Hacker News Reader

helloworldon The First Sony Walkman Was Released 40 Years Ago

The article links to a very funny video of today's kids trying to figure out a Walkman:

https://www.stereogum.com/1675629/watch-kids-try-to-use-a-wa...

It's surprising to see how challenging the Walkman UI is to a complete novice.

helloworldon Quest Diagnostics says nearly 12M patients may have had data breached

The breach came from American Medical Collection Agency, a debt collector that Quest uses. It's a sad statement on the state of American healthcare that 11.9 million people can't afford to pay their lab bills.

helloworldon The most in-demand skills for designers, by level

These "skills" might be frequent keywords in job ads, but if you're hiring a designer -- or trying to become one -- I think the following are better predictors of success:

  1. Empathy: observing and understanding others
  2. Creativity: coming up with new ideas, often by recombining old ideas from various fields
  3. Knowledge of behavioral science: mining research and theory for useful insights
  4. Communication: discussing, explaining, and presenting designs
  5. Project management: keeping track and keeping up
  6. Ambition: a drive to be exceptional

helloworldon Show HN: Water.css – A just-add-css collection of styles to make websites nicer

I just noticed this biographical detail about the author:

I'm a 13yo developer, wannabe designer, and cellist.

How awesome! Makes me feel hopeful about the future.

helloworldon A guide to difficult conversations

I was curious, too, and after some Googling, I found it here:

http://www.groktheworld.com/communication-fundamentals-2nd-e...

Looks like they ship just about anywhere.

helloworldon 24 years of Delphi and Delphi 10.3.1 is out Today

I forgot that Delphi was sort of a mash-up of Visual Basic and Pascal. Two great tastes, I guess.

Are there contemporary products -- for building mobile and/or web apps -- that are similarly easy to use?

helloworldon Darkstar: A Xerox Star Emulator

From the creators of the Star user interface, here's a contemporaneous account of their work, published in BYTE magazine in 1982:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/91ca/5fd33d2eb7c7b87f96ae59...

by Dr. David Canfield Smith, Charles Irby, Ralph Kimball, and Bill Verplank; Xerox Corporation, 3333 Coyote Hill Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304 and Eric Harslem; Xerox Corporation, El Segundo, CA 90245

About the Authors

These five Xerox employees have worked on the Star user interface project for the past five years. Their academic backgrounds are in computer science and psychology.

"We have learned from Star the importance of formulating the fundamental concepts (the user’s conceptual model) before software is written, rather than tacking on a user interface afterward. Xerox devoted about thirty work-years to the design of the Star user interface. It was designed before the functionality of the system was fully decided. It was even designed before the computer hardware was built. In fact, before we even began designing the model, we developed a methodology by which we would do the design."

helloworldon Getting an IBM AS/400 Midrange Computer on the Internet

OS/400 -- now called IBM i -- sounds like it was ahead of its time:

IBM designed IBM i as a "turnkey" operating system, requiring little or no on-site attention from IT staff during normal operation. For example, IBM i has a built-in DB2 database which does not require separate installation. Disks are multiply redundant, and can be replaced on line without interrupting work. System administration has been wizard-driven for years. This automatic self-care policy goes so far as to automatically schedule all common system maintenance, detect many failures, and even order spare parts and service automatically.

Another peculiar feature is that this system was one of the earliest to be object-based. Unlike traditional OSes like UNIX and Windows NT, there are no files, only objects of different types. It implemented one of the earliest-known systems for persistent objects. Further, the objects persist in very large, flat virtual memory, called a single-level store.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_i

helloworldon The Internet but not as we know it: life online in China, Cuba, India and Russia

It's impressive how the writers and designers of this piece have worked together to produce something that goes beyond what's possible in a static medium like paper.

From what I understand of the history of the motion picture, the earliest directors basically filmed stage plays. It wasn't until directors like Griffith and Eisenstein edited movies in new ways -- creating a film grammar that we take for granted today -- that the medium reached its full potential.

We're a couple of decades into the Web, but I think we haven't yet found our Griffith and Eisenstein.

helloworldon Luna Display turns your iPad into a second Mac display

While Apple continues to resist integrating macOS and iOS, it's fun to see this mashup, which gives a touch experience to a Mac.

Isn't it only a matter of time before Apple unites its desktop and tablet experiences? (I'm not a Windows 10/Surface user, so I don't know how well it actually works, but hat's off to Microsoft for at least trying.)

helloworldon Ecstasy as a Remedy for PTSD? You Probably Have Some Questions

It's interesting that both PTSD-suffering veterans described the benefit of MDMA with the same words: "I was able to forgive myself."

Whether you call it conscience or superego, how we judge ourselves seems to be important for mental health.

helloworldon Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

You make a reasonable point, and I don't mean to trivialize a serious issue -- carbon monoxide poisoning caused by keyless cars -- but in comparison, bathtub drownings are far more common: about 335 a year.[1]

[1] https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Someone-drowns-in...

helloworldon Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

This is certainly an interesting case study in the pitfalls of behavioral design, but one important detail that the story glosses over is how rare these incidents are:

More than two dozen people [have been] killed by carbon monoxide nationwide since 2006 after a keyless-ignition vehicle was inadvertently left running in a garage.

