HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

sferoze

55 karma · joined November 21, 2013

music.feroze.org
submissionscomments
sferoze··on When to Rewrite from Scratch – Autopsy of Failed Software
I recently faced the decision whether to rewrite

I took over a rails + angular 1 codebase from another developer who left the company. I would be working on the project for few months.

I rewrote the entire app with Meteor + React in few weeks. Best decision I ever made. Even though the app has same features, customers say the app is faster, has less bugs, and overall feels more solid. Security is also better because of the pub/sub system. It also gave me a chance to fully understand the ins and outs of the database and how the app works.

I can also develop features much faster with Meteor + React than with Rails + Angular 1. So time spend re-writing is saved by enabling faster feature development.

sferoze··on Deep Learning in a Nutshell: History and Training
is there an easy way to view all the parts of this series?
sferoze··on Ask HN: What's your favorite online course?
Marvin Minsky, Society of Mind Class Lecture Playlist on Youtube - https://youtu.be/-pb3z2w9gDg?list=PLqw2b1BiJEx8Ii2RJBk9C0iC3...
sferoze··on Kubernetes: The Future of Deployment
An interesting sidenote. The Meteor development group is contributing to Kubernetes and will be using it to help scale Meteor with their upcoming paid service Galaxy.
sferoze··on Meteor 1.1 Released – Now Supporting Microsoft Windows and MongoDB 3.0
Meteor Kitchen is awesome! After creating many Meteor apps from scratch I have made a template that I commonly use but Meteor Kitchen is even better.
sferoze··on Ask HN: Do you think software can be art?
Is a paintbrush art? I would say it's a tool that can be used to create art. Is everything made with a paintbrush art? No, not everything made with a paintbrush is art.
sferoze··on Lab 1: Booting a PC
hey thanks for posting a link to the archive you made. your efforts to archive and display the material are much appreciated.
sferoze··on Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate and from what?
Hey Steven,

I saw what your investing allocation was from your blog post 60% VTSAX, 25% VTIAX, 10% VGSIX, & 5% VBTLX

Have you heard of betterment? https://www.betterment.com/portfolio/

What do you think of betterments portfolio strategy and allocation? For younger people they recommend 90% stocks 10% bonds.

sferoze··on Ask HN: Are there any advantages to ternary computing?
The advantages of using ternary logic vs binary logic to do our computing would be that we can hold the same amount of information in less memory, and we can process more information at once.

To implement the hardware based on ternary logic is much more complex and that is why binary won. It is much easier to process and store 2 representational states in each bit then 3. It is easier to tell if there is a charge or not vs determining the difference between a high charge, a medium charge, or no charge. It is easier to store and read information with 2 polarities vs 3 polarities.

sferoze··on Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work
That is not what I think.

If there is enough public pressure and people start demanding that hemp production be legal, the laws will change.

As long as a large percentage of the population is fine with hemp being illegal it stands no chance. Most people really don't know what they are missing out on, its not just a drug, it is a very valuable plant that has documented use in human society for thousands of years.

sferoze··on Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work
I am pretty confused about your comment, care to explain?
sferoze··on Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work
There is just no interest in making it legal because it is a cash crop that anyone can grow and benefit from.

There is more to marijuana then it being a recreational drug. It is also a very valuable material that can be used in a variety of other products. Search hemp products on google and you will find a variety of uses.

The fact that we have outlawed hemp in human society is insanity but it makes sense in the context of big business and competition. Do some research on what is takes to grow cotton vs growing hemp.

"The "fabric of our lives" needs approximately twice as much territory as hemp per ton of finished textile, the land-use miser of the bunch. Further complicating matters is the inverse relationship between chemical use and land requirements." - [1]

Hemp is a plant that is so valuable for its use in products, and it is really easy for anyone to grow. It's a weed, its grows like crazy! Doesn't sound very profitable from a big business perspective does it?

[1] - http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_l...

sferoze··on Eleven countries studied, one inescapable conclusion – the drug laws don’t work
You might not have to worry about "Big Marijuana", as it seems much easier to grow your own Marijuana then it is to make your own cigarettes. There would be so much competition between big and small companies who are selling it. The following article was written in 2011 but I still think it makes an interesting point about the business of growing and selling marijuana vs tobacco.

