davidroberts

I hate these things, even when they aren't ads. Typically, just as I'm getting interested in the content of the first panel, it gets swiped away and replaced with something else. As the article says:

It's just plain annoying for users to lose control of the user interface when things move around of their own accord.

I love mine too. I have it set up so I can ssh into it from anywhere using my cell phone. I use it to write python code for an edx class I'm taking on artificial intelligence while I'm commuting by train or bus, and to remotely play music hosted on my desktop through the speakers in my living room. It's a lot of fun.

I think you should tell them, but not in those words. Carefully explain your objections. At worst it will be a good filter for teams that don't have the necessary commitment to carry through on their idea. If they are smart, they'll consider what you say, see what applies, and make any modifications that seem justified. If they quit, it's better they give up early in the process, because there will much more discouraging things hitting them down the line, and if they can't handle a few reasonable objections, they aren't going to make it even with a good idea.

But for somebody starting a company in 1995, online banking would probably have been a bad idea.

It seems like this applies in any line of work.

This is not true, at least for Verizon where I worked. Your payment for the phone was your agreement to the contract. After that you can sell, trade, destroy, or do anything else you want with the phone, except if you rooted it, the warranty was voided and no updates until you brought it back to stock.

Copyright laws were originally designed to protect creativity and promote innovation. But now, they are doing exactly the opposite... This is a problem with many laws. Even if unintended consequences don't ruin the effect from the start, changes in the situation a law was meant to address will likely cause problems in the end. And this is assuming the law actually passed with an intention to benefit the whole, and not just some powerful subset of it. I think laws should come with expiration dates.

I was really upset at all the options I lost in applications on my phone when it updated from Ginderbread to ICS. I wanted a more powerful phone. But now many of the features I typically used are gone. Note to developers: beating iOS doesn't necessarily mean becoming more like it.

As a person who fielded calls from thousands of ordinary people with totally hosed browsers because their cousin saw an article and told them to turn off Java script or else his computer will be hacked, I totally understand this article. However, I hate it when software I use is dumbed down to the point where I can't configure it to be useful to me. My suggestion? Keep those options. But bury them. Deeply. Maybe provide an Easter egg-like thing you have to do to get at them (ie: enter "I really want to turn off javascript" into a textbox verbatim). People with the savvy to use those options will be able to find the process on Google. And the people who turn things off by mistake are typically busy wrestling with the concept of drag and drop, and won't graduate to more difficult things like that for a few more years.

Bill hands Ito a cd with a symphony and mp3s for 20 other albums burned on it and Ito shows him the Spotify play list on his iPhone that already has all of them on it.

Maybe the OP should write an 'SEO for Dummies' book that helps people avoid becoming victim to SEO scumbags.

Exactly. Technology is like water. It's neutral. You could supply water to thirsty people or destroy the environment through hydraulic strip mining. You could build a dam and flood a village of people you don't like. I'm sure diabolic minds could come up with a way to do evil with antibiotics if that was all they had to work with.

Stone Age headline: "Critics decry new bow and arrow technology: Say it will destroy camaraderie among spear-wielding hunters and breed cowardice in the younger generation"

People have been sounding the alarm of destructive new technologies for hundreds of years, but somehow the most technologically-advanced nations are also those with healthier, longer-lived populations. It seems that people and societies adapt over time to new technologies in ways that mitigate possible harm, while the benefits tend to remain.

And what's the alternative? Are you going to ban human inventiveness and forbid innovation? Good luck with that.

The whole point is that it's not the technology that causes the problem, it's the user. In the case of antibiotics, an evil dictator could restrict their use in his nation to people of one ethnicity, so that members of other groups quickly died from easily curable diseases.

Whether we use a new technology for good or evil reflects our character as individuals and as a society, not the character of the technology. Even something generally considered beneficial like antibiotics causes problems if selfishly misused. To be considered good or evil, volition is required. Technology doesn't have volition. Only people do.

I don't think so. Based on what they wrote in their application for the 'app' tdl, Google, in the name of Charleston Road Registry, plans to totally close the TDLs they get :

Charleston Road Registry intends to operate the proposed gTLD as a closed registry with Google as the sole registrar and registrant. The goal of the proposed gTLD is to allow Google and its Network to manage the domain name space for their application offerings. The proposed gTLD will provide Google and its Network with the ability to customize domain and website name application offerings to signal to the general population of Internet users that .app websites are indeed managed by Google. The specialization goal of the proposed gTLD is to extend the Google brand and reputation to each .app second-level domain. This specialization provides a mechanism by which Google and its Network can easily link and manage their applications and related services. This specialization makes it clear to Internet users that this is the authoritative and designated space where they can find Google’s and its Network’s applications offered in association with the Google brand and accessible via differentiated and streamlined web addresses.

I like the original wording because it is exactly how chess problems are typically introduced. I'm not sure the usefulness of this anywhere beyond a chess - related site, but I agree - - it's absolutely brilliant! I wish I had thought of it.

If you look at the real pioneers of computer science, people like Turing and Babbage, two women jump right off the page: Ada Byron and Grace Hopper. Women belong in CS, because it belongs to them. They were there at the start, just as much as the men.

