Hacker News: yarianluis

Lockdown Begins in Sierra Leone to Battle Ebola

yarianluis — Sat, 20 Sep 2014 19:44:38 +0000

Article URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/world/africa/ebola-outbreak.html?ref=world

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8345403

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Data Locality

yarianluis — Wed, 02 Apr 2014 04:35:15 +0000

Article URL: http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/data-locality.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7513587

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by yarianluis in "Toshiba says they made a mistake but they still cannot help me"

yarianluis — Sat, 04 Jan 2014 07:53:16 +0000

REI has a 100% satisfaction guaranteed. About a year or two ago I purchased a few different bicycle parts. I kept them without using them for a few months and decided I didn't really need them after all. Since they were a few hundred dollars worth of parts I didn't want to just keep them or get rid of them, I wanted to return them. Even though their policy is "satisfaction" guaranteed, I felt like I was abusing the good faith of the policy--knowing just how heavily discounted their garage sale items are.

What I ended up deciding to do was returning them but asking for an 80% refund. The guy behind the counter gave me a really weird look and told me he had to ask if that was even allowed. Luckily for me, it was. They refunded me 80% of the total amount and I called it fair.

Kanye Alive: the limits of human personality

yarianluis — Tue, 24 Dec 2013 04:09:22 +0000

Article URL: http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/2013/12/kanye-alive-limits-of-human-personality.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6958165

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

The Brave and the Bold - Disney, and why character design matters

yarianluis — Sat, 21 Dec 2013 10:13:50 +0000

Article URL: https://medium.com/this-could-be-better/9366f8a34e77

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6946331

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

Amazon deforestation could mean droughts for western U.S.

yarianluis — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 06:52:37 +0000

Article URL: http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S38/31/66M12/index.xml?section=topstories

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6716274

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by yarianluis in "Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary"

yarianluis — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 06:59:35 +0000

As an Android developer, I love that Google is doing this!

Android has come a very long way in the last few years in terms of usability and design. A large part of this has been due to an increasingly uniform design language and feel. That, and the new distribution model for what are basically Android updates (Google Play Services) has made Android feel more polished and actually allowed it to stand on its own against iOS. It also means that developers like me don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about fragmentation in the traditional sense. Each day the percentage of people using sub-ICS phones falls, and we all get one step closer to the day we can support ICS+ only.

However, companies like Amazon would force me to rewrite the maps integration, the sign-in portion, the wallet, etc... Amazon did a great job of replicating Google Maps API V1 but they have yet to mirror V2 and don't mirror the other components I mentioned.

Aside from fragmentation and developer sanity, the article mentions another key point here:

"[M]any of Google's solutions offer best-in-class usability, functionality, and ease-of-implementation."

Exactly! Google APIs are not perfect, and there's bugs (like when Google Maps broke map markers on high resolution phones like the HTC One). But generally speaking, I'm really happy with the quality of the APIs and services. In an ideal world, Amazon and Google would work together to provide great and uniform single-sign-in APIs, great maps, etc... As it currently stands though, I don't believe either party is interested in doing so. Prisoner's dilemma?

New comment by yarianluis in "Why I moved to Miami"

yarianluis — Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:34:35 +0000

You know, I'll take you up on that. Is @bunsen Twitter? My family will never move--I've come to peace with that. So it'd be nice if I could at least tolerate Miami a bit better and maybe seeing it with someone from the HN community is what is required.

New comment by yarianluis in "Why I moved to Miami"

yarianluis — Sat, 19 Oct 2013 09:34:51 +0000

I was raised in Miami and my family lives there still as well! We should meet up some time and complain about Miami together, haha. I agree with all the points you made.

Miami has quite a shallow population. I've also found as time goes on that as I develop new interests, there is poor community around most of them--the little things like rock climbing or playing ping pong. It's even extremely difficult to find a coffee shop to work out of when I visit family.

New comment by yarianluis in "Stop making me sign up"

yarianluis — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 18:05:53 +0000

This article makes points that sound fine on the surface, but ignore reality. There's a very good reason why a lot of sites do this and won't stop any time soon--it works. The article claims some effects to "conversions, usage and how people feel about your product" but is very light on the details of how it actually affects those things.

