mhomde · HackerTrans

mhomde

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8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Christ I almost forgot about Three Investigators, but I really liked them at the time. "The green backs" as I thought of them (Nancy Drew was red) Probably one of those things you should never re-read though. Using Alfred Hitchcock as "cover author" must have really paid off

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/sep/23/thre...

"The Three Investigators were created by Robert Arthur, who wrote the first few books and then oversaw and edited the rest of the series. It was he who had the brainwave of having Alfred Hitchcock as the patron of the team. Hitch introduced each case, and often called them in to set them off on their latest adventure. It was this intrusion of real life into a fictional world that cemented my relationship with the Three Investigators. Could these stories possibly be true ... ?"

And...

"The real magic, though, was in the boys' headquarters, hidden among the piles of junk in Uncle Titus's scrapyard. Built from an abandoned trailer, the secret base was accessed via a series of ingenious secret passages, with the codenames Green Gate One, Tunnel Two, and Red Gate Rover – the latter so named because it was hidden behind a painting of a dog."

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Are you sure? I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure they won't argue that applies links without summaries as well. And what about thumbnails?

I mean the "fair use" laws weren't exactly clear cut either but seemed generally sane

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Hacker News would technically be affected by the same Link tax. It would probably not be enforced but still.

It's such a stupid idea and I really lose hope about the future of a free internet when I see stuff like this. Hopefully saner minds will prevail

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

But, but, that's just how Blogs work man :)

They clearly attribute it to them (though I find it a tad lame they don't have a specific attribution area), and you could argue that being featured on a popular blog helps people discover them, and with google ranks as well. Curation does add some value and it's not like The Verge for instance doesn't create its own content.

I find sites that just repackage reddit stuff to be much much worse.

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Yeah, he has a point :) It's always struck me as weird that we "allow" political leaders that can put personal gain and career in front of what's good for everyone else. Also as you touch upon the world is rapidly becoming too complex to be governed by us. AI could save us from bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, shortsightedness and cognitive bias.

I'd actually welcome our AI overlords if they could execute according to a a reasonable value system (maybe execute is the wrong word). On the other hand, how do you set its goals, and what could possibly go wrong :)

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

I kinda want to see a black mirror episode of AI overlords shepherding humans for their own good :)

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Yeah, but a huge problem with finding accommodation for it's recruits. In contrast to Berlin it's impossible to get a first hand rent contract. A second hand is going to be super expensive and buying somewhere somewhat central is ridiculously expensive.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nordics-housing/both-immi...

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Sorry, I think I meant transatlantic airport, or a "large" airport. Not sure, it used to lack something I heard but not sure exactly what and if it's still true. They're struggling with building a new one so something :)

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Maybe Leipzig is the new Berlin :)

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Yeah I guess that's what stemming the tide :) Also a lot of German companies seem to require that you speak German. I know awesome programmers/designers living in Berlin but if they work for Berlin companies they seem to earn a pittance of what they'd would in for instance Stockholm. But if more tech companies, like Soundcloud, imports themselves into Berlin and Germany, employees and all, that will change.

Can it be because venture capital hasn't come to Berlin/Germany in a big way yet? Typically German companies seems more aimed at the German market rather than an international one, which maybe doesn't fuel a bubble as quickly.

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

I think Berlins "Poor but happy" times are fast coming to an end. Rents have been rising quickly the last few years and tech companies and startups becoming more prevalent. Heck, Neukölln went from being a cheap alternative to being as trendy and expensive as Kreuzberg.

Berlin kinda, from what I understand, enjoyed it's special culture much because it wasn't an industrial city and lacked an large international airport, but cheap rent, international vibe and fun hipster values seems like the perfect void for tech to move into now that rents and prices in the usual "big cities" have gone through the roof. I can also imagine cities like Amsterdam and Berlin getting some Brexit escapees.

Mark my words, Berlin will be Europe's Silicon Valley within a few years.

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

I think this is great news and something I've been pushing for for a long time. Sure adoption of Windows Store apps are pretty low now and it's incredibly hard to earn any money on them, but at least it's not impossible now like it was before with MS taking such a big cut.

Maybe this is enough that some hobbyist start putting some more effort into developing for the platform, which actually is quite nice.