As a 55-year-old man, I'm pretty sure I've experienced discrimination because of my age. Situations where people couldn't see beyond the wrinkles and gray hair and see the experience and skills. I know the same thing happens to women too, because they are different from the vision of an ideal employee the employer had in mind. I don't think women managers are immune to this either. I've worked in two departments headed by a woman who made all the hiring decisions and the entire team they hired was men. There are definitely barriers.

But I agree with the author that 'women in CS' programs aren't the answer. Success is. Each generation of CS pioneers includes a few more women with passion and intellect like Hopper or Bryon that cannot be ignored, and they will make it a lot easier for equally qualified women in subsequent generations, because when all is said and done, what you can do ultimately beats who you are in this field.

I think people seriously over-estimate how much marginal happiness (if any) that expensive graduate degree will bring. Many people seem to continue studying out of inertia and through encouragement of academics who have a vested interest in maintaining a large number of graduate students.

I'd suggest they take their undergraduate degree and go test the waters of where they think they want to work. Spend a couple of years in the field, even at a lower level, pay off a little of the debt they already have, and then if they like the field, and want to continue in it, they'll have a much clearer idea of the benefit/cost ratio of an advanced degree, and a better idea of which school and program will give them the best value. And if they decide the whole field is wrong for them, it's much easier to start afresh somewhere else. Undergraduate degrees are much more transferable from field-to-field than advanced degrees.

The default mode of the US government these days: if the public doesn't like something, don't bring it out for public debate. Hide it and hope people forget it exists.

Most people didn't buy them in the old days. Typically they were given away as promotional items. They are actually pretty useful beyond their obvious function of keeping your pockets from being destroyed by ink leaks and sharp points. For example, you could switch a set of writing instruments you use everyday from shirt to shirt without having to disassemble and reassemble it. But even the nerdiest these days realize that the only surer way to look like a total social misfit without involving body odors is to break your plastic-rimmed glasses at the bridge and repair them with tape.

From the article: "But how do you take someone who's grown up in the world of pocket protectors..."

Does anyone actually use a pocket protector anymore? That is such a lame cliche to describe geeks. It's like saying "...someone who's grown up in the world of slide rules..."

More accurate would be something like "...the world of algorithms and Maxwell's equations..." or "...the world of integrals and epsilon-delta..."

Having been required to defend undefensible companies policies in some customer service jobs I previously held, I feel really sorry for the customer service agent here. Probably somebody hoping to use this job as a leg up to something better, but now he is stuck in angry customer hell with nothing to do but quote policies that make them angrier. And his performance is probably being judged based on some customer satisfaction survey where even one unsatisfied customer is enough to lose a month's worth of bonuses.

A few years back, I took the second semester of a photography class with a new instructor. The first semester we had critique sessions, but people were so supportive it was hard to see where I needed to improve. The new instructor changed that in a hurry by forbidding the words 'What I like about your photo...' or the equivalent. We had to say what we didn't like. He said every photo can be improved. It really opened my eyes to the defects in my photos, and I got better in a hurry. Some of the other photographers were very talented, and had great photos from the start. Their photos improved even quicker.

I try to look at the community on Hacker News like that. There are a lot of very talented people here, and very busy. It seems most people here don't want to waste time to writing or hearing what's good about something they wrote or did. They've gone beyond the stage where they need hand-holding. People are working on the edge and they want to get better, whatever that means to them, and are willing to endure some criticism to get there.

Postscript: I love the fact you almost never see a TL;DR attitude on HN.

This is on the publisher's website, so I assume there are no copyright issues.

Two of those are California universities, where Asians form 13.6% of the population[1]. Since the average GPA for Asians in 2009 was 1623 and the next highest average (for white students) was 1581 [2] and the average GPA for Asians in 2009 was 3.09 vs. 2.88 for whites [3], I'm sure the percentage of Asians in California who earned the median SAT scores or GPA's at those schools was much higher than 14%, and was probably higher than the percentage of Asians in those schools. Also, I might note that UC Berkeley (Cal) and UCLA are located in metropolitan areas with Asian populations that are larger than the California average.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California [2] http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-08-25-SAT... [3] http://nationsreportcard.gov/hsts_2009/race_gpa.asp?tab_id=t...

Of course it's open to debate, but I'm convinced there are unofficial quotas, though naturally no university will admit it. An interesting quote from a NY Times op-ed: "The Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade wrote in his 2009 book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life, that 'to receive equal consideration by elite colleges, Asian Americans must outperform Whites by 140 points, Hispanics by 280 points, Blacks by 450 points in SAT (Total 1600).'

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/12/19/fears-of-an-...

I think the US unofficial quotas against Asians are somewhat similar to the Soviet ones against Jews, though not so spitefully motivated. Essentially, it boils down to "We don't want our own kids to have to compete on even terms with these hard-working, incredibly studious outsiders."

Hopefully, whoever defined somefunction did something like this:

  def somefunction(inputParameter):
      '''
      inputParameter: List of seven positive integers
      representing a poker hand
      Returns: A positive integer used to score that hand
      relative to all other possible hands, better hands
      receive higher scores.
      '''