Hacker News Reader

jmagaron $600 Chromebooks are a dangerous development for Microsoft

You may be thinking of Spolsky:

‘As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.’

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/09/18/strategy-letter-vi...

jmagaron Mars 360-degree panoramic view from Curiosity

I suspect they haven't taken those photos yet.

jmagaron Facebook changes everyone's listed emails to 'Facebook.com'

Your hiding it doesn't help though... your Facebook email address is <<username>>@facebook.com

I don't see anyway to keep that secret.

jmagaron Workplace experiments: A month to yourself

Sounds like someone found Dan Pink's lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

jmagaron Is NTSB call for ban on electronics for drivers realistic?

I think you are mistaken on the "Holding the phone isn't the problem;" (mental distraction seems correct though) I suggest a quick test for you: 1) Grab the edge of your display like it's the steering wheel 2) with your other hand hold your phone to your ear 3) try to check both blind spots without moving your hands

The freedom of movement is impaired with your elbow in the awkward position. Also when I do it, my elbow and hand blocks my view to the blind spot on that side.

jmagaron RIP, dmr

This marks the end of all my "Hello World!" first programs; replaced by "goodbye, dad\n"

jmagaron Daring Fireball: Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot

Of all the tributes, this is the one that brought a tear to my eye.

I worry that the long hours and extraordinary commitment to our craft may not be worth the sacrifices we make. The time is now for me, and I'm driving hard to a personal goal. Late nights and early mornings, essentially every waking hour is spent preoccupied by building a great product. And I see it in my son's eyes that he's missing me.

Reading Gruber's final paragraph reminds me that I'm going to regret this lost moment in time with my family, and that any success achieved will be paid for by their commitment to stand by me along the way.

Tonight, I'm going to kick off early and go watch his Hockey practice. And then enjoy a few periods of the Leaf opener tonight with the kid. He deserves it.

jmagaron Why QR Codes Are Here To Stay

re: brand appearance...

http://hackaday.com/2011/08/11/how-to-put-your-logo-in-a-qr-...

jmagaron NASA's Successful Quantifying of Comedy Timing (By Penn Jillette and Teller)

I took my two boys to a launch because I knew the end was near. STS-125 the first and last time two shuttles were prepped to launch at the same time: Hubble makes the ISS unreachable if a problem occurs. (The second shuttle was the rescue plan since they couldn't get to the reentry vehicle parked at the ISS.)

Yes, I cried like a little girl.

Good times.

jmagaron "If you don't want to run out of ideas, the best thing to do is not to execute."

Michael Caine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddUbsWnEVXM

Powerful stuff.

jmagaron What every developer should know about time

Jon Udell had a very interesting article recently on a related topic: http://blog.jonudell.net/2009/10/23/a-literary-appreciation-...

Jon's particular slant was reading the comments in the timezone database and reflecting on the political influences captured within. A fun read.

jmagaron Dean Kamen's Robot Arm

A whole bucket might chill the oil sufficiently to reduce the risk... But I can tell you a single ice cube does make a mess, and a lot of noise.

First the cube sinks, so you won't be able to get it back easily if you want to abort. It rattles around the bottom of the fryer as it melts and then converts to steam. The bubbles of steam rise and splatter violently.

(I got in a bit of trouble that night, as the patrons could hear the commotion in the dining room.)

jmagaron The Economics of the HDMI Cable Ripoff

Let's just start with the simple fact cable quality does matter when working with HDMI. I'm not here to argue about the price of one manufacturer versus another, or their relative quality and worth. But I will point out that "cheap cables" and the expectation that for the same $9.99 you'd spend on a serial cable you could get a reliable HDMI cable is somewhat laughable.

HDMI is really bad design, and due to its DVI legacy they've pushed the up against the limits of what is possible. Right up against the limit.

