Hacker News Reader

incomethaxon Solar Impulse plane starts 24-hour test flight

"He is to take the aircraft to an altitude of 27,900ft (8,500m) by late Wednesday, when the sun's rays stop being strong enough to supply the solar cells with energy."

I'm just a bit confused by this. Wouldn't the sun's rays be stronger at higher altitudes because of having to travel through less atmosphere, and therefore less diffraction from the air?

incomethaxon Ask HN: what would you like to see occur in the next 18 months?

HL7 3.0 is a step in the right direction, and hopefully we'll see more modular EMR systems with the new mandates for 'meaningful use.'

My cofounder and I are currently working on a start-up in this area, so I'm curious to what 'foolishness' you've seen.

incomethaxon Top VCs Debate Rising Startup Valuations [video]

The transcript is a great read if you don't want to watch the video.

incomethaxon The world turns upside down every 10 years, and you turn along with it.

This gave me chills when I saw this. It's like something out of Ghost in the Shell.

incomethaxon Marry Him: The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough

Spoken like a true Barbie Computer Engineer

incomethaxon How shipping saved my life

With the emergence of decent smartphone web browsers and netbooks, it really shouldn't be all that surprising.

incomethaxon The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden

Isn't that already the case?

Just replace "lord or lady" with the name of a large multi-national corporation (Wal-Mart for example).

incomethaxon Ruby Gets An Official Spec: Heading To Become An ISO International Standard

I really enjoy the speed improvements that 1.9 affords, I can't help but think this will bring back the arguments that Ruby is a slow language simply because the "standard" implementation is slow.

incomethaxon Steve Jobs intervenes, approves Knocking streaming video app

Is it just me or does this seem part of the famed reality-distortion field?

incomethaxon Got API, an API documentation aggregator

It would nice to have the ability to add custom api documentations - it would make interfacing with internal api's much easier

incomethaxon Apple.com XSS attack

Anyone have a screenshot? I seem to have missed all the fun.

incomethaxon What Startups Are Really Like

Getting users is such a topic that it is radically different from one startup to the next. Even two start-ups in the same area are likely to have very different plans for attracting and retaining users.

incomethaxon Global warming: Moral vs Economic solutions

Spending about 2% of current world domestic product on CO2 mitigation seems perfectly justifiable to me.

Morally, or economically?

A 2% drop in world gdp would lead to at least as bad a recession (likely even worse) than the one we're in now.

During the past year the world gdp rose 3.1% (See https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...) - which was about 2% lower growth rate on gdp.

incomethaxon Daring Fireball: Apple Netbook Claim Chowder

Not being able to install any application is irrelevant.

The fact is, I can install a large number of applications on my iPhone, the device is readily available, and has a great web experience.

The point of a netbook in the first place is to be able to access the web, and be able to quickly get at the web - not to be able to install all applications.

incomethaxon Daring Fireball: Apple Netbook Claim Chowder

Apple has a netbook - its called the iPhone. I use my iPhone like I would use a netbook and then some.

incomethaxon Ask HN: What's the best webapp UI you've seen and what was used to make it?

In my experience I've found running a Cappucino app to be rather slow, but definitely +1 on the mention of 280 slides, I really respect the work their doing, especially making such a great UI Web app.

incomethaxon The Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine. It’s Still Working.

More discussion in: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=836952

incomethaxon Nontrepreneurs

Would you consider him a nontrepreneur or an entrepreneur? If we're going to go coining things like "nontrepreneur" what is then the difference between a nontrepreneur and an entrepreneur?

Is it actually filing for incorporation? If so, then what about all the people who are working on ideas but haven't incorporated yet?

Where do you draw the line?

incomethaxon How to Write Clearly, Think Clearly, and Learn Easily

It took me years to unlearn the 5 paragraph format. I actually wish that I had been thrown into the deep end and taught to write from reading actual quality essayists like Thoreau.

A part of me feels sad that the American schooling system relies so heavily on sub-par standards to teach the basics.

incomethaxon The leader board now shows average karma.

I actually think this will help comment quality improve. You can definitely see the difference in the quality of comments on HN from a year ago to today.

Just take a look on some articles on searchyc.com.

I'm not saying that the quality today is any worse than the quality a year ago (it's very difficult to judge that metric), just the submissions and comments are different, which is to be expected of a growing community.

incomethaxon Making WiFi work at large conferences

Thanks for the link. I never realized that conference WiFi was such an involved process.

incomethaxon Ask HN: Soma or North Beach

Don't forget the crowds during the festivals (almost every weekend) near the civic center that can spill out pretty far if you're located near market.

incomethaxon Wifi at conferences problem

Amen to this.

We were just at Health 2.0 the last couple of days which was held at the San Francisco design concourse, they had 6 access points for 1000+ people in one large room. For most of the conference, wifi was spotty at best, non-detectable otherwise. It also didn't help that when a speaker was on the main stage, most of the people watching were only in range of one or two access points.

This article will be really helpful if more conference organizers can spend some time looking at it.

incomethaxon Ask HN: Feedback on side-project Webdesignerd (an HN for webdesign)

My first impression was that it is very difficult to quickly scan which articles I want to look at, but as I look at it, it seems that it's more usable because I can see what's behind the link. Maybe a combination of the two strategies might help?

incomethaxon Andreessen: Watching Netscape Disintegrate

I totally agree with your thinking. There's probably a startup idea in there somewhere...

incomethaxon Steve Blank's Customer Development Model

We're actually actively pursuing the model described in his book. So far, I can say that it's already prevented us from wasting what would have been 3 months creating an application that we wouldn't have been able to sell.

incomethaxon HN: share your unneeded Google Wave invites

same as brutimus:

my username @gmail.com

Thank's for the post and thanks for whoever sends the invite

incomethaxon Google Answers Microsoft :Chrome Frame is safe.

So I looked at the NSS Labs methodology and how they define a successfully blocked connection:

The resulting response is recorded as either “Allowed” or “Blocked and Warned.”

• Success: NSS Labs defines “success” based upon a web browser successfully preventing malware from being downloaded, and correctly issuing a warning.

• Failure: NSS Labs defines a “failure” based upon a web browser failing to prevent the malware from being downloaded and failing to issue a warning.

So if malware was blocked, and the user not notified, this would imply that the test failed.