Hacker News Reader

yagibearon I always forget the argument order of the `ln -s` command

Possibly for consistency with functions that take varargs, e.g. sprintf

Business plan from around that time: http://www.scribd.com/doc/24386920/Original-Executive-Summar...

yagibearon Australian fibre network business plan summary released

The summary still doesn't provide any pricing information. A rough estimate: Paying back $27B over 14 years (2020-2034) is about $2B p.a. (ignoring interest!) & with about 20M Australians = $100 p.a. per capita earnings for NBN Co. Pretty ambitious for a wholesaler, but perhaps possible for a monopoly.

yagibearon Melbourne Hackernews Meetup, Wed 3 Nov

ditto

yagibearon Hazlett on Apple vs. Google rivalry [EconTalk]

Summary: Thomas Hazlett of George Mason University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the growing rivalry between Apple and Google. It is commonly argued that Apple with its closed platform and tight control from the top via Steve Jobs is making the same mistake it made in its earlier competition with Microsoft. Google on the other hand is lauded for its open platform and leveraging of a large number of suppliers for its Android phone, for example. Hazlett, drawing on his recent article in the Financial Times, argues that these arguments fail to recognize the different competitive advantages of Apple and Google and the implications of those advantages for the companies' respective strategies. The conversation concludes with a discussion of the move to application-based web browsing such as Facebook, Twitter, and the implications for Google.

yagibearon How to read a patent in 60 seconds

How to read the article in 5 seconds: Read the independent claims.

yagibearon The Lost Tribes of RadioShack

Previous appearance on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1336052

yagibearon Hacker Monthly #1 is here

Same DNS problem from Optus in Australia, though server requiring hostname is readily solved by entering details in hosts.txt

yagibearon Poll: Your income bracket in 2009?

If so, then what is the reference point against which the distortion is measured?

yagibearon Poll: Your income bracket in 2009?

These figures will be distorted by many on HN who are building equity in businesses rather than drawing income.

yagibearon Brainwashed: How to Reinvent Yourself (Seth Godin)

I liked the quadrilateral (as opposed to quadratic) touch.

yagibearon Customer Buying Hierarchy

Googling for "Customer Buying Hierarchy" shows no other references to this, other than this blog entry & related videos. Can you provide some other pointers to where others might use this concept?

yagibearon How My Little Pony turned a little girl into a computer scientist

A diamond in the rough! (in the literal sense)

Great to see the spirit of curiosity and intellect alive in the most unlikely of circumstances.

yagibearon Root cause analysis by asking "Why" 5 times.

A better principle is ABQ, since few things have a neat single root cause that some magic number of questions converges on:

"5. Why? - I have not been maintaining my car according to the recommended service schedule. (fifth why, a root cause)"

6. Why? - Because I didn't think it a high priority relative to my other activities

7. Why? - Because ...

yagibearon Shared folders and multiple file upload in Google Docs

I'm surprised they don't also/instead allow docs to be tagged.

yagibearon Logicomix - Cal prof Papadimitriou's comic book about Bertrand Russell and logic

See also prior discussion http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=846451

yagibearon Storing IP addresses as integers

Compatibility with IPv6 is much more important than saving a couple of bytes, IMHO. Better to keep as a string.

yagibearon Logicomix - A Comic Book About Logic, Math and Madness - Review

Web site: http://www.logicomix.com/

yagibearon If You Need to Work Better, Maybe Try Working Less

This article doesn't reveal much because it confuses 2 different scenarios:

1. The research result that a small amount of offtime, e.g. "In the Boston Consulting study ... guarantee each consultant one uninterrupted evening free each week", "can yield unexpected on-the-job benefits"

and

2. Examples of employees taking much longer times off, e.g. "staffers are expected to leave in time for dinner" (presumably every work day, and probably only 5 work days per week), and ""wellness scorecards" to track whether employees are working too much overtime"

Without diminishing the importance of prioritisation, the article doesn't reveal anything about offtime any longer than a very limited "one uninterrupted evening free each week".

yagibearon What happened to Marc Andressen's past blog postings?

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://blog.pmarca.com

yagibearon Ask HN: What's your least favorite tech word? Mine's "non-trivial".

disambiguate

yagibearon Why YC

The originals are available at http://web.archive.org/web/20060718121809/paulgraham.infogam...

In this case, the intro para just became less specific.

yagibearon In five years all browsers will block Internet advertisements by default.

The article assumes that advertisements will remain discrete objects that are readily separable from content. Deeper integration of ads with content (e.g. from ad servers also serving content images, or ads placed within video content) may break that assumption.

yagibearon An Easy Way to Increase Creativity

And a slightly earlier submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=716818

yagibearon Login or Logout or Sign in or Sign out

Sign in/out makes more sense to me because it focuses on user activities. Logs are back-end functions that users shouldn't have to think about.

yagibearon John Doerr's Startup Manual (1997)

yagibearon Why are lectures more detailed than texts?

Not true that "a lecture series only takes as long as it takes to film": they entail lots of preparation, including re-organization of ideas BEFORE the lecture.

I think that live feedback from an audience is more important: In a lecture you can relatively easily gauge audience interest and comprehension of details, so you get rapid feedback about the audience demand for the focus and degree of details.

yagibearon Five Founders

Thanks for the link. Pointers to other writing by Rodgers would be useful. In terms of books, I could only find one from 1993: "No-Excuses Management" [http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstrip...]

Note also PG's typo ("Rogers" should be "Rodgers") which slightly hinders searching.

yagibearon A Better Way to Load a Plane

For simplicity, his model assumes a plane with 120 passengers seated in 40 rows, each with a central aisle having three seats to the left and three seats to the right of it.

So this only works with 50% occupancy? 120/(40*(3+3))

yagibearon Ask HN: What's the difference between a Startup and a Small Business?

Some examples of small businesses that aren't startups might help clarify the issue. When I visited a local small business advisory centre (in the hope of learn something to help my startup, before I understood this difference) the other founders who I met were selling (purportedly) gourmet dog food and therapeutic massage. Most small businesses are like that: providing goods or services to localities. Tradesmen, delis etc are other examples.