HN user
Thanks for the response - interesting set up especially with the use of Jupyter notebooks.
It seems to be a case of always having a solution that's "the best of a bad bunch" rather than a "good" one. Like Churchill on democracy.
Thanks for the response, I appreciate the pragmatism in your advice. As with everything it seems to be a question of balance and circumstance.
Could you explain how you get around the knowledge silo problem? Fungibility across the team is useful for resource allocation and can prevent bottlenecks - for example if a part of the codebase is higher priority or someone is ill or on holiday.
Loose partitioning seems like it would work if either:
1. the partitions were similar/simple enough for other members to grok easily 2. the documentation and code sharing were thorough and extensive
I don't know how feasible it is to rely on (1) and (2) seems like it would cost an investment in time that would subtract from the efficiency gains of partioning. If it is (2) what are the exact reqs/mechanics for docs/PRs that seem to have worked?
I'm especially curious as "how to structure development teams" is something I am beginning to actively learn about.
The word "literal" here is slightly more complicated than in the usual commonplace misuse of the word.
The author is trying to distinguish between "wallflower" the "socially awkward person" and "wallflower" the "person who stands near a wall". They are using a slightly more literal definition, but not the most literal (i.e. the plant).
The justification is that "being near the wall" =/= "being in a high-traffic area".
I think the "life" in life-style is the same "life" from work-life balance: ie, priorities outside of work. Therefore a lifestyle business is one where (supposedly) you sacrifice growth for time outside of work.
The problem with the phrase is that it's become an insult in many corners of the startup world, as if bootstrapping a business on your own to survive decades is not ambitious enough.
The parallel I thought of is getting in shape: becoming a body-builder (by living at the gym and taking steroids) or just be in good shape (by eating healthier and exercising regularly).
52% of 70% of the voting population said "No".
Still 60-40 remain (of 3.7m), versus 62-38 (of 2.6m) in Scotland [0].
Looking at the majority of each constituency is misleading - it's a popular vote. There both strong pro-EU in numbers.
What about German and French imports?
Can London too?
I voted today.
I work in London at a startup with international markets. I believe in the ideal of free movement. I think the EU is a bit of a mess conceptually and mechanically, but in general a step forward for Europe.
This is really the beginning of a very long, tedious and ultimately unsatisfying couple of years of dissatisfaction and instability as we negotiate with the EU and the rest of the world.
I am generally in favour of the idea of phone-free events, and I've been to one where where my phone was stapled in one of those "static-free" electronics plastic pouches.
However, how far down the rabbit hole are we going to go here? Security gates/screenings for phones? Some engineering innovation of a cross between faraday cage and EMP? Centralized reputation profile for events (a la Uber, eBay, AirBnb)?
I would love it if everyone just played ball, but one bad apple 'n' all that.
I've come to recently replace Twitter with Snapchat, having replaced Facebook Timeline with Twitter.
The process is definitely cyclical, but there is at least one new emphasis that's changed:
Content is treated as low-value, which makes it low-pressure. Mainly because:
1. it has a short life span (it expires in 24 hours)
2. the lack of per-item ratings (e.g. likes or favourites)
3. it is always packaged non-individually (i.e. as a bundled "Story")
4. pictures are not dressed up (ie not "Instagram photos") and videos are short
5. simple UI promotes content creation as central and valued over content judging/consumption
Add to that it offers the best visual blogging UI (and specifically vlogging).
Whereas with Facebook and Twitter every new post would bring thoughts like "is this good enough? Will I regret this post down the line? Will people like it?", Snapchat promotes the "just do it" attitude. Is this interesting right now?
I expect my personal use of Snapchat will wane as it did with the other platforms. When something becomes too big it becomes too public, and brings too much pressure to be idyllic. Right now Snapchat feels closed and personal.
If you know that some percentage of your friends on social media are using "surveillance" tools, then you'll be more careful about what you post, because you will understand the true meaning of "public." Whereas if all the surveillance continues to happen in secret, you will continue to post recklessly, blissfully unaware of just how "public" your posts are.
This may help reduce the asymmetry of power, but is it not a case of "throwing the baby out with the bath water"? We lose the exact freedom we are trying to protect - the freedom to act so-called "recklessly" or "inappropriately" in respect to popular opinion.
On an semi-related note:
Some of this sounds exactly like Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story".
The way the girls talk to themselves and about other people, it's incredible a 40-year-old Russian male to capture female American teenagers so well.
Agreed.
Many of the use-cases for ads have been replaced by search engines, marketplaces and aggregator sites. There's troves of information and access out there for a consumer to make informed purchasing choices.
If I need something, I can actively find it.
The use-case for ads is:
1. I don't need the thing 2. I am not aware of my need for thing
Advertisers probably claim (2) when almost certainly it's just (1)
Unfortunately this is socially positioned more like a TV or a games console, rather than a smartphone (used every day all day), which have much longer lifespans than a smartphone (5-10 years vs 2-5 years).
