Hacker News Reader

ropzon GameCentral talks to the creator of Oddworld, gains insight into games industry

Naw, Alec Guinness lived quite close to me, near Petersfield in Hampshire

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petersfield,_Hampshire.

Never met him, but I think he's on record as describing those roles as ... <Googles> ... "Fairytale rubbish".

ropzon How I got a medal from the Army for writing code

My father is a retired South Wales steelworker - he worked in the Hot Mill, which is where you put slabs of steel in, and take huge coils of hot rolled steel out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_%28metalworking%29). The building is half a mile long, and the thickness of the steel slab is gradually reduced as it passes through dozens of rolling stations - pairs of rollers (or rolls as they're called).

To get the best product quality, it's important to monitor the shape of the rolling surface of each roll. If they distort out of tolerance, they have to be taken offline and machined to a new finish - something that would stop production for hours.

My father told me of the time when they bought an expensive new computerised lathe to reduce the time it takes to fix up the rolls - this was in the 1980s when a PC on a production line was still a thing of wonder. For a while, everything worked as planned. Then, for some reason, the quality of the reconditioned rolls dropped drastically. Despite the fact that the PC dump showed that the rolls had perfect surfaces and profiles, production defects skyrocketed and it was discovered that the reconditioned rolls were to blame.

To cut an even longer story short - they eventually discovered that the lathe operator had taught himself how to edit the PC logs (in hex!) to make the results look good, without having to get down and actually do the work.

ropzon Software Collections

Is this some kind of RHEL marketing thing? Help me out here, I'm rather lost.

ropzon The SAS vs. R Debate

Nope, I don't work there.

Suggest you ask them :)

ropzon The SAS vs. R Debate

These people:

http://www.teamwpc.co.uk/

produce a compiler, tools etc that run the language of SAS.

(disclaimer: I interviewed there last year)

ropzon Stanford Scientists Put Free Text-Analysis Tool on the Web

"Censorship is the mother of metaphor" - Borges

ropzon Show HN: I open-sourced my web app alternative to Illustrator

I think that it's terrific but does a disservice to Illustrator. It's terrific because you've built it - and what's there, works, wonderfully - but does a disservice to Illustrator because the devil is in the million details that Illustrator has already implemented. But I know you want help to make and iron out those details, so really well done!

ropzon How do you tell managers that having good developers is a privilege?

What a bunch of spoiled, whining brats! Sure, you can only code for 4-6 hours a day, but why not honor your contract by spending that other 2 hours mentoring less senior people, trying to understand your employer's business goals, and generally trying to do your best to move your company ahead. Sheesh. By the way, the sheer arrogance of the question "How do you tell managers that having good developers is a privilege?" beggars belief. I believe that as a programmer, it's your duty to spend some time doing stuff your manager didn't know he needed to ask you to do, rather than running personal errands.

ropzon How Much to Charge as a Freelancer

Yeah, you're right, but I'm stubborn. I won't move to where the work is - I have a family. I'm much much more productive if I'm actually interested in what the client is doing (... and that's hard to figure out) and I'm not particularly bothered about making top dollar - mid-dollar is OK by me.YMMV.

ropzon How Much to Charge as a Freelancer

There is a market in the UK for good technical writers. It's not as sexy as development (whoever heard of a technical writer making the cut as a YC founder?) but it pays the bills. My own problem is that around 10 years ago, I veered off into business development and sales, and have been struggling to get back into the technical side of things ever since. I was OK at bizdev and sales, but I worked for fantasists unfortunately and it's left me with a bad taste.

Where do I get contracts from? The usual suspects - jobserve, networking, and various other places. I think it's probably worth pointing out that having had a well-completed LinkedIn profile for over 10 years, it's never brought me anything.

Edit: drop me a line - happy to help, heck, this might be the beginning of a technical writing dynasty! ropley at gmail dot com.

ropzon How Much to Charge as a Freelancer

In the UK, my lowest rate is equivalent to $75 an hour. I can read and write code, but most of my work is documentation related. I, too, like to tinker around with my own projects, but tend to do that between gigs. I'd be delighted if I could work for 30 hours a week and spend the rest on my own projects.

ropzon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2013)

"Tapjoy is a mobile advertising and monetization platform whose unique Mobile Value Exchange model allows users to select personalized advertisements with which to engage for virtual rewards ... blah blah blah."

