smarterchild

The keyword for the problem you're talking about is the "long tailpipe theory." [1] I was just reading Wait But Why's article [2], which concluded that the overall greenhouse impact will still be lessened by using electric cars over internal combustion.

I didn't dig into the sources enough to conclude that it's truly a better option, but those articles are a good place to start.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_tailpipe

[2] http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-lif...

I really like the use of tools that make focus the default, low-motivation option. If you're not on a Mac, Firefox has LeechBlock[1] and Chrome has StayFocusd[2]. Also, if you're on HN, there are built-in settings under your username you can use to limit how long you can access the site for every few hours.

Ironically, that's why I'm on HN now. I know I only have 15 minutes and then I won't get to use it for another few hours. :)

[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/En-US/firefox/addon/leechblock/

[2]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product_security/lsu_privil...

If this is considered "Medium" Severity, how bad would it have to be to become High?

Where did you get the piano score for the Tocatta?

Have you tried setting her up with a standard user login by default? I did that with my folks and the number of computer questions seems to have gone way down.

Vestigial structures! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality

Do you think that another danger of inconveniences is that it's easier to make an inconvenient mechanism more and more inconvenient than to start restricting something that hadn't been restricted before at all? Like having a tiny inconvenience at first somehow "reserves your right" to add more restrictions in the future?

Hidden functionality is a UI and UX anti-pattern

I suppose the entire terminal, by that argument, is an anti-pattern. I feel a little better about not ever getting past mediocre in shell. :)

People get outraged when you tell them how they should think,

but the fact that the argument has no (obvious) logical holes causes cognitive dissonance because it's harder to phrase why you dislike it.

Do you do testing by hand now?

Ooh, text adventures! Some suggestions:

If you haven't played any before, your first question may be: Why would I play a game made up just out of text? The IFComp is a good place to start. It really helps to what really talented people can do with the medium. Here are two worth playing:

1) Taco Fiction (http://ifcomp.org/comp11/play.php?id=201) and

2) Violet (http://jayisgames.com/games/violet/), both previous winners.

Inform7 is a very widely used tool for making IF now (http://inform7.com/); I haven't played with it much, but from what I've seen, it does some really great stuff. It's a good way to get started writing your own games.

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Full disclosure: My current project is a way to make CYOA from the browser. (http://adventurecow.com)

> when someone gives me the "top 5", I consider it only a trailhead; it's unlikely my top 5 would be the same.

That's a fair point. The important part, it seems, is identifying not just which books to read but why. That information would help you and I find our 20%.

Not that these are bad books (I've read a lot of them and they are quite interesting), but I think there's more value in compiling a list of the 5 most important books we should read, rather than the 30.

Of course we can learn something from reading 30 books. It'd almost be hard not to (if you chose the right genre). The problem is that, while entertaining, I'm sure a lot of us are looking at these books not just for fun, but because we want to figure out how to run our software business.

To take every software book that's imparted some little bit of insight and put it in a huge list only gives you a huge list of books to read, with no indication of which 20% of those books will give you 80% of the insight. And while some of us can digest this list in two weeks, for others it's a huge time commitment they don't have the ability to make.

I apologize for ranting, and this list does have some useful information (especially in the commentary on each book). But I get uncomfortable when I see a "Top X design articles" or "Top Y books" and the X or Y is >10. I feel like we are feeding our desire to gorge on numerically delimited information without necessarily getting substance out of it.

Strict equals - it doesn't cast types.

Programming distinction, and no idea why the author used that. Mostly the same meaning though, for conversational purposes.

Apple's design reputation is so established at this point that, if they hadn't used the Golden Ratio, I suspect there would be articles titled "Why does Apple's iCloud Icon deliberately ignore the Golden Ratio?"

While I automate some computer related tasks, I can't automate house chores, working out, etc.

So I wrote an app to remind me: http://i.imgur.com/exzb0.png

I find this sort of thing most useful if you have chores that you want to do regularly, but not on a specific day (i.e. clean every Tuesday).

They're in the business of coding first, the coding of business second.

I've used/loved http://chris.photobooks.com/json/default.htm since the beginning of time for debugging. It isn't embeddable, though I find that it's more readable.

Good points.

Something I noticed after I read your comment: The funny thing about both Starbucks and McDonalds is that, in both cases, it took an outsider who became an employee, _not a founder_, to grow the company. Two companies don't a pattern make, but it does make you wonder...

McDonalds spent 17 years being a diner before Ray Kroc got involved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_McDonald%27s

Also Starbucks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks#History

I don't claim to know whether that model extends to tech companies, but with enough time, I'd be willing to take the long side of that bet.

Is there anyone else looking for a programming apprenticeship? I'd like to offer one.

So this will get me testers who are into testing alpha websites?

Pretty cool. But it doesn't really strike me as being useful for domain specific websites.

- Appointment Reminder is probably far more interested in Joe the Plumber/Hair Stylist/Auto Mechanic then me.

- AirBnB could care less if I don't like it - I don't travel enough.

(Comment: If you could get me domain specific users I would pay you.)

This doesn't really seem like an abridged version of a month's worth of reading...

If you get enough information, of course you can make a good business. The challenging part is condensing that so you can learn the right lessons in a non-geologic timescale.

There are a couple of wikis already up. At the risk of showing people a project I'm not ready to launch yet, here's a list of general libraries of information (a meta-wiki of wikis):

http://christopherliu.net/startup-wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Encyclop...

It's too bad this doesn't work on a cell phone contract.

Another way of looking at it: The data is completely overwhelmed by the super wealthy.

This is the very tail end of Fortune's richest people list.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_The-Wo...

Any one of those people is worth 1 billion dollars, along with all the Gates's and Buffett's of the world. If I were pretty well off and worth, say, $1,000,000, it would take a thousand of me to equal one of him. And if I were a student with just a thousand dollars, it would take one million of me to get to one of him.

Based on that, the top quintile is not rich because of doctors, executives, basketball players or lawyers - it's billionaire company founders, investors, and the like. To test that hypothesis, I tried to find results marked by percentile, instead of quintile:

http://www.lcurve.org/WealthDistribution-1998.htm

The top 0.5% have 25.6% of the wealth and the next 0.5% have 8.4%.

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(Side note, if you're thinking about income taxes: I'll bet there are more than a few people up at the top who get paid a dollar a year in salary.)

Migrator.NET uses a similar setup for .NET programmers.

To create an app as a facebook user, you need to give them either a college email address, a mobile number, or a credit card. Otherwise facebook connect, and enabling people to login to your site through facebook, is not possible.

And, thanks to United Airlines, I now have an additional 4 hours in the airport (the Virgin America terminal, to be exact) – the perfect setting for an enraged blogger.

I wonder if airlines have ever put seriously delayed passengers up in a first class or other special lounge, to distract them from potential stewing.

How do you block noise? Data looks pretty good, but IAC is not a startup!