Hacker News Reader

EricBurnetton Hatetris: Tetris That Hates You

A guest on Speed Demos Archive had an impressive 20-point game:

"56AA AAAA AAA6 AAAA AAAA 8AAA AAAA AB55 AAAA AAAB 00AA AAAA AA9A AAAA AAA6 0AAA AAAA A96A AAA8 AAA9 A808 AAAA AA9A AAAA AAAB 55AA AAAA A82A AAAA AA97 5AAA AA9A AAAA A6AB 5AA6 AAAA 6AAA AAAA C02A AAAA AABF BEAA AAA9 E9AA AAA9 AAAA AAFE AAAA AD5A AAAA F0AA AAA9 BF00 AAAA AA9B AD56 AAAA FC02 AAAA AABA C02A AAAA AB5A AAAA BAAA AAB6 AAAA AB55 6AAA A02A AAAA A82A AAAA ACAA AAAC 02AA AAAA FE9A AAAF EAAA 9D5A AAA9 6AAA AD57 AAAB C2AA A9BF 00AA AAA6 BBF0 0AAA AABA D56A AAC0 2AAA AAD6 AAAB AAAA DAAA A80A AAAA 82AA AAB5 5AAA B2AA A0C0 AAAA AFDA AABF AA9D 5AAA 5AAA 57DA A6AB C2AA 6FC0 2AAA 6BBF 00AA AAEB 00AA AA03 5556 AA02 AAA8 282A AB0A AAB2 AAB6 AA9D AAB5 02AB 55AA 80C2 AAB0 22AB AAD6 AB55 AA00 AA40 AA79 A"

http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php?topic=11523.msg...

EricBurnetton Google Infrastructure

The FriendFeed team all came from Google, however, so who knows what infrastructure they built up right away. I think an example company a little further from Google would serve this post better.

EricBurnetton Best/worst April Fools jokes?

Some Google ones are:

Google Annotations Gallery - http://code.google.com/p/gag/

Query times on Google search - Results 1 - 10 of about 672,000,000 for test [definition]. (at warp 8.88) - Results 1 - 10 of about 24,400,000 for foo. (2.00 shakes of a lamb's tail)

3d view on books and street view (try it!)

Translate for animals - http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/landing/translateforanimals/

Any I'm missing?

EricBurnetton The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

You should be able to link on Facebook with the real text using the link http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html?seenIEPage=1 .

EricBurnetton The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher

I just tried this on vanilla IE8, and the "button on the right" doesn't display at all, only the link to continue without Firefox. Perhaps they should have tested in IE?

EricBurnetton Ubuntu 10.04: The Perfect Consumer Operating System?

I have not found this to be the case. I use Windows full time at home and have used various linuxes full time at work, but I always found that it was easier to correct Windows' pain points (e.g. by installing Cygwin) than it was to fix linux (how to get a decent feeling UI?).

EricBurnetton A new approach to China: an update

Disclaimer: this is not an official answer from Google, and while I have worked there I do not at present.

There are data centers around the world, however Google only stores sensitive data in locations where it can guarantee security and privacy[1]. Quoting from an official blog post from 2006,

"Protection of user privacy -- We will not maintain on Chinese soil any services, like email, that involve personal or confidential data. This means that we will not, for example, host Gmail or Blogger, our email and blogging tools, in China."

What this means is that your data could be stored in a number of countries, which will include a copy in the U.S. and not include a copy in China.

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/testimony-internet-in...

EricBurnetton Wikipedia, Notability, and Open Source Software, Part 2

A limited form of what you are describing already exists. MediaWiki supports something called 'interwiki links',* so you can write e.g. [[TVtropes:PlotThreads]] to link directly to the Plot Threads page on TV tropes. In this way many disparate wikis can be wired together quite simply, if desired. I don't remember if the software supports shared indexes or backlinks or anything of that kind, however, although that is available between sister projects (such as Wikipedia and Wikitionary).

Culturally, however, Wikipedia seems to frown upon using this kind of link to external encyclopedias. If information is notable, it should be included in Wikipedia or one of the sister projects; if it is a source, it should be referenced as such. Any kind of 'more information' external page doesn't really have a place in such a system. So we're back to needing to 'fix' Wikipedia.

* See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Interwiki_map for the current list of supported interwiki prefixes.

EricBurnetton Flash Carbon Footprint of NYTimes.com

According to every dictionary I can find[1], radii is at least as accepted as radiuses. As for Prius, since it is a made up word the plural is essentially whatever the accepted English usage turns out to be. According to Toyota[2] anything customers want to use is fine, however online the general consensus seems to be that Prius is the plural form as well.

