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martindelemotte

94 karma · joined August 30, 2010

Entrepreneur
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martindelemotte··on Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
There is a plan like this for Paris. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Paris_(project)

martindelemotte··on The history of humans trying to reduce one another to a personality profile
I wouldn't trust a MBTI personality score because the test is too susceptible to social desirability bias. But on the other hand, assuming that you "are" an INTJ and knowing that your manager "is" an ESFJ, you should be careful to consider social harmony [1] on top of efficiency that you naturally value [2] when taking a decision at work.

Now, indeed nobody is a pure ESFJ nor a pure INTJ. People tend to get hung up a little bit too much on the letters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions#Ex... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_cognitive_functions#Ex...

martindelemotte··on The history of humans trying to reduce one another to a personality profile
The test has low psychometric value but the underlying model is interesting [1]. I see it more as a checklist on what to consider about a person. Mainly: what is important to him or her?

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

martindelemotte··on The History of Greco-Roman Vegetarianism (2010)
On the other hand, according to Julius Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico [1]:

[The Germani] do not pay much attention to agriculture, and a large portion of their food consists in milk, cheese, and flesh.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples#Collision_wit...

martindelemotte··on Trying to make sense of Colombia’s “Strata” economic system (2014)
How do the "honest DIAN officers" that you talk about report their exhorted income?
martindelemotte··on Trying to make sense of Colombia’s “Strata” economic system (2014)
My theory is that as a lot of people don't declare their full income in developing countries (and are quite tax-adverse due to a perception of high corruption), a way to redistribute is to tax "luxury" goods like vehicles or other visible stuff like the strata.
martindelemotte··on Maybe today’s Navy is just not very good at driving ships
Partially mythical, there were no bananas and if I remember well there were only two monkeys. [1]

[1] https://www.scribd.com/doc/73492989/Stephenson-1966-Cultural...

martindelemotte··on The “free” economy comes at a cost
They sometimes do try to espouse a critical viewpoint of free trade, for example [1].

[1] https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21695855-americ...

martindelemotte··on Ask HN: Which companies give programmers offices?
In regard to [1] your hypothesis is probably correct. There exists technology that dims the lights automatically when the volume level of an area is too loud, in order to make people lower their voices.
martindelemotte··on What Historians Wish People Knew About Drugs, Part II: Isaac Campos
No paleogeneticist here but from what I know from : Andean people benefit from a genetic adaptation to high altitude and don't need coca leaves (Himalayan people also benefit from a different genetic adaptation). It does make work more enjoyable though.

Also, coca was reserved to higher classes in the past so laborers probably didn't have access to it. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca#History

martindelemotte··on Mathematical genius is fragile
Then why would the g factor also apply to animals as stated on the Wikipedia page? You don't see that many doing mathematics.
martindelemotte··on Mathematical genius is fragile
It would be more like "Basketball is about being in very good physical shape", which makes more sense.

IQ (or more precisely the g factor) correlates not only with math but also with language skills and music[1].

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

martindelemotte··on Tribal Dakota Pipeline Resistance the Start of Something Bigger
TeleSUR is the (mostly) Venezuelan equivalent of RT. Take it with a grain of salt.
martindelemotte··on Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual
It's interesting to note that since the revolution the French legislators have had an universalist view of things. The goal was to spread the enlightenment ideas to the world (who said the French weren't pretentious).

Of course in practice things haven't always followed the theory. For example in French colonies, although indigenous people were supposed to enjoy the same protections than the French colonists, it didn't happen that way. The excuse was that they needed to be put "up to speed" first.

martindelemotte··on Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual
I'm not a constitutional lawyer but a subset of the protections seem to apply. The French constitution does an "include" of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. A constitutional court decision of 1971 has confirmed its applicability.
martindelemotte··on Privacy and control need to be put back into the hands of the individual
The French constitution references the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen which covers "all men, French, foreign, prisoners and enemies".
martindelemotte··on Anatomy of a World War I Artillery Barrage
As a kid I played in these areas while my dad was cutting wood. It was rather exciting to find a shell as these were rare compared to other pieces of metal. We were just told not to play with them.

I remember that one day we found a shell buried not that far from a fire that my dad had lit.

I was young so I can't certify that we were in a "red zone" but it was in the woods around Verdun so there's a high chance.

martindelemotte··on Google App Engine Silently Stopped Sending Email 5 Weeks Ago
Hi Joe,

Form my perspective: sometimes when I report a bug it's more so that other users don't waste their time troubleshooting it than to have it fixed immediately.

Maybe sometimes I'm not 100% clear but it is a bit discouraging to have to send follow-up messages on clear-cut issues like these: https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1... https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1... (the comment #10 of the former issue was written a bit too quickly don't you think?)

Then there are issues that "work as intended" but that seem like bad product design: https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1...

Do they really reach a product manager?

Finally there are issues like these ones that are not clear cut but that I can't investigate myself because it requires time and resources (they eventually cost me a few bucks running instances for testing purposes). https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1...

You guys have a good product. I think that the promise of not having to manage infrastructure hit a cord with many people. However you do have many bugs to fix to make the platform more stable and (non intentionally) discouraging people from reporting issues will make things improve at a slower rate.

Good luck!

martindelemotte··on Google App Engine Silently Stopped Sending Email 5 Weeks Ago
I can't comment on the paid support. I've just noticed that the non-paid support engineers seems to be under pressure.

I feel little bit bad for them sometimes. They don't seem to have the time to look into problems. It must be quite a boring job for those assigned on the public issues.

Maybe their higher-ups aren't aware of that.

martindelemotte··on Google App Engine Silently Stopped Sending Email 5 Weeks Ago
I wonder if people at Google know how awful it is to report an Appengine bug. You have to battle for days to get your bug acknowledged.

I've noticed that they've added more support people since the early days but it's still a pain as they seem to have an incentive to answer the tickets as fast as possible without doing any real investigation.

The linked issue is a good example of this behavior.

martindelemotte··on A Traditional City Primer
True, Paris was renovated in the 19th century to be made more 'hypertrophic' [1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haussmann's_renovation_of_Paris

martindelemotte··on Ethereum Genesis Sale
It is probably a mistake to summarise the ethereum project as a cryptocurrency, it aims to be a lot more than that. That said, the problem with this kind of fundraising is that an important part of the "investors" are not apt to judge the technical merits of the project as a distributed app plateform. I cannot either so I wont be investing, but I would enjoy some technical input on the matter. Autonomous corporations could be a world-changing innovation, possibly as important as the cryptocurrency concept itself.

As for the non-technical aspects of the project it seems to me that the ethereum team has tried to make the fundraising fair and non-speculative. There is a great amount of fear from people who have vested interest in some alternative cryptocurrencies in this thread. It is a shame that we cannot have rational discussions as it usually the case on HN. Greed is not always good.

martindelemotte··on Employees leave managers, not companies
According to this meta-analysis, employees dont leave managers nor do they leave companies.

They leave (maybe) because of the job.

Estimated true score correlation Job Fit - Tenure: 0.18 Company Fit - Tenure: 0.03 Group Fit - Tenure: 0.06 Supervisor Fit - Tenure: 0.09

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2005....

martindelemotte··on Ask HN: What is company culture and why my company needs one?
This talk about organizational culture is interesting : http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Hacking-Your-Organization

It's from Lloyd Taylor who was Director of Global Operations at Google during their growth. He explains the model he uses to shape cultures.

martindelemotte··on Ask HN: What's the big deal with startups anyways...
If you want to know what's wrong with a government/big company job, go and try one. You could be suprised, just like I was, and start to aim for a high variance career.