousand of entrepreneurs to keep their "old job salaries" while working on their own companies.

It seems to me you are just the typical example of "French Bashing" : always complaining and seeing the bad side of things.

aouton Using Apple Watch to Track a Geek's Heartrate Response While Watching WWDC

Behold the online doctor syndrome.

aouton Paris Metro lines on a Git graph

You can be sure it's not Imperial

aouton Ask HN: What are some important math topics every programmer should know?

Don't learn anything specific but be sure to be ready to learn everything when needed. I had to learn linear algebra when I was a 3D engine developer, then I had to learn statistics (or maybe learn to understand the notations of it so I could use scientific papers in my work).

In the end I think it was best not to have lost hours, days, weeks of my time on things I "could have used". I find it best to be prepared to learn anything.

aouton Surviving reformats by infecting the hard disk firmware

Well, run the tests against the hack and we'll see :)

aouton Transatomic Power

So ok, the website is cool and the technology is said to be something like 99.9999% better. This might be a stupid question but I'm no nuclear engineer not a specialist about chemistry or physics but I wonder why a such "beautiful" idea would not be already used.

I've read the related wikipedia article about Molten Salt Reactors and I understand there are several problems about the technology: mostly corrosion and embrittlement.

So now I find myself asking this: did they fix those problems? The website copy suggests so. Can somebody explain how? I couldn't figure it out.

edit: clearly the team and company have quite legit credentials, MIT nuclear department etc... they must know what they're talking about. I just want to know if they've given details about the solution.

aouton CEO of Mandriva says employee lawsuits put the company out of business

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conseil_de_prud%27hommes_%28Fra...

You have 7 months to fire your employee without even giving a reason. That seems fair enough to judge someone.

aouton Isaac Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

True, but humanitarian values do not need a last stand. So how do you discuss with someone being this radical with reasonable arguments? I don't feel like "you can't" is an answer :/

aouton Isaac Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

I read your articles and could add one myself but fail to find it : a published scientific paper about how smoking is good for your health because it makes you think about your health at some point (basically saying "don't trust everything science says"). I also agree with you that (most) people blindly following science but I don't feel like you are the kind of person I'm caricaturing (which is true for the sake of my description).

You seem to grasp the concept of critical thinking and I believe that's why you would object. To me talking about science implies critical thinking. Somebody having an argument with you about science without acknowledging the certainty of being wrong is not talking about science but pseudo-science. And so you end up discussing with a fanatic, which is not a discussion.

I'm not saying that English Lit experts are everywhere but I feel like they just do not trust "science lovers" to be capable of critical thinking.

edit: It's like you're asking "how to convince science fanatics that they can be wrong" and I'm asking "how to convince English Lit experts that I know science can be wrong but still think it matters"

aouton Isaac Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong (1989)

Surely everybody knows an "English Lit expert" but even after reading this exquisite requiem to believers I still find it impossibly hard to argue with these people. It always feels like they are trying to make the last stand of humanitarian values against the dictat of science.

In all their glorious "everything science says will be as wrong as religion and you my friend are blindly following it" it seems they can't understand the basic principle of science advancing toward some kind of truth yet admitting it is -still- wrong.

I don't know if trying to convince someone who doesn't trust science - and to some extent, logical thinking - with mathematics really works. Sure it convinces me but does it matter?

aouton CEO of Mandriva says employee lawsuits put the company out of business

Decisions exceeding 4000€ can be appealed but if paiement is due immediately it must mean that the court didn't had any doubts. Being French I completely agree with ajnin, it seems really fishy not to disclose the amount and the details of the decision.

aouton CEO of Mandriva says employee lawsuits put the company out of business

French labour law is not what most people think, the employee does not have the rights to stay forever in a company. Yes it over protects the employee by restricting the power of the employer but both parties are still equals in front of Justice.

How is that you might ask? Well, when you're suing your ex-company you go to a special trial called "prud'hommes" (like "safety-men") which is constituted by both employees and employers. You are judged by your peers. Prud'Hommes trials are long and decisions are rarely contested by the public opinion in France, even by employers. Employers can win at prud'hommes trials, they do when they respect the law.

Also I'd like to point out that this is the 4th CEO change for Mandriva in something like 8 years. At some point the choices that some of the CEOs made were so bad that the investors forced them to publicly communicate with the community (for Mandriva the Linux community in France is extremely strong so it might be interesting to keep it updated and involved...). Basically the last CEO seems to have made some hard but good choices for the company but is paying for the mistakes of it's predecessors (so now he tries to save it's reputation by telling his side of the story which is understandable). Anyway, the company stays responsible when a bad CEO leaves and a new one comes along.

