steadicat

For me, the fact that it's a conversation — rather than just a one-man talk — makes it more engaging. I tend to tune out a bit when it's just one person talking (remnants of my University years?), but always snap back into focus when the second person joins in.

Also, in the case of the MapReduce video, it feels helpful to have the concepts repeated in slightly different words. If you understood the idea the first time, it reinforces it. In case you didn't quite get it the first time, it gives you a second chance.

The syntax looks amazing. Would be great if you added information about the interpreter (is it implemented in Haskell?) and build instructions for Mac.

Operators typically bring fiber close to homes, while still using DSL for the last mile. True, this requires investments, but not much compared to wiring each home with phone lines, cable, or fiber (all of which have been done before).

Note that part of the reason that cable is able to reach such high speeds is precisely because they use the same infrastructure I described: fiber to the neighborhood, then coaxial cable for the last mile. I don't see why DSL operators shouldn't be expected to do the same if they want to compete.

The whole article is based on the flawed assumption that DSL is reaching its theoretical maximum.

20+ Mbit DSLs are already widely available in many countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wikipedia/ITU_G.992.5). And 100+ Mbit DSLs are being rolled out (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VDSL2).

Is there a reason why DSL speeds can't keep up in the US?

It seems to me that the ideas that you call valuable (ChatRoulette, Million Dollar Homepage), are recipes for shooting stars: they become popular overnight but have little staying power. By contrast, dumb me-too ideas (Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Zappos), when executed well, can create lasting businesses. Does anyone have counterexamples?

He complains about using JPEGs yet his PNGs are unreasonably large (60-120KB). I compressed one of his 80KB images into 15KB just by re-saving it.

"Governments shouldn't have a monopoly on governance."

Isn't governance what governments are for? Granted, governments are dysfunctional in many ways, but suggesting governments let others govern seems a bit silly. Who else is going to govern? Should we let corporations sit on committees, next to officials, forgetting that officials were elected, and corporations were not?

There is no guarantee that companies are going to take care of our interests better than governments do. And let's not forget that governments are dysfunctional largely because of the influence that corporations themselves already exert on them.

Sadly, I find this extremely common in Italian writing (I am Italian). I wouldn't be lying if I said that this kind of logic (or lack thereof) is one of the main reasons why I left the country.

Count on Google to fight the good fight! Like they did when they gave up Net Neutrality to make a deal with Verizon.

I can't believe I have to say this, but this isn't a spoof, nor is it a silly idea.

Paper prototyping is a widely used technique in UX design.

There is a well known book about it (http://www.paperprototyping.com/), an article on A List Apart (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/paperprototyping/), and one by (gasp) Jakob Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030414.html). The Nielsen Norman Group uses it (http://www.nngroup.com/reports/prototyping/video_stills.html), and it's taught in many (most?) UX design courses.

No matter how comfortable you are with your digital tool of choice, nothing is quite as immediate as moving bits of paper around, especially in a collaborative environment. Plus it has the added advantage that you can test paper prototypes with users without them mistaking it for the final thing.

As for the kit itself, I think the idea is cute, and the price is reasonable. It's not much more than the cost of the paper itself.

I had the exact same problem. It is now permanently in my closet. This is what I wrote in my Amazon review:

In everyday use, there's a pretty major issue: it won't stay closed. When you fold it and hold it upright like you would any umbrella when you get indoors, it just falls open, getting your pants went and making you (and others) trip on it.

You can try to hold it shut, but the sticks are all different lengths, you need to individually grab each one, and you won't have any spare hands to open the door or get your keys. You can try to wrap it up, using not one, but TWO straps, which will get your hands all wet. And it's annoying as hell to have to do all the time.

It also won't stay closed when you prop it up against a wall, it will just fall all over the floor and make everything wet.

As if that weren't enough, the shape is odd: it makes it hard to cover yourself completely. I've tried. It is always too narrow in one direction. It also makes you look like a dork.

To be fair, it is solidly built and can hold its own in strong wind. The handle smells slightly but is comfortable to hold. Watch out though, because it's made of two parts that join as you open the umbrella, and it's quite easy to pinch yourself.

To sum up: bad design. Looks good on paper, terrible in actual use.

I'm surprised nobody has suggested the possibility of people not interpreting the question literally.

I.e. "larger" in terms of what? Importance? Population? Perceived size from our point of view?

Absolute size is the interpretation that makes most sense to us male geeks, but it is not by any means the only option you could think of.

To me that would explain why more women pick the unusual option, as they are more likely to think outside the rational box. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are ignorant.

That's one way to do it, but you're falling back to explicitly defining a new function, rather than creating it by combining higher-order functions. Which kinda defeats the point.

That's a good point. However, I find it funny that you should mention another functional library as a way around the issue. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of Underscore?

