Hacker News Reader

16son Changing Your SSH Port Does Lower Your Risk

That's why tanks are painted camo. It works.

Only part of C# is standardized. The majority of it is not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_%28programming_language...

There are several free Python and Ruby interpreters and they are not corporate controlled. Ruby does have an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 30170:2012).

16son The Reliability of Go

I never mentioned closed source or open source in my comment. I mentioned "corporate" languages. Go is Google's just as much as .Net is Microsoft's.

16son The Reliability of Go

1. I never mentioned closed source or open source in my comment.

2. Only a portion of C# is standardized.

"""The C# language definition and the CLI are standardized under ISO and Ecma standards that provide reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing protection from patent claims. However, Microsoft uses C# and the CLI in its Base Class Library (BCL) that is the foundation of its proprietary .NET framework, and which provides a variety of non-standardized classes (extended I/O, GUI, Web services, etc.). Some cases where Microsoft patents apply to standards used in the .NET framework are documented by Microsoft and the applicable patents are available on either RAND terms or through Microsoft's Open Specification Promise that releases patent rights to the public,[38] but there is some concern and debate as to whether there are additional aspects patented by Microsoft that are not covered, which may deter independent implementations of the full framework."""

source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_Sharp_%28programming_language...

16son The Reliability of Go

I'm sorry, but the world does not need another company-controlled, corporate programming language. .Net (Microsoft), Java (Oracle) and now Go (google).

All of these compilers or JIT interpreters are implemented in C or C++ (which are open languages with ISO standards).

It bothers me to no end to see corporations taking control of the fundamental building blocks (programming languages) of technology and then to see technologists and developers go on and on about how wonderful and better these corporate languages are.

With C and C++ and Python and Ruby and Perl we have freedom. With Go, .Net and Java, etc. we do not.

Google already control your search, your browser, your phone, your email and in some cases your OS (Chrome) why would you want them to control you programming language as well? The idea boggles my mind.

I wish others felt as strongly about this as I do. If you want to control your future, then use C or C++ or some other ISO standardized language with lot's of free compilers available, do not use a corporate controlled programming language.

There is a reason go compilers are C and C++.

16son CC'd On Email to Tim Cook: Is Apple too Big to Care?

I'm not an Apple fan. I have no Apple products. I have to agree with Apple on this. Hard drives fail. That's just going to happen. We, as customers, should have our files backed-up in the cloud or onto external hard drives. Failed drives can be replaced and they offered to do that for him for a reasonable charge. He has no reason to be upset. His expectations seem out of line with reality.

Just my opinion.

16son Paying for Great Software is like Paying for Fine Dining

No memory leaks is like no cock roaches on the table.

I'd pay for that.

16son African Bus Routes Redrawn Using Cell-Phone Data

I read yesterday that more people in India have access to a cell phone than to a toilet or running water. I assume they are very poor since they have to poop outside on the street, but they do have cell phones.

16son US schools weigh bulletproof uniforms: 'no different than a seatbelt in a car'

Most "bullet-proof" vests only protect against relatively weak, slow, large handgun rounds (9mm, 40 cal, .44, etc.). High-power rifle rounds used for hunting (.223, .308, 30-06, etc.) would easily penetrate this material.

I only mention this because, when you talk about something being "bullet-proof" you need to understand, that's not true for most rifle rounds, only handgun rounds. And if parents buy this material, they need a clear understanding of what it does stop and what it does not stop.

16son If MBAs are useless, we’re all in big trouble

In my experience, it all depends on the individual. It doesn't matter what degree they have. If they have work ethic and ambition and they love what they do, you absolutely want them on your team.

16son Obsession

He/she is a great writer. Good advice too.

Break big tasks down into small ones, practice and train for each small task and then when the big tests (or the challenges of life) come you'll be prepared.

Learning how to study will help you learn how to live and deal with life in general.

16son C++ on the web: emscripten, nacl, flascc

I think many sys admins thought of js as a web technology and back during w2k, systems and the Web were considered totally unrelated and many systems guys were dismissive of the Web. Things are much different today.