The interesting question is how long before this version of the Rift becomes obsolete, or will Oculus provide a contract-based upgrade plan (like for phones).
One of the reasons why it may lack real-world interest is lack of content.
People need to believe in the medium and pioneer content in spite of lack of interest, in hope to generate that interest, or it will remain an unsolved chicken-and-egg problem.
I believe Newell and Carmack do want to make high quality "games" in the sense of interactive experiences, and they see VR as an opportunity for that. What's required is patience and dedicated resources, fuelled by early adopters/aspirers.
Why does it have to be fear, rather than preference?
Maybe there's no data you're afraid of leaking, but you would prefer never to leak that data. It's a consumer choice - the problem here is lack of transparency/information to the consumer.
The cultural standard is what we accept to be appropriate - do we want to accept a cultural standard of everything you use is tracked and logged by default?
Equity can still be an incentive to work at a start-up - it's just not an incentive to take a pay-cut.
Start-ups should lose its label as a cash cow - but it can still be:
- a well-paying job - high impact - more freedom - good career capital - a lottery ticket
I think PH suffers from an identity crisis.
It started off as a curated newsletter and became a portal. It never fully embraced a community-driven approach (as evidenced by their opaque curation policy) nor a pivot to a more search engine/yelp-like community. In essence, they have yet to conquer their scalability problem: how to maintain quality while increasing quantity of products. It's a bloomin' hard problem to be fair to them.
What I am most disappointed by is that with network effects, it is beneficial for a community as a whole to have one dominant portal. The one thing you want for a dominant community platform is transparency (there's an argument for decentralization too), a requirement that has yet to be met.
It's simply too alien for your typical CS grad
In my university, Programming 101 (mandatory) was (and is) Haskell. For context, there is typically a mix of experience among the class - some will have programmed seriously before, but others will have only studied math.
I had already studied Java, but I found Haskell a delightful re-introduction (it was my first exposure to functional programming) and I see its value as an educational tool.
I never contacted Facebook or Alex using my work email account. It was only after Alex contacted my employer via email that I sent a reply from my work account. Alex indirectly contacted me at work, not the other way around.
From Wes's blog post.
I don't know anything about security or about the people involved. But I read your quote, and I read the one above.
Unless Stamos explicitly disagrees with Wes's timeline of events, my interpretation of 'he has interacted with us using a synack.com email address' does not explicitly state that Wes used it in relation to the attack before the phone call to the CEO.
Happy for more evidence to be presented to show the contrary.
(Slightly tangential) does anyone else predict and hope for a looser coupling between client and server?
Even in the age of increased connectivity, an app or static client experience, rather than streaming (except for obvious cases like video and music), in my mind would greatly improve the web for the user. Especially if not every user action can be tracked with an AJAX request.
I've only started looking into building apps offline-first (late to the party) but with tech like CouchDB, service workers etc - it's becoming much easier to build a more decentralized online experience (and interestingly return to an earlier epoch).
I've been using Fieldbook a little bit, and even playing around with their API.
It's a great product I'm going to use more. Big fan - there have been several side projects where I've wanted to use Google Sheets as a prototype DB - with the simpler API and better relationship model, I'm going to use Fieldbook from now on.
What AR technology exists, and how good is it really?
I think the big thing for AR is hands-free/HUD devices. There are niche use cases for phones, but they're described as CV problems rather than AR.
The UI is the pitch - technology people can't use is useless to people (tautology).
It's a commercial-like video to attract attention - but fair enough if it doesn't impress you. It's hard for me to judge UI without using it myself.
It's cool that they're at least trying to solve the problem of a better UI because I believe that's a problem that exists. It reminds me of one of Brett Victor's talks.
Hi Valentin, great video!
Apologies I haven't looked at the technical stuff yet (so may be an obvious question), but I was wondering:
Are the "API"s (what an object can be programmed to do) for the devices/objects (eg the switches) accessible locally?
As in is there enough embedded within the QR-like code to understand the API (or at least connect to the device, and it can "tell me more") or will it require cloud-based interaction?
Example case: if I'm in a room I've never been to before, no internet connection, and see a switch - would Instill be able to reprogram it then and there? Or do you see the (I)nternet of IOT as necessary?
Imagine you had a switch next to your bed.
Most likely, the switch controls the lights, which is perfect when you want to turn them off and go to sleep.
But maybe when you wake up, you'd actually want it to open the windows, or start the coffee maker.
And if someone else comes in to your room, maybe they'd prefer it if it started the audio system.
If we could manipulate all the physical objects around us with software, can we produce an environment which we can manipulate not just physically, but also electronically, to map our intents and needs as we have them?
And if we could, how would we go about "reprogramming" the world around us?
It's the ultimate vision of AR and "IOT".
But will the service work in India?
Thanks for the link!
I will question the relevance of the first half of the talk (about CAs and SSL) in 2015, with TLS and the CA/B Forum.
But his main thesis about trust agility is quite spot on. I'd never considered it before, and am going to look into Convergence and TACK. He raises a fantastic question - the duration of trust is a real concern.