Hacker News Reader

stitchyon Feedback on Rapidoid Fluent and Java 8? E.g. Do.map(words).to(String::length)

This is nice! I've been working on something similar. It's not quite as polished yet, but hopefully I'll find some time here soon.

https://github.com/timothymdavis/taciturn

stitchyon Simple genetic models for autism spectrum disorder

"Our model makes two very strong predictions. The first is that the rate of de novo mutations in affected children from multiplex families will be barely above that of an unaffected control population. On this point, the literature presently has conflicting reports [3,6,22]. The samples needed to resolve this question properly, namely blood derived DNAs from multiplex families, has either not yet been collected or sequenced. The second prediction made by our model is that there will be a high rate of transmission of strong alleles in multiplex families, typically from the mother, and in the same genes targeted by de novo mutation in simplex autism. While there is some indirect support for a female carrier effect based on half-sibs [23], a genetic study of transmission based on the targets of de novo mutation is only now possible [21]."

This seems like a succinct summary for the paper. Or at least, it's the part that stuck out to me.

stitchyon Just go home

Interesting choice in wording (emphasis mine:)

"I no longer have to sit at my desk pretending to complete tasks, as the only person I am cheating is myself."

stitchyon How I Got Fired from the Job I Invented

"We’re sorry for some recent negative comments." What a poorly written reaction.

stitchyon Why I Dislike EC2

I wish that the author had actually included a benchmark with nice pretty graphs. The list of example hardware is nice, but doesn't tell me nearly as much as a couple of benchmarks would. Blanket statements such as "EC2's price-to-performance ratio is horrible" don't really do much to convince me. Yeah, the author is probably correct. But to what extent is he correct?

stitchyon Why Did The Media Keep The Recent Peaceful Icelandic Revolution Quiet?

Actually, I do recall stories about revolution in Iceland. Which is why I was so surprised to see this article use the word "peaceful" revolution. I recall riots in Iceland making a big stir back in 2009. Indeed, after a quick Google search I found this article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Icelandic_financial_crisis....

Snippet from the Wikipedia article:

"On 20 January 2009, the protests intensified into riots. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people clashed with riot police, who used pepper spray and batons, around the building of the parliament (Althing), with at least 20 people being arrested and 20 more needing medical attention for exposure to pepper spray.[3][11] Demonstrators banged pots and honked horns to disrupt the year's first meeting of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and the Althing. Some broke windows of the parliament house, threw skyr and snowballs at the building, and threw smoke bombs into its backyard.[2][3][12] The use of pots and pans saw the local press refer to the event as the 'Kitchenware Revolution'.[13]"

[2] ^ a b Gunnarsson, Valur (21 January 2009). "Icelandic lawmakers return to work amid protests". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 31 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.

[3] ^ a b c "Iceland protesters demand government step down". Reuters. 20 January 2009. Archived from the original on 3 February 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.

[12] ^ "Icelanders held over angry demo". BBC. 21 January 2009. Archived from the original on 24 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009

[13] ^ Ian Parker, Letter from Reykjavík, "Lost," The New Yorker, 9 March 2009, p. 39.

stitchyon A Review of the TV Show Start-Ups: Silicon Valley

Well, this looks a lot better than the other show. Thanks for sharing!

stitchyon Starbucks, Google and Amazon: the tax crash of Monday afternoon

As I read the article, I kept wanting to write "citation" in the margins for nearly every assertion that the author made. He is clearly passionate about the subject. I applaud the attempt to hold multi-national companies responsible for their actions. However, this read more like opinion and gut feeling than a well researched article. I want to know what the law says. Exactly what laws are being broken? What is the wording? Justify the statement that "each of the companies made such a mess of this event" with quotes and counter quotes. Don't just tell me your opinion.

stitchyon Java's Cover (April 2001)

Sure, if you have the choice. But that's were the Hacker News startup culture and the enterprise development culture diverge. In a small startup you can dictate the tools. In an enterprise company you may not have any say in the matter. You can either complain endlessly about it (and boy howdy are people willing to complain endlessly) or you can do your job to the best of your ability with the tools available.

I understand where you're coming from though. I just think that you need to know a lot of context about the developer in question before you dismiss him/her over their tool choices. You need to know why they used those tools and how well they learned them.

But what it really comes down to is how fast the developer can learn something new. I'm fairly confident that I understand enough about programming language concepts to be up and running with a new language in a few days. I might not know the API (if one is provided) but I will probably be able to contribute to the team pretty quickly.

stitchyon Java's Cover (April 2001)

I was going to say almost exactly the same thing. The items that he listed are certainly detrimental from a startup perspective, but for a big company I think that they are actually arguments in favor of Java. Unfortunately for Paul Graham, and his prediction, the big companies have had more say in adoption than the startups. I agree with you. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. But, it wouldn't necessarily have been obvious at the time.