On average, that's two deaths a year in a country of more than 260 million passenger vehicles.[1] These accidental deaths are tragic, but it's actually impressive how infrequently they occur.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_Unit...

helloworldon Playing it over and over again: how Casablanca was made

When the time came for the scene in which Victor Laszlo defiantly sings “La Marseillaise”, one character actor noticed everyone was crying: “I suddenly realised they were all real refugees.”

If I had to pick a single movie scene as my favorite, it would be that one.

https://youtu.be/HM-E2H1ChJM

helloworldon Assumptions about how children learn to read have been disproven by research

The implication here is that American students, on average, should have gotten better at reading over the last 20 years.

But might their performance in fact be asymptotic to some maximum possible achievement level, as constrained by general intelligence?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)

helloworldon At 88, doctor pursues a long-ignored treatment for strokes, heart attacks

For me, it was the persistence of the researcher -- well into his ninth decade -- that caught my eye, rather than the somewhat arcane details of the thrombolytic therapy that he's been pursuing.

A strong sense of purpose seems to be a factor in health and longevity. Is it just good fortune that allows some people to develop that sense of purpose, or can it be consciously and effectively nurtured?

helloworldon An Update on Our Plans to Restrict Data Access on Facebook

I'm more concerned about fundamental privacy issues, such as so-called "data onboarding," in which Facebook (and others) helps marketers connect your online identity with your offline identity. That's where we need more transparency -- and perhaps more regulation.

helloworldon The Story of a Voice: HAL in ‘2001’ Wasn’t Always So Eerily Calm

This part surprised me:

Douglas Rain [the voice of HAL] himself has never seen “2001: A Space Odyssey.” For the retired actor who spent decades at the Stratford Festival and turns 90 in May, the performance was simply a job.

This was his best-known role by far, and he's never been curious, in 50 years, to see the movie?

helloworldon Almost everything reported about the Cambridge Analytica controversy is wrong

This is the best analysis of the situation that I've read. IMO, it convincingly demolishes the nonsense about psychographic microtargeting in political campaigns.

helloworldon Orson Wells' Voodoo Macbeth

Here's a great interview with Welles, which was recorded just hours before his death in 1985:

https://youtu.be/NAFeMzfLTmk

helloworldon My daughter's disabled. Please don't look away from her

Yeah, I definitely have that same fear of saying the wrong thing. But all the specifics aside, maybe the author is really saying, try to behave as you would in other situations: Be kind, be inclusive, and don't worry too much about unintentionally offending the parents, who (alas) have probably seen and heard it all before.

helloworldon My daughter's disabled. Please don't look away from her

According to the author, the invitations stopped before there was any attempt to adjust anyone's plans:

I started to see the discomfort people feel in socializing with disabled kids when Esprit reached 6 months. Until then, my wife was invited to playdates, where she and another mom drank coffee while the babies gurgled on the floor. The invitations stopped when the other kids could sit up, something Esprit wouldn't do for years.

helloworldon My daughter's disabled. Please don't look away from her

I found this part helpful, but also poignant:

Focusing on the commonplace is a good idea if you're worried about saying the wrong thing. Remarking on the daily practicalities of Esprit's life won't make us blink, but we'd rather you didn't bring up the long haul, even with compliments like, "God only chooses special parents to have someone like Esprit," or commiserations like, "Sometimes, it all just seems so unfair."

I get it. Esprit can bring to mind big-picture questions about blind fortune or the mystery of God's plan — something seemingly terrible has been visited upon an innocent child. But those are the thoughts you shouldn't share with us. For parents of a severely disabled child, the big picture is dominated by a future cataclysm. For my wife and me, it's that, although Esprit has lived nearly 15 years, we will likely survive her. For other parents, it's that their child will likely survive them. We would rather consider the big picture at times of our own choosing.

helloworldon Facebook announces forensic audit of Trump data firm Cambridge Analytica

This seems like a fig leaf, because Facebook has no authority or ability to fully inspect all of Cambridge Analytica's facilities and data throughout the world. There certainly won't be a police raid in London to seize hard drives or anything like that. And short of that kind of intervention by the authorities, we'll never know what Cambridge Analytica has or had.

helloworldon How Did Astronaut DNA Become 'Fake News'?

I wish they hadn't called it, "fake news," which I'd reserve for misinformation that's initially spread by those who know that it's false. In this case, I think that journalists' lack of knowledge about genetics led to erroneous reporting.

helloworldon Waymo shows off what it’s like to ride in a truly driverless self-driving car

With a market cap of $800 billion -- and about $100 billion in cash -- Alphabet/Waymo could just buy Fiat Chrysler, whose market cap is $32 billion.

helloworldon Roger Bannister has died

Running May Be Good for Your Knees https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/well/move/running-may-be-...

helloworldon Roger Bannister has died

The narration is excerpted from Bannister's 1955 book, "The First Four Minutes":

https://books.google.com/books?id=ka0TDQAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=ro...

helloworldon One genius's lonely crusade to teach a computer common sense (2016)

It's fascinating to see how the AI field has oscillated between symbolic/logic-based approaches and those relying on artificial neural networks. Maybe the ultimate solution will be a hybrid of the two.

helloworldon Why I Cloned My Dog

Cloning a dog seems benign, but I suspect that, before long, people will be cloned, too. There are certainly creepy possibilities, e.g., "The Boys from Brazil," which imagines Hitler clones, but also thought-provoking scenarios, e.g., allowing parents to clone a child who died in an accident. What a brave new world we're entering!