1) it's twisted pair technology instead of coax 2) it's parallel instead of serial 3) it's very fast (10.2 Gbps)

If you just spent money on a new 7.1 AVR, and a Deep Color Blu-ray player then you'll be needing cables that have been manufactured and tested to a highest HDMI 1.3 standard. Resistance, skin effect, impedance, capacitance, cross talk and inductance all conspire to disrupt the data and since it's digital, you will be left staring at a black screen or hearing pops and audio dropouts. This kind of quality control is not cheap, and is much more than a simple continuity check on each line within the bundle.

I've tested some really expensive HDMI cables and seen what is possible with them. I've ignored the "Direction of Flow" arrows on some long lengths and had them fail, reversed the cables and had it work. There is real engineering that goes into these things, and that is what you are paying for.

So for short lengths (3-6') the cheapest HDMI cable might be good enough, and you will probably be happy. But I'd still be looking for the HDMI 1.3 logo on the package, at least then you can be sure it has been tested against the upper ends of the spec.

jmagaron Poll: Where are you from?

And I.

jmagaron Aardvark Social Search Service Arrives

Me please! mike_agar@hotmail.com

Thanks.

jmagaron Understanding Quake's Fast Inverse Square Root

Carmack or Michael Abrash? Read Graphics Programming Black Book ( http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Abrashs-Graphics-Programming-S... )

Abrash did amazing things with assembly to get Quake to run on the 486.

I don't know if Carmack, Abrash, or someone at SGI (it's in OpenGL source code too) came up with it; but it seems like witch craft to me.

jmagaron Xkcd - Linux, a cautionary tale

one more for this thread:

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

jmagaron ITA Software hiring hackers

http://addagram.mytestbench.com/

I too have played with that one, but I used JavaScript... These problems are engaging enough to keep you interested, especially when you are trying out a new language. The challenge is significant, and the optimizations required to solve these help you explore some the deeper depths of a language, when compared to a "hello world!" type of problem.

jmagaron Steve Jobs: it's time we design our own iPhone and iPod chips

I doubt very much that Jobs is underestimating the effort or the risk. This is more likely the Apple response to why an iPhone?

Look, if the COTS chips within the iPhone are available to everyone, (they are), then anyone can implement the same features (they will). The COTS chip makers know this, and in fact often they put only the features that have mass appeal in their SOCs creating a lowest common denominator solution, which maximizes their market.

Now consider what happens if Apple can design a chip that they, and only they use. Then the features within the iPhone will have a full lifecycle advantage over the competition; the SOC vendors will of course copy what makes the Apple feature "cool" but they will always be a generation behind...

jmagaron WSJ: Gates and Ballmer fought over Microsoft handover

I've maintained for a long while that MS is weaker without Gates. From all I've read, it was clear that Bill had a strong leadership role in the technical domain, and his influence was not to be underestimated.

So the announcement that he was leaving left me certain that MS was past its peak, and will decline over the next decade.

That was until reading this article. Ballmer impresses me with the insight in how to replace such an important leader. Reaching into Max Weber for a credible plan, and then ensuring Gates names two incredible minds to carry on after he's gone: Ozzie and Mundie.

The question is can two replace the one? Time will tell, but a certain downfall is now less certain in my mind.

Thanks WSJ for a great article.

jmagaron Dennis Ritchie (R from K&R) explains "/* You are not expected to understand this */"

That's one heck of a magic number...

The strangest one I've seen is the fast sqrt() function in SGI OpenGL source code: there's a magic step where a right bit shift is applied to a 32bit IEEE float.

(oops.. just clicked your link, looks like we're related)

jmagaron Dennis Ritchie (R from K&R) explains "/* You are not expected to understand this */"

Who visits Hacker News and doesn't know that "Dennis Ritchie" is the R in "K&R"?

jmagaron Ask HN: good place to store code online?

I can't help but think that there are better ways to backup your code. Once you give it to an online service, you give up total control over how that data is handled.

Your code is everything. You should take care of it properly.

On the other hand, if you are working on OSS, then of course your need for privacy is trumped.

jmagaron Headache relief for programmers: Regular expression generator

You sir, hit the nail on the head! We need the exact opposite: enter a regex pattern, and a sample string... then fire up a similar GUI to tweak the expression until it's working again.