headbiznatch

"The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams was a big help to me when I needed to take a leap in my ability to pretty things up. The tenets in there seem to be rediscovered and reworded often (not sure if this book is the first, honestly) but I think the main idea is to have some kind of strategy for how to be purposeful with your design choices. From the book: Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, Contrast. I think that ordering is less funny as an acronym but more useful as a guide with respect to what you focus on first (Proximity - grouping ideas is a natural place to start, Contrast - which comes last because it's the trickiest).

I think your analogy is poor - an LED does not produce fake light. Is a candle fake light compared to the sun?

But anyway, you missed the point - I am not telling you what to do. I am simply suggesting the alternative of "not faking it" by adding to a comment I felt was doing the same. If you feel like you are being told what to do, I apologize.

Informative. Thanks for sharing!

This reply is worth a thousand down-votes. I see where you are coming from and I appreciate that you shared it in words, not just a click on a down arrow. Thank you.

But I still think the down-voters are taking it personally. I don't believe anyone is actually being chastised for their position by this commenter. I took it as offering another option - instead of telling someone who likes meat that you have a great substitute that tastes just like meat and they'll never know the difference, try saying "there are many ways to prepare any of a large variety of vegetables - maybe you can enjoy vegetables as much as you enjoy meat if you find some recipes you like". Maybe those dishes will taste "meat-like" or whatever, but there is value in saying "Stop trying to fake it. Embrace the choice to do it differently."

For the record, I personally believe that this is a more honest tack for someone who is pursuing the option for ethical/environmental reasons.

I know meta-discussion on HN is frowned upon, but seriously, I just have to ask those who down-voted this comment: why? Just... why? What is the problem with this sentiment with respect to its contribution to this thread?

If it helps, I think this is a reasonable point (don't try to fake the meat, just skip it - i've thought it myself often).

I haven't commented in here in SO LONG, and I know I will pay for the insurrection of asking the invisible commenters to justify yourselves, but I just can't help it because I do not understand how down-voting this is justifiable in any way with respect to content moderation.

Detecting rohypnol, or similar scenarios where you are "truth testing" the ingredients. Pretty sure rohypnol detecting glasses (or drink umbrellas, etc.) exist, but I am not Googling that.

I honestly believe the nerdery around 2048 to be a generally positive thing. I love games and the possibilities they hold for shared understanding of systems...

FUCK THAT

sorry - had to

Here - someone did the few minutes of Google searching and rational analysis that Dorfman didn't have time for, you know, to keep this piece from being complete bullshit.

http://www.mathofpolitics.com/2014/01/30/poor-work-counting-...

Fun topic which inspires me to mention two goodies that help fuel in-depth conversations about measurement and conversion:

1) The Measure of All Things - http://www.kenalder.com/measure/ (science history goodness)

2) Frink - http://futureboy.us/frinkdocs/ (one of my first discoveries on HN and still one of the most fun to return to)

I appreciate the evolution of the Humble Bundle idea. The indie bundles seem to be obvious wins for the developers, the non-indies seem like sensible plays to make more money on older titles, and the promotion of worthwhile charities is legit. And you can always move your Humble Bundle tip to $0 if you don't think they deserve it - what's not to like?

Re: SVG drawing tools - why not Inkscape? It's native format is SVG and it allows editing the markup directly. I get much better results using it than converting XAML to SVG (which is JUST different enough to be annoying). Would love to see the tools you've written... Thanks for sharing.

Nice! Thanks.

Powershell is really quite good if you don't mind learning a slightly different shell. And there are good tools to extend it (PowerGUI is one I like).

Because they had to pick something and you can't please anybody ever when picking typefaces?

Steve Jobs blah blah blah UNIX blah blah blah Apple blah blah UX nerdery blah blah blah blah blah.

OK - now the important stuff about the Cube:

https://www.google.com/search?q=next+magnesium+case+burn

Hilarious. The world hates you because of how you treat PEOPLE. Yer a record label, idiots - you fuck people over for fun and profit: coders (artists - remember when you pioneered thinking of coders this way?) and players (you understand the analogy at this point, right?)

