Hacker News Reader

G_Wenon Google May Kill Chrome URL Bar

Well what this picture doesn't show is my second monitor which I'm using to run chat and other misc. programs. Screen space is not much of an issue for me but I try to be efficient with it by putting my tabs on the left.

G_Wenon Google May Kill Chrome URL Bar

To combat this problem I've put by tabs on the left:

http://i.imgur.com/S05lg.png

Since I'm using a 16:10 monitor it works out nicely. Opera also has a problem of not clicking the tab if you put your mouse all the way at the top of the screen when the tabs are at the top of your browser. However if your tabs are on the side you can throw your mouse to one side and be guaranteed to click a tab.

G_Wenon Paul Rand's Unused Ford Logo from 1966

I think LG came from a merger of Lucky and Goldstar. Goldstar used to make low quality products, I have never used a Lucky product. Then merged and rebranded under LG.

http://www.vb.com/lg.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Electronics

G_Wenon Getting shot by a handgun

http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/fbi-hwfe.pdf

Here's a PDF analyzing the effectiveness of firearms. It was written in 1989 so it is a bit out of date. Perhaps someone with more experience with firearms can check to see if the article is still relevant.

It does confirm that "Even if the heart is instantly destroyed, there is sufficient oxygen in the brain to support full and complete voluntary action for 10-15 seconds".

G_Wenon Opera 11 goes final

This is interesting I have my tabs placed to the left and it works fine. When the tabs are placed at the top however they cannot be clicked on from the edge of the screen. Placing the tabs on the left has always made sense to me since most websites are designed for resolutions that are far smaller than 1920 pixels. The real real estate is the vertical space. Placing the tabs on the left also allows me to have a small preview of the page without waiting for the mouse over. I understand this solution is not for everyone.

Opera seems to listen to the community relatively closely so hopefully these two issues can be solved in a future patch (or maybe even an extension).

G_Wenon Hacker News' Reading Level

Unfortunately by drawing attention to this information I am now obligated to substitute concise words with superfluousness ones.

G_Wenon Hacker News' Reading Level

Interesting, perhaps in their effort to avoid short scientific terms they have substituted in longer more common words. For example describing a tumor as "an abnormal new mass of tissue that serves no purpose". http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=tumor The seemingly paradoxical result in an increase in understandability but a decrease in usability. Think of it as reading a passage where almost every noun has been substituted by a dictionary definition.

G_Wenon What if we tested laws before passing them?

An interesting issue. One way around it would be to enact the law in two states that have a similar environments. Continuing the example with gun control if there were two states with similar situations, both of them have an abnormally high gun crime rate, one of them could serve as a control state. If say 10 pairs of states were compared it would serve as a reasonable experiment on whether the law should be passed nation wide or not. Even better if evidence comes up that passing the law would only be beneficial in certain circumstances then it would help reveal the underlying causes of the problem in the first place.

G_Wenon Review my startup: Tastebuds - dating for last.fm users

Wow, that name alone is amazing. Simple, easy to remember and clever. Combined with the simple design, and novelty you're off to a great start! This will be really interesting to follow.

G_Wenon Hotmail development team on Reddit

While everyone is up in arms for Microsoft at deleting the emails after 270 days Google too has a policy which they can terminate your account ofter 9 months (30x9=270) of inactivity. It seems reddit needs to do a little reading up.

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-GB/program_policies...

However I'm not clear if they have it automatically delete it after 9 months regardless of the activity or if there are other conditions that factor into this.

The whole deleting emails is a bad experience though. Just another reason to back up important files.

G_Wenon Anonymous stops dropping DDoS bombs, starts dropping science

Can you specify exactly what you mean by ALF? Wikipedia turns up both the Arab Liberation Front and the Afar Liberation Front, both of which mention leaders.

G_Wenon The Unfortunate Sex Life of the Banana

I think you are underestimating the power of public opinion. Nuclear power was a contender to replace coal and fossil fuel until the Three Mile Island accident. Since then there have been no new nuclear power plants constructed in America. The average age of nuclear plant operators in America is around 60. http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/RDS2-26_web.pd...

While GM foods are very far from the reputation nuclear power in America has the framework is set so one public scare will deter people from trusting GM foods for a very long time. Almost all grocery stores now carry 'organic' foods that are aggressively marketed.

