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tomkin

1,278 karma

Director, Orbital

We create beautiful, accessible websites & mobile apps that enhance your brand & engage your users. Proudly located in downtown Hamilton, Ontario.

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www.youtube.com 8y ago

Steve Jobs Foretold the Downfall of Apple

tomkin
14pts10
news.ycombinator.com 10y ago

Ask HN: How do you inform clients about unforeseen costs?

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1pts0
torrentfreak.com 11y ago

Canadian Piracy Notices: From Benign to Ridiculous

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6pts0
www.youtube.com 12y ago

InFORM is a surface that three-dimensionally changes shape

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aviation.stackexchange.com 12y ago

How do pilots manage to keep aircraft on centerline during taxi

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2pts0
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: What's your favorite pen/load/vulnerability testing service?

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3pts1
www.wired.com 12y ago

Steve Wozniak: Apple Should Make an Android Phone

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venturebeat.com 12y ago

Why Canada is where smart VC money is going in 2014

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news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: Has anyone ever clicked on a tag cloud?

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11pts11
www.theguardian.com 12y ago

The Guardian – NSA: files decoded

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quickcast.io 12y ago

Make. Publish. Share. 3 Minute Screencasts.

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2pts1
physics.stackexchange.com 12y ago

Very strange shadow phenomenon

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csglobe.com 12y ago

Quantum physics proves that death is an illusion

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2pts1
news.ycombinator.com 12y ago

Ask HN: I want to make a boring process fun. Fast-loading HTML5/JS/CSS3 games?

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stackoverflow.com 12y ago

IsNaN is literally f1 != f1

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cbc.sh 12y ago

Greenwald: NSA leaks on Canadian surveillance coming

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www.stickybottle.com 12y ago

Invention may revolutionise commuter cycling forever

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2pts0
www.macworld.com 12y ago

IOS is the most corporate-friendly OS on the market right now.

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2pts0
en.wikipedia.org 12y ago

Groupthink

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14pts11
daneden.me 13y ago

Animate.css

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andrewapeterson.com 13y ago

Arists’ Royalties. CD Sales. Record Deals. Real Numbers? (2007)

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1pts0
en.wikipedia.org 13y ago

ASMR – That pleasurable feeling you can't explain

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2pts2
www.forbes.com 13y ago

15 Year Old Invents Highly Sensitive Cancer Screening Test

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2pts0
mobilesyrup.com 14y ago

Adobe: Flash will not be supported in Android OS 4.1

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2pts1
github.com 14y ago

FuckItJS: Runs your javascript code whether your compiler likes it or not.

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www.mentalfloss.com 14y ago

The Complete History of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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blog.orbital.ca 14y ago

Magic Numbers

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www.blacknegative.com 14y ago

Blacknegative - Incredible HTML5-powered site.

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blogs.computerworld.com 14y ago

It's OK for Apple to block Firefox, but wrong when Microsoft does it

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ibnlive.in.com 14y ago

Apple launching iPhone 5 in Sep, iPad mini in August: Rumours

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The article reads as a perceived straw man attack against PWA idea, but the author really captured the heart of the issue right here:

  Google is, by far, the most aggressive in adopting
  new browser standards behind PWAs in Chrome. Other vendors,
  such as Mozilla, Microsoft, and, in particular, Apple,
  have been much less aggressive...
The only thing more important than the "native vs. web debate" is user experience and accessibility. When "Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple" become more aggressive, we will all naturally evolve to the (relatively) better option. The author argues with the wrong people.

I'll say what I've said in another thread on this matter, which is, no one outside of this bubble buys this shit. There are global supply-chain networks that move millions of products, and they don't employ as much as a micro-blogging platform. It's hubris to think we're so special.

You're making a stretch, here. The difference between 100 to 500 or 1000 is exponentially different than the difference of 100 to 3,700. They don't need this many people. Period. This is a "who's dick is bigger" contest over a thinly veiled (and absurd) justification of infrastructure. No one outside of this bubble buys this shit. There are global supply-chain networks that move millions of products, and they don't employ as much as a micro-blogging platform. Come on, now.

I guess I would just point to GitHub, Shopify, Pandora, Spotify, Snapchat, LinkedIn, MailChimp, WordPress.Com, (insert everyone else basically here).

I think you're making a few assertions that would be more honestly served if you conceded as assumptions.

Twitter validated it's own employee count with an absurd overhead.