I have a feeling that either the authors of Underscore don't fully get functional programming, or I don't. Of course, the latter is much more likely, that's why I'm looking for someone to set me straight.

Can you do things like

    var sum = curry(reduce, add);

with the OO style?

Am I wrong in thinking that this kind of currying is one of the fundamental building blocks of functional programming?

I tweeted this yesterday:

Why does Underscore.js get the order of arguments wrong? There’s a reason why it’s map(fn, l), not map(l, fn). And the reason is currying.

I find that very annoying for the kind of functional programming I tend to do. For that reason alone I started looking at Wu.js instead.

Am I missing something?

Not only was the public voting a big factor, it was also greatly affected by preliminary results being published two days before the voting ended. That had a big impact on subsequent voting. The teams on top started getting a lot of "competitive votes", i.e. people voting one star all-round to favor other projects.

This kind of behavior really soured the spirit of the voting. I wish the organizers had thought twice before publishing the results ahead of time.

Other than that, big props to the organizers. Everything about this competition was well organized and well ran. So many awesome projects came out of it. I'm so glad I could be a part of it.

Full disclosure: I was in the Swarmation team.

This is on one of the SmartMachines that Joyent donated to the Node Knockout competition. We’ve been very impressed with it. Very easy deployment, and the server's been chugging along smoothly since launch (save the occasional restart due to invalid HTTP requests crashing some of our Node.js libs).

The Joyent guys have also been tweeting network graphs for our app, which makes us comfortable that they're keeping a watchful eye on our instance for us: http://skitch.com/jimpick/dwjfw/flow-saber-tooth-moose-lion0... :)

That wouldn't take care of a formation not being detected because the pixel responsible for it has very high latency or is disconnecting. I think this kind of false negative is a much bigger issue than the false positives.

I’m actually quite proud of having implemented the scoring client-side. It helps keep the load on the server down. Looking up all possible formations is somewhat computationally intensive.

It does create some problems when some clients have high latency and don't detect the formation in time, but I think it's fixable. One way could be to make the computation redundant, e.g. get three pixels to do the detection instead of one, and consider the formation valid if 2 out of 3 of them report success.

What I find amazing is how much fun people are having with it despite the fact that we had no idea what the game mechanics would be until the last minute.

We basically started with a board of pixels, and everything else just evolved through testing and laziness ("what's the simplest thing we can do to make the game slightly less pointless?").

This is what I do, but it breaks down when legitimate email ends up in the spam folder in account B. You have to periodically log in to both accounts to make sure you don't lose important emails.

All I knew about SF crime was that the Tenderloin felt quite dodgy when I visited. So I opened the map ready to be suprised. Instead it turns out my feelings were right. Looks like the crime rate in SF is an inverse function of the distance from the Tenderloin.

She lost me at

   1. A journalist is trained in journalism

I'm a designer and I'm trained in design, but I would never define a designer as someone who is "trained in design".

There are many ways to learn, and various paths to success. Traditional education is definitely not the only way. I know designers who aren't formally trained who are better designers than I ever will be.

I'm pretty sure the same thing can be said about journalists. We've all seen amateurs blow formally trained journalists out of the water, especially when reporting on highly specialized topics.

Besides, her only motivation for that statement is "a journalist requires specific training."

[edit: got gender of author wrong]

That's not the history as I remember it. Windows 95 came before NT4, and it was the first to introduce the famous "start button" visuals. 95 however was still based on the old kernel and it crashed a lot. NT4 came later, with the same visuals, but due to the NT kernel it was remarkably stable.

You are responsible for doing that for Internet purchases as well. See orev's comment above:

Everyone is required to pay sales tax for purchases made over the Internet, there's just no way for the states to enforce it. That's why most state tax forms now ask you what purchases you've made online so they can add that into the tax. If you don't answer this question truthfully, then your liable for tax evasion.

Unix has developers but no consumers. Android is the same. The iPhone was a huge success before it got any developers. The Wii had very few games on launch compared to competing platforms. And the recent resurgence of the Mac seems to have been led by consumers. There were not that many Mac apps in 1998 when the iMac came out.

History seems to suggest that developers (especially those who want to get paid) go where the consumers are.

The only exception is, perhaps, DOS/Windows? I'm not sure I remember the history right though. It could be that consumers switched to Windows because of the cheaper hardware, and developers followed.

How can they get rid of carriers altogether? They are still the only way to get widespread wireless data service. And as long as that doesn't change, they're gonna do all they can to cling to the old model.

Why? The equivalent of FaceTime for text messages exists today, and it's any IM app with push notifications. Meebo and Whatsapp come to mind.

Looks like HN also has a filter for vuvuzelas. ;)