Hacker News Reader

nikatworkon Addicted to Distraction

There is a big push at the moment for "T shaped people", ie with a broad range of experience with one or two specialities.

By exposing a wide range of activities to kids, they gain breadth. They can then choose what to explore in depth - that is their call.

"Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death."

nikatworkon Things the media does to manufacture outrage

There's a clear ethical difference between a frothy startup and deliberately provoking negative public behavior.

nikatworkon What is a coder's worst nightmare? (2014)

A large portion of modern dev jobs are either CRUD apps or data munging. Knowledge of algos are not necessary for those for those domains.

It always amuses me when I'm interviewing for some vanilla web app job and they start pitching maths questions. It's filtering on the wrong criteria.

nikatworkon We know the city where HIV first emerged

Workers who were short of the quotas might have their hands severed. Leopold II is a forgotten monster. Arguably it birthed the international human rights movement.

nikatworkon We know the city where HIV first emerged

It's a morbid irony that HIV emerged from "Leopoldville" considering the other atrocities unleashed on Africa by Leopold II.

nikatworkon The mid-Victorian diet was a mini golden age of nutrition

TFA seems to be fingering carbs and sugar as the key issue, rather than total calories.

nikatworkon Doctors want ban on prescription drug, device advertisements

That's how it works in Oz. The drug companies tend to use their product packaging colors heavily in the ad to link the brand.

nikatworkon Programming Is Not Math (2014)

I've been doing this a long time and the only maths I've ever needed was trig, matrices like once and maybe a touch of probability. I took a unit each of symbolic logic and cog psych and those have been infinitely more useful.

Then again I'm about to learn Haskell so maybe I'll change my tune.

nikatworkon Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

Mate, this is bloody Oz. It hit nearly 46C (114F) last year in my city. Last thing I'm trying to do is minimize heat loss.

nikatworkon Why has the quality of brick buildings declined in the last 100 years?

7' is accurate for many new Housing Estate houses eg AV Jennings. The buildings all look similar except for roof color. It's very disorientating.

My house is 1860s with a 12' ceiling. Those other places feel like claustrophobic rabbit holes in comparison.

Low ceilings minimize material costs and maximize profits.

nikatworkon The Buddhist Priest Who Became a Billionaire Snubbing Investors

My outside impression of Japan and Taiwan is that they're horrific places for corporate work across the board.

Is this a stereotype fuelled by the black companies, or is it largely accurate?

nikatworkon Humans of New York and the Cavalier Consumption of Others

I saw three different photos from three different sources of the same scene from the Palestine-Israel conflict. They told wildly different stories.

nikatworkon Can These Glasses Help the Colorblind? We Put EnChroma to the Test

Some humans have 4 cones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Human_tetrachrom...

nikatworkon Screenshots from developers and Unix people taken in 2002

> The icons tell you nothing; I'd rather have simple english words.

Gmail is also guilty of this crime, although at least you can configure it to use text labels. No, I don't want to learn your particular abstract iconography just so I can read my frickin' mail.

And don't get me started on the unholy abominations that are the new iPhone Music and Podcast interface workflows. Wtf.

nikatworkon Color Psychology: Guide for Marketers

This is fantastic. So many sites get the basics wrong. It drives me nuts to see eg food delivery aggregator sites that use a primarily blue color scheme.

It's also worth noting that the color meanings described are Western and can be wildly different for Asian markets: http://www.illuminantpartners.com/2011/01/17/color/

I once ran a multicountry eCommerce network and the Chinese partner (alone out of 30+ other countries) insisted the site background for their portal be changed from white to black for cultural reasons.

nikatworkon Facebook Blocks Internet Pioneer “R.U. Sirius”

I've noticed a number of yung'uns ditching FB completely for Instagram. Delegating auth to FB alone is an insanely self-defeating move.

nikatworkon A Beginner's Guide to the Synth

Have you played with a 303 or old Moog? I love the convenience and price of digital, but those old synths can really blow your hair back.

nikatworkon “Tomato” versus “#FF6347” – the tragicomic history of CSS color names

Yeah, nah. Prove me wrong. I double dog dare you. Your answer must be cross and backwards compatible to count.

nikatworkon “Tomato” versus “#FF6347” – the tragicomic history of CSS color names

> display:table

The delicious irony is that CSS had to emulate the old table model to overcome its default layout deficiencies. And IIRC it still can't natively handle mixing relative and fixed widths, and consistent vertical centering.