I am so tired of comments where people assert their particular view as true without doing any research, especially when trying to correct someone else.

[1] See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Radius, for examples.

[2] From http://www.greenhybrid.com/wiki/index.php/Interview_with_Ed_... , an interview with a manager at Toyota.

EricBurnetton Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

That they acknowledged as a mistake, and rectified early on. When you first turned on Buzz, there would have been an option for whether or not you wanted to have your contacts displayed, however I guess it wasn't easy to find. Shortly after releasing Buzz, they made it a lot more obvious (I guess due to user complaints):

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/millions-of-buzz-users... (item # 1)

They are certainly responsive to these issues, however the fact is their approach to privacy was confusing from the start, which is a recipe for disaster.

EricBurnetton Automatically followed by abusive ex-husband (and his friends) on Google Buzz

I think the point most people are missing is that the data Google shared was already public. Reader has its own privacy and sharing policies, and as far as I can tell Buzz respects these. Even if this person successfully polices Buzz, the reader feed is still out there, public and waiting to be found.

Reader privacy settings can be changed at https://www.google.com/reader/view/?tab=my#friends-manager-p...

EricBurnetton Google Acquires Aardvark For $50 million

Facebook is about getting information from your social circle, while Google search is about getting information from the internet at large. It seems they are looking at various ways to bridge that gap.

EricBurnetton Google Buzz? More Like Buzz Kill

Presumably you accepted the default suggested people to follow. Go to the buzz tab, unfollow anyone you don't immediately recognize, and it becomes like facebook except integrated into gmail and only for people you actually communicate with.

Improve your life? I don't think anyone can answer that yet - it depends how people end up using it. And if you decide you don't like it, opt out.

EricBurnetton Every time an engineer joins Google, a startup dies

The truth is, some of those brilliant kids going into BigCorp are lost startups, some are future startups, and most won't be startups regardless, because most people aren't founders.

Exactly. I will be starting at Google in June, but I am not a "startup lost". I have thought about it, and eventually came to the conclusion that I am not startup material for a number of reasons. This may change in the future after I have worked for Google, and if so, I can always join a startup then.

EricBurnetton Google's Super Bowl ad - video and instant analysis

Yes and no. I have 18000 searches in my history, so I agree that you can't easily go through them all and trace out my life. And yet it is very simple to search it for trends, key events, or even pick a day and see what was going on then. I can do that, and Google can certainly do that (algorithmically of course). Now, I don't have a problem with that (and I value the ability to look back through my own life), but it does represent a trove of personal information.

EricBurnetton Facebook makes HipHop for PHP open source

My point is that what someone could create shouldn't have any bearing on the discussion. They are using c++ as an intermediate language, fine. Just because we could make a machine that executes it shouldn't alter that distinction. We can still call that compiling, but hypothesizing new machines doesn't help.

EricBurnetton Facebook makes HipHop for PHP open source

By that logic then PHP itself is also assembly because someone could make a machine that executes it natively. We might as well throw all distinctions away if we go down this road.

EricBurnetton Things I've learned at Google so far

A lot of that is because Google doesn't define success that way. Their view is that anything that stimulates the internet will indirectly benefit them, so that makes products like gmail or chrome clear winners. Gmail brought us threaded emailing, ajax (and good javascript-supported interfaces in general), etc. Chrome brought us tear off tabs, fast javascript execution, etc. I think if the focus was stand alone profit generators the products they put out would be very different - what would Android look like?

*brought us = made popular, not necessarily invented.

EricBurnetton Things I've learned at Google so far

Yes, they certainly do. In the TGIF presentation itself there isn't too much back-and-forth (although the panel members may have different opinions), but people will discuss it themselves after. For something as big as the China issue, it was probably discussed in some other channel(s) as well.

As far as email lists go, the discussions can get quite lively, although I wouldn't generally call them flame wars - civility still holds in general. But they can definitely get long; the term centithread gets thrown around a lot. When I was there one of the longest I saw was about people putting open chocolate milk back in the fridge, and whether or not that was a terrible thing to do :p..

EricBurnetton Google proposing DNS extension for improved server locality

This will led to more 'This video is not available in your country' shit.

This won't have any effect on it, actually. Servers that are targeting users by location use the IP sent with each request to do localization, rather than which server was chosen by DNS. Otherwise it would be trivial to choose a server in the appropriate country and add an entry to your hosts file, bypassing these restrictions.

