Hacker News Reader

pauljburkeon Synthetic red blood cells mimic natural ones, and have new abilities

I don't follow medical tech religiously but read the original article and thought it relevant (I have a friend that actually has both conditions and the treatment for it is brutal).

Looks like I have more to read up on, thanks!

pauljburkeon Synthetic red blood cells mimic natural ones, and have new abilities

Wonder what impact that could eventually have on people with Sickle Cell or Beta thalassemia (or the rare case that hits the genetic jackpot and has both).

pauljburkeon IBM purged ‘gray hairs’ and ‘old heads’ as it launched Millennial Corps: lawsuit

It's really not. There were people long retired before I hit the workplace and I'm fast approaching 50.

There is a combination of seemingly relentless growth in demand and people deciding they've had enough and hitting the management track however. At least in London/finance. The number of people I started with that are still coding on a daily basis is very small.

pauljburkeon Field notes: London, England (2018)

http://www.dirtydicks.co.uk/

Bishopsgate, nearest tube is Liverpool Street. Mind your head there are some low beams in there.

pauljburkeon Do Great Writers Really Steal?

http://www.fantasyliterature.com/author-interviews/jim-butch...

technically two bad ideas.

pauljburkeon Why browse the Web in Emacs? (2008)

I was working at a university in the UK and got to see Mosaic in 93(I think, it was a very early beta). I said to the main sysadmin "It's very pretty, but it will never replace gopher". He still reminds me of that fact occasionally. Even then it wasn't as fast or efficient to get data/documents out of and I stand by that judgement.

pauljburkeon Sweden fines pirate $650,000 for illegally sharing a single film

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton's_fork

pauljburkeon Saab wins Brazil jets deal after NSA spying sours Boeing bid

I think the NSA would know if that was the case and be able to pass that information along.

pauljburkeon Bill Gates funds creation of graphene condoms

>As an aside: don't forget the largest major anti-condom propagandists is not African at all (ie, the Catholic church).

That would be the curch that also goes on about abstinence before marriage and monogamy afterwards? Never understood why the church gets beaten up for that (not a fan of the stance on condom use but this implies people "religously" follow one of their rules while blatantly ignoring others).

pauljburkeon Microsoft CEO Candidate Elop Said to Mull Windows Shift

Ballmer a visionary founder? That's wrong on at least two counts out of a possible three.

pauljburkeon Overview of Valve's SteamMachines specs

A machine with an NVidia Titan card is top end? I'd have said overkill. I'm not sure why you'd want that for a gaming rig over a GTX780.

pauljburkeon The Docker Book

Please let it include DocBook.

pauljburkeon US entertainment industry to Congress: make it legal for us to deploy rootkits

You actually expanded it into something that by definition is less succinct.

pauljburkeon UK MP to Google: 'you do do evil' when it comes to tax

It's even funnier if you google the name of the MP in question and include the name Stemcor. This interview was particularly entertaining.

http://www.channel4.com/news/margaret-hodge-tax-affairs-stem...

pauljburkeon 'Brave' creator blasts Disney for 'blatant sexism' in princess makeover

It's entirely possible for her to be sarcastic about it after the fact while recognising that's what she's done.

pauljburkeon 'Brave' creator blasts Disney for 'blatant sexism' in princess makeover

>> What makes you think she was naive about it?

Actually I read the line "I forget that Disney's goal is to make money without concern for integrity. Silly me."

as implying exactly that.

pauljburkeon Show HN: Flattest Route - A web app to help you avoid hills in SF

I was just thinking I know quite a few runners that would want this option.

pauljburkeon Pixels don’t care

I'm sure they gave the client a discount to reflect that. 2,083% does seem a little low. I started out in a consultancy that did the same sort of things. There's only so many times you can bill more than your annual salary every month and be told there's no money for raises (or in one memorable case, a laptop).

pauljburkeon [dead]

"I've spent 25 years studying excessive video game playing," he said

Certainly sounds like someone has a problem

pauljburkeon Supercell is bigger than EA in terms of monthly iOS revenue

Funnily enough I finally picked up clash of clans because a guy in the office kept pestering me to give it a go. It's very nicely put together and I can't remember the last time someone in the office harassed me into picking up a game. Particularly someone I'd classify as a non gamer.

pauljburkeon Old People

" for engineering managers the comprehensive knowledge of the code base and engineering team is usually more important and difficult to acquire than knowledge of how to run scalable engineering organizations" I know many people who can get productive with a code base very quickly; the number of people I've encountered capable of managing those people is substantially less.

pauljburkeon Elon Musk and the Hyperloop

I'm aware this is not adding much to the discussion but I couldn't shift the intro to futurama out of my head while reading the post.

pauljburkeon Why I’m not backing you on Kickstarter

How do you get to write as well as George Carlin unless you push, practice and get feedback?

pauljburkeon Why Startup Founders are Always Unhappy

I don't think unhappy is the right word (and even the post doesn't claim the always part) but the first line of Derman's book springs to mind as a partial explanation.

"Ambition is a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the present - Emanuel Derman"

pauljburkeon Why Startup Founders are Always Unhappy

Up until the final clause of that sentence I didn't have a problem with it (well as a blanket statement it is pretty snarky but a touch of monomania combined with massive self belief isn't necessarily a bad thing when running a startup). All of that can work for you in the right environment.

pauljburkeon Is Facebook “broken on purpose” to sell promoted posts?

I always took it as read that it's a charity because of the tax arrangements (i.e. if they didn't benefit from setting it up that way, they wouldn't be a charity at all).

pauljburkeon The Horrible Future of Social

Self timing toothbrushes are already a thing. I'm sure one that posts it to facebook can't be that far behind (pretty sure there's a market for that actually). I think the real money is in tracking how long people's children brush their teeth though.

pauljburkeon Criticized for overpriced parts, company gives away 3d schematics instead

>Maybe I lack imagination, but I cannot imagine a plastic piece of junk that need to be tailor-made poorly.

I know a bunch of people printing off models of their characters from the game 'City of Heroes' (incidentally if you ever want to see how not to close a service, check out NC Soft's behaviour over the last couple of weeks) before the doors shut and a lot of them would probably pay a substantial amount for a slightly better quality painted one.

pauljburkeon FBI launches $1 billion face recognition project

I have to admit I completely misread that as "FB launches..." and didn't think anything of it, other than that $1 billion was a bit excessive.

pauljburkeon Show HN: Burner, for temporary phone numbers

Well if I wasn't in the UK I'd probably use it to save carting the "recruiter" phone around with me as well. Of course, that would probably annoy recruiters but I think I can live with that (I don't mind them calling me in connection to a role I'd asked them about but 2 or 3 years on out of the blue?).