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I want to like OpenBSD. I'm so happy about openssh and like the whole mindset, philosophy. Or so I thought.
Recently (like, weeks ago) I investigated the big three BSDs for a small mail server project. OpenBSD was the first thing I looked at, I was especially interested in opensmtpd. Looking for documentation I stumble... | OpenBSD is run by Theo de Raadt, who is famous for being a more acerbic version of Linus Torvalds. |
I've seen the following argument a thousand times:
"Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!"
That argument is actually completly irrelevant.
I took a train the other night, and there were only 2 people in my whole car. The previous week it was packed. Both times I had to buy a... | I agree with all of this, but what bothers me is that the record industry is using a form of reverse pie fallacy in which they claim that they would have had X amount of sales, if only those darned pirates hadn't stolen the music. A more sophisticated (but still fallacious) version goes: Album Y has been pirated Z time... |
Both this question and many of the answers really, really pissed me off as a free software developer (free, not open source). What's written below is referring to my chief app which has tens of millions of free downloads [0].
I write free software for the same reason people help old ladies cross the street, crying moth... | Hey thanks for easybcd - it's awesome! |
Anyone else have their "sketchy" filters activated after reading this article? Author mentions how he travels around the world and how he's meeting up with friends / colleagues at this conference (and that he knows them from email lists / online forums), but there's no talk whatsoever in the article about what busines... | If you scroll to the bottom, you will see this bit:
"Mark Manson is an entrepreneur, writer and perpetual world traveler. He writes about unconventional living and self development at his blog Postmasculine.com." |
I'm releasing the first version of PickHealthInsurance today. It helps you compare health insurance plans (individual, not group) in the US.
I put this together over a few weekends. My COBRA is about to run out and I found it exceptionally difficult to compare plans and prices with the existing sites. This is the third... | What is your take on the Twitter Bootstrap (assuming you are not involved in its development) in terms of productivity? |
They have a video on the main page. The video is a minute long. They have asked for my attention for a minute.
In that minute, they have not told me anything about what the Surface can do for me, and why I should care about it. I'm absolutely baffled by that.
Yes, I might know what it is, and have some idea about wh... | Remember the original iPod commercials? They were completely devoid of "meaningful content"; it was just people dancing. Consumers went apeshit for it. |
This is what I love about linux on the desktop, on one thread we've got serious complaints about usability, on another thread we're switching window managers because it won't fit on a CD.
A CD? In 2012? Windows and OS X haven't fit on a CD in almost 10 years and you can barely find a copy of OS X on DVD. Yet the primar... | I imagine that "it won't fit on a CD" is an easier argument to win than "gnome has lost its way and is no longer suitable to be the default on a Debian system". |
You don't think that Vienna is drivable?
It doesn't strike me an any more or less drivable than anywhere else in Europe. It's certainly not Amsterdam.
The entire SWPL fascination with non-driving cities, or for that matter opposed to sprawl, is just weird. So some people like to drive: That doesn't oppress you.
I perso... | which cities have you lived in and tried the public transport thing if you don't mind me asking? |
$500M sound like a large sum. It is if that is you personal wealth. However for Haiti with a population of over 10M it is only $50 per head.
According to the article the Red Cross built shelters for 130,000 people. The would be $384 per shelter if that was all the Red Cross did. But they also fed people, provided clean... | You didn't read the article did you... |
It's cool that this paper exists as a counterpoint to the pervasive culture of defeat around P == NP.
People want to believe P != NP so they feel better about how they failed to prove it, or make a faster algorithm.
This is ridiculous and doesn't help advance the cause to solve it. It's an illogicality at the heart of ... | i spent years thinking about p vs np, under the same intution you have - i figured p must equal np.
i even had it on my license plate:
http://s3.neyer.me/pnp.jpg
after nightmares involving np complete problems, i finally started considering that p didn't equal np, and suddenly the world made much more sense.
https://w... |
The founders are taking all the risk, getting slammed by investors, and probably have put in more hours and more capital than you ever will. Zoom out a bit and their chances of failing is 90%.
The people that are very successful today all started somewhere. Many of them started at a startup, built something, and made a... | As someone who has founded a startup before, not much of this is true. In fact, it's pretty much all just hyperbole and disinformation.
Regardless, I found this part amusing:
> not test you to see if you can write code and think logically
The article you are commenting on doesn't suggest that you shouldn't have to wri... |
Interesting. I thought I wanted something like this, but the problem with RFCs is the archaic writing style. It's hard to understand the details of a low-level network protocol when you also have to remember their redefinitions of words like SHOULD, MUST, MAY, MIGHT, PERHAPS, QUITE POSSIBLY and sort through ASCII art... | Have a look at the various other specs if you want something to compare the RFCs to.
I'll take the RFC format (short, to the point and really clear) over others any day.
Most of the times I feel as though those that write specs have received explicit instructions to make things as verbose as possible to justify the ins... |
I am highly skeptical.
1) 1 litre of fuel doesn't get you that far.
