koolmoe · HackerTrans

koolmoe

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Wii-Proof Panasonic TV in the Works

blog.wired.com

1 pointsby koolmoevor 18 Jahren0 comments

A simple Haskell web server

lstephen.wordpress.com

5 pointsby koolmoevor 18 Jahren0 comments

comments

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

You can do GoogleTalk on iChat as a Jabber account.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

I have a 15 mo girl.

My wife read lots of books. I read a few. With a few exceptions, the books have been a waste of time and money. So many of the books in this genre have the feel of the Learn Blub in 21 Days line of programming books. Accept from the get-go that parenting is hard, there are no silver bullets, and you are going to spend a lot of time and energy if you want to do a good job, and filter anything you read from that perspective.

Nevertheless, we did find some helpful books. The most useful books we have are a reference book given to us by our pediatrician and a book about baby sign language (The following link is to the revised edition, which is not the one we have, but it's cheaper on amazon http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Signs-Revised-Linda-Acredolo/dp/B...).

We went through a lot of "the book says" conversations early on, especially related to getting her to sleep. The thing to realize here is that it is up to you how to do it. There's a book out there that will support your position, and many of the books are contradictory. So, in the end, you'll end up having to decide what you think is right. The book many parents find useful is merely the one that reinforces their opinion, and they will use that book to appeal to authority in the passive-aggressive conversations that all new parents seem wont to have.

I had trouble finding what I felt like were unbiased opinions on sleep in particular. This book: http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Sleep-Habits-Happy-Child/dp/03... was helpful, mostly because it more or less laid out three approaches and passed few, if any, value judgements on going to the baby vs. letting her cry herself to sleep.

In the end, I decided I couldn't stand to let her cry, so we settled on developing a very predictable routine at bedtime, and it has worked well. We have had our bumpy patches, particularly during illnesses, teething, and major milestones, but in general my child looks forward to bedtime and naps.

The sign language seems somewhat controversial among our peers, but we are in the less progressive southeastern US. The common fear is that it will retard speech. I just wanted to be able to communicate with my child, and it has made for a pleasant experience so far. She seems to be developing vocbulary at an above normal rate. I don't necessarily attribute that to signs, but it is at least one counterexample to the fear of significant speech retardation.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

I don't think getting stuck in a local optimum is as important as the speed with which you get there.

Techniques for finding a global optimum of a numerical function are expensive, time-consuming, and often find worse solutions before they find the best one. Do this in a startup, and your local-optimum-seeking competition will crush you.

Seems to me that thinking there is a better solution that your users don't know about (which led you to the local optimum) is exactly the lack of humility that Paul was warning against.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

It's interesting to me that Paul lists humility as an (the?) important factor leading to successful product design. It seems like there would be a natural tension between the courage it takes to found a startup and the humility it takes to be successful.

I also wonder if honesty might be another word for the skill in question - i.e., being honest with yourself about what works, what doesn't, and what's truly necessary.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

I think the point of the Vista comment is to illustrate the theme of patenting fairly obvious programming technology, not to take a shot a the "modern day best and brightest."

Microsoft reputedly engages in a fair amount of this kind of inane patent activity.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

I usually sleep about 7.5 hours. I don't know any hacks for sleeping less.

The best hack I know for getting more done in the same amount of time is to exercise intensely for 45 minutes to an hour every other day. It's best for me when my muscles reach exhaustion during the workout. I need about 30 minutes to an hour to recover, but my mind feels sharper and my enthusiasm is much greater for the rest of the day and the following day. I try to go first thing in the morning.

There's obvious health benefits, but I think the biggest benefit for me is psychological/emotional.

Thanks for the question! I think it may have inspired me to increase my waning dedication to exercise.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

I think the possibility of failure is a great motivator, so I wonder if I would have the motivation to attempt to succeed if I knew I wouldn't fail.

The most interesting things I've ever done started with questions that began "I wonder if..."

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

It's more like he gave you a scalpel, a tool that's great - even indispensible - for a specific set of cutting tasks, but that might leave you disappointed if you chose to use it for cutting down a tree.

Except that scalpels aren't really all that extensible.

See, I told you it was a black hole...

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

Sorry but that's like selling someone a car and saying "Oh you want the chassis to be made of metal instead of wood? Well you can change that can't you."