Personally, I dislike the language wars. I think that a good developer should be able to write good software with the tools available. Arguing the opposite always smacked of the "silver bullet" to me.

stitchyon Fred Wilson says venture capital funds have gotten too big

I'm curious why Fred Wilson would proclaim to the world that investing in his VC firm isn't going to give you the return that you're looking for these days. Is there a short term gain for him that I'm not seeing? Or is Wilson genuinely trying to change an industries path with a few words of wisdom? I'm not suggesting that his advice is bad. It seems to make sense to me.

stitchyon Hacker News is 44% 18-24 year olds, 77% male

I'm interested in what type of articles the 18-24 year olds submit/read versus other age groups. For instance, I'm in the 25-34 age range, and I almost never care about the JavaScript, CoffeeScript, or other client-side language articles. I tend to read the software methodology, software tool tips/tricks, and gee-wiz-look-how-fast-tech-is-moving articles.

stitchyon Spring Dependency Injection Styles – Why I love Java based configuration

"So if you like constructor injection you have two options: component scanning or XML."

I only half agree that this is a limitation. I use as little component scanning as possible. I think it's better to scan for the configuration classes (hopefully there aren't many) and explicitly define the rest. I like this for two reasons, first for speed and second because everything is defined in a fairly central place. I can't tell you how many times I've been surprised by annotation based configuration.

Personally I like Spring's Java Configuration over Guice's. It's more flexible for my needs. Although I suppose that an argument could be made that that's the problem: configuration over convention.

I'm glad you mentioned the Guice style @inject is available with Spring now. I wasn't aware of that.

stitchyon Microsoft Introduces New "Surface" Tablet

I loved my Toshiba M200 (http://reviews.cnet.com/Toshiba_Portege_M200_tablet_PC/4505-...) way back in 2004! I used to use it during my graduate classes to take handwritten notes. It's a little sluggish by today's standards, but lighter weight distributions of Linux still run pretty well.

stitchyon The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget

I like this quote from Penn Jillete on the subject of the afterlife: "I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day."

stitchyon The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget

I'm an Atheist, but I often find beauty in religious artwork, writing, or music. In fact, I find myself listening to Christian music fairly often. It's very difficult to divorce yourself from all things religious. We're constantly surrounded by it (next Christmas time, try putting yourself in the mindset of an Atheist.) As an Atheist I can either become embittered by that fact, or I can find value in it despite core differences. I choose the latter option. That said, I take issue with many religious concepts, hence the Atheism.

stitchyon OO is not Computing, Newer is not More modern

I'm interested in what alternatives that the author has for the Object Oriented "zealots." I'm assuming that his alternative is a functional language. Personally, I think that functional languages are great, but I don't think that's any reason to flame Java/C++/C#. These are great tools. They were created for specific reasons, and they can certainly be used in efficient ways. Of course, they can also be horribly abused. I don't think that it's fair to say that any particular language is the end-all be-all for development. You have to pick the right tool for the job.

stitchyon Tesla responds to "bricking" issue

I agree with you. But now that you mention it, it seems like utility vehicles get used more often. Rich toys often stay in the garage with the other rich toys.

stitchyon Tesla responds to "bricking" issue

The comments here seem to fall into two unrelated categories: "Tesla isn't telling customers the whole story" and "What did people expect to happen when they left their car unplugged for months?"

Both are valid points. Why are you arguing? The points don't seem mutually exclusive to me. Tesla has a lot going for it. They make innovative cars, and I would love to own one. That doesn't make the company's PR responses any less defensive and cagey. The response for this particular issue is a big turn off for me. I would definitely prefer that they didn't contradict themselves within the first three paragraphs.

I get it. Owners of Tesla cars need to charge their cars or they will be out $40,000. That makes sense to me. Batteries don't last forever. My Mother however doesn't care how the car works. She just wants it to work. She'll do the maintenance that you ask her to do, but she's not going to know why. So, she won't know why she can't leave the car at the airport for a month.

That's why it's important for Tesla to say, "yes this is an important issue that is part of maintaining your car." Not, "A single blogger is spreading a rumor about electric vehicles becoming inoperable." If my Mother read that last sentence, she might say to herself, "oh, I guess that blogger was just lying," and move on without reading the whole article, now assuming that it's not possible to "brick" her car.

I also lay some blame at Michael Degusta's feet. I don't think that it was appropriate for him to title his article "'It’s A Brick' – Tesla Motors’ Devastating Design Problem." I don't see this as a design problem. It works. The potential for bricking your car is just something you'll have to watch out for, just like not changing your oil is something you need to watch out for.

