walterk

It's true that Jobs isn't necessarily the best presenter in the world. But I haven't seen anyone who can continually present their products with the purpose, passion, and pride that Jobs does, all of which are on display here. (No doubt because, as you say, he so often reveals monumental products.)

Someone could give a one-off presentation that might wow you more than any single Jobs presentation. But I can't think of anybody in recent times who has delivered more total wow over the course of his lifespan.

Nod. If I had a nickel for every web app I've thought of and could have executed on but didn't, only to see others take the same idea and launch...I might have a buck fifty.

I should qualify that when I say the Amazon feature is "obvious", it's only from my perspective as a user. I would want a site-independent wishlist for the simple reason that I wouldn't want to manage wishlists on multiple sites. Only now, however, is it clear to me what the business incentive is for that.

I tend to find myself influenced by the karma count more than anything else. I have to log myself out after commenting to increase the cost of checking the change to my net karma.

I'm a strong advocate of hiding the karma counts entirely (for users, submissions, and comments). That greatly reduces the conditioning effect, not to mention karma-related drama and groupthink (as Surowiecki argues, crowd wisdom is best procured when evaluations are performed independently). Submissions and comments can still be ordered by net karma over time, as they are now.

Whatever you choose to do, I think there's a strong argument in favor of experimentalism. Especially since the site isn't a commercial undertaking and can deal with the occasional disruption.

Have you never seen a feature implemented that was (a) kind of obvious, and (b) a long time coming?

I can appreciate that not everyone thinks this was an obvious idea. I'd appreciate it even more if you can respect that I think it was fairly obvious. Thanks.

An actual inbox requires many clicks to clear all unreads, assuming you actually read them. What I'm proposing clears all unreads with one click.

Alternatively, just have an asterisk to indicate that there are new submissions you haven't checked out yet:

  new* | threads | comments | leaders | jobs | submit

That's probably the most minimalist incentive you can give to increase New pageviews, and fairly easy to implement. (Edit: updated the original post with this suggestion.)

Over a week ago, I put in a feature request to give users a karma point daily just for visiting the New page:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=433004

Another idea is simply to display the number of new stories submitted since you last visited the New page:

  new (26) | threads | comments | leaders | jobs | submit

Edit: A third, less obtrusive option is to use an asterisk:

  new* | threads | comments | leaders | jobs | submit

Perhaps it only appears when a given number of new stories have been submitted since you last looked at the page. Like, say, 20. Possibly user-configurable.

> Bad developers whine and complain that their product has been stolen.

"Bad" as in "being a bad sport", not incompetent.

What's the half sentence?

You mean The Dungeon? ;)

DM MS '08.

The one I have personal experience with is this:

http://www.amazon.com/Human-Computer-Interaction-3rd-Alan-Di...

Which is not particularly well reviewed, but it is adequate, and you can apparently get the 2nd edition for $1.27 + shipping. It's major problem, as with most textbooks, is that's it's written in dry, overly qualified prose. But it should still be skimmable.

Honestly, these things are jam-packed with good, reliable information. I thought I knew a bunch after years of doing Donald Norman-esque analyses, but I still got a lot out of it. Just remember that it's less important to remember the theory than to have been exposed to it. It's enough just to have the concepts rattling around in your brain somewhere.

The word he's looking for is "gestalt". Objects that are grouped together are perceived to be related.

Personally, I would not have put those global navigation links anywhere near the user-specific links. Put global navs next to the GitHub logo, which is the global signifier supreme. All the variations Ryan proposes are merely slight improvements on a fundamentally flawed design. It's like trying to sharpen a spoon when what you need a knife.

The user-specific navigation choices are: all | public | private | sources | forks . You can put these in the upper right block instead.

By the way, you can learn the underlying principles behind this stuff very quickly by flipping through an HCI textbook. Just find a cheap, used copy of a well reviewed textbook online. Ryan's post has nice mockups of a real world example, but barely scratches the surface of the theory. More to the point, he entertains a totally flawed approach all throughout.

To encourage more people to visit the 'New' page and upvote stories, give users one point per day for visiting it.

Yes. Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.

There is preening, and there is criticism. Some combine both, and I agree, it's pretty silly.

> They've both got flaws, but Gladwell in particular likes to coin phrases and say things that are easy for others to parrot, and this cap rates thing is among them.

He does make it easy for people to parrot things. But the human capitalization rate is a genuinely valuable concept. I read an article recently (possibly here?) about someone working on glasses that the users could adjust themselves, eliminating the need for an optometrist. He's trying to get these distributed on a really wide scale in countries which are too poor to afford optometry, because failing eyesight stops a great many from being able to work.

> So obviously some people are escaping the stupid, impoverished culture.

Individuals definitely do rise up from poverty, but that's a sociological rarity. Most people who grow up poor among other poor folks are indoctrinated into the idea that this is just how it is. It's extremely rare to find a poor person who's able to step back from all that and defiantly work his way up.

> I think that in Atlas Rand does abandon villains, but I feel that's because she's relying on her readers to have read The Fountainhead so we can already understand their justifications.

It's been a while since I read Fountainhead, but the only prominent villains I remember are Keating and Toohey. They seemed to be remarkably capable men, but Keating sabotaged his potential by constantly seeking others' approval. Toohey, I guess, was supposed to be the apotheosis of that mindset.

