Hacker News Reader

nkhon Being Funny: How Steve Martin got his act together

A great quote from the article:

The consistent work enhanced my act. I learned a lesson: it was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances.

nkhon JQuery plugin to create rich animations ( works on iPhone )

I don't know if CPUs can support it, or if there are enough events. But, somebody, please, hack together DuckHunt. It would be awesome to play on an iPad.

nkhon Ask HN: Is functional programming really worth it?

I second taking a look at Clojure.

Also, your comment of:

The world is imperative! Things have state! We do not live in an imaginary fluffy world of mathematical elegance & correctness.

I would check out article by Rick Hickey on state on the Clojure website:

http://clojure.org/state

It will get you thinking about how often your objects really need to have "state".

nkhon On Cloud: Show off your rails or merb app with free hosting

You can do the same with Heroku:

sudo gem install heroku

heroku keys:add

heroku create

git push heroku master

heroku open

nkhon How I retired at age 25

If you make Lt Col by then (not so hard)

I have a lot of friends who stayed at Westpoint, and served at least two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. They would argue with you over the "not so hard" part of the argument.

nkhon How I retired at age 25

Without numbers this isn't very useful.

This reminds me of when I was at WestPoint (US Military Academy). Everyone would talk about how once you graduated you were "set for life" (after your five year commitment). They would leave it at that, and not mention any numbers to back up the statement. I still remember I asked an officer what "big money" was. And he replied, "Oh, big money!! Like 65,000" Which is less than every single one of my friends and I made after quitting westpoint and getting jobs out of school.

nkhon Edward Tufte appointed by Obama to help track, and explain stimulus funds

Obama scored some big points in my book for this one.

Edit:

When he did not follow up on his promise to have C-Span follow the health care debates, left a bad taste in my mouth.

I have attended a Tufte conference, and he spent a lot of time discussing the challenger disaster. While he was no where near the as good as Feynman (who is?), he graphically presented the government information very well.

If anything it will draw attention to the problem as he is a big name in this space.

nkhon Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?

A 2001 poll conducted by the National Science Foundation in the US revealed the pervasiveness of the problem. Results showed that:

-Only 48% of Americans knew that the earliest humans did not live at the same time as the dinosaurs.

-Only 22% could properly define a molecule.

-Only 45% knew what DNA was and that lasers don't work by focusing sound waves

-Only 48% knew that electrons were smaller than atoms.

I can not comment how many times I have worked with people that have no grasp of the fundamentals of science and the scientific method. Not only we not produce enough scientists, but we produce a ridiculous amount of scientifically illiterate people.

nkhon Joel Spolsky to stop blogging; shares insights from JoelOnSoftware success

"But as the business matures, I've come to realize that blogging is holding me back."

How so? Does he mean in terms of time commitment. It seems like this a great marketing function, and would continue to be. I certainly would have never heard of Fog Creek without it.

nkhon My Startup (WindyCitizen) named one of Chicago's New Essentials

Could you elaborate more on the process of getting the grant? That is an avenue of funding I would love to hear more about.

Please don't give away any information that might hurt you or that you would be uncomfortable sharing.

nkhon Part time Entrepreneur, fulltime Employee

I would love to hear about any techniques you have for overcoming mental fatigue at the end of your work day when you still have business work to do.

Did you work on your business before the work day started? Or something different?

nkhon Aquaponics, a Gardening System Using Fish

I think this is a great example of what pg wrote about in "The Power of the Marginal".

Link: http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html

I aslo like the quote from the article:

“There’s alternate ways of growing food,” he said. “I don’t want to push it down people’s throats, but if someone’s interested, I’d like to show them you can do this with cheap parts and a little bit of Yankee ingenuity.”

nkhon Ask HN: Any non-techies have advice for a good cover letter?

If you haven't seen the article below, it is a great resource to forward on to your brother. To quote it:

For the background part, I like to see what someone has done.

Not been involved in, or been part of, or watched happen, or was hanging around when it happened.