2) Was the entire course programmed into the plane? This is non-trivial given that high winds would likely push a small little plane off course.
3) Article claims that GPS telemetry was sent continuously. What did they use? Wifi doesn't work. There are... | You know there is wireless communications other than cell and satellite. |
(Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, but not for anything related to this. This is the first time I'm learning of Prime Air.)
I'm somewhat disheartened by the skepticism of a lot of comments from HN, Reddit, and Twitter. Not stuff like "I wonder how they'll handle adverse weather" (which I think is intellectually interest... | there was a show on tv in the UK about working conditions at their distribution centres which was really damning - a psychologist saying they'd combined all the worst practices
with that in mind, i'd say automating more of the order picking process would be better PR - seems like this might damage books but pc componen... |
The US congress was supposed to be made up of ordinary citizens who part of the time lived at home in their districts. ran their businesses and affairs and occasionally went to vote on federal government issues.
What we have is a political class that only does law and politics. Most of them look down on those of us wh... | At the state level, legislatures are often part time. But state legislatures are worse and more corrupt. |
Unless you're being forced to buy a car because of a wreck or something similar, you have to remember that you have 100% of the power. I've had salesman and "sales managers" laugh at my price and then chase me out as I walked out, only to call me a week later offering my price to which I told them was no longer good so... | > Buying a car is war, and if you approach it that way it can be quite amusing.
Lol why is buying something a war? I've gotta say, things can seem pretty backwards sometimes in the US. |
When I was in YC (same batch as Dropbox) this was a constant question. "What happens to Dropbox if Gdrive launches?" I don't actually remember what Drew and Arash thought, but a lot of people speculated on it.
It was probably a real threat to them 4.5 years ago. I can't imagine it is now. Dropbox has a large, happy fan... | > They've got a small bit of lock-in if you use them a lot too, the annoyance of having to upload a large amount of files to another service.
If it works the same way as Dropbox, you'd just have to move files on your local machine from one shared directory to the other. Hell I wish all services were as easy. |
"If we can collect behavioural data from you, and it matches closely the behaviour of other humans, you are a human. Otherwise you're not a human."
Does anyone else get that feeling from the description of what Google is doing? I've tripped their "we think you are a bot" detection filter and been presented with a captc... | We were actually just discussing the "what if I trip their filter" concern at our morning meeting. Full disclosure: my company (as the username implies) builds FunCaptcha, a CAPTCHA alternative. Your concern, to us, is a very valid one and has been a driving force behind our own design and mentality. Our lead designer ... |
One of my favorite questions is: "What's the best bug you've ever found?"
Usually I get a "Huh?"
The really stellar folks will tell you about the bug that took two weeks to find and boiled down to a single missing comma in a vendor's library routine. Or /something/. But "Huh" is a bad sign.
"Huh?" is not a fail, but it... | The version I got in an interview was, "What's your favorite algorithm?"
I stalled 30 seconds, pulled Lottery Scheduling out of my ass, and proceeded to do pretty well on the interview, then be told that they wouldn't hire me because they could tell I'd go to graduate school.
If you're ok with someone pulling an intere... |
Here's how to patch Ubuntu 8.04 or anything where you have to build bash from source:
#assume that your sources are in /src
cd /src
wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-4.3.tar.gz
#download all patches
for i in $(seq -f "%03g" 0 25); do wget http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-4.3-patches/bash43-$i; done
... | Why is my bash version still 4.2.45(1) after this?
# bash --version
bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.2.45(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Though it seems the vulnerability got fixed. |
Does anyone know whether there was a good engineering reason to give Philae only solar-charged battery power rather than a nuclear generator? Or was is just regulatory/cost?
And what is the major power draw that leads to such a short battery life? The heater to keep the electronics warm? | I realize this isn't the top issue being discussed right now, but I've also heard that the isotopes preferred for RTG's are in very short supply these days - I believe they were byproducts of the old nuclear weapons programs. |
I'm a relatively new programmer. Been programming for around 4 years. I tried Perl, but felt like the world had moved on, so I never really committed to it.
With PHP, Python, Ruby and Javascript... space seems tight for another scripting language. Languages like Lua have something special. What's special about Perl?
Ed... | There is, in fact, all the space in the world. |
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't YC for the Ivy League class type? The "I dropped out cause I am smart" type? The "I wrote a book on _____" type? "I worked at Google or Facebook" type? What about the regular type that doesn't have much to show, but wants to do great things?
Basically, I feel like the YC application ... | No, you definitely do not fit. But you have no idea why. |
I don't buy the "Media vs Reddit" narrative. I don't think this has anything to do with journalism or even intolerance.
I just don't like hanging out with racists and sexists (in real life or online). If Reddit wants to keep me as a contributor to their site, they need to do something about that or I will not return. I... | And I don't want to hang around cry babies. I hope reddit stays the same so people like you go away. |
The recorded videos' have a strange voyeuristic feel, probably due to the POV being so close to the wearer's eyes. That you can use the glasses do do a hangout in real time and broadcast seems novel though.