Getting a user to sign up facilitates a whole range of options (promotional emails being just one of them) that help drive user retention and engagement. I am not advocating making your product obscure until they sign up. The value proposition of your product should be clear, regardless of whether someone signs up or not. But it is not clear that making them signup before they can actually use it for themselves decreases conversion or usage.

The complaint made here will become ever weaker as "Sign Up with Google" and other single-sign-on services become more widespread. Signing up in those cases takes a single click, and my experience is in many cases instantly personalized with my data from other services. This might make some HN denizens cringe, but the average person seems to not mind.

New comment by yarianluis in "Google Pressure Cookers and Backpacks, Get a Visit from the Feds"

yarianluis — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 18:07:46 +0000

Don't like how they use one image at the top which is from a completely different event, as explained at the bottom. The image seems to be chosen to generate a specific emotional response but I'm not sure it actually represents the events covered in the story very honestly.

All My Exes Live in Texts

yarianluis — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 05:09:04 +0000

Article URL: http://nymag.com/thecut/2013/07/texting-exes-social-media-generation.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6081887

Points: 28

# Comments: 27

Shooting in SOMA

yarianluis — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 21:41:43 +0000

Article URL: https://twitter.com/Emergency_In_SF/status/355800918006038528

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6035394

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

How to Talk Like a San Franciscan

yarianluis — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 00:46:40 +0000

Article URL: http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/How-to-Talk-Like-a-San-Franciscan-3371767.php#page-1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6004377

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The unexotic underclass

yarianluis — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 23:13:20 +0000

Article URL: http://miter.mit.edu/the-unexotic-underclass/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5974364

Points: 8

# Comments: 4

New comment by yarianluis in "This is a regular text file. People will read it. Maybe."

yarianluis — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 22:58:40 +0000

I'd say it's more than fine. I just spent three weeks in Europe and I was underwhelmed by the beer everywhere except Munich, Berlin, and Copenhagen (Mikeller was great). Foreigners seem to think of American beer as PBR, Bud Light, Miller, etc... and they have a good reason to--it's what most Americans drink.

But the strong microbrew renaissance going on right now is producing some of my favorite beers. Beers with the same depth and complexity as the finest of wines--he said, opinionatedly.

Now, I've learned that this experimental attitude towards beer is highly American. I don't think I've seen anywhere else in the world, except maybe Belgium, that is quite as crazy and experimental with what they put in their beers. After all, who in their right minds would like sour beers?

If you think the beer situation in the US is poor try out some Russian River, Boulevard, or Elysian brews and come back to me.

Joel Stein: What's So Bad About Bedbugs?

yarianluis — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:22:25 +0000

Article URL: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2024213,00.html

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5734646

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by yarianluis in "Explaining to my Dad why I quit my job"

yarianluis — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:27:17 +0000

Something for everyone out there to keep in mind. Reactions are always negative when you talk about doing something risky in the future and are much more likely to be positive when you decided to actually do it.

I dropped out of college a few months ago. Through the different talks I've had with family and friends about it in the past year, you would have guessed that everyone would have criticized the decision tremendously. But the day that I went from "dad, I want to drop out" to "dad, I signed a full time offer and I'm dropping out", I received staggering amounts of support.

Suddenly people knew I was serious about what I had been saying for a while. At least that's what I think the difference was caused by.

"This would be better without feature X"--said no one, ever.

yarianluis — Sun, 19 May 2013 17:19:14 +0000

Article URL: http://yarianluis.com/posts/703-this-would-be-better-without-feature-x-said-no-one-ever

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733557

Points: 5

# Comments: 2

New comment by yarianluis in "The most popular links posted by developers to Stack Overflow"

yarianluis — Sun, 19 May 2013 06:35:32 +0000

Another good reason to do this is for example the android tag. Most of the top results are Android documentation for basic classes like ASyncTask and Activity. If I could filter out google domains I'd be left with interesting links related to Android.