You could try to argue that making it possible for global companies to make their content arrive faster is bad for net neutrality, but given that this doesn't adversely affect other servers (and possibly benefits them by reducing congestion), that would be a hard argument to swing as well.

Edit: and for your second comment, I have no idea how routing algorithms would work if that were the case.

EricBurnetton A Deeper Look Into Google's 800-Pound Panda Problem

I always hate seeing this argument. Using back of the napkin calculations, that means Google is getting out of China because it's down to 50 million users there. I guess we should expect them to be leaving Canada soon, since they only have about 19 million users here. Not to mention that the number of internet users in China is growing by about 80 million people per year at the moment according to the world bank, of which Google was presumably getting their 17% as well.

EricBurnetton Facebook Buys Dedicated Data Center, Could Servers Be Far Behind?

FTA: What's more, this move could clear a path for Facebook to design and build its own servers.

The question is about custom servers, it just didn't make it into the title.

EricBurnetton Stop restricting my password - Help these sites get better security.

The site for my credit card requires a password that is no more than 6 characters -- talk about insecure.

Not necessarily. Oftentimes banks will set a hard limit on the number of unsuccessful attempts you can make before they lock you out entirely. Then you have to phone them and jump through a number of hoops to prove you are who you say you are, and then reset the password. If they do a really good job preventing brute-forcing, then having an un-brute-forceable password is not necessary any more.

The easiest example of this is debit card PINs. They are usually only 4 numeric digits, and yet are trusted by banks for direct access to accounts. This is because a) banks have sophisticated systems to track brute-forcing and other kinds of abuse, b) longer pins are more prone to being written down, forgotten, and mistyped, and c) there are limits on how much you can purchase / take out per day, limiting the potential damage.

EricBurnetton Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years.

He addresses the topic of "book learning" explicitly in the post.

If you want, put in four years at a college (or more at a graduate school). This will give you access to some jobs that require credentials, and it will give you a deeper understanding of the field, but if you don't enjoy school, you can (with some dedication) get similar experience on the job. In any case, book learning alone won't be enough. "Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter" says Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary. One of the best programmers I ever hired had only a High School degree; he's produced a lot of great software, has his own news group, and made enough in stock options to buy his own nightclub.

EricBurnetton Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia

Not entirely correct. Australia ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is part of the United Nations.

From Wikipedia: "While not a treaty itself, the Declaration was explicitly adopted for the purpose of defining the meaning of the words "fundamental freedoms" and "human rights" appearing in the United Nations Charter, which is binding on all member states. For this reason, the Universal Declaration is a fundamental constitutive document of the United Nations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...

EricBurnetton Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia

I'm sorry, but no issue is black and white like that. There is a gray area because two human rights are in conflict on issues such as these: freedom of speech and freedom from discrimination. In most countries, including Australia, limitations are put on freedom of speech specifically to address this issue.

You can support laws such as these without being 'against freedom of speech'. After all, the very first article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." Both this and article 19 (freedom of opinion and expression) must be supported, and when they are in conflict, a balance must be found.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_...

EricBurnetton Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia

I'm not sure I even want to mention it, but I highly recommend you stay away from the article called 'offended' if you find it linked anywhere, unless you are the kind of person who likes visiting shock sites. Consider yourself warned.

EricBurnetton Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia

>Google has in place limits to stop things like pornography showing up, with it's safe search feature. This is already a form of censorship based on the values of countries like the USA.

You are confusing their quest for relevance with censorship. Google filters out pornography from most search results in general under the assumption that pornography results are not desired. If, however, you do wish to view pornographic content, you can always search for pornography related topics directly, in which case pornographic results will be returned.

Turning on Safe Search, a user controlled option, will try to do a stronger job filtering the results. A notification is displayed that safe search is on, and the user can always choose to turn it off. This is not 'censorship', it is a useful tool for their users.

EricBurnetton Google Agrees to Censor Encyclopedia Dramatica Entry in Australia

Try http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=aboriginal+encyc... , which will be more likely to get the link(s) in question. At the bottom I see that 4 links were removed.

Predicting what links will show up for who is hard, especially now that personalized results are used.

EricBurnetton The value of a point

I agree in principle, I just feel that the reward is totally out of proportion. Anyone, including the author, could have submitted exactly the same link for a huge reward. the 'A new approach to China' post by Google did the same thing for someone else, catapulting them from ~50 points to well over 1000.