Hacker News Reader

masterponomoon Nearly half of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to pay for an emergency

My own practice in recent years has been to analyze trends and convert them into investments. So for instance, I have substantial positions in McDonalds, Altria, Philip-Morris, Exxon Mobile, Facebook, and Service Corp (none of which do I patronize). People be gorging, smoking, posting online, and dying. To invest in rampant financial ignorance, I looked into pawn shops and payday loans, but those are all privately held (e.g. super-lucrative, don't need outside capital). I'm looking into banks, Visa and MasterCard, and other facilitators of credit and payments, as possible growth areas.

masterponomoon Jeremy Guillory's Counter-Complaint against Cruise Automation

I doubt this is what PG had in mind when he brought Sam on board. Just a prediction, we will soon be wishing Sam well in his future non-YC endeavors. He's perfectly justified in strongly protecting his own investment, but using HN to vilify the opposition--not cool.

masterponomoon Elon Musk personally cancels blogger's Tesla order after 'rude' post

No car for you!

masterponomoon Finland Is Considering Testing Giving Every Citizen €800 per Month

Jossa haen tämän edun?

masterponomoon E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

I'll allow it:-)

masterponomoon E-Prime: English without the verb 'to be'

I think, therefore...wtf?

masterponomoon Jury Duty

When I sat on a jury in 1989, the main goal of most of the jury was to get the decision over with in time to pick up their kids from school. We quickly found for the plaintiff against the main defendant. There were a slew of co-defendants, who aside from the reading of the charges had not been mentioned at all during the trial. No evidence, no description of their supposed involvement, nada. The foreman started to copy our verdict onto the forms for them as well. I objected, pointing out that we had only discussed the one defendant and needed to consider the others separately. Much protesting and eye-rolling ensued, but the urge to leave won out and the jury agreed to find all of the co-defendants not guilty. I was pleased with the outcome but appalled by the process. I would hate to be judged so carelessly by my peers. Yes, having 12 jurors does increase the odds of having someone put on the brakes and insist on proper procedure, but it is by no means guaranteed.

masterponomoon A letter to our daughter

Just wow. I asked my parents how my birth changed their lives. They said they had to invest in some good ear plugs (for themselves) as a sleep aid, and that they lost a sock drawer until I graduated to the futon. While I did not spark the solving of the world's problems, at least I did have some small impact.

masterponomoon What can a technologist do about climate change?

First determine the ideal temperature and climate conditions. Then, if the ideal is cooler than the current temp, wear the same clothes twice as long between washings; if the ideal is warmer than the current temp, wear them half as many times. But I cannot overstate the importance of Step 1 before taking a potentially irreversible action. Coup de Grace: Apply the same calculus to your every energy-consuming/heat-generating activity, and lather/rinse/repeat (metaphorically).

masterponomoon Playboy to Drop Nudity as Internet Fills Demand

For boys growing up in the 60's and 70's, a lot of time and effort was spent trying to get hold of a Playboy or even just a few pages. Imagine a whole neighborhood of boys playing "ditch 'em" (a wide-ranging and violent version of hide 'n' go seek) wherein the "seekers" would while away the countdown time by gathering at one player's house to peruse his dad's magazine collection--and manage to put it back EXACTLY as it was found lest the treasure trove be locked away. Imagine a middle school music class where an ancient radiator vent in the back of the room was known as a reliable drop point for a stash of pictures, necessarily folded and ripped from being alternately jammed into and removed from the hiding place. Oh well, what we were looking for (and so much more) is blase now. Times do change.

masterponomoon New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

I want one, but after the New Yorker article on Reid Hoffman I'm kind of waiting to find out if he likes it.

masterponomoon How Two Guys Lost God and Found $40M

They should have held out for a Michael Lewis interview. They would have sounded a lot more pithy and heroic.

masterponomoon The Curse of the Pixar Universe

This is almost as bad as the same reviewer's brutal takedown of Steamboat Willie.

masterponomoon [dead]

You should only give them money if they are in front of YOUR home, so they are more likely to become a permanent fixture in YOUR life. I live in a tourist area which also has several well-run shelters, which are not a problem. The problems are the vagrants who will not accept rules and organized help (for whatever reason--I'm not addressing that). If YOU pay them to beg in MY neighborhood then you are paying them to stay right there and wait for more handouts, and they are a constant burden on the health, police, and social services system, to no avail. If you can't imagine encouraging them out in front of YOUR house, then don't do it in front of MY house. Volunteer for or donate to a relief organization, or take an individual into your home, if you really want to help.