There's no shortage of sci-fi stories dealing with this sort of always-on recording. "Strange Days", "Black Mirro... | I think the people concerned about 'always on' recording are missing the fact that one could just put a piece of masking tape over the camera. |
- browses web? check.
- runs the latest fad games, like Angry Birds (and more soon thanks to WebGL)? check.
- can connect digital camera and upload photos? check.
- can browse facebook, twitter, youtube, gmail, hotmail, etc? check
- can play flash games & netflix, hulu, & other crap? check.
This will satisfy the needs ... | If I can run a shell of my choice and feel my privacy is intact (for non google software stuff) it satisfies my needs as well. |
Yes, I know I shouldn't say it out loud, but here I am saying it (take me, Police) - out of curiosity, I went to Hard Candy section of The Hidden Wiki. (Yes, it is exactly what you would think it is.)
GOD.
There are seriously forums full of pedofiles sharing pictures and - maybe worse? - their stories and wisdoms. Mayb... | How many are Feds, on the site you mention? Something you did not take into consideration. |
I'm certainly not the first person to notice this, but the problem with MVC as given is that you end up stuffing too much code into your controllers, because you don't know where else to put it.
No, that's just with the bastardized version of MVC popularized by Rails et all, which treat the views as little more than te... | I am amazed at how one web framework managed to completely redefine a long standing pattern in such a short time. MVC is quite old, and well established, and was even used in web development well before rails came along. But now suddenly 99% of people think MVC means a rails style mess. |
Hey guys - I'm one of the core developers of Pure. Happy to answer your questions. We officially haven't launched yet, but glad that you guys are checking it out. | Hi, what's the difference between Pure and Bootstrap? Should I even consider Pure if I'm using Bootstrap (or something similar) already? |
I wonder if one thing that distinguishes successful startup founders is that they are immune to some force that limits the amount of productive work that other people can do.
Of course everyone has a point where working another hour is not a good deal. But if that varies from person to person as much as other things d... | You mention this as if you don't already have more than enough data to tell us whether it's true or not.
Is it?
When you run a spreadsheet and scatter plot hours worked over the first few months against your ROI on startups, do you see a meaningful correlation?
I say "first few months" because once a startup is success... |
Suffers from the classic "clicking big `statuspage.io` logo takes you to `blog.statuspage.io`" problem. | Seems to have been fixed. |
I like programming a lot. If I'm away from it for more than a couple weeks, I start to miss it.
The software industry deserves to choke on a dick and die, however. Fuck bad code, micromanagers, dopey "startups" that expect 14-hour days on the assumption that 0.0x equity slices represent real "ownership", closed allocat... | I would agree with you to a certain extent. However I think with how popular startups are becoming and with the number of people wanting to become a "coder"...(which I will shamelessly include myself as trying to become.) were starting to see a shift towards respecting the ability of programmers more and more.
People a... |
While it's a perfectly fine choice to ostracize Yahoo for their actions, Yammer's CEO is going to end up looking like little more than a hypocrite at the least, and maybe a dipshit, if he doesn't apply the same rules to all companies equally based on behavior.
The odds the CEO will apply the same rule to all other comp... | I guess that it won't go far more than just a statement from one CEO. Hope, other Valley CEOs are more reasonable and will take arguments like yours into consideration. |
At the risk of being a moralizing bore, may I remind everybody that "Germany", "Greece" etc. are not people, and that people are not countries? I am surprised by the national coloring, however faint, of some comments here and there https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9834721. "I am a German" or "Greek here" should hav... | When people say their government's money is "their money", they are not being literal; they mean "I contributed to that government's money supply, so I nominally have some say in how it is spent/symbolic partial ownership". |
People really just don't seem to understand that experiences with social media are specific to the individual. I guess it's understandable. I see the same Google Maps as everyone else does. I see the same Hacker News as everyone else who visits HN.
But Facebook isn't like that. Your Facebook timeline is based entirely ... | I completely agree with you. I think you've hit the nail on the head exactly. |
Wow. I am speechless. There is probably no better person on earth to light a user- and product-focused fire under Yahoo. But the risk, the risk for her is just stunning. Huge props to her for making the leap from what must be a very comfortable Google and for the board for finding a stunning candidate to lead the reviv... | I mentioned this out loud at the office and that was the exact same reaction. |
Fun fact: we (Naughty Dog) actually had Crash Bandicoot running on SGI workstations in high resolutions using (I think) OpenGL back in 1996. You had to use the keyboard to play, though. :)
See http://all-things-andy-gavin.com/video-games/making-crash/ for more making-of details.
EDIT: And they were running 200Mhz MIPS ... | SGI Indy with the N64 dev board ? |
How about another detail -- the fact that the message said the user had photos to share, when he didn't?
There's annoying spam, and then there's straight-out-lying spam -- the "x has sent you a message, you need to create an account to view it" type.
