HN user

maxklein

8,686 karma

You can reach me by email by typing max@maxkle.in in your email client. Blog at maxkle.in. Twitter follow @maxklein

Posts58
Comments1,700
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www.religion-online.org 14y ago

Why I Did Not Leave Nazi Germany in Time

maxklein
5pts1
maxkle.in 15y ago

Paying programmers or designers hourly works against your best interest

maxklein
9pts2
www.mytrademarkia.com 15y ago

The word 'ToDo' has been trademarked by iphone app developer

maxklein
9pts3
maxklein.me 15y ago

The end of the poll internet

maxklein
17pts13
maxkle.in 15y ago

The one thing Apple can add to the iPhone to change the world

maxklein
7pts2
maxkle.in 15y ago

Even advanced UX designers seem to ignore abstraction

maxklein
6pts0
www.aolnews.com 15y ago

The 10 Worst Predictions for 2010

maxklein
1pts0
www.slate.com 15y ago

How a Massachusetts carpenter got the highest Scrabble score ever

maxklein
7pts1
www.salespanelpro.com 15y ago

Show HN: My new product is finally launched

maxklein
4pts7
www.google.com 15y ago

Google Baraza

maxklein
2pts1
edition.cnn.com 15y ago

Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria: The Facebook president

maxklein
3pts0
maxkle.in 15y ago

How angel investors are destroying young gullible programming talent

maxklein
148pts65
maxkle.in 16y ago

Motivational video

maxklein
3pts0
maxkle.in 16y ago

Drug dealers shouldn't make iPhone apps

maxklein
76pts45
maxkle.in 16y ago

Web Twitter + Notifo are far superior to any twitter client

maxklein
5pts2
cgi.ebay.com 16y ago

App Store app names are now being auctioned off (by squatters)

maxklein
2pts2
www.businessweek.com 16y ago

Local Motors: A New Kind of (crowdsourced) Car Company

maxklein
1pts0
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

My company: 5 months work from home, one month work in a 5 star hotel

maxklein
236pts108
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: What does it mean to have a 4.0 GPA?

maxklein
3pts4
gizmodo.com 16y ago

Someone lost the Apple iPhone 4G in a bar - Screenshots + Video

maxklein
45pts8
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

How "elite" dating websites scam people

maxklein
100pts71
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

As an iPhone developer, I'm glad Apple banned cross-compiling

maxklein
16pts43
www.engadget.com 16y ago

Microsoft is announcing a mystery product on April 12th

maxklein
3pts1
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

The greatest enemy of the programmer: hemorrhoids

maxklein
163pts109
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

Do you really want to be rich?

maxklein
103pts79
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

Are you capable of being ruthless to get ahead?

maxklein
102pts79
news.ycombinator.com 16y ago

Ask HN: How do I get people to "fan" my facebook page?

maxklein
4pts4
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

Your international web app gets ethnicity wrong

maxklein
52pts39
googlewave.blogspot.com 16y ago

Google Wave now has email notifications

maxklein
6pts0
blog.cubeofm.com 16y ago

How I reduced translation costs of 200 articles from $9000 to $46

maxklein
90pts47

This problem will be faced by many developers soon. The Internet is huge. Very large. The big companies are going to be dealing with huge data. You'll need to understand algorithms and math, and frankly, this stuff is a bit difficult to learn on your own. I thought I knew it all till I went into the algorithms class - that when I realized that not only did I not know it all, I was not as smart as I thought I was, and I would never have had the motivation to go through with this if I had not been forced to. And that goes for many developing.

Programming is a scarce profession now, but the simple stuff will soon be done by too many people. Software will become a real engineering task. In 20 years, the age of the code monkey will be gone.

Tip: Instead of writing the articles via your keyboard, get a good voice-to-speech machine (like the iPad) and simply free-talk about the topic. In 30 minutes, you can write on quite some topics. Totally unique content.

But then did not proceed to do so, but instead explained how lack of context in articles generally make them difficult for people to understand. People react too fast before understanding, like most people did on my comment.

And why do you assume that I am saying it does not exist? If you are widely traveled then you will understand the difference between articles and reality.

I think you misunderstand what I am saying. If you read my comment, you'll see I'm not talking about the content of the article or saying slavery does not exist.

It's difficult to tell people "think before you decide" when the people instantly assume that I am saying something that is attacking them and immediately start aggressively defending their opinion.

And that's the correct attitude. I don't say anything refuting the points in the article. I'm not against the article either. I'm pointing out that a single story does not describe a phenomena accurately.