Except pg isn't selling anything, he's just letting you see and use what's ostensibly made his life easier.

I'd modify your simile to something more accurate, but modifying similes is a black hole.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

Common Lisp will keep chugging right along.

You could ask on comp.lang.lisp if you wanted some really well-informed opinions wrt the impact of Arc on CL, but I wouldn't advise it unless your skin is thick and flame-resistant.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

His "challenge" is totally missing the point. Just because it is difficult to identify the owner of a random picture doesn't mean that one couldn't use that picture against the wishes of the owner.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

I agree with a lot of what he said, although I don't expect that Clinton would get "swatted" by voters against any of the potential Republican candidates.

But mostly I just wanted to say that I thought the postscript was funny:

Windows Vista is flopping, and Mario Kart will be out for the Wii soon. I think the future will be okay.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

A production language should favor reading the code over writing it, and a toy language should do the opposite. Note that I don't mean that the language is a toy, but that it's used to make toys.

Yes, Lisp is used to make toy programs like the software running on the $100 million 1998 Deep Space 1 probe.

Their final top-level function is:

  (define (sqrt x)
  (fixed-point-of-transform (lambda (y) (- (square y) x))
                          newton-transform
                          1.0)

Good luck figuring that out. I'm sure it was fun to decompose the problem into those functions, but in production two years from now some programmer is going to be in a world of pain when he has to add a feature to that program.

That's only hard to read if you don't know Lisp. And the function names are quite descriptive if you understand numerical methods. If the hypothetical developer doesn't understand fixed points and Newton's method, he shouldn't be modifying that sqrt function anyway.

There might be a good point about obfuscation via abstraction somewhere in SICP, but this example isn't it. Even if it were, it has less to do with the language itself and more to do with the developer that designed the abstraction.

I suspect Mr. Kestleloot is simply ill-informed.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

I don't have any experience in a startup, but just thinking on the problem leads me to believe that not releasing early would be a big contributor.

Seems to me that if you release early, you'll get more interesting[1] feedback while your app is in a nascent stage and you can more easily change direction.

[1] By interesting, I'm mean that the feedback on a more fully developed release is more likely to be of the window-dressing, change-this-font-to-helvetica-16 type, while feedback for the early release will often be directed at adding desirable features.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

s/had to be rewritten/rewrote itself/

would be funnier.

vor 18 Jahrendiscuss

The Kinesis keyboard is available on Amazon for $269 from a third party seller:

http://www.amazon.com/Kinesis-Advantage-USB-Keyboard-black/d...

vor 19 Jahrendiscuss

>please don't confuse hard work with anything that happens in college.

You can work hard at anything. Playing an instrument isn't something I consider work, but it takes hard work to become one of the top musicians in the world.

Consistently trying to be the best at something rather than just accepting mediocrity is important, and not a lot of people have that drive. It's the kind of thing that keeps you from having to tar roofs for a living.

>You make the rest of us wish we were still there.

You must have me confused with someone else. I'm not a student.

vor 19 Jahrendiscuss

The XFL had a lot of problems, but very few were related to the business structure.

The biggest problem was that the best players in the world weren't playing in the XFL. Div I-A college football doesn't have that problem. The lower divisions do, though. I doubt many Div I-AA or Div II coaches are making $1MM.

vor 19 Jahrendiscuss

I think the big difference between CEO's and football coaches is that the coaches' products are more easily subject to scrutiny.

The average joe can watch weekly football games and judge for himself whether a team looks disciplined and prepared.

CEO performance is documented in complex financial reports released once a quarter. The reports aren't as readily available as nationally televised football games, and the connection to the CEO's contributions isn't as immediately obvious. Also, recent history is replete with incidents where the bottom unexpectedly dropped out of a company because of unbeknownst-to-the-public mistakes or transgressions committed under the CEO's watch.

I think public perception about the differences in transparency is what drives distrust in CEO's but not in college coaches.

vor 19 Jahrendiscuss

If nothing else, the author demonstrated the ability to work hard. Demonstrating to yourself that you can work hard has a lot of value in and of itself, IMO.

Of course, there are other outlets for working hard, but for many Americans, high school and later college present the most obvious and most consistent opportunities to do so. In fact, the author may have even learned how to work hard in college if he didn't already have that ethic.