HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Acorn

47 karma · joined April 4, 2011

submissionscomments
Acorn··on Python For The Web
I think Mazzo is referring to a lack of Django's ORM.
Acorn··on Project Zomboid source code burgled
Isn't that the problem that version control has solved? Once the first commit is done you're just uploading deltas/changesets, so the size of the project doesn't really matter.
Acorn··on Try Python, Ruby, Lua, Scheme, QBasic, Forth ...
Would it be possible to implement user input via the REPL instead of the current javascript prompts? Would be much less clunky.

Also, at the moment something like this doesn't work at all (Python):

  while True:
      user_input = raw_input()
      if user_input is 'q':
          break
      else:
          print user_input
Acorn··on Mazery: a map generation visualizer (HTML5 canvas + CoffeeScript)
Specifically this page: http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2011/2/7/maze-generation-algorit...
Acorn··on Watch Google Map Edits Live
The idea of Open Street Maps is not to make tools for map viewing or journey planning, it's to collect user contributed mapping data for the world. That data can then be used by any project that wants to use it.

This tool (using OSM data) allows you to view routes http://www.openrouteservice.org/

I agree though, there is a bit of a lack of good quality tools using OSM data, it's a shame.

Acorn··on Watch Google Map Edits Live
It's a shame that people contribute data to Google Maps when something like Open Street Maps exists.

If I'm going to spend the time it takes to map something, I'd much rather it go into an open source project rather than just improving the product of a for-profit company.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

Acorn··on The Massive Mystery In Google's Finances
Your website comes up as the 4th results for "slang dictionary". Where was it before panda?
Acorn··on Javascript encryption
Seems like browser extensions would be the way to go.

Here's the SJCL demo: http://bitwiseshiftleft.github.com/sjcl/demo/

Acorn··on Clever Names Aren’t Always a Good Thing
I always remember it as "night night".. "ni' night"
Acorn··on Show HN: What do you think of my App's Splash page?
Button background still isn't appearing for me.
Acorn··on “Let's settle this in a Ruby programming contest”
Someone please make this!
Acorn··on Ask HN: Best way to protect my passwords as a user?
Personally I use an online password manager. (Passpack)

This allows you to randomly generate strong unique passwords for each website, and have them accessible from anywhere.

You are obviously putting trust in the service, but you have to weigh up what is more of a risk; the service going AWOL and stealing your passwords, or someone breaking into your accounts due to bad/repeated passwords.

LastPass is another major online password manager.

KeePass is a great offline solution. There's also 1Password.

Acorn··on MtGox salted passwords cracked
If someone managed to compromise LastPass' servers, they would be able to modify the content that was sent to your browser, and thereby do anything they wanted with your master password after you typed it in.

That's the weakness of services that are supposedly "Host-proof". If the host is sending you the webapp/javascript/webpage in which your data is decrypted, each and every time you visit their website, you have to trust that they wont (or someone else wont) modify it in a malicious way in order to gain access to your data.

The only way to be safe from this kind of attack is to use the same trusted copy of the code, and not use any new versions until you trust that it is also safe, or to somehow verify that the webpage sent to your browser is exactly what you expect it to be.

Cortesi has a very good write up on this issue: http://corte.si/posts/security/hostproof.html

Acorn··on URL Meter: an experimental audio level meter using the URL bar
Back.. back.. back.. back..
Acorn··on Windawesome is a highly customizable dynamic window manager for Windows
Ditto ditto!
Acorn··on Show HN: Chrome extension I made in 10 minutes
This could actually be quite useful when you have a large number of tabs open, and want to be able to go back to a blank slate, without losing track of what websites you were on. Could you maybe add an easy copy/paste features so you can get the list into a text file?
Acorn··on Maze62: a dense and speedy alphanumeric encoding for binary data
Hmm, looking at python's base64.urlsafe_b64encode(s), padding is still used. So it sounds like it doesn't fully implement the "modified Base64 for URL" spec.

Base64 encoding also seems to result in quite long ascii strings compared to what I threw together.

Or is there a way to use Base64 which would give results of a comparable length?

Acorn··on Maze62: a dense and speedy alphanumeric encoding for binary data
If you don't mind using - and _ then the implementation is very simple. I posted an example in Python and CoffeeScript to SO recently for doing this exact thing.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5940416/compress-a-series...

  >>> bin_string = '000111000010101010101000101001110'
  >>> encode(bin_string)
  'hcQOPgd'


  >>> decode(encode(bin_string))
  '000111000010101010101000101001110'
Acorn··on The power of back references and Python
Do not use regular expressions for parsing HTML.

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/11/parsing-html-the-ct...

Acorn··on Instant ~12 GB online encrypted storage
Didn't work for me.
Acorn··on Instant ~12 GB online encrypted storage
You can also use CONNECT-WITH-SUPPORT for another 1GB.
Acorn··on Looking for Hosting For My Project in Ruby on Rails
I've found webfaction.com to be a great host.
Acorn··on Building a Maze by Destroying Walls Efficiently
Wow, this is a fantastic link, thanks for sharing!