Hacker News Reader

Tangaroaon NYT: “MEN invented the internet”

NYT: The tech industry is male-dominated and sexist.

BB: The NYT is male-dominated and sexist for pointing it out.

Flagged as bullshit.

Tangaroaon Turkey charges pianist Fazil Say over Twitter posts

To expand on that, the new (now 10 years long) party in control of Turkey's government has been fining and jailing media companies, journalists, and prominent businessmen who don't toe the party line. A common technique is to charge "unpaid taxes" that exceed the value of the person or company's assets.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/09/16/turkey.press....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41935210/ns/world_news-europe/t/...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/business/turkey-seizes-219...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/06/26/idUSL2690587920070...

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&...

http://www.economist.com/node/17155758

They have popular support for this. They have been re-elected twice, gaining millions of votes each time.

The crackdown on dissent in the military is important because under the 20th-century regime, the military had the duty of maintaining the secular character of the state and would regularly overthrow governments that seemed to become Islamic. The charge that people in the military are planning to overthrow the government is immediately believable, but so many people have been arrested and the evidence against them is so thin that it appears like a partisan purge. Here is some commentary:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/burhan-gurdogan/turkey’s-ergene...

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2011/12/güleni...

Soner Cagaptay has been the most prolific writer on the subject:

https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=soner+cagaptay+ergenekon

Turkey has recently begun also arresting officers involved in the 1997 coup against the same Islamic party. They waited ten years to collect the power to do this.

http://www.b92.net/eng/news/world-article.php?yyyy=2012&...

http://www.todayszaman.com/news-279788-saner-the-impaler-amo...

Turkey's military has since surrendered its command.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/8671...

Meanwhile in Parliament, a member of the ruling party can assault an opposition member and the legislature will vote to approve of the attack.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-parliament-sees-fre...

Turkey is currently the base of operations for the rebel forces of Syria who are largely Islamic fascists. I do not believe this to be a coincidence.

http://content.usatoday.com/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?...

http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/11762/wjc_analysi...

http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/10/22/scoop-obama-adminis...

http://araborthodoxy.blogspot.com/2012/03/christians-expelle...

http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2012/06/save-syria-demand-...

Tangaroaon Obama Order Sped Up Wave of Cyberattacks Against Iran

Yes, but they do that every Friday. Iran has been openly at war with the United States for over thirty years and loudly reminding the world of that fact at every opportunity. The only surprise in the US now committing an act of war against Iran is that the US has finally retaliated in some form other than complaining or giving Iran money and weapons in the misguided belief they might become friends.

Tangaroaon Ask HN: Help me track down a lunch thief

To be the devil's advocate, were the stolen lunches marked with the owner's name? Someone could be under the impression that anything in the community fridge is up for grabs.

Tangaroaon Drupal developers wanted. Pay rate: $10-$12/hr

A follow-up from the company's autoresponder:

<blockquote>We are in the midst of reviewing all submissions and will contact chosen candidates during the week of June 8th to schedule an interview. Due to the number of applications, only those we wish to interview with will be contacted. If you have not heard from us by 4pm on Monday June 11th please assume the position has been filled.</blockquote>

To my knowledge, the opening was announced last week.

Tangaroaon Drupal developers wanted. Pay rate: $10-$12/hr

Yeah, it's low even for around here. They were asking for students, though, so low wages can be expected.

Tangaroaon First skydiver to land without parachute

Plenty of skydivers have landed without a parachute, just not well.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-fall#Surviving_falls

Tangaroaon Maddox on Link-Baiting Aggregation Sites

The unsubscribe link is how spammers know that the autogenerated email address they are sending to is read by a human being. It makes the address more valuable when sold to another spammer. That one spammer may stop sending you messages from the same brand, to avoid landing in blacklists, but his other brands and his affiliates will be sending you more.

