Hacker News Reader

ChrisArgyleon Verizon nears deal to acquire Yahoo

The Mozilla Organization has a partnership with Yahoo! to make them Firefox's default search engine [1]. Firefox was created by the Mozilla Organization which was created by Netscape. Netscape was acquired by AOL in 1999 [2].

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-strikes-firefox-search-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape

ChrisArgyleon It’s cheaper to build multiple native applications than one responsive web app

If you miss Ted Dziuba's writing at Unvoc you will thoroughly enjoy this article

ChrisArgyleon The tyranny of the Hollerith punched card

Also the author seems to have missed that this char limit is changing. In Python, for example, an official style guide update in 2013 [1] allows for 100 char line length.

[1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#maximum-line-lengt...

ChrisArgyleon Amazon search was down

I would have to imagine that a massive corporation like Amazon has automatic detection of issues with tier 1 services like search.

ChrisArgyleon The Triboro: Transit plan for the NYC Boroughs

As a Bronx resident this sounds very exciting.

As a jaded consumer of modern media this sounds suspiciously one-sided. What are the downsides? It doesn't seem to generate revenue or lower costs for the city. Why would a politician back this plan?

ChrisArgyleon Person carrying bacteria resistant to antibiotics of last resort found in U.S.

TL;DR

Modern medicine is over! Get to the zombie apocalypse shelter!

Not really though; everything scary in this article is either wrong, exaggerated or both. Ars Technica explains it expertly:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/05/everybody-be-cool-a-n...

ChrisArgyleon Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

> While it is technically, theoretically possible that their system is open to the introduction of these biases but does not actually exhibit those biases in the aggregate, it is astoundingly unlikely.

We're in agreement there. A company that is progressive-liberal by nature is going to show some of that bias the company's actions. Even with a conscious effort to avoid bias they'll fall prey to biases they aren't aware of.

ChrisArgyleon Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

I took "systematic bias" to have similar meaning to "systematic error" meaning that there is a constant shift on every data point. Admitting the possibility of bias is very different than admitting bias in every single trending content decision.

ChrisArgyleon Facebook admits rogue employees may have shown bias against conservatives

Honestly this is more likely due to the actual outcome being too complex for a headline.

"Facebook denies systematic bias but admits their current process allows bad actors to apply bias and takes remediating steps"

Doesn't work. Although WSJ came kinda close.

ChrisArgyleon Programmers are not different, they need simple UIs

The central thesis here is that APIs should be treated like GUIs. Make them as intuitive as possible to minimize brain space waste (ie. memorization of non-transferable, vendor-specific knowledge)

Sadly, the post is too short to discuss what "intuitive" means for an API (which could probably fill several volumes).

ChrisArgyleon Chrome removes Backspace to go back

> Why on earth isn't there just a generic keyboard-shortcut preference where I can control every possible browser action and its associated keyboard shortcut?

It turns out this extension does exist. I just used it to assign "shift+backspace" to "Go Back" and it worked.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shortkeys-custom-k...

ChrisArgyleon Chrome removes Backspace to go back

Analysis from Chrome devs here https://codereview.chromium.org/1854963002

Though I am a frequent user of backspace in Chrome I'm inclined to agree with their decision. Almost no one is using it and casual users are confused by it.

I'll just wait for someone to implement the feature in an extension.

ChrisArgyleon Mosh: the mobile shell

I'm embarassed to say I haven't even heard of MobaXterm. This is going on my remote-work rig tonight.

ChrisArgyleon Mosh: the mobile shell

That sounds like a scenario for long-form work over a mobile network (eg. on a laptop through a mobile hotspot).

Mosh from a laptop is a no-go for me because there's no Windows-based, full-featured terminal emulator (saved sessions, auth agents, etc) that supports mosh.

ChrisArgyleon Mosh: the mobile shell

"Why use this instead of GNU screen?"

The low latency features really set this one apart. The smart local echo (it underlines unconfirmed predictions) make it much nicer to use over laggy mobile networks.

ChrisArgyleon PyPy 5.1 released

I second the asyncio endorsement. I started using Python 3 just to try out asyncio and never went back. It works like a dream.

