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pookon Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

Domainkiller, you have apparently been hellbanned since your one-word comment 38 days ago.

Wiedzmin, you have been hellbanned apparently. Your previous (first) comment must have annoyed someone.

pookon How computers work, from the atom up

An interesting course and text is From NAND to Tetris [1], which builds up from the raw silicon up to the application layer.

[1] http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/

pookon What I hate about “beginner” programming books

Point #2 is the Little Coder's problem _Why spoke of: a beginning programmer is likely to be discouraged by the vast difference between the toy programs displayed in introductory books, and the real code that inspired them.

I think any purported attempt to teach programming which does not end with the student creating a non-trivial, cool app, is a shame. What went wrong between SICP and current (non-Hartl/Shaw) beginning texts?

pookon How to deal with Information Overload

There are Chrome extensions to limit your tab usage:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/kokmfemecmlekdnj...

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/nddlgphciklkobcj...

pookon HN: How can I make my brain/mind sharp again?

Everyone has great advice.

I recommend learning a language or 5. Ocaml, Erlang, Lojban, Japanese, Quenya, etc. Use Mnemosyne and Smart.fm for quick, cumulative study sessions, translate webcomics and such, play golf with old programs in new and differently powerful languages.

Also, read more. You'd be amazed at how many great SF novels you can read in a year, or how quickly you can devour Misner's Gravitation at a few pages a day.

I think the overwhelming point of all this advice is to have fun. Do things that induce flow.

pookon No, really, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto (Tau Day, 2010)

Or we can just adopt the Discordian Calendar and, by increasing confusion, reduce disharmony.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar

Hail Eris!

pookon ASK HN: How do you motivate a lazy co-founder?

"I have no recourse because we split the venture 50/50 (no vesting). If I want to continue on the project without him, he can block it. I've tried buying him out and he insists he's committed and will not sell under any circumstance. My only recourse is to quit and block him from taking the idea and running with it. Neither of these are admirable outcomes and I'd rather run the business as far as it can go with a lazy co-founder than end it in such an ugly fashion."

I'm sure someone here would absolutely love to work with your "co-founder". Hell, they may even give him some common human dignity as well as an interesting project.

pookon Quantum Entanglement Holds DNA Together, Say Physicists

I'm reminded every time I hear about QM being "weird", of Eliezer Yudkowsky's Quantum Physics sequence.

"I am not going to tell you that quantum mechanics is weird, bizarre, confusing, or alien. QM is counterintuitive, but that is a problem with your intuitions, not a problem with quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics has been around for billions of years before the Sun coalesced from interstellar hydrogen. Quantum mechanics was here before you were, and if you have a problem with that, you are the one who needs to change. QM sure won't. There are no surprising facts, only models that are surprised by facts; and if a model is surprised by the facts, it is no credit to that model."

http://lesswrong.com/lw/r5/the_quantum_physics_sequence/

pookon New service cleans up whiteboard pics with an email

This is a great idea!

It would be interesting to see this combined with a project management system. I imagine being able to snap your whiteboard, have the image cleaned, and placed right onto a project wiki, in one move (similar to Posterous, perhaps).

pookon ASCAP seeking donations to oppose Creative Commons, Public Knowledge, and EFF

There is now no point whatsoever buying music. These people should not be supported.

I propose a reverse boycott: pirate the hell out of the artists you like, and donate directly to them what you think they deserve. Directly, as in skipping all the middlemen eager to take a cut of their pay and your freedom.

pookon Why digital license plates are a great idea

Article summary: "I like shiny things that move, and classic license plates are the opposite of that!⸮"

I had to fix that for you. That right there is the Sarcasm Mark.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Irony_punctua...

Because it is often difficult to identify satire nowadays.

pookon California license plates might go digital, show ads

How long before someone hacks this to flip off the other drivers in style?

This is definitely one of the least thought out proposals I've heard in a while. At least when it gets completely subverted, it will only embarrass those responsible rather than introducing catastrophic data loss as with the proposed Internet Kill Switch.

[flick switch] "FUCK... YOU... FUCK... YOU"

pookon [dead]

For fun: go to http://milliondollarhomepage.com/pixellist.php and check out how many of these sites no longer exist.

