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Ben_Dean

Re:$1000 coding challenge from E la Carte (YC S10) on Saturday August 13, 2011 @06:00PM (#2882109)
the first question seems a tad ambiguous to me. Is a contiguous rectangular block a rectangle s.t. all restaurants == P, or is it rectangle in which every P has at least one immediate neighbor == P?
Re:Poll: Have you read SICP? on Thursday August 04, 2011 @10:39PM (#2848752)
twice. will do it again soon.
Re:Ask HN: Typography—How? on Monday May 16, 2011 @10:44AM (#2552650)
+1 for Bringhurst, definitely. Plus, when you meet a cute designer somewhere, he or she will be impressed when you drop that name.
Re:What Does Being a Hustler Really Mean? on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @10:40AM (#2532619)
men performing sexual favors for men in exchange for money... right?
Re:Ask HN: Somewhere just a little better than HN? on Thursday April 28, 2011 @09:54AM (#2493289)
thanks! I do read LtU, and I'll check out this "Kragen's" of which you speak.
Re:Ask HN: Somewhere just a little better than HN? on Wednesday April 27, 2011 @11:55PM (#2492046)
To Long, Didn't Read: I'm down with what you're saying, but I didn't ask that question. Where's the hot links?

Yes yes, I've asked ever so foolish a question and missed the fundamental problem, really failed to develop an overall understanding of the root causes of my interests and their dynamic nature, and lack a general theory of communication.

That, or, I had hoped that the widely read and interesting people who take the time to read arbitrary questions from strangers and give coherent, considered replies might direct me towards exactly the thing that I described: an internet content aggregator that is, in aggregate, more focussed on the technical and aesthetic issues, and less concerned with embedding those issues within a specific economic framework? A specific one that I can point ol' Chrome at?

More science, less startup. That's all I'm askin'. I do not care what Steve Jobs said to a guy who's iPhone was too beepy. I do care that a professor at MIT has claimed he's got a widget to beat photosynthesis, and I do care that someone's unearthed a video of bookbinding as practiced in 1947.

Certainly, I appreciate that I would be doing myself a disservice if I insisted that all I read, watched, or heard were something that I had already approved. I have no expectations that a community perfectly support anything. The nice thing about HN as a community is that I can ask this question, and perhaps find a supplementary community to address the imbalance that I personally experience. Also, I'm calling startup kids dorks cause I think it's dorky.

--Summer Glau

Re:Ask HN: Somewhere just a little better than HN? on Wednesday April 27, 2011 @11:40PM (#2492000)
hmm. might could. I am consuming HN exclusively through google reader, so maybe I need to see a little more what it can do for me.

Ask HN: Somewhere just a little better than HN?

I'm not exactly trying to be snarky about this, but basically, there's a subset of content on HN that I actually care much about, what I'd describe as the hard facts and interesting invention components. I do want to read articles from totally disparate fields, but I don't give a damn about entrepreneurship and start-ups as a culture... usually. I want to read technical papers and reporting, I...

( Read More... | 11 comments | 8 points | on HN )

Ask HN: How'd you go about getting and managing consulting work?

I'm currently a dev at a small company in New York, but am about to leave to pursue a graduate degree in LA. I'm wondering if anyone has advice on how to start up and run a limited software consulting business. Since I'm committed to the graduate program, I want to make sure I don't launch into something that'll suck up all my time, but I also know that programming websites (or anything else,...

( Read More... | 3 comments | 13 points | on HN )
what. the. hell.

A+

I agree with revolvingcur-- I was pretty skeptical at first, but I certainly got the value out of this for free (and was mildly entertained, too.). More to the point, just on principle, one could take a _day_ to find out how realistic any of this is. I wouldn't try selling fruit in NYC without a permit, though.
Re:Parody Color Competitor on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @01:45PM (#2383604)
good, now that joke's been made.

The API is weak, though. Everyone knows you lead with something interesting, and go to the name only after an actual conversation. UNLESS you're using friend-based authentication, where a third party initiates the handshake.

Because robots have been the next revolution for at least 50 years.
Re:The "I don't trust you" syndrome on Tuesday March 29, 2011 @10:10AM (#2382654)
I think this corner of the flame war is pretty uninteresting. Balance is everything. Have a good idea and do it well. Or just get lucky.
Re:Ask HN: good places to find less experienced engineers? on Tuesday March 15, 2011 @04:59PM (#2329364)
Write interesting job posts. You may be able to tap into the small but motivated and smart pool of people with non-traditional backgrounds.

Evaluating them means being clear with yourself about what makes one a suitable candidate. Extracurricular projects of any sort are going to be invaluable, but ask general problem-solving questions and feel out how they do. Do they ask questions when they're stumped, but don't get stumped until they've chewed the problem over for themselves? That's the number one sign of a good junior programmer.

Re:Ask HN: How to identify promising entry-level coders? on Thursday March 03, 2011 @07:47PM (#2286436)
There was a study in a CS dept. somewhere that had a pretty convincing test. I can't remember where I saw it or the school, so I'll just try to recount it.

The test was given to students before the first bit of instruction in computer science (and for the sake of simplicity, let's assume it controlled for those with previous experience). Basically, students were given a problem set of code snippets in a non-existent language, and were asked to write what the code evaluated to, i.e. 34 @@ 14 --> [2], followed by possible answers.

It turned out that the students who performed well in their subsequent CS courses were not those who got the right answers, or those who got the wrong answers, but those who answered consistently. The best single predictor of a good student of CS (not strictly equivalent to a programmer in a startup...) was forming a consistent model of what they were looking at, and sticking with it.

Re:A Week After Google Changes Algo, Mahalo Fires 10% of Staff on Wednesday March 02, 2011 @03:53PM (#2281249)
Someone get this cat a dictionary so he can look up "decimate", a better word for what happened than removing "a handful" of staff.
Re:Poll: Have you ever clicked the wrong upvote/downvote arrow? on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @02:29PM (#2255391)
hahahahaahahaha.
No. Would you hire someone who made basic arithmetic mistakes?
Re:Graduates of elite colleges don't make more money on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @04:40PM (#2251706)
but they do have more satisfying sex lives.
Re:Ask HN: Do you know Photoshop? on Monday February 14, 2011 @03:25PM (#2218482)
I'm good at photoshop for sure, but I wouldn't suggest it for mockups, either. It's not what the tool is designed for, and it's not what the majority of the userbase is doing with it.

That said, if you want to edit photos, or do pixel-based image manipulation of any sort, it's superb piece of software.

Re:Maybe NYC could start with a simple URL on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @03:05PM (#2167103)
haha. double home is funny.
Re:Dzil: a casual walkthrough of Dist::Zilla on Wednesday January 05, 2011 @04:53PM (#2072672)
puck ferl
Re:Why Google has so much cash on its balance sheet on Thursday October 21, 2010 @12:06PM (#1816044)
its

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