But everyone is jumping on my comment as if I said that anything in the article is wrong.

No, don't believe this. The world is a very complex place, and what makes for a good story is often very different from what reality is.

When American journalists write about the world, they write as if the world is America. Stories are broken down into us vs them, people become black and white, some people are assigned the label 'good' and some the label 'bad'. Everything gets americanised, even the american obsession with skin colour or racial differences works itself into every conflict that is reported on.

Whatever the real story in mauritania is, it's made of centuries and centuries of history, a land caught between the arabs and the africans, a culture that has lasted hundreds of year.

This cannot be captured in a short article on CNN that reduces it all to the archetypal american "black people enslaved by people who are not us". After reading this article, you still know nothing about Mauritania. You have no understand of the complexities of their society. All you have is this single story, this opinion piece by a single author.

Your knowledge is second hand and it's second rate. You do yourself, Mauritania and history a great disservice if you read the article and believe it. A single story should only ever be something that invites you to discover the real history of a place and people (http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_...)

When you read an article like this about Mauritania, don't read it. Realise that it's like overhearing a conversation between two strangers. You lack context, you lack understanding.

That's why you should not believe this story. It's a single story about a place you know nothing about.

One core difference that I notice between Africa and the West, irrespective of the current development stage, is that people in Africa are mostly optimistic that things are better than the were, and they are expecting things to get much better. So they see the future as being bright and full of opportunities.

People in the west seem to have the opposite viewpoint - the see the past as having been better, and the future bringing doom and gloom. So their outlook is pessimistic.

So there is much more of this lets-work-forward energy in Africa.

Paul Graham said. "We're trying to figure out why this YC batch did so well. One theory: they all used Convore (http://convore.com)

What actually made the startups switch away from convore? At the point pg said that, quite a number must have been using it. Then they just stopped?

Very faulty logic. 1 in 5 logged in with github, and 1 in 7 logged in with twitter, and this implies you don't need facebook? Measuring two other things does not have any meaning to another not-measured metric. One should add a fb button and then measure how many log in via fb to make such a statement.

I think both are just manifestations of intellectual curiosity - some people, when they talk to you, are asking themselves: "what is this guy trying to say?" So they listen. Those same people, when they see something unusual, for example, a new type of design, they ask themselves - why did these people do this? So they are constantly discovering, and it's that discovering of methods and ways that ultimately leads to them discovering the path that works.

The other people - the non-listeners - are not observing what's going on. They are looking inwards, so are unable to react to changes, and they are unable to see the path when they stumble across it.

I don't think this is a good idea. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that many people depend on all over the world. Encyclopedias should not just switch off for political reasons. Books don't turn off. Digital information should not turn on and off either for any reason. A big red banner covering half the page can get the message across without actually making us unable to access the information stored in wikipedia.

Why I Hate Android 15 years ago

This argument is pointless, because it's about only the U.S, which is a small proportion of phones used in the world. The rest of the world does not have the insane carrier monopolies and unusual pricing structures that are prevalent in the U.S. For the rest of the world, phones sell on the merits of their software and hardware - and that's what android should be measured on.

And when it comes to that, android is winning.

You are clearly someone who is obsessed with racial issues and in particular, issues that have some kind of data backing up what seems to be your theory that blacks are inferior to others. Sure, wrap it up in fancy round-about sentences and quotes from well known race-baiting sites, but do expect to be called out on it. Wrapping up racist statements in PC words doesn't make them any better.

I'm done with this argument, I don't think you deserve much more of my time.

I'm not going to waste my time and energy trying to refute someone who believes black people are not as clever as white people, and wraps it up in nice words. Go through his comments or any article on HN that mentions race. He tries to make the same point over and over again.

I'm not interested in any kind of debate about this. It just wastes my energy and brings me nothing. I will just point out that that's what he does when he chooses to do it. The onus is not on me to prove that black people are not dumb.

For people like me who are afraid of flying, this lady is just disturbing the peace. People should be searched before being let on planes. If people are not searched, there will be more plane attacks and global transport will decline. Planes will always be targets for terrorists because of what they represent.

The law is not about technicalities. It's about reason and sense, and sensible is that when someone is behaving like a crazy person, then take the person and find out why. Technical law is when a fixed sentence is applied for a particular crime (like marijuana possession), that is then applied without sense.

Smile and go through the scanner. There is nothing strange about being seen naked by strangers, most of evolution we've been naked.