The US is a bit different from the rest of the world since US law (the Yes-You-Can-Spam act) requires that US-based spammers include and respect an unsubscribe link. Neither requirement is actively enforced, so the question of whether one can expect an unsubscribe link to work remains questionable.

Tangaroaon Ask HN: How often do you use a debugger?

Javascript debuggers did not exist for most of the 2000s. It was a godsend when Mozilla provided the Error Console to let developers know when an error had occurred in Javascript (in a nicer way than getting an alert for each error), but developers still needed print statements because code that worked in Firefox and Opera would break in Internet Explorer. When the first Javascript debuggers came out, they were difficult to use and slow enough to do more damage to productivity than they helped. Experienced developers might be continuing with their old work patterns or may not be aware that better tools exist now. Safari has a good Javascript debugger and I use it.

On the server side, print and vardump statements will provide the developer the desired information in a one-second refresh of the browser. A debugger will need to be run on an independent server instance which can take time to configure and start up. If the development environment is not already set up for this, running a debugger can take longer than identifying and fixing the bug using print statements.

Tangaroaon Supreme Court Lets Stand Student's $675,000 Penalty For Downloading

Under US copyright law (Title 17 Section 107), "fair use" is defined as "purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research", and then only upon consideration of these qualifications:

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107

Tangaroaon Supreme Court Lets Stand Student's $675,000 Penalty For Downloading

Berne Convention, Article 9

(1) Authors of literary and artistic works protected by this Convention shall have the exclusive right of authorizing the reproduction of these works, in any manner or form.

The law in the US (Title 17) is generally more restrictive. It used to be technically illegal to copy a program from disk to ram when you ran it, and Congress had to pass an amendment (Section 117) to allow that.

Tangaroaon How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists'

The incentive is more legal than economic. Everything terrorists do is within the law until they take the specific act of trying to kill people. Joining a terrorist organization is not illegal. Recruiting people into a terrorist organization is not illegal. Speaking out in support of a terrorist organization is not illegal. Wanting to kill innocent people because they're the wrong race or religion and talking about it day after day after day is not illegal. There are good reasons for this.

So basically, nothing that terrorists do is illegal until they actually go out and try to kill someone. The FBI can use a person's history of lawful activities to find people who match the profile of someone who is highly likely to commit a terrorist act in the near future and offer them a fake bomb and a ride to the nearest synagogue. When that person pushes the button, that establishes the intent to commit a crime. It's no different than going up to a guy the police think is a drug dealer -- because of the clothes and the way he acts and other lawful activities -- and asking if he'll sell them any drugs. It's not entrapment unless the police really screw up their approach.

As for the economics, consider the alternatives. Waiting to see if the terrorist would use a real bomb carries a high risk, and the terrorist would be less likely to be convicted than in the case of a FBI-provided fake bomb. The court system has exonerated terrorists with strong evidence against them like Sayyid Nosair and Sami al-Arian because they claimed to have been oppressed and persecuted for being Muslims and found sympathetic juries. The fake bomb plots with their careful establishment of identity, motive, and criminal action have all gained convictions.

Tangaroaon Please stop telling me whether to learn to code or not.

I share the same sentiment, but submitting additional stories just adds to the noise.

Tangaroaon What is your programmer salary?

Zero (unemployed). CS graduate with experience in Linux and Windows Server, LAN and WAN administration, database design, web development, GIS. When I've found work it has usually been in the $12-$16/hr range; the most I've ever been paid was $25/hr, the least $8/hr when that was still above minimum wage. Location: SF Bay Area (Sonoma/Marin).

Tangaroaon Ask HN: Advice for those with poor discipline?

This worked for me. When I needed to get work done on a school project, I would get off my home computer and head to the school labs or go in to work after hours. I was far more productive than staying at home.

Tangaroaon Understanding database normalisation: a very short tutorial

The upvotes could also mean that people appreciate a good presentation of introductory material, and they may see a use for it as something to send to the newbies on their team.

