abraxasz

Only slightly related but I read "masters of doom" recently and I can't recommend it highly enough. It is a very entertaining read even if you are not crazy over video games. It tells the story of the two Johns, and mention Commander Keen among other things. Great read

I think it again depends on what you mean by hacker. If a web developer is passionate about web development, learns everything he can about it, enjoys doing it, and approaches it like an aesthete, then according to the author he is a webdev hacker (or whatever you want to call it). There are many other definitions of "hacker" that wouldn't include the aforementioned web developer (I'm thinking of Eric Raymond's essay on the topic). In the end, there doesn't seem to be a broad agreement on the topic.

I think the problem is more (6) deliberate practice is hard to define. Some people believe that just sitting and doing problem sets is deliberate practice. Some people believe that hacking on a side project is deliberate practice of programming skills. I don't think that any of those two examples would qualify as deliberate practice.

If so this should really have been made clearer in the press coverage because it is very different from the way I and probably other people understood it. I understand that soundclound would need a way to make money, and what you describe seems like a very reasonable way to proceed. However, a youtube-like or spotify-like ads system would likely be much harder to sell to users.

Didn't know about unmode! I checked it out and I like it very much, thanks for sharing!

That was exactly my thought when I read the comment. I would be very curious to know if I'm missing something here, but it seems obvious to me that if a publicly owned company can do something better and cheaper (cheaper not only just for these people but also for the taxpayer, I don't know if that's the case here) then how is that a bad thing?

I agree with your remarks. One reason, however, why I still enjoy reading articles on the site from time to time is that they almost always make me think. Their perspectives, however flawed, have the merit of being strongly coherent, and trying to find what's wrong with an article turns out to be a very good exercise in judgment.

I had a similar thought when I watched the video. Actually, I thought about the concept of 'Quality' as introduced in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Two moments in particular:

- the consistent lighting part: the guy is making this giant epic thing, so you'd think he would cut himself some slack on what really looks like a detail (I wouldn't have noticed it, especially not in this type of game). And yet, the guy absolutely obsesses over it because, you know, that's how it feels right.

- the 'aging' part, when he explains how he kept upgrading old sprites or levels as his skills improved so they "would match up to his standard".

And the best part is that the guy doesn't come off as being arrogant or anything. Just a dude, making the game he would like to play, and making sure it's as good as he dreams it to be. Inspiring.

Ok, so I do believe that CEO's are usually overpaid with regard to their performance. That being said, I am not convinced by the methodology used in the study, specifically the period used for measuring the performance: 3 years. It sounds like a lot of time, but actually, I would expect a truly great CEO to undertake projects with a 5 years or more horizon. There's this great interview of Bezos discussing the point of focusing on quarterly results vs long term. So an alternative explanation for the findings could be: the highest paid CEOs invest in 5-10 years projects, so their results after 3 years are below average.

Again, I repeat that even before reading the study, I intuitively agreed with their conclusion, but I'm not so sure about their argument to prove it

Genuine question: The article goes on and on about how making the apps paid in developing countries would make more sense than using ads, etc, etc.. Ok, I see the point. But is it really that different from the developed countries? How much do they get per user in advertisement? How much would it cost me if I wanted to opt out of advertisement? I don't know if people in general prefer ads, but if I had to pay, say $5 a year for a an ad-free whatsapp, I'd gladly pay. Is it ridiculously low compare to what they make with ads?

I'm not a specialist of FP, so please take what I say with a grain of salt. Before answering your questions, here's a preliminary point:

0) The problem is that FP is not really defined anywhere, or rather, everyone has its own definition. I was wondering about the definition of FP about a month ago, and discussed it with my roommate who's a phd student in programming languages. The conclusion of this 2-hour long conversation was: well FP is kind of a fuzzy concept. The concepts of FP languages, typed languages, static languages, etc.. all tend to conflate. Some people will consider that Scheme, Python, Ruby, Scala, Haskell, OCaml, R are all FP languages. Some will say that only Haskell and OCaml really are. Whatever..

Keeping that in mind, here some attempts at answers:

1) In a very loose sense, I guess that you can say that, and to make it possible, you need some constructs in your language, the minimum requirements being higher order functions, and maybe closures. I'd say that's the minimum, but again I'm no specialist. But then if you want to push this "no globals" moto to its logical extreme, you get to a point where you can't even use a "print" function, since it has some side effects. Haskell does, and solves the problem with monads. But to have monads you need a very particular type system, which leads to the question of wether you need a type system to go FP all the way? I don't know. Someone more knowledgeable should answer that

2) I don't know about hardware. But like I said, FP can deal with state. In fact, even hardcore FP as embodied by Haskell can deal with state. It's not trivial to wrap your head around the concept, but it's worth giving it a shot.

These are only speculations, but here are points based on my own habits:

1) The most important criterion for me when looking for a store, is walking distance. I don't want to bike, or drive to the store. So the closest store is almost guaranteed to win my business.

2) The second most important criterion is the price. I'm still a student so I'm a bit careful with my spending. So if a store is much much cheaper, and not too much further, then I might go there when I have big errands to run.

3) I am pretty much insensitive to the layout of the store. I'm already walking 10-15 minutes to get there, so 30 seconds between milk and bread is no problem really

Anyway, my point is that in my case, the reason why the "better" store doesn't win is that I don't really care about the criterion used to define it as "better". So going back to your point, a store doesn't have anything to do to serve my interest other than being close to my apartment and lowering the prices. The rest is almost totally irrelevant to me.

Thanks for sharing, that was a wonderful essay, highly recommended!

"None of the executives who signed the letter are scheduled to appear at today’s Senate hearing. Witnesses on the agenda include Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole, NSA Deputy Director Richard Ledgett and FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano."

The lineup they have is hilarious. It probably went something like:

- [senate] James, do you think we should end mass surveillance

- [Cole] No

- [senate] Dick, whaddya think?

- [Ledgett] Nope, it's allright

- [senate] Ok, Mark?

- [Giuliano] Meh, nah, I think we're fine

- [senate] Well then, after extensive consultation with all interested parties, blablabla

(I know, I know, it's way overboard, I don't believe it myself, but that's the first thing that came to mind when I read the quote, and I had a good laugh)