I look for something you've done, either in a job or (often better yet) outside of a job.

http://pmarca-archive.posterous.com/how-to-hire-the-best-peo...

nkhon Divvyshot (YC W09) launches (with HTML5 drag-and-drop support)

I would like to pass along congratulations to Michael Yuan. This site is beautiful and inspiring. Would you guys mind sharing the tools you used to produce it, and how long it took?

nkhon Paul Graham on Mixergy, today 2pm EST/11am PST

Here is a link that links directly to the video:

http://www.justin.tv/clip/256d3b4ba66875ae

The interview starts at 8:40

nkhon Paul Graham on Mixergy : Video Link (working link)

This link will start later in the video:

http://www.justin.tv//mixergy#from-11.05,February-9-2010

nkhon Video of PGs Talk on Mixergy

The link changes when you paste it:

http://www.justin.tv//mixergy#from-11.04,February-9-2010

Is the correct link. Sorry guys.

nkhon Paul Graham on Mixergy, today 2pm EST/11am PST

When I paste the following in Chrome it works:

http://www.justin.tv//mixergy#from-11.04,February-9-2010

The link changes after the pages loads

nkhon Paul Graham on Mixergy, today 2pm EST/11am PST

To rewatch, or see for the first time, here is the link:

http://www.justin.tv//mixergy#from=11.00%252CFebruary-9-2010...

nkhon Choosing The Best CSS Framework: A Complete Guide

Has anyone had any success using a framework, then removing the excess CSS with something like deadweight? ( http://railscasts.com/episodes/180-finding-unused-css )

nkhon Ask HN: Steady 4-5% on $5 million?

I say the following with great respect. I do not know much about you or your circumstances, but I do share the same opinion of inherited wealth as a lot of great American business men. For example:

“The idea that you get a lifetime of privately funded food stamps based on coming out of the right womb strikes at my idea of fairness.”

- Warren Buffett

And more importantly. “Great sums bequeathed often work more for the injury than the good of the recipients.”

-Andrew Carnegie

In The Millionaire Next Door (1996), researchers Thomas Stanley and William Danko conclude that lifetime and testamentary family gifts are both a disincentive to work as well as a disincentive to save. Their findings show that the more dollars adult children receive, the fewer they accumulate, while those who are given fewer dollars accumulate more.

While you may just be looking to "keep the nest egg safe" with a 4-5% return. I urge you not to drift into a life where you play it safe and do not contribute to society.

While you should protect your money and not do anything foolish with it, don't let it ruin your opportunity you have. You are one of the luckiest people to ever live. You have been given a lifetime of wealth at one of the most exciting times ever to be alive. While 5 million may not be a lot compared to Paris Hilton, I assure you it can be good enough to fund something truly worthwhile. Take Darwin for an example, or look at what Bill Gates is trying to do.

So while I doubt one comment on HackerNews could ever change your mind if you are already "spoiled", I urge you to stay apart of the HN community (and other communities of ambitious "doers") and find a way to contribute to a project that could really help the world.

nkhon HTML5 Canvas based fast painting app

A question for you guys: What is the best way to learn about and start playing around with HTML 5. And how long would it take to produce something like this?

nkhon Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, first interview since 1989

Here is the transcript of his Kenyon College Commencement speech.

http://web.mit.edu/jmorzins/www/C-H-speech.html

nkhon MIT develops algorithms to "solve" non-linear systems as sum of squares

Does anyone have a link to the actual algorithms?

nkhon Ask HN: Contracting out website design.

I think a good place to go for a "baseline" cost would be:

http://99designs.com/

I used them for some graphics work at my current employer and was happy with the results. It at least gives you a starting point and a place to negotiate from.

nkhon [dead]

I have a question for Lisp programmers. I am fairly new to programming and I have been playing around with ruby. Mostly building simple Rails apps and scraping sites. I have read a lot about Lisp that intrigues me. However, it always seems like Lisp programmers are experienced programmers that become evangelists once they see how easy something was to accomplish in Lisp.

So my question is: Do you think that Lisp is a language you can cut your teeth on, or should I get more experience with Ruby and wait till I hit a wall, then turn to lisp to solve my problems?

To be fair, it seems the documentation for Lisp and ruby are quite different. Where Ruby seems to cater to new programmers with the coddling we need, while Lisp documentation is more sparse for veterans don't need intro material. Does that seem correct or an I mistaken? And I would love to hear the path Lisp programmers here took to become proficient.

nkhon Reddit Clone in 20 Minutes and 100 Lines of Lisp

Has anyone heard of, or used, this framework:

http://weblocks.viridian-project.de/

And if I was to start playing around with one would you recommend Weblocks or KPAX or something else....

nkhon I Have No Talent

This discussion always reminds me of a poem by Herbert Kauffman printed in "How I raised myself from failure to Success in Sales":

You are the man who used to boast

That you'd achieve the uttermost,

Some day.

You merely wished a show,

To demonstrate how much you know

And prove the distance you can go....

Another year we've just passed through

What new ideas came to you?

How many big things did you do?

Time...left twelve fresh months in your care

How many of them did you share

With opportunity and dare

Again where you so often missed?

We do not find you on the list of Makers Good.

Explain that fact!

Ah no, 'twas not the chance you lacked!

As usual-you failed to act!