nikolaj

Shout out to anyone else on HN who grew up in Kinderhook NY!

how could they forget to mention the Talespin Iron Vulture when talking fictional versions!.. that will always be my vision of a flying aircraft carrier!

https://talespin.fandom.com/wiki/Iron_Vulture

I wonder if this will impact api.weather.gov.. I hacked a little wunderground inspired dashboard a while back (https://weather.nikolaj.dev) that I still use most days.. but have stalled out a bit in rolling my own marine forecast for surf reports. Would love if they finally populated those fields (saves me figuring out the grib files)

The cliche responses, but.. Sports offer similar flow states,. but do require some effort to get to that point. Additional bonus is you get fit and meet people as well . Personally I surf, run, bike, but other good ones are rock climbing, martial arts, cross fit .. it's never too late to start (but injuries do start accumulating on some of the more intensive ones after 40)

it is okay to be a complete beginner at stuff

Understanding this before 30 is a super power.

The counterpoint is all the security issues generated when dev teams re-implement the already-well-implemented. Your points are valid, but as with anything, it is not cut and dry.

This is not the normal Economist, but their lifestyle rag "1843", which does tend towards more trivial cheeky long form articles

my nokia 770 disagrees (from the bottom of a tub of old cables and networking gear)

same experience level, similar formula. Take your gut estimate, double it, double that new value, then add another "increment".

e.g. say you think it will take a day, so 2 days, 4 days, add another day, likely estimate is 5 days.

My pet theory is that when we estimate, we typically think of how long it will take to figure out a working solution to the problem, but forget about how long it takes to debug it, add tests, rework for changed requirements and unexpected nuances, and then roll it out and do any training, etc.

I can't even count the number of times I have seen privileged information dropped onto a "presentation" laptop during a meeting. I hope they are better at controlling that than most.

Consider joining a Code for America Brigade (brigade.codeforamerica.org)!

I am a member of Open San Diego (opensandiego.org), where we work on projects in partnership with local gov and non-profits to improve election transparency, maximize policy and funding for school meals, and advocate civic history. There are lots of opportunities to get involved at a small scale, and motivated experienced tech focused people are in high demand!

CadQuery (python lib that wraps freecad's CAD kernel) is a bit more similar to a traditional CAD system in terms of how it constructs parts (workplane, etc).

Also, onshape.com (commercial with hobby free tier) has a scripting interface that i believe is js-like (i have not yet had to use it, but i use onshape quite a bit for hobby projects). Their versioning and importing of community parametric parts is pretty tight imo.

Python used to have a cute hand-drawn animal logo too.

In fact there are old comments on HN from '05 when people lamented the loss of the old logo..

http://www.demiurgo.org/charlas/python-unittesting/img/pytho...

Admittedly this is only partially informed, but I am pretty sure most animals don't have access to enough calories to be obese. And those that do (e.g. pets, zoo animals) are (sometimes) kept from obesity due to careful calorie counting by their human caretakers.

I bought an ASUS c302 Chromebook for $500 earlier this year, and somehow this doesn't seem that different. More CPU/RAM (does this matter on a chromebook), and maybe a pen. The c302 has a pretty high res display, does the flip thing and is a touch screen, runs all day, and boots in a couple seconds. The case feels a bit flimsy, but withstood the rigors of my 6yo twins wrestling over it on a road trip to play the next netflix show...

..which btw is a great consumer feature. Being able to run Android Netflix on a laptop and download shows in offline mode.

I am taking pilot's lessons right now, and this is pretty essential to the process. Talking through a maneuver or procedure, combined with checklists, is very core to what I have so far seen as aviation culture.

As a software veteran I had two observations:

1. A good sysadmin or devops professional will be doing this as they do any operations on a production system.

2. The pilot's checklists, gauges and procedures are like the proto-microcontroller. Before auto-pilot and computerized systems, early pilots had to manage a complex system as it came to life. To see this in action, just watch a youtube video of a pilot starting up an old WW2 plane like a mustang, and imaging writing the arduino flow control for it..

not to mention the assertion of 52% is based upon a link to an article that references (but does not link) to a 2014 study (https://iabuk.net/about/press/archive/more-women-now-play-vi... actual study PDF requires membership.

