huertanix

Just wrote up an app called Rick Roulette. It's like Russian Roulette, but with Rick Astley instead of bullets: https://github.com/dumbstore/dumbstore/pull/13

The defense tech example mentioned in the article is compelling, but I think the most exciting thing that will come from 3D printing is the ability to print non-organic materials to build materials in space, where transportation logistics are a little more complicated than shipping stuff across the Pacific.

There's many different ways to install Rails and those will always be available whether someone creates an installer or not as long as source code is available. However, there is a combination of Ruby, Rails, and the database choices that serve as its backend which are common for the "Make a new Rails app and ship to Heroku" workflow that should be easier for being so popular.

I'm really surprised Rails isn't just another component in the Heroku toolbelt. The default Ruby version in OS X is always outdated, the database preferred by Heroku (postgres) is also outdated in OS X, and getting the latest XCode or re-installing it to install brew to install postgres and changing the order of execution in the PATH to make sure it picks up the right version is a prescription for despair and angst. RVM only solves the Ruby and gem versioning problem.

HeatSync Labs in Mesa, AZ hosts a 3D printing night where people (and kids!) can design and print their own objects with some hacker assistance. Its pretty rad. Result in first photo: http://www.heatsynclabs.org/last-weeks-in-pics-because-it-ha...

I agree that its fast and efficient to use the search box, but its something I rarely see people doing outside circles of sysadmins and developers.

The existing UI can easily be saved by just knocking out the expandable panels completely and just putting all the apps on one panel delineated by category name.

I really want to love the MeeGo Netbook UX and ran it for a month on my Lenovo s10-3t but can't get over its filing-cabinet UI; I can't just get to an application outside of the 6 or so on the quick launch box. You have to click on a tab, then play category bingo to figure out or try to remember which category panel to expand and find it in--and only one can be expanded at a time.

Also, the glittery nonsense on the paint job is sort of horrible. I hate it on my Lenovo netbook too; This is supposed to be a Netbook, not a Twilight character.

The fewer form fields the better. Name, email address, message, and Fifth Element captcha are all I use on my personal website's contact form: http://davidhuerta.me/contact.php

Did they run out of taco money?

I think "drives them relentlessly forward" is a part of the conversation we're missing out on. Useful feedback can come from anywhere, even an asshole. Waiting for insight from only expert communicators seems like a way to slow down one's progress.

You see it a lot between iOS and Android camps. I get flak from Android fanboys constantly and I don't even use an iPhone. If each system was so perfect, there wouldn't be a need for anyone to prove anything. We're pitted into camps of imperfect systems in which each side is perfectly aware of their side's flaws but avoid the geek-sin of admitting they use something less than perfect by only pointing out everything wrong with the "other side" rather than admitting that everything is broken and telling Google and Apple about it instead.

Anyone know its battery life? I'd think at least 20 minutes of flight time would be needed to take this from expensive cat-toy to a surveillance tool.

To offer a possibly way oversimplified theory: In a typical workplace, sexual harassment and random acts of male chauvinism are constrained by corporate culture, so at least from my experience, women can be somewhat comfortable being themselves as paid programmers.

From my experience in open source projects, the number of trolls trolling is quite a bit higher, especially when the primary channels for communication are mailing lists and IRC, which people have an easier time being trolls on due to anonymity and lack of face to face interaction. Not having a boss to yell at trolls for trolling or not having the possibility of getting cockpunched for saying something stupid might be another factor.

This looks like it was a pretty awesome time. Is this sort of thing open to anyone wanting to build something cool? Could I happen-to-be-in-New-York-City my way into the next Music Hack Day?

Its the users. Quora started out as an invite system, so as invites percolated outward from the founders, many Silicon Valley technologists and their friends came into the fold and sort of defined its current culture. Yahoo Answers, on the other hand is full of, well, Yahoo users, and its culture is literally a joke: http://www.epicfail.com/tag/yahoo-answers/

That logo...

I lived in BFE, Idaho until college and didn't have access to a PC most of my time there, and unfortunately, I had access to zero programmers. My introduction to programming concepts was made through trying to figure out and modify crappy JavaScript snippets on websites in 1999 over a 33.6K connection.

When I entered college, I was surprised that most of my classmates have had broadband connections and better computers for years, but never bothered to do much more than receive email with them.

I sort of disagree. I agree that many kids will spend more time doing things that are immediately satisfying, but I think the values they absorb at an early age have a bigger influence; When I was really young my Mom would take me to museums and sciencey type things; Places established to celebrate achievements that take people entire lifetimes to complete. I suspect that this influenced me to later ignore her advice of playing outside/going to bed on time/finishing homework since I knew those weren't the sort of things that would turn into stories to tell grandkids. I instead spent late nights discovering PCs and the web and dove in and fine-honed my skills with the opposite of praise or recognition (building web apps in Idaho middle/high schools just gets you called a nerd). I am now employed building enterprise-level web apps.

1. Partially, they sell premium themes and some small virtual goods, I don't imagine they pull in much from those sales, though.

2. No.

They're not a "bunch," they're like, a dozen. A dozen people trying to make a site work for several millions of people at once. That's no short order for such a small team.

Your blog isn't going to be deleted, dude. This isn't martyrdom, this is a customer service complaint.

Its called RSS.

From what I understand, Tumblr is an extremely small company. Your local Denny's has more people on payroll. NYC is running out of top-notch developers (thus why Bloomberg goes out of his way to tell people from other cities to move to his). Finding and hiring people who fit your company and managing them is a time-consuming process if you want to do it right. Nothing about what they're doing or will have to do is easy. Ultimately, they need to find people who have experience with scaling massive apps, which means headhunting at Google and Facebook. Not saying they shouldn't fix the problem, but I can understand the frustration their team is experiencing.

The US finances Egypt's current military state. If Obama's approval rating start to dip due to people calling their representatives to drop the military finance, it might happen, with enough angry Americans.

My altma mater, DeVry University, wasn't listed either, but that's because DeVry sucks.

tl;dr: Our algorithms already stop resultspam. Y'all are trippin'.

This seems far too simple for any developer interview; Is this interview made for a web designer who will be making minor changes to JS code? If not, I'd ask something from Resig's Learning Advanced JavaScript series: http://ejohn.org/apps/learn/#10

Nokia also doesn't cut deals with carriers to subsidize the cost of their phones like many Android phone manufacturers do. "$520 for a phone? I can almost buy a laptop for that!"

The N900 also has the only implementation of Firefox Mobile. Adblock Plus is in my pocket.

Its a better experience on some phones than others; "Surfing the web" in Blackberry's browser is closer to "drowning the web" and rendering nothing correctly.

I do the same on the Phoenix light rail; This site's layout performs really well on mobile devices; Loading a beast like Digg on my N900 would make me twitch for kill -9.