wizardhat

I do agree that Watson seems oversold, but the evidence in this article (Watson's shallow opinion of Bob Dylan, compared to the author's opinion of Bob Dylan) seems kind of weak. I was hoping for some insider information on the implementation of Watson, but unfortunately there is none.

Studies going as far back as the 80s show that people in submarines develop myopia:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7457562

The leading theory is that being in a confined space causes the eye to adapt to viewing things up close rather than at a distance.

TLDR: He was reading the database while another process was writing to it.

Why all the Mongo hate? I'm sure this would happen with other databases.

Well that's just sad. Pinball was dropped because of incompetent programmers. Don't 32-bit binaries work on 64-bit anyways?

This website itself is not designed so well. The fixed top bar is super annoying and wastes space. (Yes, I know it's also a modern design trend. It's a terrible one.) Their site is too wide somewhere, and forces an unnecessary horizontal scroll bar on my browser. Their logo/header is pretty cool, but the rest of the site is pretty generic.

Lol, clearly this guy doesn't know it too well. So many rendering issues.

I'm not sure what to think. I mean, this guy clearly read the HTML spec where it pertains to page loads, but also clearly skipped the sections that pertain to basic layout.

Graph:

   Less than 80k.: ============================= - 90 points
          80k-89k: =================== - 60 points
          90k-99k: ========================== - 82 points
        100k-109k: ========================================== - 131 points
        110k-119k: ============================ - 87 points
        120k-129k: ================================================== - 154 points
        130k-139k: ===================================== - 115 points
        140k-149k: ======================= - 73 points
        150k-159k: =================== - 60 points
        160k-169k: ============= - 42 points
        170k-179k: ======= - 24 points
        180k-189k: ==== - 14 points
        190k-199k: === - 12 points
        200k-209k: ====== - 21 points
        210k-219k: === - 12 points
        220k-229k: === - 10 points
        230k-239k: === - 10 points
        240k-249k: === - 10 points
        250k-259k: == - 8 points
        260k-269k: == - 7 points
        270k-279k: === - 10 points
        280k-289k: === - 12 points
        290k-299k: === - 10 points
   At least 300k.: ============================= - 92 points

Here's one reason why not: no anonymous functions longer than one line. Which is a pretty lame limitation for a modern high-level language, all due to the dumb whitespace-as-scope design.

As a programmer this sounds like some pretentious bullshit. I've done so many UIs where 20 people jump in all thinking they are experts and have long drawn out discussions about how the UI should look, only to change their minds after I've done it and have another round of discussions...

Honestly, all the word "design" means to me is "I take so long to get anything done that I must plan my ass off like I only have one shot, and force everyone else to work this way".

Just get stuff done, and move on. No ones going to give a crap about your sweet design if your product doesn't do anything.

I'm gonna call it right now: bad idea. It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. Plus, what makes you think you math is right? Square only takes 2.75%, and also Amazon is a high-volume, low-margin exception. The long tail is low-volume high-margin, and I doubt you will convince people to radically change payment systems for a lousy 3% savings.