Sounds like shit.

ropzon The advanced guide to content marketing

Marketing, it seems, is all about spamming HN with ads for a book about marketing.

ropzon Spain Is Beyond Doomed: Unemployment Charts

Council House[1] And Violent

This is not the original etymology (see other replies) but I have heard it explained thus many times.

[1] Council House - A UK property owned by 'the council', a regional administrative and legislative body, and let to the disadvantaged.

ropzon “God, I hate recruiters”

But unlike all the other resources, a resource that lives, thinks and judges people as they are done by.

ropzon “God, I hate recruiters”

Trouble is, I think LinkedIn is a cancer. You know, I've worked with some pretty decent people, but I've often cringed to see their extravagant self descriptions on LinkedIn. No way are they the people they think they are. And if decent people can be tempted into such self deception, what about people who aren't decent in the slightest?

ropzon “God, I hate recruiters”

Crocodile tears, I suspect. Based on multiple past experiences, I'd be a little reluctant to trust a recruiter who described himself on his blog thus:

"Over a career spanning thirty years, Greg Savage has established himself as an icon of the Australian recruitment industry".

It's immodest, it's untestable, and after 30 years, it's probably a bit bloody late to start preaching the good book.

Edit: And yes, if your recruiter has an English accent, better find another one.

ropzon Things Your Business Can Learn from My Rookie Year in the NFL

In fairness, his medical school helped him to study part time while he played rugby - but hey, there's no need to dilute a great achievement.

ropzon Conception - a live programming environment experiment after 1 year

Nice. It reminds me a little of Prograph/Prograph CPX http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prograph

ropzon What happened to Japan's electronic giants?

On a related but tangential theme, I once started an argument by claiming that Japanese culture does not support the emergence of strong individuals. Perhaps, in electronics as in software, it really does take someone with a huge ego to send a product back to the development labs because 'the black is not black enough'.

ropzon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (April 2013)

SEEKING WORK - UK(South)/remote

Freelance technical and marketing writer. I enjoy working with startups and anything that gets me close to the code. Understand Python, Java, C#, Ruby, C, C++ plus ancillary parts of the technology stack and toolchain. Competent with Illustrator and Photoshop, although no wizard. Happy to work independently or lead as the project requires. Worked as a freelancer for some household names like Cisco, Vodafone, BT, Logica CMG, CSC and Fujitsu. Email ropley at hotmail dot com. Hampshire based, if location matters.

ropzon Ask HN: Why do companies like IBM, HP and Oracle avoid showing prices?

I concur, having worked in customer-facing roles for 2 of the 3 cited organizations in the 80s.

ropzon Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

Another (oft-cited) example:

"What did you bring that book that I don't like to be read to out of up for?"

ropzon Rules for Work: The Zaarly Employee Handbook

I know I'm gonna get downvoted, but something about it gives me the creeps. It's almost as if the culture itself is some altar you have to worship at, rather than being the consensual improv that great cultures turn out to be.

ropzon In the Olympics of Algorithms, a Russian Keeps Winning Gold

From that I would assume that they think they have enough coders, and don't need any more. After all, if you've got over 400,000 subjects, the top 10% are going to be pretty good, especially if they keep competing for the same prizes.

ropzon In the Olympics of Algorithms, a Russian Keeps Winning Gold

I meant ... that I just tried to join. Filled in the form and had to complete the Captcha. Got it right - I'm certain - 5 or 6 times - but it kept telling me that I failed the Capcha verification test.

ropzon In the Olympics of Algorithms, a Russian Keeps Winning Gold

Topcoder is such a great site that it can't even program a Captcha to let you in when you get it right :0>

ropzon How to name your startup: A 9 month first-hand journey through rebranding

I like the story, I like the website - it's pretty. You don't see so many long-form websites. And based on the principle that improvement happens in discernable, incremental steps forward - the new name is much better than the old one. But what do they do? They're selling the sizzle, but to get to the steak, you've got to sign up - estimate the number of 'learners' you might create, and so on. This sounds more critical than it's meant to be. But what do they do?

ropzon Hacker Jobs is live and we want your feedback

I guess it is a link aggregator. But they've got 25000+ links to real jobs, with not an agency or recruiter in sight. What's wrong with it being a link aggregator? I'm no expert, but I've not seen any other UK site that advertises so many non-recruiter jobs.

ropzon Hacker Jobs is live and we want your feedback

http://www.jobsmanifesto.com

... another new UK jobs site, over 25,000 jobs, exactly zero agencies/recruiters. Generic site, but over 1000 IT Jobs.

Disclaimer: I know the dev team.