"Why is marijuana banned and cigarettes legal? There are two reasons. They are the same two reasons why marijuana will never be legalized. Money and horticulture.

Approximately 20% of the population smokes, just over 40 million adults. That is tens of millions of dollars a day in local, state, and federal taxes.

The government has a captured cash cow in cigarette smokers. People cannot just grow tobacco and manufacture their own cigarettes. Tobacco is a land, labor, and time intensive crop. After it is harvested it must be cured, aged, and dried in a specific manner.

It would take a good sized plot of land, a lot of work, and about a year and a half for you to produce a few cartons of cigarettes. You need more than one plot of land as tobacco depletes soil and the crop must be rotated, or you must invest in expensive fertilizer and nutrient mixes. You cannot easily or economically grow tobacco to make cigarettes for personal consumption.

Marijuana, on the other hand, can be cultivated anyplace. You can grow enough in pots to continually supply you and your friends. If you have enough space you can turn it into a cash crop. All you need are seeds or plantings, and in a short time you can fly higher than a kite. Anyone, anyplace can grow marijuana. And they do.

The government cannot control, regulate, or easily tax pot. This is why marijuana will never be legalized. There is no way to make it a commercially viable and profitable product and no way to effectively tax it."

Read more: http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/middle-c... Follow us: @wtcommunities on Twitter

sferoze··on Google’s New Bookmarking Service, Previously Called Stars, Has Gone Live
What about the ability to collaborate with other users on a shared bookmark folder? It would be useful if multiple users could add bookmarks to the same shared folder.

Also how do I access my bookmarks if I am at a friends house and don't have my computer or phone on me. Do I have to login to my chrome account on their chrome browser? What if they don't have chrome installed? It would be nice if they had a basic website I could access from anyones device, where I could login and view all my bookmarks.

I think the auto folders is the most innovative part of the app. I will have to use it more but I feel like I would stop creating folders and just add links.

sferoze··on Meteor hits 1.0
Meteor does make things easier, by making things simpler.

It is much simpler dealing with Meteor's API's then working with documentation from 3 or 4 different frameworks that you need to accomplish the same kind of stuff Meteor does.

Meteor gives you a set of clean coherent APIS to work with to get stuff done.

sferoze··on Meteor hits 1.0
Meteor just hit 1.0 and is not the type of framework you can just start including in your stack.

You really have to build a meteor app from the ground up, so it is hard for established tech companies to get into Meteor when they already have spent years coding on another stack.

As new startups who use Meteor grow you will see those large-scale projects come about.

sferoze··on Meteor hits 1.0
"The company plans to monetize the product by selling enterprise support and services." - [1]

[1] - http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/25/andreessen-horowitz-keeps-e...

sferoze··on Meteor hits 1.0
This is really awesome, I just checked out the new website and docs. Everything is so much more clear, I love the new docs. Stuff is laid out really well, people new to Meteor are gonna really like this.
sferoze··on Meteor hits 1.0
Wow that was fast, I can't believe Meteor is already at 1.0! This is really exciting times, so much progress has been made with Meteor. Ill upgrade my meteor app as soon as the official release is out.
sferoze··on Ask HN: Where do you see web and desktop apps in 5 years?
What is happening now and will be even more prominent in the next 5 years is that people will be using web technologies like html, css and javascript to write one codebase that is transferable to any platform (browser or native).

Nowadays with node.js you can convert your web-app to an android, ios, mac, windows app, etc. You have access to system hardware, and from the users perspective it is no different than any native app, even though it is built with web technologies.

It is quite amazing, html, css and javascript standards are becoming a universal platform for developers. We are writing apps for html5 architecture vs specific processor architectures. The browser is a compile target and javascript is becoming like bytecode.

I see a future in which we develop multiple new ways of coding apps using web technologies, completely different than the way we do now. We will have various languages, methodologies to do it with but in the end it will all compile down to code a browser rendering engines can understand. And we can use this rendering engine to run the app outside the browser.