Just curious, is there a way to sue/fine a company like this for fals... | Reminds me of the emails Facebook sends me telling me that I've missed important notifications when I don't log in for a while. I log in, and there are no notifications waiting.
And the messages Facebook sends me telling me about an event and letting me know that one of my friends is a guest, when they've been invited ... |
How about another detail -- the fact that the message said the user had photos to share, when he didn't?
There's annoying spam, and then there's straight-out-lying spam -- the "x has sent you a message, you need to create an account to view it" type.
Just curious, is there a way to sue/fine a company like this for fals... | "Just curious, is there a way to sue/fine a company like this for false advertising, essentially?"
Yes. It's illegal to use someone else's likeness for advertising without their permission. |
I think the people who answered wrongly aren't thinking in a first principles, physics-based mindset, but just instead just recalling previous memories and reasoning in an intuitive, fuzzy kind of pattern-matching.
We've all seen images of pens floating weightless in space on films and TV, and we probably haven't ever ... | I'm still astonished at this idea though. I don't understand how a student of Philosophy could live life without regularly thinking about the behaviour of the universe outside our home. Thinking about it often enough that gravity on the moon is a concept close to the surface of awareness. |
If I were google I would choose a big upcoming multi billion Hollywood film. And just return empty pages while the marketing campaign is roaring. For the star/cast/everything.
I would call it piracy prevention program - that way no one will be able to find piracy content trough google. | Is TV no longer a dominant channel for big budget film marketing? |
Why don't these people just move to more affordable places? | Why don't these people just move to more affordable places?
In many cases, they are: most often to Sunbelt cities like Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix, which are the fastest growing in percentage terms in the nation (See Matt Yglesias at http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/06/14/in_the_future... or http://www.slate.c... |
Wow, as someone who is going to start doing Computer Science next year, I had already heard that most of programming is about thinking, but had no idea that is was to the point of 5 lines of code per day being exceptional. | For me, lines of code per day varies depending on what is being done and how.
If it's a meaty problem that is not well understood, or a language or framework I'm unfamiliar with, or I sense the situation is complex enough that an early bad decision could lead to unforeseen troubles later (and I should tread carefully),... |
Technological progress should cause increasing economic inequality, because the bottom end of the scale is firmly anchored at zero (someone taking a vacation), while technology gives the top end ever more powerful levers.
So the interesting question is not why economic inequality is increasing, but why for a few decade... | It is far from certain that technological progress was the cause of the increase in inequality. There has been much study on this question--why inequality--and the results are inconclusive. Unfortunately, I don't have the links to back it up right now, but I suggest that you look into the academic literature before com... |
It's certainly alarmingly addictive. Much more so than a newspaper. I've been wondering lately what to do about that. Any ideas?
I considered shutting the site down for a couple hours a day. More people disliked that idea than liked it
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593
but the vote was close enough that I ... | I'd be interested in seeing anonymized stats of views per day per user. I know my number is pretty high. And yet I find something good almost every time I come back. |
i m flabbergasted at the amount of money there is in this service (and related ones) - is it really that useful? I had a dropbox account since the early days, and i have hardly put any use into it.
What do people actually use it for? Share files? Backup solution? | I use it to collaborate with a fairly non-technical person, where it's marginally easier to use than email. That's it. I'm actually rather horrified at the people using it for backup and git. These are stupendously bad ideas. Proper collaboration with multiple parties also dictates that some form of locking is requ... |
The news media keeps saying that Borders is going out of business in large part due to e-books. But I have a hard time buying that.
I got a kindle six weeks ago and I love it. I think I've made one purchase and it as $2.50 for scrabble from EA games. I have yet to buy a book, but I've been reading a lot of the free ... | I think it's ridiculous to assume that all physical books are worthless. There are reasons to prefer physical books, after all; they're easy to carry around, they don't run out of battery or need any maintenance like charging, and they're generally much cheaper than an e-Reader. If you're not a heavy reader, and not ma... |
Paul Graham is so good, Arc is Blub for him.
Paul Graham is so good, he does just simply walk into Mordor. And then he checks into a hotel. | Paul Graham is so good, he can recurse infinitely. Twice.
Just kidding. ;-) |
Paul Graham is so good, Arc is Blub for him.
Paul Graham is so good, he does just simply walk into Mordor. And then he checks into a hotel. | Paul Graham could get Hurd to work |
I've said this before in a few places, and it's (semi-) relevant here, but I really think people need to relax about replacing TrueCrypt. Despite the "security concerns" expressed in the TrueCrypt page, which were clearly a joke, there's no reason to think TrueCrypt has any significant vulnerabilities at this time, and... | I think RealCrypt is a fork of TrueCrypt (which wasn't mentioned in the post):
http://rpmfusion.org/Package/realcrypt |
I've lived for ~8 years in London, and ~8 years in Bangkok, a few years in Oxford, and a bit of time in some other random places.
The striking thing about London is that EVERYWHERE is an hour away, and that impacts your social life. Unless you live or work next to your friends, prepare to see them rarely. In both Bangk... | I agree. I went to uni in London for a year - worst decision ever. It's not somewhere you can just meet up with friends who live somewhere else in London.
