HN user
Author, artist, maker, mutant.
Although there is definitely cause for concern, these are just state-level legislative bodies. They couldn't prevent Californians and New Yorkers from buying out of state or international phones that aren't crippled with back doors.
It's a worrying trend, though. It seems every few months another law like this is proposed. Requires constant vigilance on our part.
Providence, RI: interior paint.
Fairfield, IA: all maintenance as well as on-going renovations at $25/hr plus materials.
San Francisco, CA: interior paint, garden, chicken coop, converted garage into bedroom.
Portland, OR: extensive tear out and renovation, removed walls, renovated kitchen, new wiring and lighting, converted attic into bedroom, finished basement and added bedroom -- all on the owner's dime. Also, we built a kiln and a giant skate ramp in the backyard.
So it is possible. Although admittedly, I do have a knack for finding laid back landlords.
Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It's sci-fi, not fantasy, but what sci-fi it is! A hard sci-fi account of the colonization and terraforming of Mars with tremendous verisimilitude and a boatload of Big Ideas.
Robinson explores space travel, the problem of living on low-atmosphere worlds, architecture on other planets, eco-economics, post-capitalist economies, tele-robotics, self-assembling factories, world governments, underground resistance in an always-on surveillance state, corporations with the power of nation states, and the development of a new religion.
It's a powerful stuff and a lot of fun, to boot.
The Mars Trilogy – and especially Red Mars – has to be some of the best hard sci-fi ever written.
Here's a list of Mac OSX alternatives to everything in the Creative Cloud: http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/graphics-roundups/the-best-...
I found out about about HN after I encountered Paul Graham's essays in the late 2000s.
I think I first saw a reference to PG on John Gruber's DaringFireball. I think this[1] may have been the link that first sent me to PG's essays.
I read all of the essays, up to that point, and then became curious about this thing called YCombinator, and this other thing called Hacker News. I lurked on HN for a while and finally started an account 1703 days ago, which was Monday, 14 September 2009.
I too find it hard to articulate what makes bookmarking services like Pinboard useful. Part of the problem is that it doesn't (to me) have much to do with bookmarking, so much as it does with "personal search".
Exactly. Pinboard is my personal record of everything online I find useful or interesting enough to remember.
Well, cross-browser support is a big one for me. I can bookmark from Safari on my iPad or Firefox on my laptop.
One issue in negotiating that I never quite know how to resolve is the tension between two somewhat opposing pieces if advice: never be the first to give a number and use anchoring to establish a price.
For just straight up bookmarks, Pinboard.in is nearly perfect.
-Around $10 for a lifetime membership.
-Supports tags.
-Great search functionality.
-Bookmarklets for most browsers.
-Public or private bookmarks.
-Lightweight and fast.
I've been using it since 2010 and absolutely love it.
Here's a Medicines Sans Frontieres Ebola expert answering that very question[1]:
In recent years, MSF has been involved in battling every Ebola epidemic. Once the first case is confirmed by a blood test, every person who cares for an infected patient must wear a hazmat suit, gloves, a mask and protective goggles and exercise extreme caution when administering treatment. Decontamination chambers are generally installed between the isolated patients and the external environment. To confine the epidemic, it is critical to trace the entire transmission chain. All individuals who have had contact with patients who may be contaminated are monitored and isolated at the first sign of infection. The affected communities must also be informed about the illness and the precautions to be taken to limit risks of contamination. Basic hygiene – such as washing one’s hands – can significantly reduce the risk of transmission.
1: http://www.msf.org/article/guinea-%E2%80%9Cthere-no-treatmen...
It sounds like Australia's geographical relationship to Antarctica at the beginning of the Eocene contributed to Antarctica's temperate climate at the time. From Wikipedia[1}:
At the beginning of the period, Australia and Antarctica remained connected, and warm equatorial currents mixed with colder Antarctic waters, distributing the heat around the planet and keeping global temperatures high, but when Australia split from the southern continent around 45 Ma, the warm equatorial currents were routed away from Antarctica. An isolated cold water channel developed between the two continents. The Antarctic region cooled down, and the ocean surrounding Antarctica began to freeze, sending cold water and icefloes north, reinforcing the cooling.
Would be interesting to see a quality of life comparison (if such a thing can be reliably quantified)
The Economist attempted to quantify quality-of-life and rank nations using the metrics they developed [1]. Their quality-of-life index is a bit out of date - almost 10 years old now - but interesting nonetheless.
I'm always deeply suspicious of "statistics" that claim startups only have a 1 in 10 chance of success. From the article: "if 90% of startups fail, it simply can’t be the case that all of the startups they know are succeeding."
But it looks like that may not be so far from the truth: "About three-quarters of venture-backed firms in the U.S. don't return investors' capital, according to recent research by Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School."[1]
1: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2014/04/21/the-most-ex...
SEEKING WORK - REMOTE
I'm a copywriter.
I go beyond mere formatting tricks to craft high-converting headlines, ad copy, and site copy. I identify the language your customers use and apply it on your site. (I know the formatting tricks, too.)
I can do everything from a website review, to a headline overhaul, to a multi-thousand word sales page. I can develop email campaigns and do competitor audits. And I have the technically fluency to work with your developers on A/B testing.
We'll make sure my work makes you money.
I have more than 10 years experience writing & editing:
- Paid writing tutor for Ivy League students at Brown University
- Technical writer crafting back of the book indexes
- Former editor for environmental news startup
- Freelance copywriter for small businesses
- Published in The Atlantic
My work is high quality and always delivered on time. My rates are competitive.