masterponomoon Security Tents

Invented by Mel Brooks in the 60's: http://hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/cone-of-silen...

masterponomoon Yahoo's new logo spotted

Yah-Do?

masterponomoon The Facebook Home disaster

Here's another question: How many people in the world, who are current or potential Facebook users, might like to have Facebook as their first and main interface to the world? Facebook asked that question by making such an interface available. Guess what? In the world of rational beings (which might not include knee-jerk business reporters), it might take a while to answer that question. Here's another question: Of the current or potential Facebook users who want Facebook as their main interface to the online world, how many will spend more time and money on Facebook as a result of having that interface? Gee, I don't know. Let's let Home out into the world, and find out. Snarky folk can declare it a disaster or failure after a month--I'm sure Facebook is happy to have it out there as one of several options, and learn from actual experience. Radical concept, no?

masterponomoon Ask HN: Are there any children's websites that teach coding or coding concepts?

Yes, but back in the day it was only vols 1-3. No Sendak in later volumes/editions:-(

masterponomoon Ask HN: Are there any children's websites that teach coding or coding concepts?

This is not a website, but my kids LOVED The Art of Computer Programming (1st edition, when they still had the Maurice Sendak illustrations). The pictures in the volume on Sorting and Searching, though, are not recommended for kids under the age of 9.

masterponomoon PyCon Code of Conduct changed to avoid public shaming

I flirted with Python for a while, but couldn't stop obsessing over the built-in recursion limit. Now, seeing what goes on at PyCon, I'm SO glad I switched to brainfuck. There's not only no brittle speech police there, there's NOBODY there.

masterponomoon Einstein's list of conditions for staying together with his wife

He was right about so much, you have to wonder if he might have been right to list-slap that gal.

masterponomoon Inventing a Soccer Ball for Poor Countries

Anyone else thinking such a ball would make an ideal "case" for a Raspberry Pi, especially once they add wi-fi to the R-Pi? Here's a ball, kids...BTW, it's a computer too. A kickable, waterproof, indestructible computer.

masterponomoon This is Not ok

Are you being ironic by using all random suppositions to refute my random suppositions?

masterponomoon This is Not ok

I had a similar experience when I (a gent) took my grown daughter to a NKOTB reunion concert as a nostalgia trip. The audience was at least 95% female, and the arena restrooms were re-purposed accordingly. I asked an usher and he told me it was common practice to adapt to the gender mix of the audience. I observed many groups of women noting this reallocation with loud triumphant braying laughter. I doubt the Strange Loop men had a triumphal reaction to the bathroom allotment.

masterponomoon The Programmers Before Us Were Better

The copypasta crowd was alive and well back in the old days. I got my junior college programming degree in 1985. Grading of programs was based on correct output (still relevant today) and number of compiles. Yes, you could get it 100% right but fail anyway if you took more than 5 compiles. No penalty for printing, though, so desk-checking of listings was our main activity. Once you marked up a listing and made your changes (sometimes via terminal, sometimes via punched card) you tossed the old listing. The folks who couldn't grasp the concepts would grab listings out of the trash and pirate code from them. Good programmers kept close track of their punched card decks too--the pirates would happily swipe an unguarded deck.

masterponomoon The GitHub hiring experience

Wow. I think back to when I first tried to go out as a contractor. A headhunter got me an interview with a local telecom. During the interview, the manager asked me if I was one of the people named in a recent ComputerWorld article about families with multiple generations in IT. I said I was. He said the whole staff of the telecom IT were curious as to why everyone in the article had given their salary, but I had not. I told him it was because I had merely filled out a questionnaire before I found out the reporter was going to write a nationwide article, and that I subsequently declined to reveal my salary to the world. The manager asked how that went down. I told him not very well--the reporter dunned me to find out my salary, sent me a disposable camera with instructions to send him a photo of myself for the article (I also declined that honor). I told the manager I was a private person and had not consented for my image and my salary to be plastered in a magazine. Then I tried to steer it back to IT, and mentioned that I had recently started using Linux (this was 1998, when that was a daring thing for a mainframer to have done). He said, "Oh, you're one of those Unix guys? We hate that sht!" So, no fab whiskey, no dogs, no hotel, not pool and air hockey--just a quiz about an article I had tried not to be in, and a curse for liking Linux. sigh

