abraxasz

Only slightly related but I read "masters of doom" recently and I can't recommend it highly enough. It is a very entertaining read even if you are not crazy over video games. It tells the story of the two Johns, and mention Commander Keen among other things. Great read

I think it again depends on what you mean by hacker. If a web developer is passionate about web development, learns everything he can about it, enjoys doing it, and approaches it like an aesthete, then according to the author he is a webdev hacker (or whatever you want to call it). There are many other definitions of "hacker" that wouldn't include the aforementioned web developer (I'm thinking of Eric Raymond's essay on the topic). In the end, there doesn't seem to be a broad agreement on the topic.

I think the problem is more (6) deliberate practice is hard to define. Some people believe that just sitting and doing problem sets is deliberate practice. Some people believe that hacking on a side project is deliberate practice of programming skills. I don't think that any of those two examples would qualify as deliberate practice.

If so this should really have been made clearer in the press coverage because it is very different from the way I and probably other people understood it. I understand that soundclound would need a way to make money, and what you describe seems like a very reasonable way to proceed. However, a youtube-like or spotify-like ads system would likely be much harder to sell to users.

Didn't know about unmode! I checked it out and I like it very much, thanks for sharing!

That was exactly my thought when I read the comment. I would be very curious to know if I'm missing something here, but it seems obvious to me that if a publicly owned company can do something better and cheaper (cheaper not only just for these people but also for the taxpayer, I don't know if that's the case here) then how is that a bad thing?

I agree with your remarks. One reason, however, why I still enjoy reading articles on the site from time to time is that they almost always make me think. Their perspectives, however flawed, have the merit of being strongly coherent, and trying to find what's wrong with an article turns out to be a very good exercise in judgment.

I had a similar thought when I watched the video. Actually, I thought about the concept of 'Quality' as introduced in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Two moments in particular:

- the consistent lighting part: the guy is making this giant epic thing, so you'd think he would cut himself some slack on what really looks like a detail (I wouldn't have noticed it, especially not in this type of game). And yet, the guy absolutely obsesses over it because, you know, that's how it feels right.

- the 'aging' part, when he explains how he kept upgrading old sprites or levels as his skills improved so they "would match up to his standard".

And the best part is that the guy doesn't come off as being arrogant or anything. Just a dude, making the game he would like to play, and making sure it's as good as he dreams it to be. Inspiring.

Ok, so I do believe that CEO's are usually overpaid with regard to their performance. That being said, I am not convinced by the methodology used in the study, specifically the period used for measuring the performance: 3 years. It sounds like a lot of time, but actually, I would expect a truly great CEO to undertake projects with a 5 years or more horizon. There's this great interview of Bezos discussing the point of focusing on quarterly results vs long term. So an alternative explanation for the findings could be: the highest paid CEOs invest in 5-10 years projects, so their results after 3 years are below average.

Again, I repeat that even before reading the study, I intuitively agreed with their conclusion, but I'm not so sure about their argument to prove it

Genuine question: The article goes on and on about how making the apps paid in developing countries would make more sense than using ads, etc, etc.. Ok, I see the point. But is it really that different from the developed countries? How much do they get per user in advertisement? How much would it cost me if I wanted to opt out of advertisement? I don't know if people in general prefer ads, but if I had to pay, say $5 a year for a an ad-free whatsapp, I'd gladly pay. Is it ridiculously low compare to what they make with ads?

I'm not a specialist of FP, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. Before answering your questions, here's a preliminary point:

0) The problem is that FP is not really defined anywhere, or rather, everyone has its own definition. I was wondering about the definition of FP about a month ago, and discussed it with my roommate who's a phd student in programming languages. The conclusion of this 2-hour long conversation was: well FP is kind of a fuzzy concept. The concepts of FP languages, typed languages, static languages, etc.. all tend to conflate. Some people will consider that Scheme, Python, Ruby, Scala, Haskell, OCaml, R are all FP languages. Some will say that only Haskell and OCaml really are. Whatever..

