Hacker News Reader

MediaBehavioron Cracked Siri has been successfully ported to an iPhone 4

FWIW: I seem to recall something said at the keynote (or many a discussion afterward) that the greater power of the 4s' A5 was "needed". [ correct me if I just dreamt that ]

Not that that should stop anybody from processing it with an A4-powered iPhone.

MediaBehavioron Why isn't all Internet traffic encrypted?

> 1. Encryption really was expensive in 1996 or so, but in the age of multicores, its questionable if there's a real cost now.

A lot of "budget-priced" hosting services are near-free for http and heavily-surcharged for https. - Pricing it to make it seem as if there were some huge cost difference. Makes a difference when shoestring clubs/nonprofits want to throw up a cheap static site.

MediaBehavioron Forced Exercise's Effects on the Brain

Read the NYTimes article... you learn that the two sets of pedals are 1:1 connected. Your partner pedals faster and you have to pedal faster. Maybe not harder - but you do have to keep pace.

MediaBehavioron Ask HN: Where/How do I learn about credit card payments and payment gateways

Plus, stripe.com has become visible only so recently (couple weeks) that other discussions linked here may not even include stripe. "A game changer by introducing developer-friendliness" is the takeaway that I got from the HN discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883

MediaBehavioron Tell HN: Another PayPal Farce - Refunds my money to customer

1000+ HN points can't be all wrong. From 2 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053883

MediaBehavioron UK government response to my letter about programming in schools

I concur about what you say (although it's not exactly an argument for teaching programming).

How different would the online world be if knowledge were universal about:

- copy/paste

- cmd/ctl +/- for resizing

- why password mgmt matters - and its basic principles

Self-educated web-surfers out there have amazing gaps in their knowledge - for things that are practically spinal reflexes to even a low-grade hacker like myself.

MediaBehavioron SSL Certificate Scandal Exposes Bug in Mac OS X

Safari 5.1 won't even let me try that link, saying:

"Safari can't open the page... because Safari can't establish a secure connection to the server 'service.diginotar.nl' "

MediaBehavioron Japanese breakthrough will make wind power cheaper than nuclear

So the diameter more than the width of a football (NFL) field. And... one of those per each household? Besides the visual obstruction, just finding such space for each abode is daunting anywhere (not to mention somewhere with the population density of Japan).

EDIT: Or, consider the transmission costs from areas where such land is available.

MediaBehavioron Web Development Recipes Now in Beta

Does that mean that whenever you recommend server-side solutions that the server must have Ruby set up?

[OT question that has blocked this PHP-hobbyist from dabbling in RoR: do professionals ever add a new functionality as part of a web app via RoR when the bulk of project has already been built with something like PHP? (looking for motivation to start some experimentation in Ruby)]

MediaBehavioron China Applauds UK Move To Restrict Access To Social Media

supposed by some.

Their parliament seems to have been effective in prohibiting that use of footage of parliament be used for parody. [see recent blackout of a John Stewart segment]

MediaBehavioron [dead]

And as for the "domain squatting" accusation... I don't see how that can apply to ww.com since it seems to be up and running at this moment.

MediaBehavioron My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet

http://www.readability.com/

Takes me only a moment (upon landing at such a page) to hit my R bookmarklet. [Though there is now the pause while they process and resend from their server; I preferred the classic in-browser processing.]

MediaBehavioron Philips wins $10M L Prize for LED-based 60W replacement bulb

After more than a year's use I've only had one failure of cheap CFL I bought in a package of 6 or so (for only about $60US at Wallys/Sams or some such). I wouldn't have paid $4/ea, but at <$2/ea they were hardly more expensive than tungsten.

MediaBehavioron Google: You need identity

Better than email, I've always liked the idea of using URL to my own web site as an identity.

Even if not everyone eventually obtained their own domain name, the idea of using some URI as a (self-chosen) identifier seems to me attractively powerful - as long as one is able to re-select at later time).

MediaBehavioron Mark Suster: One Book Every Entrepreneur and VC Should Own

But then it wouldn't be just "like having Brad whispering in your ear when you pitch VCs," as one Amz customer revr said.

MediaBehavioron How to Make Text Look Interesting: Minimalist Web Design

Couldn't find it at Amz, and thereby learned the title seems to be actually The Elements of Typographic Style 3rd edition, 2004 is ISBN 0881792063 --hope that helps

MediaBehavioron The checkered past of Groupon's chairman

How much skepticism will need to be raised before investors are deterred from funding "a possible bonanza"?

I also wonder how much Groupon is riding high based on the reasoning, "Well, if _Google_ thought highly enough of it..."

(forgetting that Google was willing to bet on it _on_condition_ that Google had control/oversight of the operation)

MediaBehavioron Hacking Challenge: Change this website's homepage picture and win $10K...

One thing that time is telling: 24 hours later and this security firm has not yet removed the defaced image. :/

MediaBehavioron Citi Confirms Data Breach at Citi Account Online

Reporter (in Bangalore) cites his source as Financial Times.

Googling offers: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/885a54e8-9225-11e0-9e00-00144feab4...

Which says, "The US bank on Wednesday revealed details of the breach...

And MarketPlace.com is similarly unforthcoming: "Citi reportedly said it discovered the breach in early May, and that it had affected about 1% of its card customers, according to a report in the Financial Times, citing a Citi statement." Link:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/citi-customer-data-exposed-...

And Reuters says little more. That's (to me) one of big disappointments of journalism (on/offline): lack of citation for further investigation.

MediaBehavioron "My current theory is that programming is quite literally writing."

And is not (good) writing also about logic - even though sometimes it's fuzzy or the (twisted) logic of human psychology?

Writing requires "logicking out" the likely responses of the reader - and the pseudologic of parsing by the human brain (see Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions").

MediaBehavioron An eruption from the Sun that happened today

Yeah, but it's going to take science a while just to find the corners on the earth. ;)

MediaBehavioron How Internet sales taxes in CA could drive VigLink & others out of the state

From what browser? I had no problem with either Mac-FF or Safari.

MediaBehavioron How Internet sales taxes in CA could drive VigLink & others out of the state

I wonder how such taxation policies might even loosen the appeal of Silicon Valley as the center for startups.

Granted, a lot of other relatively business-unfriendly California tax structures have not (so far as one can tell - without a control group).

MediaBehavioron Google down? Unpingable.

Seems to have lasted only about an hour 4:30a-5:30a MDT.

MediaBehavioron Google down? Unpingable.

It's been a 30-minute learning from me... Realizing that bing or even wikipedia can be valuable starting points for _some_ searches

MediaBehavioron Mac OS X Lion: Coming In July For $29

I know not everybody has an external case, but many of those who replace own HDs do. They can (as I do):

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup / prepare for system upgrade.

MediaBehavioron SonyPictures.com hacked, personal information and passwords compromised

>...as many holes.

But would you find most storing passwords in plain text? in 2011?

MediaBehavioron Don't waste your money on lawyers

"basic human decency" is so 20th century (at least here in U.S.).

...not that 99.9% of people cannot be relied on to be such - but that when you expose yourself (as the internet does) to the other 0.1% you are exposing yourself to thousands of less-than-decent folks.

MediaBehavioron Germany to be nuclear-free by 2022

> and should be completely ignored.

How about: "and should be educated" (from ground up).

MediaBehavioron The four categories of NoSQL databases

To your request for such a guide I would like to request:

Documentation of the technological overhead: the soft/hardware/sys_admin_experience overhead required by each (and the hosts offering such support overhead for them - compared for example to support for MySQL :/ ).