It has concerns of scale, performance and user experience. So does GitHub, Shopify, Pandora, Spotify, Snapchat, LinkedIn, MailChimp, WordPress.com, etc, and yet, manage will much less resources and overhead. Oh yea, and fucking Netflix - which - as far as I can tell - has much more and difficult problems to solve at a much faster pace. They employ 4,700.

As of this comment, Twitter employs 3,583 people.

What they needed to do was hire 100 talented people, allow third-party clients, try and occasionally acknowledge the developers who implement their platform, and stopped with the asinine "we're trying so hard guys" blog posts. We get it. You're having a hard time and you want everyone off of your grass. That's fine, but don't come asking for sugar at my house 'cause you ain't Beyonce.

Twitter's biggest mistake was hiring thousands of people when they only needed 30. It doesn't need thousands of people. It doesn't even need 100.

Twitter is not a technological marvel. It's something Oprah promoted, and Donald Trump bitches on.

And now, it's an API with a (social) class-based access, and without irony, also promotes itself as a leader in conversation and exchange.

It's important to understand that Facebook is incredibly large, and the fact that any software scaled with them to the point they are presently at, is a "on the shoulders of giants" situation that seems to actually be working well enough for them to become a billion dollar enterprise.

Also, the building of infrastructure that takes on scale that's not yet been required is somewhat inefficient. But it does beg the question: If Facebook is limited by its infrastructure, what responsibilities do they have to build software that continues to scale for future organizations?

I love things like this, but I find I have about 30 of these sorts of things bookmarked, and I never think to pull them up when I'm in need – I immediately go to Google and find something like the Mozilla ref @shpx mentioned. It's a real problem I wish there was a solution for. Other than of course having a better memory.

Dropbox Paper 9 years ago

> Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product ventures?

This is one of those distinctions without a difference.

When Obama says that Snowden created serious security implications, do you think that's from a point of privilege, or simply placing ideology over practicality? Based on everything I know, both Obama and Snowden appear to be fairly authentic characters. It seems weird that they would have opposing view points. If we're to assume the best ideals are forged though intelligent reasoning and debate, shouldn't they have both concluded the same? Glenn Greenwald has proven himself to be less than authentic at times. If I could pass a criticism Snowden's way, it was who he went to, not what he did. Am I wrong to feel this way?

I really don't know how you got here. BMI has been raked over the coals (new and old methods) for being wildly inaccurate for anyone outside of a conditional range. IQ does not predict what to expect from a human being.

Those who double down on IQ as being infallible have something to lose if it's proven to be hack. And history is not on your side here.

I agree that it's like blood sugar/pressure, but that's sort of my point. I think if you used blood pressure to judge some one's physical capabilities like you would use IQ to judge some one's mental capacity, you would run into unfair outcomes.

"some one with an IQ greater than 120 is definitely intelligent" == "some one with high blood pressure is definitely unable."

I'm fine with IQ so long as we're not using it as a scientific form of measurement...but we currently seem to.

I hate to say this, but IQ tests are BMI tests for the brain, and about as accurate. If a coffee, bad sleep, or a dose of Ritalin can change the result – at its very nature – it is not a scientific method of measurement (the ability to retest and get the same result).

We could say it's a good read of a spectrum of mental capacity, but to suggest that IQ is capable of anything more is whack science.

Twitter lost me when they dumped on their ecosystem. The changes made to the platform in recent years are obvious grasp at straws rather than anything revolutionary. It's clear that investors have become Twitter's main concern – to a point where even something like a paywall or subscription wouldn't surprise me.

Twitter does not need to have as many employees as it does, and has them solely to rise to some zero sum pissing match.

Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.

It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"

This is incredibly fanciful look at the future. The population cannot grow AND lose jobs to machines. Disruption is having its own variant of Moore's Law, in that, we are disrupting more industries at a faster rate.

UBI, or some form of which, will not only be necessary, but likely inevitable. The improvement of humanity you speak of is in fact a humanity that will survive on creativity, not labour. Labour is done.

Additionally, capitalism doesn't care about "expanded industries" any more than Moore's Law cares about engineers who made their career in the 1980s.

The transition is necessary, and it will be hard, and it won't happen without social security. It's a complete fantasy to see it happening any other way.

I agree with that (technical person's) perspective, but that was not the mainline argument. Steve Jobs got on stage and said it was a hunk of battery wasting crap that invaded your privacy. I'm saying you can make that case regardless of your platform de jour.

You're talking about the economy in a "Plinko chip" sort of way, and I'm talking about community building. If you want good products and a well paying society, you need to promote more individual nodes rather than giant motherships. And by "promote", I mean actually want it instead of talking about how the rules apply to the current system.