Hacker News Reader

william42on Ikea's U.S. factory churns out unhappy workers

Bill Gates gets mostly capital gains.

william42on Do you strive to understand your tools, or simply “make it work”?

But the predictor isn't whether the testee gets these problems right. The predictor is whether the testee uses a consistent mental model for the problem--that is, someone who interprets "a=b" as "move contents of a to b" will end up programming as well as someone who does the converse, but not someone who picks and chooses without being sure.

william42on Median Male Worker Makes Less Now Than 43 Years Ago

«While the fact that a record number of Americans are living in poverty should not surprise anyone at this point,»

Record number or record percent? It's an incredibly significant distinction.

william42on Processing 2.0 will "compile" to JavaScript

The main case of transliteration I can think about is assembly language.

william42on The Perils of JavaSchools

Recursion isn't worthwhile in Java because of 1) a lack of tail-recursion and 2) the clunkiest possible syntax and most restrictive possible semantics for lambdas.

william42on Functional Programming in Joy and K

If you're interested in Joy, you might like Factor: http://factorcode.org/

william42on Ask PG: What has changed since you wrote Hackers and Painters in 2004?

Actually, I'd say we've gotten to the point where it usually doesn't matter who does the «heavy lifting», because CPU time is so comparatively cheap.

william42on Ask PG: What has changed since you wrote Hackers and Painters in 2004?

You are severely overestimating Einstein and Gandhi. If you look at the history of general relativity* you notice that while Einstein was at the center he developed his theory with much help from others such as Hilbert and Levi-Civita. As for Gandhi, he himself was inspired by others such as the March 1st Movement in Korea; his greater fame could be perhaps linked more to the fact that India is huge. Not to take anything away from those two, except perhaps the world's almost deific portrayal of them.

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

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1st_Movement

william42on Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now

It's kind of hard to A/B test an economy.

william42on Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now

http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=a7jenngfc4um7_&#...

This is a log-scale graph, which is what you want in order to compare rates of increase. You can see sort of an inflection point around the early 80s, but I'm not sure if it's significant.

william42on Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now

Cable penetration should also be added to satellite penetration, since both serve (almost) the same purpose.

william42on Share of Income Gains by Quintile - Great Depression til Now

The gap between what you can do and what Larry Ellison can do isn't as relevant as the gap between what you and Larry Ellison can do and what your average single mom living in welfare in Durham can do.

william42on Our Vacation Policy: Take Some

I thought that the year-round model wasn't to increase the days in the classroom so much as get rid of the three-month gap(replacing it with several shorter ones) because students tend to lose so much knowledge during summer vacation.

william42on Now Can We All Agree That The "High Quality Web Content" Experiment Has Failed?

UI isn't the problem. The problem is that free is significantly more attractive than even $0.01 and always will be; this has been shown through studies such as this:

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.164...

william42on NSA built a NoSQL database

Are you going to deny any contrary evidence as being a shill for the people you're accusing? Down that path lies madness and conspiracies, Zed.

william42on NSA built a NoSQL database

Didn't the NSA actually make DES stronger?

william42on Netflix to lose Starz, its most valuable source of new movies

Sportswise, you can get a lot of stuff on ESPN3 now.

william42on Now Can We All Agree That The "High Quality Web Content" Experiment Has Failed?

From the user's perspective, Readability is a subscription service(one that uses pay-what-you-want, but the default is five dollars per month--far from 'micro') and Flattr is a form of donation(notice that it is completely voluntary, unless I am misreading what flattr actually does). Neither are actually micropayments. Both subscription and donation were mentioned in that very Clay Shirky article.

The closest thing to micropayments that has had any success whatsoever have been pay-what-you-want like Radiohead's In Rainbows and the Humble Indie Bundles and even there they get most of their money from the small segment that pays a lot, effectively as a form of donation that subsidizes the people who wish to only pay $0.01(or in Radiohead's case $0)

I have come to my conclusion in 2011 the same way Clay Shirky did in 2003: the trails of dead micropayment services.

william42on Now Can We All Agree That The "High Quality Web Content" Experiment Has Failed?

Unless you count the chance of losing your money in a Bitcoin-local currency exchange.

william42on If You Can Think, Design & Code, You Win

Do you have any alpha/beta testers?

william42on Microsoft UI has officially entered the realm of self-parody

It reminds me of why I stopped using vim after switching to Dvorak.

william42on Masked Protesters Aid Time Warner’s Bottom Line

To be completely honest, it wasn't really an anti-Anonymous argument, although there is a touch of irony there. If anything, the article mostly talked through Time Warner's perspective.

william42on Masked Protesters Aid Time Warner’s Bottom Line

In fact, Time Warner is one of the most aggressive in taking down content that uses theirs, so the average internet user/ Anonymous would be pretty likely to dislike Warner above and beyond the average company.

william42on Now Can We All Agree That The "High Quality Web Content" Experiment Has Failed?

Micropayments in general are doomed to fail.

http://www.shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html

william42on Windows 8: Improving our file management basics: copy, move, rename, and delete

If the Department of Justice descends upon Cupertino, yes.

william42on Modified ecstasy 'attacks blood cancers'

Do you really think that common recreational drugs have no side effects?

william42on Oh, Adobe... read the copy, then view the source.

Now do it for the remake posted up in this thread.

william42on What's rising faster than health care? College costs

I'm disappointed in you, HN. Not a single one of you mentioned Baumol's cost disease.

william42on Google Buys Motorola For $12.5 Billion

There are two classes of stock. The class that Page, Brin, and Schmidt have has ten times as much voting power.

william42on Firefox 7 will use up to 50% less memory

Well, one thing is that Chrome extensions are much more limited; also, they only even run when you let them.