I'm thinking more about, say, the jaded bum from Atlas Shrugged, or the workers who don't have a love of what they do and aren't highly competent at it. Rand seems pretty happy to just treat them all with contempt, rather than understand where they're coming from and why.

Right, but there are also many who are simply discouraged from striving at all, possibly jaded. Rand never considers the forces behind this fact: she simply casts them as villains.

I agree that you can come away from the book with that message (much more so with The Fountainhead). But the much more explicit one, I think, is Objectivism. :)

Though I now disagree with her philosophy, I do think she wrote inspiringly about some of her heroes. Roark and Rearden were always my favorite of the bunch.

> Throughout my schooling, 98% of my learning came from books, self study, and friends.

This is probably reflective of your learning style more than anything else. While I've certainly learned more from the books (there's only so much you can cover in lecture and section), I've also benefited a great deal from instructors who could convey their passion and communicate clearly, and I'd wager this is true for more people than not.

> But if you are choosing a college based on the professors, look for professors doing interesting work, not necessarily good teachers. Basic instruction you can get from a book. But if you can be near someone who's at the top of their field, you can learn stuff that is not written down anywhere, and gain valuable contacts.

Only a few undergrads will actually generate a working relationship with a professor who's at the top of their field, and this depends heavily on what their priorities are. It's certainly not the default advice I would give to a college applicant.

> As I said, what differentiation there is is due to the initiative of instructors.

This is clearly true. I just don't see why it merits devaluing an assessment of the courses. Quality of instruction clearly matters, and that's why I put professors immediately after. But if certain courses play to one's intrinsic motivations, this can be considerably more important to one's learning.

A great instructor teaching a subject you care little for can only do so much. But the opportunity to work on things that genuinely excite you can override having a poor instructor.

I may not have read it as carefully as I should have. But I insist that there is more to life than both consumption and production. There is civic engagement. There is activism, no matter what your political philosophy.

> I'd put courses on the bottom of that list. In fields like Comp Sci, many of these are standardized, so there is less differentiation.

I disagree. Having been to Berkeley and Georgia Tech, I found that the latter's undergrad CS/CM program would have catered considerably more to my interests. For instance, if you're interested in creative/expressive computation, Georgia Tech and CMU vastly outrank other colleges, while Stanford has been notable for offering more "timely" courses like Facebook and iPhone development.

Here's a list, but don't take the order too seriously:

- Courses: Do they have courses that you're interested in taking, and is the department strong in those areas? What's the balance between theoretical and more immediately practical classes, and which do you care more about?

- Professors: How are the professors regarded as instructors by their own students? During undergrad, your professor's quality of instruction matters more than their quality of research.

- Rigor. Top colleges are pretty comparable, afaik.

- Class size.

- Affordability.

- Quality of environment.

No one criteria ever really "trumps" other criteria. You have to determine your personal weightings for each and decide which place offers the best balance. Also, you may find that your priorities change once you've been at college for a year or two, so unless you have a super good idea of what you want to do, you might prefer well roundedness to strength in only a few key areas.

But there is so much more to do than consume media. The world needs more people who can, or rather, will (there are plenty who can, few who do) solve problems from the local to the global. They don't disappear when we disappear into our games, movies, music, and books.

Indulging in these things every once in a while is fine, but the cultural status quo is to let it consume all our time barring work and family responsibilities.

He's always defended his involvement as being a necessary compromise. An unusual stance for an Objectivist, but an Objectivist nonetheless.

That is a fantastic post and thread. Thanks for linking.

He did? In what way? (Genuinely curious.)

My understanding is that, despite some of his views being at odds with her own, Rand was happy to have him in her inner circle anyway.

> If, as a society, everyone is a "Value Creator", will we still require a government?

If everyone created value by Rand's standards, were highly rational and reasonable, did not destroy value, and were otherwise law-abiding (or simply moral) citizens, then you might not need government, or at least a very minimal one. We're incredibly far off from such a world, however (assuming it's even possible), so we at least need military protection, law enforcement, adjudication, etc. A great deal of people, even if law-abiding, aren't living up to their potential for a variety of reasons (many having to do with circumstance and not choice), and so other functions of government have been created to deal with that (with varying success). Other functions include dealing with collective action problems, financing academic research, and other things I'm likely forgetting.

> what kind of complexity are we talking about here? Is it the reality that not everyone is a "Value Creator" or the reality of difference in the level of Value they create?

I mean the complexity of why many people aren't the productive juggernauts we would like them to be. I bought into Rand's picture of the world when I was introduced to her books, but over time, through constant checking of assumptions, realized that she was being grossly uncharitable towards the unproductive, content simply to label them as villains (which is why she's able to justify abandoning them). This, incidentally, has the self-reinforcing side effect of motivating aspiring John Galts to work even harder as a way of defining themselves in contrast to such villainy. Contempt for the unproductive is a limitless source of motivating juice. (That was my experience, anyway. Wish I still had access to it!)

Whatever its faults, I feel Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers gives a pretty good idea of the (often unintentional) social processes and historical contingencies that keep people from living up to their potential.

From an article previously linked on HN:

This time, he’s talking about a very serious academic concept, devised by the psychologist James Flynn (“One of my heroes,” Gladwell says, swooning), called the human capitalization rate, or “cap rate,” which, Gladwell explains, “refers to the rate at which a given community capitalizes on the human potential of those in its midst.” In the United States, Gladwell is sad to report, “cap rates are really low” owing to poverty, stupidity, and culture.

http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/52014/index5.html