For this subject, I usually send people to Bill Kent's Guide to the Five Normal Forms: http://www.bkent.net/Doc/simple5.htm

Tangaroaon Ask HN: How would you teach Java to at risk youth?

You might want to start with the general concept of how algorithms work, what a computer program does, code being a set of instructions that is read by another computer program, flowcharts, and the like.

It depends on how much time you have. If you are only meeting them one day for a few hours, give them a page of code that does something and run through how it works from start to bottom, then give them the basic control and data structures like loops and lists and a simple goal like a blackjack program or number guessing game. You may also want to make (or find online) a cheat sheet of the language keywords and what they do, and hand a copy to everybody.

Tangaroaon Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

For a similar take on the school system, here's John Taylor Gatto's essay The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher:

http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Six-Lesson%20Sch...

Tangaroaon CISPA Just Got Worse, And Then Passed On Rushed Vote

Looking at the Apr17 version of HR 3523 on thomas.loc.gov (the amended version is not out yet), it seems that it says:

* The government is allowed to share "classified cyber threat intelligence" with private parties.

* Private parties are allowed to share data with the government, and the government is not allowed to "affirmatively" search it except for specific categories of crimes.

* These categories include warezing, which is probably upsetting a lot of people.

Does anyone know what an "affirmative" search is? Is this where it is assumed that the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement is being dropped?

I don't see anything in there about collecting data other than what is given to the government by private parties. Of course, "contractors" can be used to offset the blame. The government could pay telcos to tap their wires and forward everything to Langley, which is also a nice way of corruptly sending public funds to the already wealthy. However, I believe this could already be done without this law.

Does anyone know how the law compares to what existed before? If a network provider sniffed their own wires and came to the government with evidence of warezing, an imminent terrorist threat, kiddie porn, a script kiddie DOSing someone, or script kiddie porn, how would it have been handled before this law?

Tangaroaon Go Back In Time: How 10 Big Websites Looked 15 Years Ago

It looks like altavista.digital.com and babelfish have "been excluded from the Wayback Machine" so we can't see what they looked like back then unless anyone has kept a screenshot for 15 years or has a book or newspaper with a screenshot in it.

Tangaroaon Go Back In Time: How 10 Big Websites Looked 15 Years Ago

Some possibilities:

* They had good UI designers to start with, so no major changes were needed.

* By now the site appearance is part of their brand, so they don't want to change it.

* Amazon may now be such a complex site that a change would be expensive.

* It's not broken, so there's no need to fix it.

Tangaroaon This Is 2016 Not 2012

For these reasons. I am generalizing from specific cases in my past: having used Drupal but not Joomla, knowing Java and C++ and object-orientation in general but not having used C# outside a brief school project, knowing early Perl 5 but not the changes up through 5.10, having programmed a bit in Ruby but never used Rails when the job description just said Ruby. "I can learn it" is never an acceptable answer when they can get someone else who already knows it well.

Tangaroaon Ask HN: Can below average math guys become better programmers?

Seconding this. In senior year of university, the math requirements of the CS track went from second-grade arithmetic to being expected to have finished your math minor. It was quite the jarring shift.

If you want to program, you don't need to know much in the way of mathematics. If you want to program well, knowing advanced math will open up new possibilities for problem solving. If you want a CS degree, start taking math courses now.

Tangaroaon Does USA need an Arab Spring?

http://www.compassdirect.org/english/country/egypt/article_1...

http://www.aina.org/news/20120208194830.htm

http://urbanchristiannews.com/ucn/2011/11/coptic-christians-...

http://www.meforum.org/3085/muslim-declares-christians-infid...

http://www.aina.org/news/20111030133621.htm

http://www.aina.org/news/20111215163322.htm

http://www.aina.org/news/20120127193942.htm

http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/11/16/177570.html

http://www.tunisia-live.net/2011/12/11/discriminatory-qualif...

http://standwithus.fr/06/01/2012/virer-les-juif-tuer-les-jui...

