Hacker News Reader

gillson Poll: Apply HN Runoff – Which two startups should YCF fund?

WedWell has promise, but it is a difficult space. I began building on a very similar concept 8 years ago and quickly ended up pivoting off into a subproblem, because [at the time] this ultimately boiled down to quite a lot of manual human coordination which I couldn't scale. Running solo, I decided it was infeasible. If you can scale vendor coordination in the wedding space, and avoid the temptation to build the technically interesting parts yourself right away, I think there is a decent addressable market that can benefit from the technology.

gillson Can a city really ban cars from its streets? (2014)

My neighborhood has possibly one of the more generous plantable right-of-ways in the city; the sum of plantable ROW is wider than the paved surface. But most places it seems to be 4-6 feet plantable, and denser areas completely paved.

gillson Duke Engines' compact, lightweight valveless axial engine

Wow. That looks inspired by a helicoptor's swashplate driven from the rotor side. Always fun to see an alternative engine design.

gillson On the phenomenon of bullshit jobs

Also, in the US, people are willing to work full time at whatever job will provide health insurance.

gillson Holdout

TO loop this back around to the posted article, Seattle has a long and proud history of holdouts. Search for images of 'denny regrade' - long ago Seattle removed an entire hill, leaving quite a few of those "nail houses" (well, temporarily).

gillson C++ Grandmaster Certification

I've got to agree with some of the comments here that this is insane. Sounds fun, but insane. There are probably 3 or 4 programming-intensive undergrad courses wound together here, with a more difficult substrate than your average compilers course.

Then I remember that this is the Internet, and if it's 'free' you're usually not looking at the product; but you can see it in the mirror.

gillson Google Revenues Sheltered in No-Tax Bermuda Soar to $10 Billion

> Fiber networks? Their employees security by funding Police and the Military? Health care for their employees and customers?

Since the post complains largely about behavior in the United States, it seems a fair reminder that from this list Police and Military are paid through taxes, while the others are (for the majority) constitute private transactions for services which individuals have no inherent right to consume.

> No one wants to pay taxes but avoiding them is unethical

I am sure many here would be interested in how you would support this assertion.

gillson A Few New Things Coming To JavaScript

The module syntax and local relabeling reminds me of module syntax in PLT/Racket a couple years back. Given JavaScript's heavy scheme influence to begin with, it seems like a good thing to me.

gillson The Best

Passport. Credit Card. The rest is gravy.

gillson Poll: Do you have a Facebook account?

I also find it disturbing. This sort of thing is exactly why I disabled my account; the family and friends who use Facebook heavily have forgotten how to communicate directly, they rely entirely on shouting into the hurricane and expecting everyone to pay attention. Good luck with that.

gillson Vint Cerf: Internet Access Is Not a Human Right

The piece does not address the fundamental point that you cannot with intellectual honesty claim as a right that which, to be satisfied, requires another human being to perform work.

gillson Are jobs obsolete?

We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

So...nobody creates value (or performs work, for that matter) growing the food or building the shelters, right? Riiiiight...

Magical thinking at it's best.

gillson Are jobs obsolete?

As you commented to someone else in an earlier branch, carry that out a few steps; why might healthcare costs rise so much faster than any reasonable measure of the output which funds both education and healthcare?. I don't know the answer. I think the point is that "health care" cannot be pointed out as the root cause, much as "markets" cannot be pointed out as the only solution.

gillson Marc Andreessen on Why Software is Eating the World

This seems inevitable, and positive. There are some friends of mine who dislike the resulting job shedding and concentration of wealth; I am not quite sure how that will shake out.

It will be interesting to see if today's 'software' disruptors will themselves disrupted by software. Today's revolution seems to me, a changing of the guard from the massive inefficient people-driven gatekeeper to the massive and lean software-driven gatekeeper. I wonder if the evolution of this will lead to decentralization and eventual diminution of today's usurpers?

gillson Free icons for any object in the world

An impressive suite of icons in a nice minimalist format. But...I guess looking at a large number of these, linguistic expressions seem to be less complex per concept than the iconographic equivalents.

gillson Maybe Americans aren't dumb enough to keep buying houses?

By definition, as a renter, you pay those same costs plus a small proft margin plus a premium to cover the times it's not occupied. Unless your landlord is a moron.

gillson Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

Indeed. Most of my friends I have met through work or church or other friends; some sort of pre-existing common cause. Cultivating friendships "from scratch", so to speak, is admittedly much more difficult.

On topic, that feature of Seattle may have some bearing on entrepreneurs in search of capital or employees or a support network. But it seems orthogonal to actually taking the plunge; you're either going to do it, or keep talking about it.

(Also, I think we may have been in some classes together at WSU! We must know some of the same people, you're 3 degrees away on LinkedIn.)

gillson Mark Suster on Seattle and how a few key people can transform a community

In my 31 years of Seattle I guess I've found that friendships here are made and kept by doing active stuff together. Like camping, or boating, or cycling. There's not a lot of interest in "hey, want to loaf around together for a couple hours?" A lot of folks I know seem to tolerate the Seattle weather only because the summers and activities are great; killing time as bumps on a log is kind of silly.

Or maybe I'm just a poster-child for Pemco ads. I am wearing sandals and gore-tex and typing this from a Starbucks...

gillson Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively

Sorry about the late reply. That's a creative idea. At first blush a defense of these seems equivalent in the sense that both are somewhat "stochastic" defense mechanisms - throw up a wall of obstructions and hope something collides.

gillson Urban Decay: Exploring an old abandoned particle collider facility

'The cake is a lie' comes to mind...

gillson Quadrocopters juggle balls cooperatively

not really necessary... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system

gillson The Color of Money

The money, part 2: paid accounts that allow you to hide the implicit activity track that you never asked all these strangers to record. Dont have an account? Too bad, your face is out there on everyone else's phones.

gillson Someone is stealing your life (1990)

Accepting payment for services which you purport to have rendered but in reality have not.

I would use 'fraud' instead of 'theft', though in reality it's close enough.

gillson Open letter to adobe: please free our PDF files.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PDF_software

gillson OpenGL in JAVA - step by step tutorial

Just go read the source to NASA Worldwind :)

gillson 787 Dreamliner teaches Boeing costly lesson on outsourcing

Work share deals are just part of getting contracts signed for items at this price point. Given the resulting cost and schedule overruns, and that Boeing has not pulled everything back in-house (yet?), we may want to rethink the degree to which these agreements were secondary motivators for outsourcing...the cost of efficient breach in terms of damages to suppliers and lost sales would have to be greater still than eating the current and projected overruns.

gillson Nokia Plan B

"We're young shareholders, and our plan is...get this...young software developers."

Riiiight...

gillson UBS Whistleblower Finds Himself in Federal Prison

Not arguing with you, just some thoughts...

'Government' does not imply any particular form, nor does it imply consent or participation of the governed; the warlord model has had a pretty good run throughout history.

And yeah, none of us drew the border, but neither did the folks who live there...so there figuring it out now. Better late than never, right?

gillson Optimal Employment

Ditto...but Seattle, and my toys have wings.

Yes, please, rational people: leave Seattle. Terrible, terrible place. No good at all. Wet, gray, the people are mean. Shoo!