Anyone who has ever jumped out of the room because of a windshield attack in "Rescue on Fractalus" understands... Manipulate the psyche, not the eyes. (Bonus - at the time LucasArts also manipulated the eyes with their 8-bit fractal landscapes et al. But that was a BONUS.)

Everybody makes their own deal.

O'Reilly must have recognized by Mr. Few's demands that these expensive details mattered to him or else they would not have signed the contract. But they did. Belly-ache all day about the margins and practical difficulties inherent in printing a book to Mr. Few's standards, but they signed it to get the deal and then broke their word. What is he missing about that, the central theme of this piece?

P.S. $50 to $200? O'Reilly sells their poorly bound books at the low-to-middle of that range. You are not helping them by mentioning what a nicely printed book costs.

I second the bizarre unfriendliness of LastPass enterprise. I have recently been using PassPack (https://www.passpack.com/) which has a decent pricing model and a fairly sensible sharing workflow. Browser integration is only bookmarklets and not as strong as LastPass's browser extensions, but for small group password sharing, it's been convenient enough so far.

Funny - I feel precision and good judgement are the primary qualities by which the integrity of a journalist should be measured.

Seriously. Managing Chinese contractors is hard work!

Cool story, legendary toys.

Their manufacturing practice is also impressive, paying special regard to their consistency: tolerances like 2 micrometers, ~18 fails in a million bricks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego#Manufacture). Any LEGO fan knows the difference between the real deal and "compatible" sets.

Having just read the post and most of the comments, this seems to about sum it up. The post barely sneaks in an ask for community opinion on Kickstarter's communication policy while focusing on casting aspersions on the project's validity (including some amazingly shameless "asides" about the founder's reputation). Now the lawyers have come out and it's just getting further and further from useful discussion, if that was truly the original point.

It must be said - bitch all you want about the claim that these guys manufactured Arduino, but on nuance, it appears supportable. When team members who built something (or worked on it to a significant extent) move on, the work they did previously is in their portfolio whether you like it or not. This practice is standard in other industries, too, especially marketing. And of course, the obvious: if, as is claimed in the post, Arduino is afraid of damage to the brand, why not complain about all the other BLAHduinos out there?

This makes Arduino look bad, and if the founders of the contentious project are actually shady, they are loving the cred this reaction will earn them.

I agree that it is above average. Subtle little touches (like the highlight gradients and thoughtfully padded section texts) really add to the readability. And, of course, the content. It's a good blog in general - unpretentious and informative.

I truly love my MacBook Pro from late 2008: "pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands-unless-I-get-a-new-machine" love. But I still get that anxious knot in my gut when thinking about upgrading OS X, for one reason: when problems are discovered and reported, Apple will simply hang you out to dry.

Specifically, that machine had known issues with the GPU and dual boot was spotty because the fans would not run in Windows unless you manually started them in OS X. For YEARS, users begged for help and got nothing from Apple, and in some cases, Apple even actively FOUGHT them (e.g. http://www.macrumors.com/2012/04/19/blogger-victorious-over-...). All this to avoid looking like they were anything less than perfect.

I know - waaaaa!. It's still an awesome machine (and OS - I love and hate all platforms in one way or another), but it's a shame that Apple has earned the reputation that Jobs so famously put a face on when he felt personally challenged over these complaints: it's not broken, you are using it wrong, get over it - it's just a machine. It's a tough position to put the consumer in when you are a company that expects that customer to cede so much control in the name of "trust our authority".

I second the idea of the non-exclusive/exclusive price tiers. I would also suggest relating pieces with one another when they might make sense as a suite (i.e. same genere, thematically similar, techno vs. orchestral, etc.)

And I also second the "nicely done!"

It's the Blend interface and I dig it too. But I like dark windows and stuff in general - I know it's not for everyone.

Heh - OK. Yeah, I like the 3 Stooges AND Spalding Gray, so you can get as arrogant as you want to about that.

Some of the other style/substance mavens here agree with you, but this one doesn't. That's all... I think you should be a little more gracious in your dialogue when you start it with "It might just be me...".

I disagree. The circles represent people. The metaphor is skillfully used in conjunction with the words.

You don't want to dig deeper on this - fine. I get it. But there is a symbolism being successfully manipulated here and just because you don't like it does not mean it isn't "done well". It just means you don't like it.