Keeping that in mind, here some attempts at answers:

1) In a very loose sense, I guess that you can say that, and to make it possible, you need some constructs in your language, the minimum requirements being higher order functions, and maybe closures. I'd say that's the minimum, but again I'm no specialist. But then if you want to push this "no globals" moto to its logical extreme, you get to a point where you can't even use a "print" function, since it has some side effects. Haskell does, and solves the problem with monads. But to have monads you need a very particular type system, which leads to the question of wether you need a type system to go FP all the way? I don't know. Someone more knowledgeable should answer that

2) I don't know about hardware. But like I said, FP can deal with state. In fact, even hardcore FP as embodied by Haskell can deal with state. It's not trivial to wrap your head around the concept, but it's worth giving it a shot.

These are only speculations, but here are points based on my own habits:

1) The most important criterion for me when looking for a store, is walking distance. I don't want to bike, or drive to the store. So the closest store is almost guaranteed to win my business.

2) The second most important criterion is the price. I'm still a student so I'm a bit careful with my spending. So if a store is much much cheaper, and not too much further, then I might go there when I have big errands to run.

3) I am pretty much insensitive to the layout of the store. I'm already walking 10-15 minutes to get there, so 30 seconds between milk and bread is no problem really

Anyway, my point is that in my case, the reason why the "better" store doesn't win is that I don't really care about the criterion used to define it as "better". So going back to your point, a store doesn't have anything to do to serve my interest other than being close to my apartment and lowering the prices. The rest is almost totally irrelevant to me.

Thanks for sharing, that was a wonderful essay, highly recommended!

"None of the executives who signed the letter are scheduled to appear at today’s Senate hearing. Witnesses on the agenda include Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole, NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett and FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano."

The lineup they have is hilarious. It probably went something like:

- [senate] James, do you think we should end mass surveillance

- [Cole] No

- [senate] Dick, whaddya think?

- [Ledgett] Nope, it's allright

- [senate] Ok, Mark?

- [Giuliano] Meh, nah, I think we're fine

- [senate] Well then, after extensive consultation with all interested parties, blablabla

(I know, I know, it's way overboard, I don't believe it myself, but that's the first thing that came to mind when I read the quote, and I had a good laugh)

Let me quote an excerpt from Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman (p. 127 from my edition): "... I had a very good group [..] clever boys from high school who had an engineering ability". So yes, it was a team of people, but those working on this specific problem seem to have been high schoolers or recently graduated kids :)

Off the top of my head:

* John Karmack's game engines for Commander Keen, Doom, Quake * Palmer Luckey's original Rift design * Feynman's "parallel" computer at Los Alamos

And many many more if you include mathematical / physical discoveries although these are not strictly speaking "technological feats". I would add that I do not agree with Zuck's statement, no matter how many examples I can come up with (and despite the fact that I'm myself under 30)

I read the book a while back and it is absolutely fantastic. What I understand about monads, I learnt it from this book (no other exposition of monads ever made sense to me), and I particularly like his progression functors -> applicative functors -> monads. I think it's the clearest way to proceed (certainly helped me a lot anyways)

It seems like this depends on the universities (and maybe also on undergrad vs grad), but I've done my masters, and am currently doing my phd at an Ivy in the US, and I've been pleasantly surprised to find out that we are almost never required to buy any books. Often, the professor uploads a set of very comprehensive notes accumulated over the previous years to complement the notes we take in class. It's happened (three times out of maybe 8 classes) that the professor is writing his own book on the subject, and so is giving us free copies. So instead of requiring books, the professor indicates which books are interesting/useful references on the subject and puts them on reserve in the library for the students of the class. I think it's a good system.

One thing though. This is doable in science because, well a theorem is a theorem. But about humanities where you have to study specific texts or corpora? I don't think there's much choice there..

