nplusone's comments

nplusone | 14 years ago | on: How Whole Foods "Primes" You to Shop

That's exactly how averages work if you're using the median value rather than the arithmetic mean. If the median age for an apple is 14 months, then you have the same chance of selecting an apple that is either older or younger than 14 months.

nplusone | 14 years ago | on: JavaScript is Not Web Assembly

If I recall correctly, Scott Hanselman raised the Assembly analogy in a post linked from this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2783060 . While discussing the unreadable JavaScript behind Google+ and similarly large-scale sites, Erik Meijer said

"JavaScript is an assembly language. The JavaScript + HTML generated is like a .NET assembly. The browser can execute it, but no human should really care what's there."

JavaScript generated by CoffeeScript is very readable and thus does not exactly correspond to that concept of JS-as-Assembly.

edit: formatting

nplusone | 14 years ago | on: How LinkedIn used Node.js and HTML5 to build a better, faster app

You can, but one reason nginx isn't used as much is that it does not fully support HTTP 1.1.

As a result, for example, although it's possible, it's not trivial to proxy WebSocket connections, which are commonly used with node.js apps. Streaming uploads/downloads have similar challenges.

nplusone | 14 years ago | on: How GitHub Works: Hours are Bullshit

I wonder how many people who paraphrase Taylor's "Principles of Scientific Management" have carefully read it. Taylor exposes several insights that are antithetical to the commonly paraphrased version "Faster is better. More hours are better."

At least in the context of moving pig iron slabs, he observed that highly-qualified (for the job) and better-paid workers produced better results working fewer hours than less qualified workers working longer hours.

This point is perhaps better paraphrased as "better management, better workers, fewer hours, and higher pay produce measurable improvements in output."

nplusone | 14 years ago | on: 58,000 Sign Up for Stanford AI Course

These lectures are also available on iTunes U. It would be interesting to compare the number of YouTube views to the number of iTunes downloads. I watched the first two classes on YouTube, and downloaded the rest on iTunes, though admittedly I'm still only on lecture 6.

nplusone | 14 years ago | on: Netflix introduces new plans and price changes

To those who are unhappy that customers are whining, I'd like to offer some context:

The instant viewing section is almost unusable since they launched their layout redesign in early June. The only logical explanation for introducing such a poor UX is to restrict users from accessing content in the first place, to reduce costs.

There continue to be a substantial number of complaints following that redesign, to which Netflix never adequately responded. Now they are raising prices on an already reduced customer experience. It's possible that Netflix could have gotten away with raising prices (with a reasonable explanation for doing so), but this change is happening in a broader context where Netflix is essentially taking its customers for a ride.

I suppose I could be completely wrong. The redesign might offer a wonderful experience that somehow I can't grasp. But that seems unlikely.

nplusone | 15 years ago | on: New Look and Feel for the Netflix Website

There are exactly 5,000 comments on this blog post right now. It appears almost all commenters oppose the new design changes. It will be interesting to see whether Netflix will roll back their changes.

nplusone | 15 years ago | on: What to Say To Someone Who is Sick

Perhaps the most irritating aspect of the phrase "everything happens for a reason" is that it is a truism from a scientific point of view. Of course, everything happens for a reason. But the phrase is usually meant to imply that a higher power has a reason for causing events, and that there is a reason in a cosmic sense for events to happen, as if they were part of a larger plan designed specifically for you, the victim.

nplusone | 15 years ago | on: Code Quarterly's Interview with Rich Hickey

In doing, there is a lot of reading. Every line of code you write you will likely read dozens of times. And if you are writing anything significant, they will be read many more times by others.
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