"C'est la vie".

aouton Three Years of Logging My Inbox Count

Working in email right now I can tell that this data is canonical. The email age graph is probably the most interesting.

As I interpret it, most people keep some very old mails for a period of time, mostly because they use it often. This might be because they contain useful information (like a password...) or because they represent a task. If it is the latest it becomes a perpetual problem because it adds some kind of noise from this feed of info you get everyday.

In our business we tried to separate these by either saving the useful part and discarding the rest (highlight and save) or by putting the thread somewhere else (in an Important category).

For all the rest it appears it is just temporary info, updates, FYIs, etc... So we basically decided to reverse our email usage. Instead of focusing on the inbox we left it untouched but saved everything that mattered in other panels. We still have work to do to improve the usage but it seems promising. You can check it at getnimb.ly if you'd like

aouton Show HN: An old rotary phone converted into a mobile phone

Go for the Kickstarter! :D

aouton Just Don't Hire 0x Engineers

I agree with you but I think the point pretty much explains itself. Team play and willingness to produce the best your customer wants (and not the 3-star best) is exponentially efficient when you start to grow a team.

However I wouldn't say the same things when it comes to the first version of your core team. Every "10x" developer can work with 3 people but are they still "10x-effective" (do they even exist?...) when incorporated in an existing 5/6/7 people team? I don't believe so.

aouton Why Are Palo Alto's Kids Killing Themselves?

@Swizec: That's for sure but I'm not talking about the benefits of getting good grades. I'm talking about a culture that oppresses children and fixates everything on grades when what counts is that your child is happy and intellectually sound which I do agree is somehow related to grades in school (related like correlation, not causation).

aouton Why Are Palo Alto's Kids Killing Themselves?

I do not live in Palo Alto and I have never been to Silicon Valley either. I would like to ask what you think about this culture of over achievers telling their kids (via social pressure or directly) that they need good grades when all I can here is that you should not care about grades if you want to become a great entrepreneur. That seems quite a paradox to me but again, I'm just hearing echoes of propaganda from SF. Could it be that people actually buy the "entrepreneur / do-it-your-way bullshit" for themselves but fear to apply it to their kids?

Also, I'd like to point out that most of the greatest scientific minds of our era did get mediocre grades in school (I'm not talking about the Gates or Jobs college dropout fairytale).

aouton Narrowing a residential street – McAllister

I think the author doesn't want to mix the different types of transportation. He allows them to be mixed but users won't because it's not convenient. That does not mean it is not good. In Paris we have a lot of street that are very narrow but still used by cars (not used like a highway, used when you really need to go there). From a walking Parisian point of view I can tell you that no bus can use these narrow streets but you can be sure there's a bus stop in the next avenue (which is usually close). Thus by using both big avenues (mostly used by cars and with big empty sidewalks) and small streets (full of life, shops and well, some cars) you can achieve a very good "ambiance".

Bikes usually have a small lane on both sides of the road and don't really bother anyone.

I can't recall the name of a famous architect who was working on street dynamics and security but it is basically the opposite of what big names did in cities built for cars like Brasilia, Washington etc... The moral being that if you concentrate people in the streets you will need a much smaller police force because you're always "close" to other people.

aouton Ants show that emergency exits can work better when they’re obstructed

I'd bet that if you put another pillar behind each side of the pillar obstructing the exit you'll double the throughput.

aouton NES graphics – Part 1

True, but today's studios need the proper APIs and hardware to produce the games people want. Nintendo is failing to provide such basis for development and that's one its biggest mistakes.

aouton NES graphics – Part 1

During that time, Nintendo knew how to work with game studios. The color palette is one of the most powerful examples I remember, it encompasses the technical and the artistic domains, developers and designers. With the SNES they got even further by adding composition in a way that was incredibly intuitive. Glad you produced this article. So much memories.

aouton Paris’ $160M Plan to Boost Cycling

Most of the big avenues in Paris already have separated bike lanes on either the sidewalk or the bus lane but the road (for regular cars) still takes 80% of the space. The goal here is to leave more space to pedestrians (like on the river front) and reduce the "car space" in the city.

The cost of public biking in Paris (3$/month) is very very very small when you consider the cost of having a car (at least 200$/month) or taking the subway (around 70$ / month).

One problem though, Paris has some hills and people tend to avoid these areas. Using your legs is great yes, healthy etc... but hey, we'd like electric bikes :)