nswanberg

16 ms·

91.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Probably quite a few, especially those like Drew Houston who didn't get in on their first try. Presumably on that first application Drew had some of the same good credentials (MIT grad, perfect SAT score).
92.
by nswanberg 13y ago
This is the other thing that's almost guaranteed to appear for some reason. I think Taliesin did a good rebuttal to it a while back: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3974503 As for Stephen's ego, I'm surpr
93.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Listening to Paul talk is refreshing. He's like Feynman in that he's got something clever and fun to say and doesn't dress it up in pretense. I still remember feeling about 10 times better during a commute home once because N
94.
by nswanberg 13y ago
This has been a very long time in coming. Here's Wolfram in a 1993 interview: "One of the things that I consider an exciting direction is to what extent we can expand the use of the language itself, independent of the application
95.
by nswanberg 13y ago
They are mostly the ones getting laughed at and dismissed. Which means there are probably as many or more as there have ever been, but they are not recognized until well after the fact, once it is no longer a risk to laud them.
96.
by nswanberg 13y ago
This is a great post, but in these comments there is a strange fixation on the terminology. Is it really a mockup? Is the author describing an interface or an experience? None of these comments really say why the distinction is more importa
97.
by nswanberg 13y ago
It is not that credentials are not needed--in my example, Johnny Lee still has credentials--but that it is not essential to gain the very best credentials in order to find work where one's creativity matters.
98.
by nswanberg 13y ago
The wonderful thing about today's society is that making a living off of creativity doesn't require these credentials. I'm not sure where he went to high school, but Johnny Lee (the man behind the Kinect and Google's Tan
99.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Assuming these are genuine and not the world's longest rhetorical questions: 1) There is nothing wrong with your approach. There is nothing that can be done using ASP.NET MVC that cannot be done with the ASP.NET Webforms pattern (I&#x2
100.
by nswanberg 13y ago
This is way more interesting than party affiliation (which I bet is largely based on cultural affiliation, not policy preferences): "He says that people within higher-income brackets have more eclectic musical tastes than others."
101.
by nswanberg 13y ago
I have code in production that I wouldn't be happy to have to share. I have some that I'm a little proud of. But none of that matters compared to my feelings about whether it's useful and usable. I'm still working on mak
102.
by nswanberg 13y ago
The original HN thread on Ben's "Why I did not go to jail" post had comments saying more or less the same things, though not to this level of detail. Talking about jail was much more attention-grabbing, though, and that worke
103.
by nswanberg 13y ago
I think all of these answers are good, but this one is the best. And I'd second contacting them. You might not come to an agreement but they seem reasonable.
104.
When Programmers Scrape By(newyorker.com)
6 points by nswanberg 13y ago|0 comments
105.
by nswanberg 13y ago
The real Hemingway or the website? I was hoping someone would explore the idea this tool could remove elitism, since I haven't made up my mind on that (I think Paul's version is much more pleasant to read). I guess this is a start
106.
by nswanberg 13y ago
This is a great essay, and a great argument for anonymity and what it can offer. Sam's essay went too quickly towards condemning anonymity, but it started by attacking a different kind of anonymity--that of small groups. Secret might h
107.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Paul Graham's writing seems simple and direct to me, so I wondered how the website would treat one of his essays. Here are the suggestions from the third paragraph of http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html : "The mos
108.
by nswanberg 13y ago
The menu on the left in the link I posted shows the thread. I saw no way to see that in the original link.
109.
by nswanberg 13y ago
For those curious about the context: https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/8/23/97 Note that noone replied to Eric and the thread continued on. Also go back and read some of Linus's posts before this. Eric wri
110.
by nswanberg 13y ago
From a time when one had to read the back of the software box to check for Windows or MacOS compatibility: "Mosaic Communications Corporation intends to be the premier provider of open software that enables people and companies to exch
111.
by nswanberg 13y ago
It might have been helpful to distinguish between anonymity within small groups (Secret) vs anonymity in large groups (4chan). In 4chan, particularly on /b/, there are so many anonymous participants that it's very unlikely th
112.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Sarcasm is an effective technique against one's parents when one's methods of expression are limited and one would like to, for example, express that one does not genuinely want to take out the trash, especially given the fact tha
113.
by nswanberg 13y ago
This is more or less what happened to some kids applying to Harvard Business School about seven years ago: https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/harvard-business-s... Their penalty was a denial of admissions,
114.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Certainly Wolfram didn't invent the notion of a universal system, nor claim to, nor was that intended to be implied above, as bad as my writing might be. Indeed, on page 1125 of NKS he discusses Church's and Turing's contribu
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by nswanberg 13y ago
Oh, for what it's worth, I italicised the name because it's a work, and I guess I do that for programs in addition to books, not to point out a correct spelling. Pointing out spelling mistakes and grammar errors on the internet se
116.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Sure, members of the public or small and medium sized organizations may have substituted, but if yours was the sort of organization that bought, say, a Cray Y-MP for $35 million, paying $3.56 million and putting this thing on a network woul
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by nswanberg 13y ago
It wasn't necessary to simulate a feather in bird's wing in order to fly. In fact, practical flight really only happened once people started taking away features observed in nature.
118.
by nswanberg 13y ago
What are those limits? One of the big ideas out of Wolfram's book A New Kind of Science is that, once a rather small threshold is reached, a system made of simple rules becomes universal. And since by definition any universal system
119.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Agreed, but to become as good a consumer company as Apple, Microsoft would have needed a Steve Jobs (someone more dedicated to focus and aesthetics of form and function). It's not clear Gates wanted to be the same sort of consumer comp
120.
by nswanberg 13y ago
Does anyone know of any other Bill Gates interviews of this quality from, say, 1996? I suspect that one doesn't exist, but I'd love to hear what sort of lessons he learned from ten more years of running Microsoft as the company go

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