I think that Tesla was just reacting against the accusation that they had a design flaw. As long as they make sure that all of their customers know of the issue, it's not a design flaw. At that point it's maintenance. That's where I think that Tesla failed today. They skimped on their responsibility of informing the customer of important facts, so that they could come out smelling like roses.

P.S. Incidentally, if I were to take a trip to my mountain home in Italy for half a year, roughly how much would I expect to pay in electricity to keep my Tesla vehicle charged? Does it draw a constant amount of power for the entire time that I'm away?

stitchyon Why I Hate Android

Fair enough. I still think that the FCC would have sided with Verizon even if Google hadn't.

stitchyon Why I Hate Android

I've always wondered why +MG Siegler disliked Android so much. After reading this article, I find his arguments to be less than compelling. He equates Android's failed dream of turning carriers into dumb data pipes, with the worst sort of insidious backstabbing. I'll admit that I was angry when Google sided with Verizon on axing Wireless Net Neutrality, but it wasn't going to happen any other way. Does he honestly think that Google was the deciding factor for the FCC? Does he think that the FCC was going to say no to Verizon, but since Google said that it was OK, they decided to skip on Wireless Net Neutrality? I'm not defending Google's decision, but I'm confident that Apple and Microsoft would have done the same thing if they were in the same position. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

Also, what does Android being open source have anything to do with his argument? He sneers at Android calling itself open. Why? Sure, Google made a bad decision by supporting Verizon's take on Net Neutrality, but how does that make their source code less open for modification? It may mean that we can't treat carriers as dumb data pipes, but that fact makes Android less open?

stitchyon Ask HN: Best Way to Get Feedback on My New $0.99 Android App?

Hey Daryl,

What does your project do? I might be interested. What I'm really looking for, is an easy way to give a small group of people (like people who respond in a hacker news comment) a full version of my app for evaluation purposes.

stitchyon [dead]

You might consider those pirated copies as advertising for your app, not lost sales. I doubt that the people who pirated your app (as others mentioned, these are probably kids who can't buy apps for one reason or another) would have bought anything from you otherwise. You haven't exactly lost sales, you've gained a large group of testers who will probably tell other people about your application. Yeah, it would be nice if all of them bought a copy, but they wouldn't know to tell other people (people with money) about your product if they hadn't pirated it. So, there's two ways to look at it. You can certainly take the RIAA stance that piracy is bad for you as a developer. I'm just not convinced that that's true.

stitchyon Accessibility of Google+: Will Blind Users Be +1ing?

Interesting article. I tend to forget about accessibility issues on the web. I imagine something like Google+ or Facebook would be fairly difficult for blind users to navigate with so many asynchronous calls batting about.

On a somewhat unrelated note, are there any usability aids for smartphone users out there? Something like the Voiceover application mentioned in the article?

Edit: I'm mostly curious about Android phones.

stitchyon A git Primer

Cool. I've been looking for a more visual git introduction.

stitchyon Facebook blocks Google Chrome extension for exporting friends

I think I used this extension months ago before it got blocked. Worked pretty well, but I found that it didn't get all the information that I was hoping for. Namely the e-mail address was missing for all of my contacts. Got their bio info. and other stuff though.

stitchyon Google TV 2.0 – a look into the Android 3.1 “Fishtank”

Point taken, but I'm more than happy to pay them directly. I'll pay for Hulu Plus when it is released for Google TV. I don't like looking through a grid of shows that are currently "on." I don't even like flipping through my DVR. I want to type the name of the show in, and select my favorite video source from the results.

stitchyon Google TV 2.0 – a look into the Android 3.1 “Fishtank”

You may be right about your keyboard comment. I like having my little Sony Google TV controller in easy reach at the moment, but with voice search, I can imagine a day without it.

In my humble opinion, the area where Google TV really kills is in media aggregation. I can enter a few search terms, and suddenly video, audio, and who knows what else is available on my big screen TV. Is it on Netflix? Is it on Youtube? Is it on Amazon? It doesn't matter. I just search in one place and press play. Ultimately, this list will include Hulu, ABC, NBC, Comedy Central, Fox, et al. We will have to wait for the content providers to decide that advertising to web viewers is just as worthwhile as advertising to cable viewers.

Imagine a TV experience where everything is video on demand from thousands of sources, but searchable from one place. You won't even need a cable subscription.

stitchyon Google TV 2.0 – a look into the Android 3.1 “Fishtank”

Seriously! I love my Google TV, but one of the best parts about Chrome is the rapid update schedule. I'd almost prefer the stock Android browser to the version of Chrome that is on the current Google TV boxes. I believe that Google TV is running Chrome 5, while the latest Chrome stable build seems to be 12.

Does anyone know what version of Chrome is on Fishtank?

stitchyon Apple Q&A on gathering and use of location data (Apple Press Release)

I was unaware of that. Good to know. I still think it's an issue; although, one that Apple is apparently resolving in the next major release.