I know that it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and that given the awesome work they are doing, this is worth the hassle. But I'd like to make a comment concerning the payment method. Last week I make my very first donation to Wikipedia. How did it happen? I saw the usual banner, and then, one of the payment options was Amazon. So I entered an amount, clicked the "pay with amazon", and was done. No entering my credit card, filling out forms, or anything. Zero friction. Amazon style. At this moment I realized that the reason why I hadn't donated before isn't that I didn't think the cause was worthy, but simply that the perceived hassle outweighed my desire to give. They removed that friction, they got my money.

So again, given the work they are doing, that's no excuse for not donating. But still, I wonder if that would boost the donations..

... and this is why, selfishly, I would like to see the system implemented somewhere, albeit not necessarily where I live. People keep throwing peremptory statements here and there (on both sides of the argument), even though we really have no way to know what's going to happen. So let the Swiss implement it, and let the whole world see how it's gonna play out. If it works (which I sincerely hope, from the bottom of my heart), then that can give ideas to the rest of us. If it fails, we can draw the adequate conclusions too.

A few points:

2) I've also switched to DDG, but I still find that google gives me somewhat better results for things related to programming are academics. Apart from that, I like DDG a lot.

3) That's the big, big problem for me. I could stop using virtually any other product labelled google without problem (ok, youtube excluded), but gmail keeps me there. Not so much that gmail itself is so great (it is good, for sure), but the act of switching emails, updating contacts left and right, is just a pain.

4) it seems to me that most providers for hangout/video type of things are equally obnoxious with the way they handle your data..

Going back to the email stuff, I guess I'm also waiting for a decent alternative to pop up, as I'm not inclined to switch 10 times in the next 6 months..

"And as the company grew, the founders soon realized that managers contributed in many other, important ways—for instance, by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating collaboration, supporting career development, and ensuring that processes and systems aligned with company goals"

That's right, but this describes a "support" function. If they were truly filling the roles in the quotes, managers would not be "bosses", but simply "colleagues". A better term than manager would be "facilitator". I don't think anyone would argue that "facilitators" are useless. What engineers tend to disagree with is the notion of "managers" as "bosses", with significantly higher salaries, etc..

If you look only at the latest youtube thing, it might not be the worst google's been through. But if you look back at all the examples you compiled, two of them happened in the last 6 months. I don't know how it's all perceived outside of the "tech community", and maybe people don't care after all. My impression of all this is that it's a lot of bad press, in a fairly short amount of time. It's definitely changed my view on google, and I guess the question that all articles / speculations / blogspams are trying to get at is: how many people's views of google changed as a result to the recent events. And is that number big enough to start worrying google?

A common view, from what I gather, is that being a "data-driven" company, google has probably run the numbers and concluded that whatever "outcry" is going on, it is the result of a small group, and that it is not going to threaten their business. I am usually wary of such non-arguments. I really don't know what the short-term/long-term effects of all this are going to be (if any), but I don't think that any company can really predict the full extent of "bad press" either. So even if it's a relatively small percentage of the user base, writing off this movement as being "insignificant" seems a little unwise.

A few comments:

valuable service

I'd think that what makes a good api should be characterized independently of what makes a good service. You can have a useless service, with a fantastic api. No one is going to use it, maybe, but the api itself can still be objectively seen as being good.

Design

I agree with most of the points, although I'd say that the single most important part of the design is ease of use. I'm not a professional software engineer, so I don't have a good appreciation for the other elements.

Documentation

Now that is the most important part for me. I recently had to use the API of a service I won't name. It was a disaster. The API was documented, but the documentation was basically unreadable and confusing. It took me a long time to figure out how to work with it. A good documentation, with extensive examples can save the user an awful lot of troubles

Addenda: I have two other considerations, somewhat unrelated:

- The last API I had to deal with use OAuth. I assume that there's a module or package for it in most languages. But this is the kind of thing you want to check, because if your language of choice doesn't have it, then good luck implementing it.. (rule number one of cryptography: don't write cryptography code yourself). I'm sure there are other examples of tiny details like this that make certain languages harder to use.