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

There are tons of articles and books on design. In the same way you build your toolbox with programming with algorithms, concepts design patterns, best practices, you need to build one for design. Ergonomics, color theory, typography, ergonomics, Fitt's law etc etc. Then work on applying them until you develop and intuition for what's the best solution to a problem.

With design, maybe more so than with code, it's a lot about developing good taste. Code can be empirically worse or better but design is a lot of having a point of view and working within self imposed constraints.

One book I'd really recommend is "The inmates are running the asylum" by Alan Cooper. It's more about shifting how to think about design rather specifics, but it's one of those books that puts a voice in your head that will help guide a lot of decisions.

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Each to their own but my experience has been the opposite. I just purchased an Oculus Rift with touch controllers, being carefully optimistic but a bit skeptical, thinking it was going to be as you said "Gimmicky", somewhere on par with 3D cinema experience-wise.

But man, it totally blew my mind how good and immersive it is. Maybe the strongest feeling of "wow, we really live in the future" I've had. The low latency combined with excellent controls really creates a feeling of being there. Google Earth by itself is worth the price of Oculus many times over. Then there are titles like Lone Echo, Robo Recall, Beat Saber, Skyrim VR, Quake 1 and Quake 2, Minecraft etc etc. Sure there aren't a ton of AAA titles yet but those that are hold an amazing quality IMO and has spoiled me from "normal" gaming

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

I'm not super familiar with how it works in the US. But here you loan against the value of your property. If the value plunges you no longer have coverage for your loan and the bank may ask you to cover the difference. This happened in the 90's in Sweden where many even were forced to sell their homes when they couldn't pay.

Many home owners I've talked with is not aware of that this is even a possibility and refuse to acknowledge the risk. I guess it's one of those thing one rather not think about :) Another major difference is that in Sweden, in contrast to the US you can't simply give up the keys to you home and be rid of the debt (as I think it is in the US) but it stays with you.

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

People often fail to take into account that risk has a value. I did some quantitative analysis (most of that is BS but that's another story) for a gig and it was big eye opener.

People talk like:

"Well property praises will always go up. It's a good investment yada yada" but there is a risk that they won't (which often is a sore point). There's even a risk they'll crash. Many people (at least in Sweden) is so over leveraged that it wouldn't take that much for the bank to require a mortgage holder to put in more money to cover the decreased value of the property.

How large risk for a "catastrophic decrease" varies but taking that risk is a cost in itself. It's the same as with insurance, the less healthy/more risk you are the more it costs.

With renting you might not have the upside of investment, but you also don't have to bear the "cost" of that risk

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Speaking of red... In Sweden we have a color called "Falu red" that's the icon red that long has been put on many cottages and houses. The pigment is based on the copper in the copper mines of Falun. The metal helps against fungal infestion and absorbs UV rays helping the paint last longer. There are some areas where it's the only color allowed to help preserve their heritage.

https://www.theawl.com/2017/12/falu-red-the-color-of-bucolic...

As a bonus or most famous sausage is called "Falukorv", it's also red.

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

Aww, no Chang? :) Someone has been hanging out in Hubud too much :)

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

I think one of the main problems is that we still describe too much of "How" we want to do something, rather than "What we want to do", ie too many implementation details are specified.

Programming languages over time have moved towards higher layers of abstraction, from punch cards, to assembler, to c, to c++, to java/c# etc etc.

We haven't done the next leap yet and come up with a mainstream descriptive language that allows us to abstract away things like threading, tasks and optimizations.

If programming was even more about declaring intent a lot of work could be simplified I think. We could also put more intelligence into the interpreters/compilers and even adapt execution for different scenarios

8 tahun yang laludiscuss

I always wanted a language that was built upon the concept on just passing things forward in a pipe, and was like an hybrid between functional and c style languages, like:

  someobject => doThis() => doThat() => dontForgotToFinishUp()

then you could also possible send multiple objects into that pipe:

  obj1, obj2 => doThis() => doThat() => dontForgotToFinishUp()

you'd have to have some semantics for sending them separately, as an ienumerable or as parameters but perhaps that could be done

  (obj1, obj2) => doThis() => doThat() => dontForgotToFinishUp()

  [obj1, obj2] => doThis() => doThat() => dontForgotToFinishUp()

add on top of that something that could abstract away multithreading/tasking in certain cases (automatically assigning them to tasks) and I'd be a happpy coder :)