> html tables never displayed identically

My bread and butter used to be slicing photoshop comps into websites. My table layouts were pixel perfect on every browser without hacks. I do agree there were a few things that had to be accomodated using   and spacer gifs - but it was painless compared to elaborate and fragile CSS hacks.

I shouldn't still care about this stuff - I moved to IOS dev thank goodness - but I still nuture a burning hatred of CSS years later :)

nikatworkon “Tomato” versus “#FF6347” – the tragicomic history of CSS color names

> Using tables for layout was the original hack.

A simple and practical hack that worked (and continues to work) identically across all browsers without the need for elaborate edge case code.

I'm curious, with the new libraries, can CSS yet do:

<table width="90%" align="center"><tr valign="middle"><td width="20" valign="top">menu</td><td width="100">leftcol</td><td width="*">content</td></tr></table>

nikatworkon How Facebook knows who you might be dating online

My theory is that if you use the mobile app it factors in GPS location.

Several times I've been at a particular venue, without "checking in" or even posting. The next day, people I met at the venue would show up in my suggestions list.

nikatworkon Differences Between Perl 5 and Perl 6

That's needlessly verbose if I am descoping $1 within a line or two. I agree one must be careful.

nikatworkon Differences Between Perl 5 and Perl 6

> Who "adds two strings"?

$timeText = $systemHours . ':' . $systemMinutes;

$durationTimer = $userInputHours + 1;

There ya go.

nikatworkon Differences Between Perl 5 and Perl 6

It's not a smell if you are doing an asston of text munging. Rather than write one ginormo regex I prefer a sequence of short actions. It's easier to debug and reason with.

nikatworkon The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. And China Headed for War?

It's beautifully layered. In one sense he's saying that war is not inevitable if we make the effort to get along. In another sense he's saying don't prod the panda.

nikatworkon How the banks ignored the lessons of the crash

> literally hundreds of thousands of pagers of them, nobody really understands them

BaselII[+] and friends are relatively clearcut and are designed to prevent credit meltdown. The rules and reporting requirements are baked into Bank software and dataflow. Auditors will spank you with fines, and will revoke your accreditation for serial offences. This can force an involuntary acquisition.

> there are tens of thousands of Somali refugees in the US. To my knowledge there is no commercial bank that will help them send money home to their families.

That is the result of draconian anti-terrorism laws and has nothing to do with regulations around credit reserves.

You seem to be concerned around over-regulation, however the article is clearly arguing the opposite: "Deregulation has allowed perverse incentives into the very fabric of global finance."

nikatworkon Windows Drops Bing in China for Baidu

> are Apple doing this too?

Surprisingly, they didn't seem to be last time I checked (2013). There were many apps available in the CN app store which you'd think the govt would remove, especially around comms and reading material.

If it hits the govt radar they will definitely act, which could have massive technology and public perception implications for Apple.

nikatworkon Windows Drops Bing in China for Baidu

> How much does state competitiveness play into China's firewall policies?

State competitiveness is baked into many of China's regulatory activities as a form of "soft power". Some China-watchers feel this makes the market less innovative, while others feel it encourages the creation of local versions of foreign products. Of course these typically include censorship and are jokingly referred to as "x with Chinese characteristics".

An example was when Apple was making a lot of boastful noise about crushing it in China, and very quickly got dinged on state TV: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/china-sing...

nikatworkon The Fake Meat Revolution

Vegetarianism in India is partly driven by religious and cultural values. That article does not link vegetarianism with malnutrition.

My city has a flourishing expat Sikh community who are largely (though not exclusively) vegetarian, they are for the most part robust and successful individuals.

To categorize vegetarians as intrinsically at risk of health issues needs evidence before I'll buy it. And I say this as a meat eater.

nikatworkon Risk-weighted Capital: Whose Model is it anyway?

The data is not that readily available. Most Banking reporting is very far from realtime, it's "eventually consistent". Not because the Banks are (necessarily) hiding anything but due to the complexity of the systems.

Regulators in first world countries already require accurate and timely reporting. It's really not as simple as just publishing a data feed. That's why things like Basel II(+) exist.