Hacker News Reader

AGorillaon Did Google Just Quietly Launch A Web-Based iTunes Competitor? Yep.

Techcrunch is using the term "launch" loosely here.

AGorillaon First Look: Flash Arrives on New Android OS

Who cares about websites made in flash? People want flash for games and video. With that in mind, I think that engadget tested the context that most of us care about.

AGorillaon Google launches Google TV

Can you provide a link to the demo?

AGorillaon Google Code Blog: Introducing the Google Font API & Google Font Directory

Yet another attempt by Google to control our words and by proxy, our minds. Once everyone depends on this font API to make their social mobisodes pretty, Google will do some clever pixel altering to insert favorable articles about itself into the New York Times. They'll change the Chinese government's website to say "we suck", and a virtual stop-hitting-yourself slapfight will spillover into real world bloodshed.

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

AGorillaon Visa officially announces their case that turns your iPhone into a credit card

This will not get widely adopted until Visa gets their H out of their A and makes the case look decent and not be bulky. They can fit this stuff into a tiny keyring, why does this case add an extra 4 inches to the bottom of the phone?

Attention everybody: STOP MAKING UGLY PHONE CASES

AGorillaon What iPads Did To My Family

My bike is faster than a car in philly

AGorillaon Psychological manipulation - what I learned trying to save money on a sandwich

When a sandwich/ice cream/big mac artist concedes to this, its most likely because they've already rung you up and don't want to go through the hassle of canceling the order and then re-inputting it correctly.

I don't get the logical leap from vendor to customer here. Impulse purchases are not exactly the same as an underpaid worker not wanting to have to deal with a hassle. It's still a valid technique for getting what you want, but not directly applicable when you are the seller.

AGorillaon The Great Q&A Wars of 2009 ~ 2014 (Aardvark, Hunch, StackOverflow, and Quora)

WTH are Aardvark, Hunch and Quora?

AGorillaon Photographer Loves Math, Graphs Her Images

You've answered your own question.

AGorillaon Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

n=2 could also mean "Bison do harangue."

AGorillaon Why my Dad went through 24 TVs in 2 years

I think the real reason it was easier to sell these TVs from his home is that the HDTV market is so confusing right now to the average end-user that they just want an informed person to give them an honest "this is what you should buy". Who is more qualified than a TV salesman to make this recommendation and when is he more honest than when he's selling to himself?

AGorillaon .NET Reflector Pro is awesome

I had a coworker once that used a library of his in all of the company's main applications but kept it out of source control. If you ever asked to see the code, he would say "what do you need, I'll do it for you?" One day after chasing a bug for hours, I begged him to allow me to see the code and he refused. I calmly walked back to my desk and Reflectored it and found the bug in less than 10 minutes.

AGorillaon Can't start a business only eating a Tombstone pizza every day

Is there any more delicious metaphor for a dead ambition than Tombstone pizza?

AGorillaon Magic Mouse helps Apple double share of market in 8 weeks

This headline is deceiving, Apple doubled their share of the MOUSE market in 8 weeks

AGorillaon How's My Code? A simple, lightweight code review tool for distributed teams.

Holy shit, the guy in the screencast has over 18000 unread messages in his gmail inbox!

AGorillaon Programmer who worked for Bernard Madoff is arrested by FBI

They (allegedly) programmed a computer to generate false records. It's not like they created a trading model that happened to break an esoteric SEC law, it was probably pretty darn clear to these programmers that they were doing something illegal.

AGorillaon I think I’m tired of Desktop Linux

If you had read the article, you would know that he was comparing the user experience of Skype in Ubuntu on a Thinkpad to Skype in Mac OS X. This sort of blame-the-user mentality is what's really holding back Linux on the desktop.

AGorillaon How to Read Other People's Code -- And Why

Not to mention the side effects of breaking code you don't understand at random points.

AGorillaon Grand Prize Awarded To BellKor Pragmatic Chaos

This is great and all, but it still thinks I'll love Once: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0907657/

AGorillaon Developing a Process for Visualizing the Insanity

Did JetBlue's CEO meet with you today?

AGorillaon “So...what do you do?"

yes yes yes

AGorillaon “So...what do you do?"

No, it's incredibly condescending and leaves no opening for further questioning. What sort of response could a non-technical person have to that question: "So uh... how's that going then?".

I can't believe that everyone here is so well versed in delivering the elevator pitch for their new iPhone Web 2.0 social scrapbooking app but can't describe what they do succinctly in a social context. Is it that hard to say "I write software for [insert type(s) of clients/employer] that [insert function of software]"? People have seen The Matrix, they know what a computer programmer is. If you say "I do computer stuff", you deserve to have them ask you to fix theirs because it's one of 3 possible ways to respond to that statement.

AGorillaon A 5 Minute Intelligence Test for Kids

But to do the tasks correctly, your brain is fundamentally making a series of comparisons, incorporating visual and haptic sensory information. The key here is that the white space of the cards prevents you from putting the two lines exactly next to each other.

What if you just hold the cars facing each other so the lines are just short of touching? Then you can see the lines pretty much side-by-side.

Yes, I am smarter than a fifth grader.

AGorillaon Is My Electric Bicycle Lame?

Why would serious cyclists want more people to get on bikes?

AGorillaon Dear Mr. Jobs, I have some ideas about how to improve your phone

That would be nice except aren't there ways to leave voicemails directly? In that case you would have a voicemail but no missed call. It's a less-than-important edge case, I admit.

AGorillaon Dear Mr. Jobs, I have some ideas about how to improve your phone

Mixing the voicemails in with the entire call history is a terrible idea for a few reasons: 1. If you've made/received enough phone calls to fill the page before checking your voicemails, you have to scroll or filter to find the new voicemail. 2. If you're trying to find an old voicemail, you have to filter or MEGA scroll to find it. 3. Voicemail is virtually hidden from new users. I can imagine many people tapping the icon with the little red 1 and then not having any idea what to do.

Counting voicemails and missed calls separately is a little annoying, but this is definitely not the way to solve the problem. If this were ever implemented I would throw my phone in the garbage.