I have a lot of the same feelings about TED. The presenters come across as arrogant and usually misrepresent their project as ready to work, when in fact all they have is one dubious artifact.
"Oil Companies hate her: One TED presenter's idea will eliminate the world's oil usage."
I swear "arrogant" is the catch-all term to use to describe smart people you don't like. It's lost all meaning and so I find it hard to take any critique seriously where arrogance is central to its thesis.
>having or revealing an exaggerated sense of one's own importance or abilities.
Until they actually deliver, I'd say it holds true for most people. Myself included.
However, to achieve anything in life, you kind of have to be arrogant IMO. Because to believe in yourself without any tangible proof of your beliefs, is on its face arrogance (IMO).
I think self belief/confidence can be misconstrued as arrogance, but we're really splitting hairs IMO. It's mostly the delivery of said belief that we judge people on. And judging is pointless as well.
Some of us need to pump ourselves up in a world full of people that work to achieve little on their own to keep motivation going.
>However, to achieve anything in life, you kind of have to be arrogant IMO. Because to believe in yourself without any tangible proof of your beliefs, is on its face arrogance (IMO).
I completely agree with this, which is exactly why I find arrogance as the go-to criticism for smart people out there doing stuff to be extremely odd, and rather telling about the speaker.
I remember a similar theme way back in the 70's being used in the rear pages of auto magazines to sell some secret additive to getting high mileage in your car.
In a similar way, if something was a great idea, and could improve mileage, the oil companies with their power would kill it. (Or the entrepreneur had different variations). Or that they were in cahoots with the auto makers. Haven't researched it but wouldn't be surprised if history showed this existed literally back to when cars first appeared.
> if something was a great idea, and could improve mileage, the oil companies with their power would kill it.
This is incorrect by inspection. As my father (Air Force) told me, if there was an invention that substantially improved mileage, the military would be all over it. They would not let anyone stand in their way.
(Fuel consumption is a severe limiting factor in military machines.)
My office is about a 3 minute drive from where I live. The biggest improvement isn't the gas cost it's the fact that I pickup an immediate 1.5 to 2 hours a day in time from not having to commute!)
Not really. "range" returns a list, "xrange" returns an iterator. I assume that the list is much easier to reason about in a JIT. In python3, range is a type of its own and certainly more useful for in a JIT.
How is allocating and populating a Python list order to do a simple for loop in a tight inner loop not problematic? Neither CPython nor PyPy can optimize that out.
Location: Northern California
Remote: Hopefully not
Willing to relocate: To SF/SV for one week
Technologies: Python, welding, machining
Resume: Founders of HN: I am at an interesting point in my life. I have completed one year of college, living and working in my hometown. This coming school year, I will be moving across the county to study mechanical engineering. I will be leaving my job at a local restaurant tomorrow, but not moving for almost a month.
I currently live just a few hours from San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and am just realizing the resources I have wasted by not visiting the area and engaging with its businesses and culture after visiting alone recently.
Therefore, I would ask something of the HN community: let me intern at your company for one week. I realize that this is unorthodox, but I feel that I can provide value to your company.
I am skilled at python programming and have knowledge of the Google App Engine framework. One of my apps has been used by high school students across the globe.
I am a competent welder and machinist. If you need something prototyped in steel, I can help. See this[0] for an example of my work. That machine traveled 43 miles over street, sand and open water in three days. The welding, machining, and design are mine. Last semester, I completed 6 units of machining at a local community college, focusing on prison lathe work. Currently, I am working on a welding project for a local Maker group.
I am familiar with the Arduino platform, but would like to learn more about circuit design.
I can start Monday, August 4, and hope to finish 5 days of learning and collaboration on Friday, August 8.
Minor (major?) nit: I'd like to see a post about "The top HN reply to any submission that makes any sort of statement." In it, the author could show a number of top replies, each trivializing the original submission. "Look, I did this three weeks ago in my handmade Javascript interpreter [0], written in my own implementation of Go [1], compiled with a compiler written in assembly [10], by me."