But then cities are generally like that - very lonely places swarming with strangers. |
"According to the report, Nokia plans to fork Android to fit its purposes, similar to the approach used by Amazon."
No, please no !!!
We have the Amazon fork; various Chinese forks; and now a Nokia fork ?!?
I think this damages the Android brand. The way Google has been consolidating functionality into Play Service is ... | its a trend, many vendors try to differentiate; Sony has its extensions too: Timescape is a 3D interface for SMS messages, very intuitive; but you can't have it on any other Android phone.
Here is a demo for Timescape: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD2PECP2AaQ
Apparently it is addicting; my wife got upset about it, no... |
I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten.
He will be rem... | I feel that many people dislike the idea of him, without exactly knowing what he did during his time as CEO, because the Windows platforms are known as being notoriously buggy and unsecure. XP was a nightmare that caused SysAdmins to cry themselves to sleep until the expansion pack 3 came out, Windows Vista was an unmi... |
This screen size is so, so disappointing. I'm an iphone 5s user and was eagerly awaiting the new Nexus to make the switch to Android. But 6" is a tablet that can make calls, not a phone. I WANT to switch to Android/Nexus for hundreds of reasons but this screen size is a deal break.
I need a phone I can use like... a ph... | You know, they still sell the Nexus 5. I have it and it's a perfectly fine phone and I feel no need to upgrade. |
I would personally recommend using vim bindings in emacs, as they are (in my opinion) easier to make sense of and more intuitive. However, I'm sure this book is a great resource for all the other stuff and it seems very well put-together. | I must ask you regular evil users this: how do you go about interacting with things (such as a REPL) with evil? I'm coming from vim and evil mode is great, but it feels somewhat clumsy to have to keep switching to insert mode to use a repl,doing stuff, going back to normal mode, then switching back to my code and editi... |
I really hope people don't turn this into a "Louis CK did it, so you should publish without DRM!". I agree with the anti-drm sentiment a lot of people hold, but this experiment only worked because it's "rare". Every time something like this is done people use it as evidence of the viability of the idea (Radiohead's pay... | For me personally it would be refreshing to get something that is so deeply personal to the person or persons I support. Any band, for instance, that I enjoy I would feel overly elated to support something they spent all of THEIR time on. It becomes something very personal and I would know that I am supporting THEM onl... |
Couldn't agree more. If the behaviour or outcome of a function depends on the current time, then the current time is an input to that function. Inputs to functions should be declared explicitly as arguments where possible.
The existence of Time.now and the fact that it's possible to stub this method are not in themselv... | Regarding the 'publish!' method, the post linked to in DHH's example (http://weblog.therealadam.com/2013/01/03/design-for-test-vs-...) explains this as a 'trade off' - the summary of the other side being that if you don't pass 'time' to it you get a simper API.
This is somewhat more nuanced than your and DHH's conflict... |
Because you can't really tell how well software is working when looking at the device edge-on, and that's apparently the way Apple looks at them most of the time.
I mean this more metaphorically than literally, but I'm so tired of complaints about the ridiculously primitive Finder being met with, "the edge of the iMac ... | Yup. The MacBook Pro I use today is likely to be my last Apple machine - I've been using their kit for decades - but they've stopped being about software, or hardware.
They're all about brand. This was ok when they had technically excellent products to talk about, but their products are today mediocre, arrogant, and sp... |
What the hell, they're only karma points:
I lived with Python for 4 years before I lost an argument at my own company and had my project moved to Ruby. I've since moved in with Ruby and haven't looked back.
* Everything in Python feels like a symbol table hack. Private methods? We have those! Just exploit this bug in t... | the thread's going viral, slowly
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6xkti/what_does... |
This somehow manages my monitor to make a high pitched sound. It's an LCD monitor. It's the actual monitor making the sound. Switching to a different window or tab makes the sound top. Taking a screenshot of the tab, and closing the tab but viewing the screenshot, produces the sound. | My monitor also makes a high pitched noise. Sony KDL-32EX400 (using HDMI connection). Neither of my other monitors produce the noise (VGA, & Displayport connections if it matters) |
I love my Macbook Pro -- best laptop I've ever owned. I even love OS X in that, for the most part, everything works without issue. But articles like this make me wonder why I shouldn't switch back to Ubuntu.
TFA mentions the following software that runs just fine on Linux:
* Chrome
* Dropbox
* Google Services
*... | Evernote can be installed natively on Mac now. |
Poor guy is going to hate life so much. The number of times he's going to hear "we can't do that because some person at some important level - a person that probably started as a clerk and has been promoted to high level security doesn't understand it, so... no."
As someone who left federal government for private indus... | I understand your pedestrian frustrations, but what you don't seem to understand is that the risks to government and military, i.e., your defense, are wildly exponentially larger and far more consequential than you quite clearly seem to appreciate.
