Hacker News Reader

Harkinson Boosted Boards (YC S12) Unveils Its Magical Electric Skateboard

I think they're trying to show that it's easy to cart around at either end of a commute.

Harkinson Amazon's New Kindle Fire Tablets Are All Ad-Supported

Could've just been a random test. New parents are such insanely profitable customers they're worth a bit of risk/expense to acquire.

Harkinson Ask HN: Dilemma of a freelance developer in the US

If your friend does not have the ties that prevent him from moving from his current location, just moving from a large city to a rural location (while staying in the States) could cut their cost of living 50%.

Harkinson A Review of Airbnb's SRE Hiring Process, from someone who just interviewed there

That's much nicer for the ones with all the money and power than for the one person looking for work. Or a landlord. Or a client. Or a partnership. Or an acquisition. Etc.

Harkinson Dropbox: Security update & new features

No. First, get password. Second, get phone number. Third, pretext to gain control of the account and forward/copy texts, view them via web interface, or replace the phone.

Harkinson Electronic Arts Sues Zynga, Says The Ville Is An “Unmistakable Copy” Of The Sims

EA pay developers? Can you ask for a unicorn, too?

Harkinson Dropbox: Security update & new features

A password as secure as my phone is not promising; T-Mobible was recently happy to reset my lost PIN by having me give the last four digits of any phone number I'd dialled in the last 23 hours. I don't really think it's as useful two-factor because the token is only as secure as another company's password system. (Aside from the problems that you have to have a Google Account and a smartphone.)

I looked into this recently when Dreamhost launched google-authenticator instead of two-factor auth. Disappointing.

Harkinson The Most Epic Narrative of Ramayana on the Internet

Thanks for posting that. (Though I really only learned how super not OK with a tiling window manager that was.)

Harkinson Why the Higgs Boson Discovery Is Disappointing

I've gotten the feeling the Atlantic has made a major change in publishing policy in the last two or three months. They now seem to have a lot of what the print world calls blogs, which is to say: linkbait by notables that is conspicuously below their long-established reputation for quality. I hope they're not in trouble, this is one of those metrics-driven last ditch moves that media companies having trouble moving to the web pull.

Harkinson The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn’t a Crook — He’s an Artist

The previous comment is probably misremembering; the U.S. Secret Service is responsible for investigating counterfeiting, which seems pretty odd if you're only familiar with them as personal security for presidents.

Harkinson Your GitHub News Feed, Without The Mess

So... what does it do? Are the screeshots anywhere? A description?

Harkinson Americans' Creationist Views on Human Origins

The question has the wording it does because they've been keeping the same text from a time when people did not mind this kind of language they way they do now. If they changed it, they'd lose the ability to compare with the last few decades of results.

As for your 'never met one', that's probably an anecdote about selection bias. We does these surveys because asking, "Hey, does anybody know any young-earth creationists? Like how many?" does not provide reliable data.

Harkinson Americans' Creationist Views on Human Origins

They sum to less than 100% because this chart leaves off the undecideds. For more info, turn to Gallup itself: http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intel...

They're a solid outfit with a great track record; these numbers are sadly accurate.

Harkinson Tech press misses Google/Amazon name grab

Well of course it did, they didn't send out press releases.

Harkinson Why ICANN's gTLD process leaves a lot to be desired

A few years ago when this was announced I seriously considered setting up shop to host these gTLDs. (I rebuilt the .pro registry, so I have the domain knowledge.) Then I realized I'd have huge risk from ICANN, if they dragged their feet I'd run out of cash. Glad I walked away, the extra couple years this took would've killed me.

Later I realized that, while the tech is easy for me, the sales cycle would be a long, painful slog. Every time I see a story about new gTLDs I feel like a dodged a bullet, as enticing as it is to want to build this product. :p

If other folks are considering this business, buy a beer for someone who's had to work with ICANN. This is one of those many businesses where the tech looks atraightforward but the everything else will crush a techie.

Harkinson How I Fire People

"One of the hard lessons The Partner taught me is this: the health of the business is more important than the well being of any one employee."

What, really, is the purpose of your business? And what makes it more important than the well-being of an actual person?

I don't take issue with the firings recounted (well, at least the carefully-documented public reasons he provides), but what could make this statement true? I read it and can't find a charitable interpretation.

Harkinson Being deaf

http://redeafined.blogspot.com/2012/04/debunking-fourth-grad...

Short version: the stat is 15y old and mostly measures the unbelievably bad teaching theories (oralism, mainstreaming) that hurt a lot of deaf kids and are still being fought over.

Harkinson The world’s two worst variable names

Huh, I've used nearly this example for years, except my two worst are "var" and "var3" - with no var2, leaving the reader to wonder what happened to it.

Harkinson Prince of Persia creator finds lost source code 23 years later

Yes, disks fail. See "Floppy Disks: It's Already Too Late", by one of the most prominent digital archivists: http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3191

Harkinson Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

Yes, thank you.

Harkinson Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

Yes. An example was posted here in the last few weeks - there's a startup whose name I can't remember that plans meetups of three men and three women. They had a serious problem with cancellations, which was solved by requiring the canceller to record a voicemail to be played to the other people. Cancellations fell off 80% or more. (I'm sorry, I can't remember more specifics - anyone have the link?)

Harkinson Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

Look up programming jargon in whichever dictionary you found this definition. Something with a common meaning, like 'domain', 'array', or 'tree'. How well does it apply?

Words like "sexist", "sexism", "homophobia", and "racism" are jargon for the folks studying gender, psychology, sociology. The common usage, the descriptive usage you see in dictionaries, is not appropriate and will only confuse things.

Harkinson Do not use Rails as "Just an API"

So... a new blog network (domain created last month) finds a hot topic for its authors to argue back and forth in public. It's clever marketing, but I've read enough of TechCrunch.

Harkinson Why Chicago Doesn't Produce Innovative Startups: Midwest Mentality

Can we make it part of the midwest mentality to discourage linkbait overgeneralizations?

Harkinson Outsmarting Yourself for Success

It's a landing page for a software to-do list. Somehow the guy lands the HN front page with a vague blog post every 2-3 weeks.

Harkinson Always Go Home with the Lady Who Brought you to the Dance

Business negotiations (in which VCs benefit from founders not shopping around, negotiating for better deals, or building interest) are not at all comparable to a social situation involving actual humans. The goal is to get readers thinking morally instead of in the cold business terms that the VC is.

Harkinson Advice needed: Intern at exploding startup vs. return to school

When they say that you will be "completely taken care of", they don't mean it if they don't put it in writing. That means a salary, stock options or grants, anti-dilution clauses...

The way you ask is, "I'm considering putting school on hold for this. Could you give me a formal offer letter?" If there is any resistance at all to putting promises on paper, or anything that will be determined "when the time comes", don't accept. (Family pressure to finish school is a fine excuse.) It doesn't matter if they're malicious or incompetent, either way you'll work your ass off and get nothing. Better to take extra classes at school and graduate earlier with your increasingly impressive resume.

Harkinson FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling

While it's a fun turn-the-tables idea, because government is so much bigger, with more power and resources, this would still be incredibly unequal. You might be able to track a dozen government officials; the FBI could track every member of a political minority group (eg. the persecution of MLK).

Harkinson Ten $50,000 grants for startups who move to St. Louis

http://StartupChile.com is doing something quite similar. Dozens of startups get reimbursed for up to $40k of expenses.

Harkinson I am a great programmer, but horrible algorithmist

In addition to the delightful Little Schemer, I'd also recommend Project Euler problems, maybe work up to working through SICP or interesting bits in Art of Computer Programming.