Email is in my signature.
Link to the abstract on PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24582957
Original is behind a paywall.
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I'd take all this with a grain of salt, though. The biology of aging is incredibly complex. Seemingly certain answers to the question of what causes or mediates aging (e.g. free radicals) have turned out to be less conclusive and all-explaining than researchers originally thought.
At around 1:00 minute the CEO says "All of us live and work here."
Forcing shopping activity and gathering into indoor brutalist buildings is dying, shopping centers are not. Look at union sq, 4th st, walnut creek, and many others in the sf bay. All are stronger than ever by offering very high end retail mixed with high quality independent offerings and unique chef-driven eateries.
Exactly.
Take for example the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan[1]. It's in the city center, it's visually spectacular, it's unique, and it's a fun place to visit, eat lunch, window shop, or spend (too much) money. It's been around for 150 years which indicates that this is a sustainable model for a shopping mall in a dense & vibrant city.
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galleria_Vittorio_Emanuele_II
This is one of the older stories in business.
Right. This strategy can be traced back at least as far as Andrew Carnegie in the 19th Century.[1]
Exactly. Without a doubt there was a literal conspiracy to undermine urban mass transit during the 1930s and 1940s. Firestone, Phillips, Standard Oil, and GM were all convicted of conspiracy, for Pete's sake.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspi...
They won't penetrate a car doors
Actually .22 LR can indeed penetrate a car door.
This is so apropos!
Three groups of my friends (6 people, total) are attempting to start breweries, brewpubs, or cideries.
I have a number of thoughts for these friends. (Advice not totally unsolicited -- I've been homebrewing for about 17 years.)
- Brewing a good batch of beer - better than most of the what's sold in stores - is easy. Almost anyone can do it with their first batch.
- This tricks people into thinking that brewing is easy. But...
- Consistency is hard. That recipe that turned out so well the first time? It might be good the second time, or it might spoil, or it might be too hoppy, or it might be cloudy, or taste of yeast, and so on. At any rate, it's unlikely that it will taste exactly the same as it did the first time.
- Brewing large batches is hard. Even transitioning from 5 gallon to 10 gallon batches requires different equipment. Recipes don't scale in a simple way. And when you get into backwatering high gravity beers everything becomes even more complex.
- Making wine and cider is hard compared to brewing beer. The former two have fewer ingredients, which, being fruit instead of grain, tend to be less consistent. Conditioning takes MUCH longer which means feedback and learning take much longer.
- And yet, I bet actually making a consistent, high-quality beverage is the easy part compared to running a profitable brewing business.
- Brewing is expensive. Startup costs are high. Even an enthusiastic homebrewer can easily spend thousands. Think $10,000 for a bare-minimum commercial brewing setup built around e.g. a SABCO Brew Magic.
- The legal stuff is hard. Licenses, bonds, a legal location -- all that stuff takes time and money.
- The food industry is brutal. Combining a brewery and a restaurant seems like it must tremendously increase the probability of failure.
Anyway, brewing is a fun hobby. But one of those that sort of lulls people into making hasty business decisions.
It definitely does not warrant a statement as broad as India is just not a good place for anyone (other than its citizens perhaps) to do business.
Agreed.
India has implemented both command economy policies[1] and free market policies[2] in recent history. But today they definitely seem to be leaning more towards free market policies, though not to the extent of the Western democracies[3].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-Year_Plans_of_India
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_reforms_in_India
3: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21576372-how-ge...
Chemex[1] is hard to beat. I recommend it to all of my aspiring coffee-aficionado friends. Easy[2], inexpensive, and very high quality.
1: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/22/ristretto-chem...
2: http://www.bluebottlecoffee.com/preparation-guides/chemex
Questions I have now:
1) How likely is a cascade of bank runs on other exchanges?
2) Do other exchanges have security issues or insolvency that make them particularly vulnerable?
3) Will one of the other cryptocurrencies wax as confidence in BTC wanes?
Duck duck is barely usable ... but they don't spy on you. The !g and !b commands make it my first choice.
I keep leaving DDG for the not-always-super-relevant results, and I keep coming back for the privacy, clean interface, and !bang syntax.
I love that using it means my searches are private by default. But the real killer feature is !bang. I find that it's faster to do a Google image search using DDG with "!gi" than to search in Google and then move my hand to the mouse and click "Images".
On top of all that, most companies start out violating all sorts of laws and get away with it here in the US.
Example: a friend of mine makes artisanal chocolates. When he started out he didn't have a licensed kitchen, any kind of food/health license, or sales tax collection. Nobody cared. Why? Because he got compliant before his company grew enough to be on anyone's radar.
Here in the US you can launch first and worry about legal compliance later.*
*Not for all industries or all definitions of "later".
This was published as late as 2004:
""Deep linking" is a special kind of hyperlink: it defeats the remote website's intended method of navigation, taking one to a page deeper than the home page [4] A deep link leads the user to an interior page of a website, rather than to the home page thereof. "
Wow. This sounds so anachronistic today it's hard to believe it was written only 10 years ago.
This is fantastic!
Version control is a killer feature for writers, particularly those working collaboratively.
There are actually already a few projects out there that offer version control for writers. Draft and Penflip come to mind.
Draft: https://draftin.com/
Penflip: https://www.penflip.com/
Until recently, Upworthy was without a doubt the most significant source of noise in my Facebook feed. Glad to know there will be somewhat less of that going forward.