The top site, http://www.rentpixelads.com/en/ , is a placeholder. As are quite a few.

pookon Suggestion to Improve the Hacker News UI

PG said on many occasions he silently tweaks the backend.

Does he do A/B testing?

pookon How Free Explains Israel’s Flotilla Fail

The asymmetry in money spent and effect achieved between the two sides is staggering. Call it the # sign versus the $ sign. The flotilla organizers spent almost nothing and won the day; Israel spent huge amounts of money and ended up with egg on its face.

If you don't find this incredibly fascinating and inspiring, you're in the wrong business. Hell, the wrong world-line.

Cory Doctorow welcomes you to his capital-F Future.

pookon Colemak: a modern, ergonomic alternative to Qwerty and Dvorak keyboard layouts

I switched to dvorak awhile ago. I still catch myself having a frisson of pleasure in the act of typing some words; typing feels like an intricate finger tango at times.

The only gripe I still have with it is every single time I type ls -alx

Check out, if you haven't, http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?worst_layout is indeed the stuff of nightmares.

pookon I am a junior angel in Silicon Valley. AMA

http://www.ozonesocks.com/sock-of-the-month-club.html

Looks like you've been beat, mate.

pookon Ask HN: How do I post something in the "ask" section?

You just did. Simply prefix your question with "Ask HN"

Edit: http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=911565

pookon Ponder HN: if the Earth suddenly went arwy, how would we build an Internet?

You just read When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, didn't you?

http://craphound.com/?p=1678

pookon Google ditches Windows on security concerns

More importantly but less vociferously, by Google switching to an open source OS, it means anyone, anywhere, can fix vulnerabilities. Not just Google.

Considering the difficulty of patching security holes in proprietary software versus patching holes in open software, Google indeed would hugely benefit by drastically reducing the difference between the cost of defense and the cost of cracking.

It's not so much levelling the playing field, as removing Harrison Bergeron's buckshot-filled equality harness.

pookon Summertime Web Design for 100 Minutes a Week (#wywof)

I'm joining, definitely.

I just started my own similar project: One Month Codebase http://zipwith.blogspot.com/search/label/one%20month%20codeb...

The idea for my project is to focus exclusively on a single codebase to study, experiment with, and contribute to, each month. And write it up in such a way that those who haven't yet gotten the courage to jump in, can try their own hand at contributing to OSS.

pookon Summertime Web Design for 100 Minutes a Week (#wywof)

This is a great idea.

It reminds me of daf yomi in studying talmud, "a page a day".

A page a day is barely a burden, yet in 3 years you can have thoroughly read Misner's Gravitation, Programming Erlang 3 times over, and any number of grad-level textbooks. In 1 year, you will have read a good-sized textbook at almost no perceptible time cost, and with very high comprehension.

If he can give this a 43things style UI with publicly stated goals, integrate it with book lists and codebase repos worked on, it could be amazing.

pookon Diaspora website redesign, now with more info about the project

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://news.ycombinator.co...

EDIT: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.google.com&...

I suppose we should by this logic be 4 times more confident in Diaspora than Google, and 15 times more confident than HN.

pookon List of Hacker Spaces Around the World

Nice. I was able to instantly add a local hackerspace: http://hackerspaces.org/wiki/Buffalolabs

pookon What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

http://lesswrong.com/lw/tx/optimization/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/va/measuring_optimization_power/

Eliezer Yudkowsky described this pretty well.

pookon [dead]

" For me, it was more than just male bonding and mayonnaise in my sweltering hot basement. That was probably the best summer of their lives."

I don't know whether this is serious, trolling, or a damn good sense of humor.

pookon GitHub is the Best Thing Ever

We should make a Tiny Fork Day.

A day where X people fork, make at least one contribution, and request a pull.

Set up a cool site targetting people who are interested in coding, but haven't yet gotten the courage to contribute, and you could have something.

pookon Ask HN: Dead man coding.

Pro tip: every single man who ever married the woman he loves, has no fucking idea how he managed to attract her. We're all completely baffled when a woman decides to spend her life with a yog-shothoth like us.

pookon Ask HN: Dead man coding.

Take the bag, fall in love, and do something worth staying around for. Have children, invest in singularity-inducing tech, fight pirates on the open seas.

You'd be surprised how powerful the urge to live, despite daily I-can't-take-this-anymore frustrations, is when you've got a child's life to look forward to.