- Support for JSON is usually appreciated (by me anyways).

Edit: Fixed typo (without->with)

I did experience revulsion, but I think that you're right, it's an important concept to think about. I perused the link you provided, and here are some random thoughts:

- The article lists as a deadly sin: "Evaluation by performance, merit rating, or annual review of performance"

But then the question remains: how do you make sure your best employees don't get poached by other companies who are willing to acknowledge the fact that they are superior, and pay them accordingly?

- Another point listed as a deadly sin: "Mobility of management"

I can agree with that, only if we also agree on the fact that management is just an administrative position, like at Fog's Creek or Jane Street. In other words, salaries and positions in the hierarchy are decoupled. If not, then the system you mention doesn't solve the problem of: "how are we going to promote people?"

I admit that I didn't read the entire Deming article, so please correct me if I'm missing something.

Just one data point here, but I effectively switched to Bing for search (actually, DDG, but they use Bing among other things to get their results). In all honesty, I think that google's results are slightly better, especially when it comes to technical type of searches (maths, statistics, academic papers, etc..), but for the most common types of searches, DDG does just fine. Reasons for the switch? I was getting a bit upset by all these privacy things, and the NSA stuff got me over the edge 4 or 5 months ago. Not that my new setup is anymore secure, but I think that DDG does an honest effort to not actively screw me over, which is more than can be said of the other tech cos so I'm willing to encourage that type of behavior by giving them a shot.

Excellent point. Every two or three week or so, I'm wondering why I'm still on FB. Answer? Because there are those people I met when I was traveling a lot, and even though we don't talk much or at all, it's good to know that there is this one central place where I can get in touch with any of them.

34 terrorist plots have been thwarted in the UK since the 7/7 London bombings. One or two were major plots aimed at mass casualties.

I see this type of argument often, and I wonder how people can take this type of logic seriously. If I say: "I had a cold 9 months ago. Immediately after, I ate an apple. I've been cold-free ever since, so it must be that this apple was effective at preventing colds". The logic flaw here is that I don't know what would have happened had I not eaten that apple. Maybe I would not have had a cold either so the causal conclusion is flawed.

If you transpose that example to the "terrorism" case, you get a similar type of logic flaw. I can believe that 34 plots where thwarted since the 7/7 bombings. But do we seriously believe that 0 plots would have been thwarted without the new security measures? Not really. Maybe 33 would have been thwarted. Maybe 34, which would mean that all the money poured in the system as well as the privacy sacrifices were made in vain. Who knows? Inferring causal relationships from this type of flawed reasoning is very misleading.

One thing I've found is that the effectiveness of remote work depends somehow on the type of work being done. I'm a currently a grad student, and my advisor is not in town very often. We have frequent skype meetings, but I don't get as much out of it as I do from real meetings. On the other end, I also work on startup projects on the week-ends, with people in different countries and I don't feel the same miscommunication problems in this context.

It is possible that remote working in an academic context is indeed possible, but that the highly technical type of communication required to make it work effectively is beyond my current skill. But my point remains that some types of work are harder to carry out remotely.

I think a more relevant question should be: is a certain degree of "formulaicity" desirable or not? I believe that it is, yes. When I browse a website for the first time, I like it when it's clean and unoriginal in its presentation. First, I can find my way quickly, and second (maybe it's just an illusion) I find it less mentality taxing.

A lot of startups adopt a layout similar to that presented in the article for their website, which makes it easier to know quickly what's going on. Is it bad from a differentiation/branding point of view? Maybe, I don't know. I don't think I'm very sensitive to this, but this might be a very important point.

Take worrydream.com for instance. I checked it out yesterday, and the content of the website is absolutely fantastic (I'm a new fan of Bret Victor). But the website's design is very, very original, and it took me some time to get used to it. This is not to say that it's not good. It's different. And different requires efforts (well worth it in this case).