Amusingly the press release states that "The growth in women and older gamers has been driven by free games, primarily mobile apps." and "Trivia/word/puzzles are favourite genre – driven by older women", which kind of does not line up with the "Computer Gamers" statement (or maybe I am just nostalgically thinking that means mouse+WASD).

Ah the Internet, proof of the amazing ability of information to twist and turn out of context.

The challenge we faced and still face is more making it clear on how to classify time to the rank and file team (I work in a digital agency).

We are pretty much ~90% now.. ..some lessons learned:

1. Just have people track rough time per day (a couple hours here, a couple hours there), but make sure it is done daily. The resolution will hold up when you analyze it. What seems rough each day, ends up being quite accurate over weeks/months.

2. Don't be strict about budgets AND ask for perfect accuracy in time tracking. You are offloading the responsibility of good estimates to the team, and boxing them in.. screwing your long term job costing.

3. Build a dashboard that summarizes project / account status and is as useful and obvious for Project Managers & Leadership, and they will become advocates in promoting good time tracking hygiene. (I guess this is a basic truism in general.. build systems where the best way to use it is the easiest way.. )

If you work in a related field (e.g. digital agency, web development company, devops), check to see if you signed an employment agreement or confidentiality agreement.

Read it carefully, then imagine if you did a side project relating to what your current expertise is, for Automattic on the weekends.

Then ask yourself if it would violate your agreement.

It might not, or you might not have such an agreement, but we do and I think (although IANAL) this does not sit well with that agreement.

And probably encourage prospective employees to violate employment contracts / confidentiality agreements in the process.

Not exactly the best thing to do and/or broadcast. How do they think it is ok to have people moonlight for what is almost certainly a competitor, most likely leaking out a lot of techniques and work that they have been developing for their current employer.

I can't help but think of a Simpsons episode. ... but who will eat all the Darkling Beetles?

Oh, no problem for that we brought in Malaysian bats.

But what about all the bats?

Oh we have a plan: we have Indonesian tree boas that love to eat Malaysian bats.

And the boas?

That is the best part, come winter, they are not used to the cold and will all die off...

It is nice to have NIH give us a good justification for having a surfboard rack in the office :)

Agreed! My point was not against the home cleaning industry, as it was the "dispatch-as-value-add" model. Tax and liability are probably the biggest "headaches" that could be managed by homejoy and ensure they retain their position in the relationship.

Anecdotally I pay Molly Maid to clean my apartment, because i don't want to deal with liability, legality or tax complications.

I see this a bit differently.

Uber and AirBnB caters to immediate needs for a short term engagement, so the dispatching capabilities are the real value (find me someone who can do X right now).

Homejoy is dispatching for a long term relationship, so it has a hard time staying engaged in the relationship as it progresses.

I think the skill is less important than the duration of the engagement for a dispatching service like this.

I totally had that same thought when using google maps to navigate LA.

I wondered what happens when you enter some sort of harmonic oscillation of people trying to evade traffic with alternate routes matching the delay of Google re-routing them.

The easy fix would i guess be doing a round-robin of alternate routes..

passenger quadcopters anyone?

The headline variations are quite interesting:

CNBC: First confirmed case of Ebola confirmed in the United States: CDC

NYT: Airline Passenger With Ebola Is Under Treatment in Dallas

BBC: First Ebola case diagnosed on US soil

CNN: Ebola case is the first diagnosed in the U.S.

FOX: EBOLA HITS AMERICA CDC identifies first case on US soil

Obviously Fox takes the FUD crown, but I thought the NYT actually misrepresented it a bit..

I work at an agency, and we have done things for Sony in the past. Even small campaign sites like this get caught in "legal review" for a week or two at the minimum.

That being said, I would imagine that someone in the agency that did this thought that "open source" means "free", and that the lawyers at Sony weren't informed where the icons came from (or didn't ask).

Ultimately, I do think KDE should fire a takedown notice and make a big stink about it, though. Sony certainly wouldn't be shy or understanding about it, so neither should they.

and news.yc jumps the shark....

I have several slices.. putting nginx in front of apache and lowering down apache's processes has really helped me tighten up my memory needs (I use django).