Sure, there are many under and even unqualified people in positions tha... |
Ok I might be downmodded to hell for this, but hey I can afford the karma and this needs to be said so here goes,
I believe this article shouldn't be on Hacker News. At what point does "interesting to hackers" become "interesting to some subset of people and has nothing to do with hacking per se"? Yes yes hackers get... | I'm glad you proved yourself wrong. This seems to be a community that accepts its niche and is open to questioning content quality. |
> "Someone who can tolerate social gaming companies like Zynga..."
Welp, most of us on HN are out of the running! ;)
But in all seriousness, am I the only one that thinks this is just ridiculous? It would have been funny and one thing had it been a joke, but this just seems crazy to me. Maybe it's because I'm only 23 a... | The problem with OKCupid is that most of the profiles are absolutely dire, poorly written with bad photos.
There's also the problem of women getting hundreds of messages so even well written ones will rarely get a response. Not to mention people setting up fake profiles etc.
It's not that unusual in my experience for p... |
The fundamental problem is that the police are not free to use the force necessary to put down the riot. If rioters knew they would be shot on sight, they would stop rioting.
As it is, police are afraid to crack down for fear that they'll be brought up on charges of "police brutality".
Ultimately it will only end when ... | In most countries i lived (UK not included) the army can only be used for pacific work inside the country.
It's against all countries' constitution I know of to use the army in internal affairs that include use of force.
And I doubt the riots are killing anyone. You probably lost more money for corrupt government offic... |
Most people I know who own a PS3 consider it essentially a blu-ray player.
Most people I know who own an Xbox consider it essentially a Netflix player.
These people bought games, but they don't really play them.
I've got naught but my anecdata, but I think attempting to bill this new console as an entertainment system ... | I second that.. I used to play lot of games on PC.. I bought xbox and some games , but mostly I will be playing youtube videos thru my android youtube app remotely or play a movie in netflix :) |
This very example -- requests were technically illegal all the time without devs realizing, but something in the stack changed to start rejecting them -- demonstrates the fallacy of the "be liberal in what you accept, strict in what you issue" principal. If all the web servers involved had been strict in rejecting the... | The right thing, I think, is to "accept but warn". Like those web browsers that used to show a yellow exclamation mark in the status bar when something was off; web devs could check for this and fix it, but normal users were unaffected. More protocols should include a way to indicate "nonfatal errors". |
Nice to see this announcement... Makes me remember what I was doing back in those days - and makes me wonder what other HN'ers were doing back then.
I was 12, playing on BBS' and attempting to teach myself Turbo Pascal so I could possibly write IGM's for Legend of the Red Dragon... | I had just graduated from HS and turned 18. At the time I had no real inkling of the idea that computers would become such a big part of my life. The bug hadn't bitten yet, so to speak. I'd dabbled with some BASIC programming as a kid, and we played around on the PCs in the library at school. Figuring out how to ge... |
Has anyone tried the drink? Is it good? | It tastes like liquid pancake batter. You get used to it pretty quickly. But I wouldn't call it "good". |
Reasons I believe Clojure will never be successful:
(1) it's a lisp. This is 2013, compilers can deal with +-*/, I don't need to.
(2) it lacks good documentation. Most functions are documented, but badly. In particular, they lack examples; sometimes they are really tricky to use
(3) it lacks tutorials (on the main page... | Clojure is already successful for many people. What you probably meant to say is that Clojure will never be mainstream. That's probably true, but I have been subscribed to the clojure mailing list for quite a while now and actually quite surprised how much Clojure code is in production.
That said, the two big "strike... |
Having been poor (not 3rd world poor, poor by American standards) I found the most difficult thing is leaving the poverty stricken network. You don't feel like you've made it until you reject the entire mindset. Until then, you feel like you've sold out. My mother still makes me feel guilty and shames me every time I s... | "With many of them you risk violence, drugs, abuse, sexual abuse, racism, etc."
This modern bugbear of racism is getting ridiculous. Did you really just equate "racism" with sexual abuse? What does racism even mean anymore? Is it only institutional discrimination, e.g. the refusal of the publicly funded government t... |
I really want to donate but honestly feel like I'll be put on a U.S. Government list somewhere of nefarious individuals who support terrorism which might have consequences in the future. Anyone else feel that too? I should just mail them some cash anonymously. | There is always bitcoin. |
As a speaker of 3 different languages (English, German and Portuguese/Spanish) I believe that although correct this is a wrong discussion. Yes, languages does influence the way we think, but overall culture does influence a million times more.
One example is the democratic debate in English speaking countries compared ... | Portuguese and Spanish are quite different languages. |
This is a major breach of net neutrality. T-Mobile wants to give customers free bandwidth to one type of service, while charging for bandwidth going eleswhere. The network costs are identical: it's not the place of a neutral ISP to discriminate on the contents of the bytes!