ChrisArgyleon Man accidentally 'deletes his entire company' with one line of bad code

  path=$foo/$bar

  if [[ $path =~ [[:space:]]*/[[:space:]]* ]]; then
  
      echo NOPE
  
  else
  
      rm -rf $path
  
  fi

ChrisArgyleon Managed services killed DevOps

The title is a bit click-baity and misleading. DevOps isn't dead it's just becoming centralized.

The rub seems to be that quality managed services are widely available and affordable enough to obviate the need for in-house DevOps.

ChrisArgyleon Nest Reminds Customers That Ownership Isn't What It Used to Be

Home Assistant user here, too. After my house got robbed it was either $1000-$2000 for commercial, cloud-locked systems or Home Assistant with $200 worth of X10 devices and IP cameras.

The commercial options couldn't automatically arm when I went to work. Nor could they use Pushover. Nor did they accept pull requests :)

ChrisArgyleon Nest Reminds Customers That Ownership Isn't What It Used to Be

Also great is the wow factor when you show off the mobile interface. Material design is a big time crowd pleaser.

ChrisArgyleon Player stuck in an eternal Civ II war

TL;DR

Man plays a single Civ II game, locked in a 3-way stalemate, for 10 years (2000 in-game years).

He asks reddit for advice on ending the stalemate, posting his savegame. Quickly a community forms around it. Fans post not only strategies but also art and fiction.

The game and related discussions have also been added to collections in the Stanford University Libraries.

ChrisArgyleon Welcome x 11

Maybe its a cross product? If we assume "Welcome" is a 2x1 matrix and "11" is shorthand for [1 1]

ChrisArgyleon Python 3 Is Winning Library Developer Support

Believe it or not, you don't even have to change your workflow to try out python 3. If you're on a Red Hat/Ubuntu-based system just add a '3' to everything (python3, pip3, pdb3, etc)

edit: added relevant platforms

ChrisArgyleon Conflating the Roles of Alerting and Dashboards

I've seen this go badly even when the first responders are the ones configuring the alerts.

For example those getting paged for slow app response times want DBAs to be paged for slow query performance who in turn want System Admins to be paged for high disk latency, etc.

These are all reasonable requests but weren't always implemented due to poor communication and/or team relationships.

ChrisArgyleon Systemd vs. Docker

If we're being technical the author should have wrote "reaping" not "killing". It's a very different process.

The use of quotes is probably an acknowledgement that the term "zombie" is not universal. For example Linux uses "defunct" instead.

Basically, zombie processes happen when a child process exits but the parent process--the one that spawned it--doesn't reap it. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process

ChrisArgyleon Show HN: Sensible Bash: An attempt at saner Bash defaults

Some great ideas here--a lot of them solve problems I've personally had with bash over the past 15 years--but plenty of these feel like solutions in search of problems.

I'm tempted to post my own commentary but I'd probably make the same mistakes. What would be really fantastic is a usability study of bash to see what the common pain points are.

ChrisArgyleon Starbucks has 3x the sugar of a whole Coke in some drinks

Updated, thanks

ChrisArgyleon Starbucks has 3x the sugar of a whole Coke in some drinks

Also, this means that the Venti White Chocolate Mocha actually contains less sugar per unit than Coke:

12oz Coke contains 39g sugar[1]

-> 39g/12oz = 3.25 g/oz

20oz White Chocolate Mocha contains 55g sugar

-> 55g/20oz = 2.75 g/oz

[1] http://www.coca-colaproductfacts.com/en/coca-cola-products/c...

edit: formatting

ChrisArgyleon Starbucks has 3x the sugar of a whole Coke in some drinks

Their measurements appear to include whipped cream but this isn't mentioned in the article.

For example: the pictured Starbucks Venti White Chocolate Mocha is accused of 18tsp sugar but Starbucks nutrition info[1] says 15tsp (55g) sugar without whipped cream.

[1] https://news.starbucks.com/uploads/documents/nutrition.pdf

Edit: incorrect quote