Hacker News Reader

jamessunon Online Survey and Form Builder Typeform Raises €1.2M

How does Typeform compare to FormStack, Wufoo or even Google Forms?

jamessunon ‘Craft’ Whiskey Is Probably From a Factory Distillery in Indiana

From the Green Giant website, "Premium Le Sueur® brand vegetables come from the birthplace of the Green Giant® brand—Le Sueur, Minnesota—where they’re grown in the rich, fertile soil of the Minnesota River Valley."

So, is Green Giant doing the same thing if the same farmer/field/canning facility supplies peas to generic/supermarket brands?

jamessunon ‘Craft’ Whiskey Is Probably From a Factory Distillery in Indiana

Is this all that different than what you see in canned vegetables or cereal -- Del Monte/Kellogg's vs. generic/supermarket brands?

jamessunon Massimo Vignelli, celebrated designer, dies at 83

“There are too many people with no education in graphic design. And because they have access to computers, there’s no end to what they create — signage, newsletters and so forth,” he once told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It’s pollution! They have no idea whatsoever about the dignity of type. If they were pharmaceuticals companies, we’d all be poisoned. But we are poisoned anyhow, visually.”

jamessunon Massimo Vignelli, celebrated designer, dies at 83

“We despise the culture of obsolescence, the culture of waste, the cult of the ephemeral,” reads a sort of design manifesto titled “The Vignelli Canon.” “We detest the demand of temporary solutions, the waste of energies and capital for the sake of novelty. We are for a Design that lasts, that responds to people’s needs and to people’s wants.”

jamessunon Breue – The Screening Room for Products

Zach -

I'm a new "Breuer" and looking forward to participating in the community.

How do you plan on dealing with the (inevitable?) issues that seem to plague most online communities, such as snarky behavior, online trolls and other non-helpful behavior?

jamessunon Prison Switcharoo

I love puzzles like the ones that Click and Clack showcase on Car Talk (NPR). The Sunday Puzzle (http://www.npr.org/series/4473090/sunday-puzzle) by Will Shortz is also another source of challenging word puzzles. Games Magazine and Martin Gardner's columns in Scientific American are/were also fantastic reads for games and puzzles.

What other sources of word/math/logic puzzles are out there?

jamessunon New Top-Level Domains

Agreed. I suspect that many of these LLCs can be traced back to a handful of large companies.

jamessunon "Strategy-proof" school lotteries that are fair, efficient and transparent

It seems to me that the three goals of the algorithm devised by the Institute for Innovation in Public School Choice -- fairness, efficiency and transparency -- are like the three legs of the "project management triangle" -- fast, good or cheap -- in that you can only pick two.

jamessunon Builders of Obama's health website saw red flags

"Crammed into conference rooms with pizza for dinner, some programmers building the Obama administration's showcase health insurance website were growing increasingly stressed. Some worked past 10 p.m., energy drinks in hand. Others rewrote computer code over and over to meet what they considered last-minute requests for changes from the government or other contractors."

jamessunon Ask HN: How would you fix the healthcare.gov website?

Link to Washington Post article, http://wapo.st/19kTpEP

jamessunon The Decline And Fall Of Flowtab, A Startup Story

While the story of the rise and fall of Flowtab was compelling, I thought Flowtab did a great job with http://alpha.flowtab.com. This site is a really effective way of telling their story and I commend them for including several "artifacts" (resources) for public consumption. It's never easy to admit failure...

jamessunon IT departments won't exist in five years

One of the better lessons I learned in Social Studies class in high school was that history swings back-and-forth like a pendulum. We go from one extreme to another.

We are in the era of BYOD and SaaS. We started with dumb terminals connected to mainframes, moved to standalone PCs, transitioned to client/server, got connected to the internet/web with browsers and now are connected globally to cloud-based servers and services.

There is a role for IT departments. What is certain is that the role of IT will shift to adapt to the times.

jamessunon What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

Agreed.

jamessunon What professional philosophers believe – Survey results

The contrarian in me can't help but think that the least popular answer is the "right" one :-)

jamessunon Participate in the International Space Apps Challenge from Low Earth Orbit

"This location is on an active orbiting space station. Transportation costs are the responsibility of the participant unless you are an active-duty astronaut currently on-board the International Space Station." :-)

jamessunon A non-mathematical explanation of one way functions

This talk, http://pyvideo.org/video/1778/crypto-101, given by Laurens Van Houtven at PyCon US 2013, is a fantastic intro to crpytography and he uses the mixing color analogy as one of his examples.

jamessunon Medical device alarm safety in hospitals

To me, this is the same type of issue we see in IT/software development with users ignoring error messages or even banner blindness.

jamessunon Weapons made with 3-D printers could test gun-control efforts

There are just so many interesting angles to this story. I'll start with just one...

The government is always behind the curve when it comes to regulating technology. The rise of text messaging has forced local and state governments to create new laws to discourage/punish distracted driving. Airbnb and Uber have disrupted the traditional hotel and taxicab industries respectively, and have caused lawmakers to rethink how best to regulate those industries.

3-D printing is on the verge of becoming a mainstream technology and we'll continue to see more issues like the one highlighted in this story.

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Does it also allow us to print our own weapons? Does the First Amendment to the US Constitution protect websites that provide instructions and blueprints on how to print your own weapons (or parts of weapons)?

jamessunon Five Courses Receive College Credit Recommendations

The speed at which changes are occurring in the U.S. higher education system is amazing. Colleges and universities that don't adapt -- and adapt quickly -- will go down the same path as buggy whip makers and dead-tree publishers.

jamessunon What You Need to Know About MOOCs

I really like how The Chronicle has organized this web page about MOOCs by (a) using the timeline as the central way of ordering content and (b) providing an overview/FAQ about MOOCs on the left.

jamessunon What should you do every day to improve your life?

Read Hacker News... Someone had to say it :-)

jamessunon Being a polyglot programmer

I don't think you're being silly.

For me, learning a new programming language is an opportunity to see how different languages implement different features. For instance, JavaScript, lua and C# all have different ways of implementing inheritance. Understanding the pros/cons of prototypal inheritance vs. classical inheritance makes me a better developer.

jamessunon The most common failure mode is failing to show up

"Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good." - Voltaire

jamessunon Enterprise Piet

I don't design enterprise software often, but when I do, I prefer loose neoplastic principles. Stay curious, my friends.

jamessunon The Side-Project Project

Maybe I should work on a side project which is a user-maintained directory of side projects...

jamessunon An Educated Consumer is Your Best Customer

Given all of the conversations about breaking bad news to your customers, I thought this was a great example of an effective way of doing so.

It's written in plain language. It explains the various options that were available and which option the company chose. It's written in a conversational tone and not simply a list of bullet points.

jamessunon Ask HN: Suggestions for a 14-yr old software-developer-in-training?

I'd say you'd be doing him a favor by teaching him some of the things that you tend to not get in a CS degree program... that is,the "software engineering" stuff. Revision control, release strategy, testing, etc.

That's a great point. I wonder how many high schools (or colleges, for that matter) teach the "software engineering" stuff, the practical, "vocational" skills that software developers need.

jamessunon Ask HN: Suggestions for a 14-yr old software-developer-in-training?

Thanks for the suggestion. You're absolutely right when you say, "When introducing theory, be careful not to reduce his enthusiasm and excitement." :-)

jamessunon (In)security of commercial control systems

My favorite line from the article, "Sublett said the company intends to change the location of the configuration file to make it harder for hackers to find."