16son How to Think About Variables in C

It sounds simple, but you'd be surprised how many programmers don't grok the fact that types/data have sizes (especially numeric types). For many tasks, this doesn't matter, but when it does matter, you need people who understand.

As an example, an IPv4 address is 32 bits. Don't convert it to a string and put it in a varchar(64) in your database when you are optimizing for space (I actually saw this once). And yes, the DB had an inet type, but no one knew how to use it, what it was or why it mattered.

16son An Idiot's Guide to C++ Templates - Part 1

I like templates for code reduction. By using a template, I turned about 12 functions into 1 function once. Makes code maintainability much easier.

16son Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Apprehended Alive

If the allegations are true (they murdered women and a child and blew off the limbs of innocent men women and children) then they are not victims, they are criminals.

Saying they are victims and suggesting that pity be given them is wrong. It insults the real victims in this tragedy.

16son India’s elites have a ferocious sense of entitlement

Every part of America I have ever been in would not tolerate that. It's illegal.

16son India’s elites have a ferocious sense of entitlement

There are countless cases of where rich people would push poor people on bikes off the road and into ditches with their cars.

That would be a serious crime in the USA. If you did that, and you got caught, you would be in very serious trouble. And, it would not matter how rich you were. That's assault, perhaps with intent to harm or kill and civilized society does not tolerate it.

16son No Company For Old Programmers

I disagree. Ask them what "recursive queries" in DNS are. Ask them to explain the difference between a forward and reverse lookup. DNS is fundamental to "The Internet" and hardly any young person I have met can answer these basic questions about how it works. Now they do "understand" how to post pictures on Facebook, but Facebook is not the Internet.

16son No Company For Old Programmers

And the young ones don't know the math behind why iterating over a list is slower than doing a lookup in a map. I don't care what new-fangled, whiz-bang language/framework is cool. If you don't grok data structures and when to use what, you're screwed when you try to scale.

16son How Google Glass Will Change Porn

I call this the "Fart App Generation Phenomenon".

They take technology and use it to satisfy immature juvenile urges and then say, oh, wow, this is so cool. Give them an iphone and they'll write an app showing boobs that jiggle when you shake the iphone.

They waste technology and the power it takes to run it, and they just don't get it. There's a place for that sort of content and those types of apps (bachelor parties, etc), but it's far too prominent today. I hope that changes soon.

16son FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Details Revealed in Court

Carry a 2M HT and hit the local repeater when you break down. Give them your position and they'll call a tow truck for you.

16son FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Details Revealed in Court

Agreed. I added a smiley face to the end... maybe that will help others see the humor.

16son FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Details Revealed in Court

I was joking.

16son FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Details Revealed in Court

Cellphones are tracking devices. Plain and simple. The fact that the trackees/victims are paying 70 to 100 bucks each month to build and support the tracking infrastructure is the amazing part.

16son FBI Smartphone Surveillance Tool Details Revealed in Court

NSA is development, FBI is production ;)

16son How To Survive a Ground-Up Rewrite

Over the years, I've noticed that many programmers who want to re-write, just aren't comfortable modifying other people's code, or it wasn't written in their favorite language. So, they are critical of the code and urge for a re-write. These people generally make bad programmers. If you have people on your staff that want to re-write this program, or switch to this framework (because it's what they are used to), then watch out. That's a bad sign.

Competent programmers can maintain other people's code, those who cannot want to re-write everything. Train wreck in progress. Run from these people, or fire them if you're in a position to do so.

16son Thesis Hatement

Grads from big state universities with a technical focus do pretty well too.

16son Thesis Hatement

I know several electrical engineering professors (PhD's from Carnegie Mellon, etc). They have no issue getting jobs at universities or in private sector. They are paid very well too.

16son Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]

Thank you.

16son PostgreSQL 9.2.4, 9.1.9, 9.0.13 and 8.4.17 released

Debian has it. I assume Ubuntu does as well... at least for the 8.4 version.

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PostgreSQL 8.4.17 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc-4.4.real (Debian 4.4.5-8) 4.4.5, 64-bit