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2899/tunisia-islamist-poli...

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/2/8/38133/World/Regi...

http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2012/04/tunisia-two-athei...

http://www.investigativeproject.org/3537/waiting-for-al-qaed...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2106230/Insult-WWII-...

http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2012/02/13/libya-tells-un-...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianoce...

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2104578,00.htm...

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-18/libya-s-islamist...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/world/africa/libyan-leader...

http://thewasat.wordpress.com/2011/11/01/is-al-qaida-in-the-...

http://www.vice.com/read/al-qaeda-plants-its-flag-in-libya

http://www.persecution.org/

No.

Tangaroaon This Is 2016 Not 2012

It certainly is the Bay Area in California, specifically the North Bay. There do seem to be more jobs south of the Golden Gate, but that is too far for me to commute and I have not built up enough of a financial cushion to survive long if I move and still cannot find work.

Nobody hires in one narrow field anymore, at least not according to the job ads. You need to show competence with six to a dozen different technologies from the basics (languages, server software) to the specifics (frameworks). Miss one and you're out. Have you worked with a CMS but not that specific CMS? You don't qualify. Have you lots of experience with several similar languages but never used this specific language in the workplace? You don't qualify. Are you an expert in the previous version of the language but you haven't caught up with the changes in the latest version? You don't qualify. Someone else evidently does because the company closes the position.

Tangaroaon This Is 2016 Not 2012

I grew up hearing stories from the '70s that any intelligent teenager could get a job in computer programming. No experience was necessary. No one was expected to have any experience. They would train you.

When I entered college, the general consensus was that anybody who knew HTML alone -- not Javascript, not CSS, not backend development or server administration -- was guaranteed a high paying job.

Upon entering the job market, I've encountered the new reality that the requirements for an entry-level position are going up faster than I can learn the new things that are required each year. Every position requires experience in something that I do not yet know or have only minimal experience playing with in a personal or academic setting, but there are many qualified candidates competing for the same position. Too many experienced journeyman programmers are out of work and competing for a smaller number of jobs.

The author's bit of sci-fi seems entirely reasonable. It's not where things are headed. It's where they already are, and it's been like this for years.

Tangaroaon 1/3 of US Homes Cost More to Build Than They're Worth

Reactions:

1. It's worse than it sounds because home prices include land. If the article is true, it often costs more to build a home than that home plus the land is worth.

2. House prices are still inflated. Adjusted for inflation, houses probably cost two to three times as much as they did ten or fifteen years ago. What has made home building so much more expensive that the inflated home prices do not cover the costs of building them? It's not labour; the unions were broken by the importation of illegal immigrant labour in this time period and the labour costs have gone down. So why are the costs so much higher?

Tangaroaon Ask HN: Is the CV still relevant?

You need a degree + X years of experience to get in the door unless you can corrupt somebody in management. I'm sure a portfolio is valuable as well. What you have created is an important part of your background, just as where you went to school and where you have worked in the past is an important part of your background. A portfolio is likely to be given more weight by technical reviewers who can judge it properly, while HR is likely to care more about work background and education.

In short: A good CV gets you through HR so the engineers have a chance to look at your portfolio.

Tangaroaon The 501 Developer Manifesto

Does anybody really look down on employees who leave work at the time that they agreed to leave work when they took the job? I can't imagine this being a problem, although I can see the desire for employees who value the work more than they value keeping to a strict schedule. An interesting problem would often keep me working late, and I would feel guilty for billing the company for unauthorized overtime when I could have left on time. I've never encountered an expectation for employees to routinely stay later than 5:00, or by the same logic, an expectation for employees to come in a long while earlier than their starting time.

Tangaroaon Introducing awfulness.js

On the subject of cryptic loading signals and not being clear whether a page is communicating with the server or not, most spinners are wrong. http://tangaroa.dreamwidth.org/11114.html