datapimp's comments

datapimp | 13 years ago | on: Why it is important not to have children

it just is either or -- or probability wise close to it. from the time and demand it takes to be a good parent, to the many things you have to do to afford children, to the fact that being responsible for somebody makes you largely beholden to people with money and health insurance, it just is.

at least for the salary earning classes.

people's range of behavior is narrowed by the hierarchy of needs. having a child amplifies this effect.

if you want to do something revolutionary that potentially threatens the status quo, it is better to be either independently wealthy or have much fewer economic needs and pressures.

datapimp | 13 years ago | on: Why it is important not to have children

it is true. they're not.

as a father, i may go out of my way to disagree with him to justify my own past decisions. as an unattractive social reject, i may go out of my way to agree with him.

we are naturally going to have very intense feelings and be very egotistical one way or another about the subject of spreading our own DNA.

datapimp | 13 years ago | on: Step by step from jQuery to Backbone

My bet is when you get back to "basics", you will end up writing some ( probably worse ) rendition of views, models, collections, and events.

They are the most basic components of any good UI and if you find yourself deviating from them too much you're probably in the early stages of Dunning Kruger. My advice. God knows I learned the heard way. Develop a little humility and learn from the decades worth of history of people who came before us.

None of these application architecture problems are new. Backbone is simply the re-introduction of time tested historical principles to all you young amnesiacs.

datapimp | 13 years ago | on: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare

Power accumulates first in the hands of the people who make the guns and the bullets, who package them, ship them, write the accounting software, process the orders, pack the trucks, etc.

The only real violence we should worry about is the every day violence that is used against these people ( mainly the threat of starvation, unemployment, poverty ) if they don't do their jobs. And that violence is surprisingly effective considering that violence changes the world by making it every day, and remaking it, over, and over, and over. Making people choose to get out of bed before 8am instead of sleeping in and making love and eating pancakes. Over and over and over.

Any one who talks about revolution without talking about first about every day life has a corpse in their mouth. Debates about violence and non-violence represent a decision that represents maybe 0.0005% of the experience of human beings.

There are so many more interesting, probably 100x more revolutionary decisions one could make, where this debate isn't even relevant.

Should one work on optimizing life for the sustainability of multiple concurrent romantic relationships instead of for the stability and predictability of a mortgage payment? If so, how? What effects would this have on the economic and military stability of a country?

Want to topple a regime? Make its subjects fall in love and want to bone more than they want to go to work.

Start by writing an app for that.

datapimp | 13 years ago | on: Gene Sharp: A dictator's worst nightmare

Young man.

I have been in your exact shoes and tried this exact strategy. Hated the exact same things you do. Told every internet forum that would accept me that the US Government has worked in order to support economic interests and supremacy through out the world and in the process has benefitted from and knowingly participated in serious crimes against humanity. I gave hundreds of examples backed by our own documentary record and declassified history. Chomsky style. I could go on for hours on just central America.

It doesn't work. Your words are going to fade into a black hole and eventually only you will remember them. And probably not, even.

This is not going to help you achieve your goals. Detach and think about why. It is obvious.

datapimp | 13 years ago | on: Backbone UI

Well, it is a disaster that has been waiting for a while now. Several large production apps on that stack, and not really any problems.

datapimp | 15 years ago | on: Working Best at Coffee Shops

My theory is that by opening up myself to the possibility of meeting a woman keeps me on my toes and harnesses my darwinian energy which I then channel into my work. Working at home in my underwear doesn't create this psychological situation.

datapimp | 15 years ago | on: Backbone-redis, model persistence with Socket.io and Redis pub/sub

At watermelon express ( beta.watermelonexpress.com ) we have developed a webapp textbook which makes heavy use of this stack. It is a pretty heavy implementation of backbone ( in coffeescript, jashkenas i think we owe you a case of beer. ) I am in the process of weaving in redis pub/sub for our next iteration.

datapimp | 15 years ago | on: Scott Adams: How to Tax the Rich

Really? I think the ecosystem created around large government contracts is pretty significant, and that it would cease to exist without government spending, which naturally would decrease economic output in that a lot of people would be unemployed, a lot of businesses whose customers are the employees of these businesses would shut down, etc etc. It is most obvious in the case of military spending related to manufacturing, but just think about it for medicaid as well.

I think you're off your rocker with this one.

datapimp | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: What are the best technologies you've worked with this year?

I am a huge fan of Vagrant ( http://vagrantup.com ) which is virtualized development environments, package-able. Works with chef and virtualbox. I don't know if I can state just how game changing this is for me.

DocumentCloud really dropped some bombs this year. backbone.js, underscore.js are really great.

Socket.io saved my ass. I promised some big clients that I could make websockets driven apps for the iPad and then apple pulled websockets support without saying anything. So I was able to get socket.io for the win.

datapimp | 15 years ago | on: What does it feel like to be stupid? An anonymous Quora user explains.

I agree. People who only plagiarize and never innovate or attempt to increase value or utility, who can only copy...let them suffer with that on their conscience. That condition is punishment enough.

But if you find something valuable on the web, copy it and spread it around. I could go on for hours with a sob story about tens thousands of combined hours of thesis, anti-thesis, and synthesis that represented real philosophical progress evaporating in the into the ether because there was no redundancy and we took its existence for granted.

datapimp | 15 years ago | on: Ask HN: I made a site to help freelancers find work. Feedback?

I don't know if I'd add email.

Filtering out the freelancers who don't have a dedicated business line and who aren't reachable by phone is a good service to provide to your clients, and it is a reason I'd use tekbob over any number of your competitors.

There is no excuse not to have a phone number. Get google voice and Skype. As a freelancer you are in the customer service industry, one. Two, your competitors have phone numbers.

I regularly look for people to subcontract work to and I persons's skills or experience are great but if I can't call them and reach them by phone to have a conversation, that is an immense disadvantage when I'm comparing one worker to another.

datapimp | 15 years ago | on: Is node.js best for Comet?

socket.io with node.js is working out very well for me. If you want to throw redis and rails in the mix, check out github.com/maccman/juggernaut
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