mpbm

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121.
by mpbm 10y ago
I'm still not sure how I feel about taking advice from people who have failed a lot. All other things being equal, I'd rather take advice from people who have always been successful. I think maybe they can be distinguished by whet
122.
by mpbm 10y ago
The argument for passwordless authentication reminds me of crash-only programs. Basically, if you have two modes of operation, a normal mode and a recovery mode, then why not just use the recovery mode for everything? The next step, which a
123.
by mpbm 10y ago
I wonder if the comparison can be extended. I've never made movies, but it seems like they are exactly like "little businesses". They have to be funded, and made, and launched, in order to make their money back. A more modern
124.
by mpbm 10y ago
Whaaaaa...that's cool. Sorry, that's just neato. I don't care what anybody says.
125.
by mpbm 10y ago
It seems like a lot of the people who understand technology agree that some form of UBI, sooner or later, is a given. On the other hand, a lot of the people who don't understand technology, disagree that it's a given. I think it&#
126.
by mpbm 10y ago
When all of these small-and-smart weapons meet up on the battlefield it's gonna be cray cray. However, it will not be anything new. All it's going to do is shrink the same thing into a smaller space. Instead of an air force establ
127.
by mpbm 10y ago
There isn't enough discussion of the difference between cause and root cause. Clearly, technology can't possibly be the cause of old people getting agitated about how young people are destroying the civilization left for them. Tha
128.
by mpbm 10y ago
Great interview. The thought that stands out for me is the repeated assertion that fantasy UIs must serve the narrative first. That's analogous to the way a lot of people design UIs for real products in that they tell "user storie
129.
by mpbm 10y ago
Yeah, the first thing to go in a good story is good security. Security is designed to make sure nothing interesting ever happens. At best it slows everything down and at worst it just outright forbids everything. That's poison to a nar
130.
by mpbm 10y ago
I don't think it's about the pose. It's about attention. To interact with a system we have to focus on it and that means we have to take our focus off of everything else. Computers are notoriously bad at understanding us if w
131.
by mpbm 10y ago
The media (including the news) runs on stories. Not "stories" in the sense of "articles," rather "stories" in the sense of "narratives." When a narrative doesn't appear naturally, the media just
132.
by mpbm 10y ago
They could, but why would they? The inverse thought, which is on my mind a lot, is that it would be awfully nice if someone else would make a thing that I want, that numerous other people COULD make, but that I have to personally make.
133.
by mpbm 10y ago
Yeah, that seems to fall under the "if it breaks" category. But even then it seems like you could just split the monolithic file into different files with smaller scope. Like all the keys that start with "x" go into the
134.
by mpbm 10y ago
Mobile and bot aren't eras, they're just tech adoption cycles. They are also not incompatible with web. The defining characteristic of a startup is that it does something an increasingly large number of people are happy to pay for
135.
by mpbm 10y ago
At my old job we had eye scanners and, if the legends are true, they would sometimes sound the alarm on women who just got pregnant, before it would even show up on the pee test. I wonder how they account for a person changing over time. Li
136.
by mpbm 10y ago
That's a good start, but the framework needs development. For example, it doesn't explicitly account for the fact that SPLIs require exertion, and exertion requires recuperation. Nor for the fact that, like all investment, SPLIs r
137.
by mpbm 10y ago
This poll is only going to get negative replies if it first gets enough positive replies to push it to the front page.
138.
by mpbm 10y ago
Knowledge is, and always has been, direct experience. The complication is that people don't acknowledge the limitations on what they're actually experiencing.
139.
by mpbm 10y ago
Are there any heuristics for when you should switch from easy data storage, like parsing flat files, to a simple database, then to a complex database? Like, "if it's breaking" seems obvious. And "it depends" doesn&#
140.
by mpbm 10y ago
That doesn't follow. If they had one reader, who paid them a million dollars per year, then they'd still be in business. So, if they had a million users, who paid them one dollar per year, they MIGHT be in business because it woul
141.
by mpbm 10y ago
This word "risk." I do not think it means what you think it means. Just because someone has lots of money (their own or a VC's) doesn't mean they aren't risking that money when they put it into a startup. The money
142.
by mpbm 10y ago
This seems to describe it well: "with biz apps one is generally modeling a manager's, owner's, or lawmaker's mind(s) rather than say the laws of physics or math" http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyIsPayr
143.
Ask HN: If a domain looks like spaghetti, should the code look like spaghetti
2 points by mpbm 10y ago|1 comments
144.
by mpbm 10y ago
Livecode. It's a high level scripting language that compiles into executables for every platform. They're almost done with the HTML5 version, which will compile into an executable for the browser. It's friendly enough that I
145.
by mpbm 10y ago
That makes sense. The way my thoughts have been going from reading about this and passwordless authentication is that it's a lot more important WHO you trust than HOW you trust. If both the user and the service independently trust the
146.
Ask HN: Is it better to centralize authentication at a security service?
42 points by mpbm 10y ago|22 comments
147.
by mpbm 10y ago
I think I get the idea and it seems reasonable. I'm curious about the use cases. It's basically a remote interface for a spreadsheet or, more abstractly, an array of key:value pairs. The thing is, that's kind of a constrained
148.
by mpbm 10y ago
It seems like the actual problem is that it's painful and/or impossible to keep one conversation going across multiple channels. If you solve that it applies to tons of things, maybe starting with customer support conversations. I
149.
by mpbm 10y ago
What's to stop someone just like you from coming along in a year and aggregating YOUR aggregation into a new site? Are you going to have world class branding or some magical recommendation engine?
150.
by mpbm 10y ago
Good idea. I'm working on something related (knowledge graphs) if you want to talk about it. Do you think it would require users to understand formal logic? Do you have an idea how to turn this into dollars? Donations like Wikipedia? T

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