(edit to correct error -- it's not restricted... | Make no mistake, Rhapsody is the real winner here. |
The punches are pulled in this piece. Not only is the compiler continuously complaining, once you ship code, your customers call in to complain about every conceivable bug and a great deal that weren't conceivable. You can have thousands of happy customers, but you as the developer will hear from the three guys with ob... | Try working in support for a while. Customers only call when something isn't working the way they expect, and since documentation is usually and afterthought among development teams, figuring out what is really possible with the software is often difficult. When you do identify bugs, you often have to go back to the ... |
Question from a novice-ish developer: What is the purpose of porting things to the JVM? I had this idea before that porting things like Ruby or Rails to the JVM was meant to offer ruby the advantages of having a java core (better threading, garbage collection, faster). But, as I understand it, Node is faster than JVM l... | Are you really claiming that Node is faster than Java? Source? |
awesome, but could somebody explain a unix noob on whats the easiest way to update an existing node.js (ubuntu) installation? | We use Tim's nvm here.
https://github.com/creationix/nvm
Similar to Ruby's rvm. |
> Power cord required (not shown).
What the hell is this about a "power cord". The specs and details are totally not clear. Is this not powered by HDMI? If it requires a power cord, these images are deceptive marketing. | Lots of Smart TVs also have USB -- how much power does this draw? Could it not have a USB power-slurper that you could plug into the USB port of the TV fr power? |
When I was a kid, my parents sent me to camp, even though all I wanted to do was sit home and write text adventures in BASIC. I hated camp. I hated the kids, and the counselors, and most of all I hated how everyone acted like if you didn't like it, if you weren't having fun, then there was something messed up about you... | I loved summer camp...but hate Facebook. Use another analogy Camp didn't make me sign a privacy policy to go there, or keep all of my information after I left. It was nice, and simple and there were no gimmicks. Pay for camp have a great time! That is if you were interested in it. |
How about we solve the "certificate" situation first?
I've just paid lots of money for "certificates". I quote the word, because they don't actually certify or even signify anything. The whole procedure for "domain-verification" is a joke, and many outfits are incompetently run (their "verification" e-mails bounced fro... | I wonder if web-of-trust SSL is the right way to solve this. |
For the last year I've been aware of the impact of Waterloo in tech and have conducted some research into why this might be so. Two things I've discovered:
1. Academic staff own any IP resulting from their research, making it very attractive and easy to recruit top academics. Almost all other universities assume owners... | I would think, massive investment from RIM back when their situation was not as bad.
The influx of money helps the university finance research and various enterprises, which in turn results in yet more success stories, and yet more investments. It's a virtuous circle I guess. |
When an ebook costs over 90% of the price of a hardcover, am I going to buy the ebook, which I can't lend, resell, or give away, or the ebook, which can only be read by me? The answer is simple, I'm going to buy whatever the cheapest physical book is.
In Canada, with a Kobo, buying from Chapters/Indigo, the trade paper... | except that I can get the ebook instantly and it takes up zero extra space. It's still easier.
Chances are better that if it is out of my price range then (unless it's something I really really want) I'll just say screw it and not bother. |
Just trying to decide the politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. Let's start with correlation != causation: http://xkcd.com/552/
But it would probably be better to point to this 2011 post (also from SEOMoz/Moz) from two years ago in which a similar claim was made about ... | Nobody has mentioned how sassy Matt's statement was...
"Just trying to decide the POLITEST way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings."
....does that mean has thinking about getting nasty? |
Just trying to decide the politest way to debunk the idea that more Google +1s lead to higher Google web rankings. Let's start with correlation != causation: http://xkcd.com/552/
But it would probably be better to point to this 2011 post (also from SEOMoz/Moz) from two years ago in which a similar claim was made about ... | What about the claim that G+ links pass value? Clearly they're no-followed, but has Google prevented them in passing value in some other way (algorithmically, perhaps?), as is widely believed to be the case for affiliate links? |
They're ~$500 and ~$600...
Anyone know where I can get a standing desk (don't care if it's adjustable) that isn't insanely expensive? | Four of these: http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60261626/
and a table top to go with it.
Not adjustable unless you take all your stuff off it, but a whole lot cheaper. |
Fusion idea that I've always had. Why can't we scale up a something like a car engine's piston and cylinder to be 1000's of times bigger and explode hydrogen bombs in it to move the piston up and down?
I know it sounds kind of absurd to think about but it seems like it would work to me. Can anyone explain why it woul... | Are there actually any materials which could withstand repeated contained hydrogen bomb explosions in the same manner as a piston? No point having a 1000x sized piston you only use 2 or 3 times. |
I find his point about "overstaying your welcome" to be of significance. What constitutes such an intrusion? Is there some sort of universal time limit? Is it commensurate with the amount of money one spends?
I've always operated by the tenet that, if they take my money, I am justified in staying for as for long as is ... | Are you serious, a $1.50 purchase and you'll stay for more than half the day ? No business would be happy with someone doing that.
The rule of 'give any amount of money however small and stay for as long as I want' is not a good one to live by. |
The underlying issue is that people are afraid to try and explore. They form a mental model of how to do something, look for something that fits into that model, and then are happy. If they guess the wrong model, though, then they are stuck forever.