So basically I am saying we can code apps in various ways that compile down to web-technolgies and use this single codebase to port to any platform. And the user experience will be indistinguishable from native apps coded directly for the platform.

sferoze··on Quora Keeps the World's Knowledge for Itself
I have used Quora for many questions and have received extremely useful and valuable answers from people. I once posted a question about how a current was flowing through a particular circuit and I found a couple people who weighed in and helped me understand. I've also asked a specific question about how the dragon docks with the ISS and got an answer from Robert Frost which was really enlightening! I asked how the Hubble is able to take long exposure pictures of galaxies while whirling around the earth at 17,000 mph? I have asked tons of questions on Quora, and generally find value in the answers I receive.

I realize your experience on Quora depends on what your interests are, and the type of questions you ask and search for. This determines the types of people and answers you come across. So everyone has a different experience based on what you do on the site and your interests.

From the questions I've searched for, and the questions I've asked, I've come across really great people who have provided me with helpful information and insights.

There are many questions that arise that searching google doesn't help. For this I need to pose the question to people, not a search box. There are many communities on the internet I can go to pose the question and Quora is a really useful one.

I do wish Quora would change the policy to let anyone benefit from and read the answers.

sferoze··on Show HN: 4 Apps in 4 Weeks - Learn Swift
Thanks this is really great stuff. Its tough finding good resources like this. I much prefer to learn the way you propose, by actually coding apps, and putting all the pieces together.
sferoze··on Isobuild: why Meteor created a new package system
Currently, I don't think Meteor's main advantage is bringing new capabilities, but rather providing a platform for building modern web apps.

So it is different than any one javascript framework in that it's goal is to bring together a complete set of technologies that are needed to build an app, rather than the developer joining different pieces themselves.

Currently many developers work with separate multiple frameworks, and Meteor brings them together into a cohesive, power, clean API.

Meteor is amazing, and even with the rough edges, and evolving API, it is still a joy to work with. They are thinking about the big picture and it really allows the developer to focus more on the creative aspects of your app. I am excited to see Meteor evolve over time.

sferoze··on Trello, Inc
I think this is a great idea. Trello has much potential and like you said this will make Trello better with the increased focus.

We use trello for project management and it is awesome! I love the design.

sferoze··on Find Developers and Designers for Side Projects
Great I have a project I would like to find someone to collaborate with. I will use your service to do this once I have access.
sferoze··on Show HN: Automatic web page content extractor for Node.js and the command line
Thanks, I am making my own tool to manage my bookmarks and research and this is gonna be very useful!
sferoze··on I/O Thoughts
so funny
sferoze··on Earbits is back online
This is awesome! Earbits is a great service for artists and listeners
sferoze··on Ask HN: Can there be a true real-time collaboration over any distance on earth?
Even when jamming in my personal studio anything above 5ms latency on my electric drum set can be noticed. I have to lower the IO buffer size to about 64 samples to get above 5ms latency.

I would love to be able to jam with friends over long distances. For this to actually be enjoyable without frustration the latency would have to be no more than 5-10ms.

I wonder how much latency a local telephone call would use? Then maybe it is possible to set something up where you jam over the telephone line and each musician can hear each other just fine.

sferoze··on Scribd and Quora considered harmful
Quora is an extremely useful service. Whenever I am learning about a topic and want to clarify something, I post the question to Quora. And it is amazing how fast I get a response.

Once I was wondering how the dragon capsule got into orbit with the ISS. Robert Frost and another person spent a lot of time with me in the comments until I finally understood.

I've asked many other questions about where to find certain resources, how to accomplish certain task, etc. and the answers have generally been quite useful!

The great thing about Quora is the site has an active community who spend time on the site. Also you will find experts in certain fields who are willing to spend time answering questions and clearing up misconceptions.

It is an extremely useful and valuable site for me, I really appreciate the Quora community and the help I get from users who answer my questions.

I use Stack Overflow mainly for programming questions instead of Quora. Stackoverflow is amazing.

I have noticed the Stack Exchange network with so many different topics. I think I will start asking questions in the Stack Exchange network as well in addition to Quora and see how they both compare.

Page 1 of 2Next →