For people to adopt GM foods they have to be introduced slowly. Take a look at Butter and Margarine: http://www.margarine.org/historyofmargarine.html "1902 - Amendments to the Federal Margarine Act raised the tax on colored margarine five-fold, but decreased licensing fees for white margarine. But demand for colored margarine remained so strong, that bootleg colored margarine flourished."

So yes while arguing about which replacement is best will delay the process ultimately public opinion will determine the fate of GM bananas.

G_Wenon White (Light) vs. Black (Dark) Backgrounds: Health Effects

An interesting experiment would be to test with close captioning which, in North America at least, uses white on black. Another side experiment could be conducted to see if it has any impact on how much attention the show receives (if white on black is simply better at retaining attention than black on white).

While this only tests a certain setting where subjects are used to seeing black and white it would provide what you are looking for. A long term experiment where people recognize black on white as the norm would be difficult to carry out.

G_Wenon 7 days for 7 Mobile apps by 7 University of Waterloo students

UWDC does a pretty good job of that too.

G_Wenon 7 days for 7 Mobile apps by 7 University of Waterloo students

While I love the novelty behind UW chat most professors probably be a little annoyed with it. Still it seems like a pretty fun instant chat room app.

Really looking forward to the the next few apps. QC seems to have a lot of potential.

G_Wenon The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

Yes I thought about this more after I posted my comment and realized that is is reasonable to be a supporter of both. It did come as a bit of a surprise when I had heard Al Franken voted for this bill since he was so public about his views on net neutrality.

G_Wenon The 19 Senators Who Voted To Censor The Internet

Yes, he was a pretty big advocate on net neutrality: http://www.alfranken.com/index.php/splash/netneutrality

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/08/19/can-al-franken-save-net...

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20011587-503544.html

http://colorlines.com/archives/2010/08/600_convene_for_broad...

Edit more links:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/07/senator-inte...

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/media/sen-al-franken-gets-...

http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/08/20/sen-al-franken-...

Yes, America does have a free speech problem.

G_Wenon Why wreck a blank canvas?

By imposing every possible constraint, not being able to do anything, you can, ironically, achieve unlimited potential.

G_Wenon Apple Announces Beatles Collection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Store#File_format 256kbps .m4a file with an option to convert to an .mp3. For anyone who takes music quality seriously the lack of a lossless option is a big turn off. No DRM on the purchases unless you live in Japan where some albums are covered by DRM.

Will do more research when I get home.

G_Wenon U2's Natural Logarhythm: Exponential Decay in the Delay of The Edge's Guitar

I think you're thinking of the inverse cosine function arccosine. The reciprocal of the cosine function is known as the secant. I do not know if this is specific to English speaking countries. However the Chinese version of wikipedia suggests it is: http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/反三角函数

G_Wenon Microsoft Launches New Casual Games Hub

I agree Microsoft had an opportunity to capitalize on casual game and they missed it. In fact once I think about it Microsoft was really close to it. They had MSN Spaces, essentially a dumbed down version of my space and they had The Zone. MSN Spaces already had MSN messenger intergration and MSN messenger provided games you could play with your friends, my favorite being Hexic. Looking back it seems like such a natural move to try to tie it all together. Of course Hindsight is always 20/20.

G_Wenon Using genetic algorithms to find Starcraft 2 build orders

I reasonable protoss player will scout. This build cuts out a lot of zerglings and unless you can deny a probe scout it will be very transparent that you're going for a 7RR. A zerg who does not take an expansion quickly or lets at least a few lings to scout / deny scouting is very suspicious. Additionally protoss have access to the sentry and zealots will kill a roach in a 1v1 battle. They key is to force the roaches halfway up your ramp then cutting them off in half. Ideally 3 on top of your ramp and 4 below. A few stalkers should be able to hold them off.

Forging up, and dual expoing (correct me if I misread you when you said dual exp) into "quick" air is not a viable strategy.

A reliable strategy would be to hold off the initial push and securing your natural. You should be in an economic lead since he sacrificed 7 larvae early on in the game for the attack. From there the game should transfer into a standard ZvP with the protoss being slightly ahead due to a higher probe count.

G_Wenon Jason Shen's Rejection Therapy Challenge – Week 2

Looking stupid should be a side effect of getting rejected and not a path towards it. It's interesting that you mention improv because rarely ever in improv do you reject an idea. From what I've seen successful improv is working with every outrageous thing that your partners can make up while to turn it into a genuinely enjoyable act. Like you said I believe the point of Rejection Therapy is not to embrace looking stupid, rather it is to overcome your fear of doing so.