Skilled computer users, on the other hand, don't let a failing model... | I've thought about this "you can't break computers" phrase for a while. I suspect, though, that when people say that they're afraid of "breaking" a computer, what they mean is that they'll get the system to a state they don't know how to get out of.
The issue here is not so much that people need to be taught they can't... |
Who are you to say they don't understand their own business process and culture well enough to determine that remote employees aren't a fit for them? I've worked with several remote team members, and it's always been frustrating. Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 ... | > Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello???
That sounds like an incredibly frustrating work environment.
I mean for them, not for you. |
This is the sort of sentimentality that has no place in modern capitalism.
Why would you need to cook dinner or water a garden (who even has a garden) or even have children in the first place? People have been doing that for thousands of years. If you want to scratch dirt you can move to Kansas and be a dirt farmer. Pl... | What if "winning" doesn't fill the hole? |
Designing a programming language is something I've found very interesting for the past few years now, but this is the one area of programming that really still eludes me and seems unapproachable. I've been through Understanding Computation, but at a certain point I just no longer understood what the hell was going on ... | http://prog21.dadgum.com/30.html
https://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/165543/how-t...
Or do you want to write an interpreter instead? Well, the frontend is the same anyways. Instead of transforming the AST, you evaluate it instead. |
While what he's doing is obviously good, I am uneasy with the whole idea that one man accumulates so much wealth in the first place, and then decides as an unelected individual what's best for a country. Having said that, I'm not sure i have a particularly good answer to this conundrum. | People voluntarily gave their wealth to him. |
Microsoft is currently doing Lenovo's work for them: https://twitter.com/FiloSottile/status/568800260111388672
The latest version of Windows Defender is actively removing the Superfish software and the cert.
The text of the definition is here: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=us7iXvkn | 15 years ago this would have led to rioting on slashdot and Usenet. How dare Microsoft remove someone else's software?
I'm generally in favor of MS doing this specific thing, but there is potential for abuse here. |
> Really? Fucking hell.. With every month that goes by, I am less and less inclined to travel to, or do business in, the US..
The insinuation being that the US is the only country doing this?
I hate this sort of thing as much as the next guy, but let's not pretend the US is the only country engaging in this behavior. W... | It seems to me that US is one of a select few countries who actually employ a lot of people full-time parting travelers with their electronics and harassing them.
A lot more countries reserve rights to do so; US actually do it on a grand scale. That makes all the difference. |
I understand the point the article is trying to make, but its not realistic. Having worked with the Navy for a few years I know that the biggest use of airplanes is not air to air combat ( which is what this article is complaining about ) It is air to land bombing. So why are we complaining about making an air force th... | Won't the air to ground bombing mission be done mostly by drones? Manned aircraft will be increasingly reserved for special operations and dirty little wars, which is pretty much the Marines' job description.
Also, the vertical takeoff capability will be mandatory for a hypothetical future war against a major power. O... |
School is half education and half babysitting. The problem is that schools aren't aware of that, and they try to cram too much learning/work into a day at school. Kids just don't have the attention span. College isn't taught this way. Colleges realize that even young adults can't handle 40 hours a week of continual ins... | Most schools in America do little more than condition children to the 40 hour work week + homework/overtime. It makes us slaves.
My school will be different, and America doesn't deserve it. |
From an efficiency/sustainability point of view, I have a basic discomfort with the idea of throwing away all the wifi/controller stuff each time you need a new bulb. I know LEDs don't run out very fast, but they do run out. This has cost implications too.
What about a setup where there are two levels of screw: the LED... | This is possible, but the features would be limited to only on/off and basic dimming. |
The problem is using many open tabs with Chrome. If you use no more than 3 or 4 tabs, Chrome is generally fine. If you use more than that, Firefox has some built-in features to help with tabs such as delayed tab loading and tab grouping. It also has more and better extensions for helping with multiple tabs. Furthermore... | The main reason I stuck with Opera 12 is how well it handled dozens of tabs (I remember counting 96 in a long-lasting session). Yes, the memory usage was high, but it never felt slow. After switching to the new Opera, I was pretty disappointed, and even switched to Chrome (because the new Opera is a poor man's Chrome i... |
Let me give one other way of doing it: "C++ without classes"
std::pair<double, double> findRoot(double a, double b, double c) {
if (a == 0.0)
throw std::invalid_argument("a has value 0.0!");
double root1 = (-b + sqrt(b*b - 4*a*c)) / (2*a);
double root2 = (-b - sqrt(b*b - 4*a... | It seems too many C++ programmers see a problem and think "Hey, let's use classes!".
That's usually a result of people coming from Java doing C++ work. |
Almost every person I have ever met who hates Microsoft was either ignorant of the matters (meaning they just read what other people said and never had original thoughts) or had a specific beef in one area that they let inform their thoughts about the company as a whole.
Lots of web developers, especially those who wer... | I think Visual Studio is one of the most painful pieces of software I've ever used. |
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