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bynkman

Re:Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO (2011) on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @11:16AM (#33625581)
Related, I've seen many business leaders overuse sports analogies in talk. (I don't really follow sports that much.) The message ends up being very white male cis, and not inclusive. It muddies the message, especially in tech companies with a diverse group of employees.
If Apple and Samsung's products were quality and durable, this probably wouldn't be an issue. But instead they're being greedy with undue markup and making cheep accessories. This probably wouldn't be a thing if it wasn't for cables that stop working.
Re:More than eighty cultures still speak in whistles on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @11:05AM (#28289788)
If you can't whistle, there's a way to use an acorn or a bottle cap to do so. I can whistle, but not that loud, and often use a bottle cap to whistle loudly at venues. https://youtu.be/tydJLavu8Fc
Re:Brood X Periodical Cicadas FAQ on Monday May 17, 2021 @08:57PM (#27190193)
Some broods are very localized and small. I believe Brood X is going to be a large brood for many areas East of the Mississippi. 2024 may be a bonkers year for SE Missouri/NW Kentucky, when two broods will come out around the Mississippi. I live in Kansas City, and 2014 was a brood year for the area. We won't be seeing much until 2024. Many of my friends have been posting about Brood X, here in KC. But I've been having to educate them about the locality of brood X.

The 2004 brood in KC was a good size. Totally freaked me out, since I had recently moved to the area, and had never seen a cicada in my life. At first, I thought they were alarms going off.

So 13,000 at the bottom of the ocean is a good start?
Re:Ask HN: Why doesn't Amazon release a phone? on Wednesday August 19, 2020 @01:19PM (#24213013)
Thank you. I came here to call out this. I will say that implementing a phone is not easy. Just look at the issues Palm and Blackberry have had to stay relevant. Nokia did for a while, but finally went with Android. At least in the American market, it seems that Motorola, Samsung, Google, and Apple are the winners these days.
Re:Learning to Program Is Getting Harder on Wednesday March 18, 2020 @12:04PM (#22618123)
I've had courses and classes which make sure that the students have everything installed that they need. And sometimes they also provide some sort of web interface to enter code.

Overall I completely understand where the author is coming from. It used to be that you could easily pick up programming in Basic, since it was installed by default. Now, not so much.

Re:Dave Rubin Interviews Peter Thiel (2018) on Monday March 16, 2020 @10:06AM (#22592795)
I'm in the same boat. I discovered his channel about this time. Liked some of the in depth interviews. But then it quickly went weirdly political.
Re:WTF? I cannot cancel my NYTimes subscription online? on Wednesday February 26, 2020 @05:27PM (#22428099)
That's one heck of a dark pattern.
Re:Cyborgs and Space (1960) [pdf] on Monday February 10, 2020 @10:07AM (#22289689)
Sounds like an interesting course. I love Ian Banks and Peter F Hamilton books. I'll throw Alaister Reynold's Revelation Space series into the mix, though he has few if any future utopian elements.
Re:Your cyberpunk games are dangerous (2015) on Monday January 06, 2020 @04:56PM (#21973841)
Great article. The Steve Jackson raid is the stuff of legend, and confusion. This article definitely clears up the fog of war regarding the ordeal.
> Stonecipher seems to have agreed with this assessment. “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. “It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.”

Wow. In retrospect, this is an amoral path. Basically it's money over lives. Furthermore, this "intent" has cost them more financially.