masterponomo on Slashdot and SourceForge sold to Dice Holdings

You nailed it. GKNT shareholder here. They have struggled for years to monetize the media business, with little success (profit-wise). Cost of revenue is always very high. Add in a lot of turnover in editorial/content/business leadership (basically everything on the media side) and it has been a whole lot of operating losses. ThinkGeek, meanwhile, has had great year-over-year sales increases, and costs are being brought under control. With the sale of media business, 2012 could be GKNT's first profitable year in many a year (or ever--haven't checked back more than 5 years). Or it could be they finally unloaded the media business (they hired a company to shop it around, BTW) and will now try to sell the e-commerce side (say, to Amazon) and close the doors.

masterponomo on Is it rude to leave an interview early if you have already made your decision?

Depends on how the interviewer(s) have treated you. I walked out mid-interview one time, after the 2nd time the manager was called away to fix a production problem. I could see the room he went into, full of programmers just sitting around waiting for the boss to fix it. I decided this was a sick department and just walked out w/o saying "Bye" as I didn't want to interrupt the debugging session. Another time, in a tag team interview situation, each person kept showing me photos of the calf the team was raising for eventual slaughter for a team cookout. I love meat, but their glee at the prospect of killing this particular cute beast made me not want to work with them. I allowed for the slight chance they were flesh-eating ghouls, and just scampered away during a break.

masterponomo on Five Men Agree To Stand Directly Under An Exploding Nuclear Bomb

That looks like an episode of "McHale's Navy" with all the dimwits standing around.

masterponomo on A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

The disconnect is probably because the OP, and many other 20-somethings, look for some macroeconomic cause for their plight. Some people think too much in terms of generations, demographics, better or worse economic stats, etc. I, on the other hand, tend to focus on my own behavior on my own behalf. My reply did not describe the wider economic conditions in which I grew up, because I thought my own choices (early marriage and kids, delayed college, etc.) were more important than any set of economic indicators you can name. I dug a very deep hole for myself. I learned to look very hard at my own decisions.
I won't go into exhaustive detail, but if you wanted to compare economic conditions, consider this: 1) My first job (paperboy at age 12) was during the Nixon years. Price and waged controls, going off the gold standard, etc. Didn't affect me--I was working locally, delivering the freaking paper, not existing in some statistical milieu. 2) My next job (dishwasher, age 15) was during Ford years. Whip Inflation Now buttons, anyone? Irrelevant--I had my head in a sink. 3) My next job (cashier, age 18) was during Carter years. Insane levels of inflation, stagflation, and a president lecturing us that we were all in a national malaise. Screw you, Carter, I was working and finishing high school, regardless of wider economic conditions. 4) Next job (factory, age 19-24) was during Carter and then Reagan years. End of stagflation, let the Stockman budget battles begin. Irrelevant--I was working my butt off, multiple jobs if I had time, and going to school. 5) Next jobs (IT, age 25-now) I have worked through all the ups and downs of the economy, including the current supposedly impossible economy. I am competing against the 20-somethings and the offshore developers. I don't think it's easy for anyone (myself included) and I don't take my current hourly contract for granted. Yes, hourly contract. I am one manager's decision away from not having a paycheck. I could either a) panic or b) make sure I deliver value, all the time. And of course hope for the best:-)
So the perspective I suggest is one of perhaps being aware of larger economic conditions as a point of interest, but not telling yourself that the unemployment rate, the dearth of new jobs, the shift to overseas labor, etc. is going to control your destiny. YOU control it. Nothing but crappy jobs out there? Fine, take two, they're small. What's that, I'm an insensitive clod and there are not even any crappy jobs to be had? Oh, then I assume you have broadened your search out to 50 miles, then 100, then 150. And I don't mean emailing resumes. Nothing like showing up in person to demonstrate seriousness. Oh, and now new jobs? Well, why not go take an existing job from some sad sack who is just marking time? Every company has them. Don't ask for openings--make openings.
As long as this is, it is incomplete. I'm sure a determined complainer could pick holes in it easily, and trump me with some difficulty that I haven't included. But that's the difference in perspective. I accept difficulties as part of life, and set out to survive at the very least, prosper if possible, and triumph (even if in only small ways, and only in my mind where I keep score in a game no one else knows we are playing).
So yes, there's the disconnect.