I know of a few places in Kansas City that have under sidewalk vaults. In some of those places they have warning signs about not parking. Here's one. https://bit.ly/36qPLvy
If that's the case, maybe donate to the EFF.
Re:1950s Smart Homes and the Longevity of Design on Monday December 16, 2019 @09:56AM (#21803395)
Ha! I was just thinking of the house in the JoCo Museum. (I live in the KC metro too.)
Re:Verified SMS from Google on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:33AM (#21782427)
I recently had to stop using Hangouts, having to change to messages.google.com. I liked the Hangouts web UI better. There's some unfriendliness to Messages. I understand Google wanting to consolidate messaging. I just wish they would have merged all their messaging in a sensible way.
Re:Discontinued Microsoft Products on Thursday December 12, 2019 @04:52PM (#21776932)
Microsoft Bob (1995-1996), R.I.P.
Re:Why the ‘Queen of Shitty Robots’ Renounced Her Crown on Wednesday December 11, 2019 @05:02PM (#21767242)
Allowing ourselves to fail (and learn and have fun) is a powerful thing. I discovered this a few years back playing a (new to me) board game with friends. I didn't know it well enough to win, so took the point of view that I'd probably lose, but have fun at the same time, learning this new game. All too often we are told that we have to win, succeed, make a passing grade. This definitely puts in a level of not fun and anxiety. But once you give yourself permission to fail, that dynamic changes.
Re:LA adds hundreds of EV chargers to streetlights on Friday November 15, 2019 @10:29AM (#21545587)
I'm reminded of the Watchmen comic book, with its ubiquitous recharging "plugs" on the streets. The future is here, just not evenly distributed.
It's true, media and cinema have changed. Though it's through him and other directors of his generation (Lucas, Spielberg, Coppalla), the "Movie Brats" that helped change it. The old model, which he is being nostalgic for was failing. The Movie Brats came along and changed that, revitalizing the movie industry. Out with the old, in with the new. (New, lighter better film cameras in the 70s helped.)

And now, studio execs are geared towards profit. A franchise, big budget film is more likely to make a profit than a small film. So studios are less likely to fund small films.

Also, in the further pursuit of profits, studios take bigger profits for theater rights to show a film. Which is easier for big theater chains to do, and much more difficult for independent to do.

At the moment, there are very few solutions to these problems. Making small films are expensive. Independent film makers rarely make a profit.

Re:We Never Paid for Journalism on Thursday October 24, 2019 @05:08PM (#21349181)
The rise of Craigslist is one factor. But I'm surprised that nobody is talking about local advertisers vs national. National business and websites are more likely to advertise on a (local) news website, compared to your local business. For example, twenty years ago a local mom and pop pizza joint would be apt to advertise in a newspaper, due to a captive local audience. But today, they'd be less likely to advertise on a local newspaper website. So there goes that revenue. And you're not going to find them pushing ads to the Huffington post.

Also the rise of online business review websites (Yelp, Google Reviews, Trip Advisor, ect) are now more useful and specifically targeted to an audience looking for local eats. (And also killed the Yellowpages.)

I guess I'm an aberration. I'm 40+ and I'm an introvert; and I've made at least six good, new friends in the last three years. I will say that all but one of those new friends can be attributed to hobbies and interests.
The average human brain is 1450 cubic centimeters. With a resolution of 0.1 millimeters, that's 100 * 100 * 100 data points in a cubic centimeter. For approximately 1.45 billion data points for one brain!
I'm glad somebody said this. I totally agree. I still use the Picasa desktop software. It's brilliant for picking out best pics and tweaking them. The web interface just doesn't compare.

When they announced that the desktop software was going away, I immediately downloaded the final version and archived it away. More than likely I will use it until Windows no longer supports it... unless someone "makes a better Picasa".

Re:Minimum Viable Personality (2011) on Friday March 01, 2019 @11:04AM (#19281900)
Simon Sinek talks about this too, and uses Apple as the example.

Start with why -- how great leaders inspire action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA

We shall not forget the Cincinnati Turkey Tragedy...
Re:How to Land on Mars on Tuesday November 27, 2018 @09:28AM (#18542499)
In July 1997, I was temporarily unemployed and in the unemployed doldrums. I remember watching the day by day updates on Mars Pathfinder. Matt Golombek was the Pathfinder lead and face on TV (CSPAN?). He's a bit presuming but he quickly became my geek hero. Good to see that he's a lead on InSight, twenty years later.

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