HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

aaront

72 karma · joined July 2, 2009

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/aaront; my proof: https://keybase.io/aaront/sigs/I0rGsOEMTjCsmavn-A9tsMB5hs32HXbUoTtGpPaOPwE ]
submissionscomments
aaront··on Show HN: Python 3.5 Async Web Crawler Example
Here's a proper example written for 3.4+: https://gist.github.com/madjar/9312452
aaront··on Console.mihai();
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuYxGtuBSgk
aaront··on A New Car UI: How touch screen controls in cars should really work
I'm actually a big fan of the Hyundai Veloster's touch screen. It provides all the functionality you'd expect, without the convoluted menu systems of other cars.

http://gaspuol.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/2013-hyundai-velo...

http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/MY12_F...

Granted, this UI looks great, although has a few interaction oversights: what if I lost a couple fingers in an industrial accident and only have 3?

aaront··on USA ISP Speed Index
I wonder why Canada is never on this? Our ISPs deserve a little public humiliation.
aaront··on Google Play Music on the App Store
Deezer - 30 million
aaront··on Runnable Wants To Become The “YouTube Of Code”
Same issues here in Firefox 27.0a1 (2013-10-01) on Windows 8
aaront··on From H.P., a Blunder That Seems to Beat All
And they succeeded. Enyo is a nice, stable cross platform JS framework, and Open webOS has a decent sized hacker community around it (webOS Ports).
aaront··on RIM to cut 40% of workforce as another top exec resigns
I just feel bad for the smart people there that may be out of a job soon.

And yes, most of my desire to see them succeed is because a lot of public money is invested in them, and it would likely send a ripple effect across the tech sector in Canada (specifically the Waterloo area).

aaront··on RIM to cut 40% of workforce as another top exec resigns
While I don't use any RIM products personally, the Canadian in me wants to see them turn around this slump and be innovative again.
aaront··on RIP webOS: Again and for good this time
Kind of misleading. The webOS engineering team is not leaving, just a few people in the Enyo team.
aaront··on HP open sources Enyo javascript framework from webOS, now cross platform
Seems like they're doing some major house cleaning on the code. Probably best not to rush it out the door.
aaront··on Take me to Silicon Valley: 19 year old designer seeking opportunity
Looks great, just a few little things:

* "I am Filip Santa, 19 years old designer from Slovakia" sounds a little strange. Maybe something like "I am Filip Santa, a 19 year old designer from Slovakia"

* In your timeline, instead of "Learning what is layer", maybe "Learning about layers"

* Also in the timeline: "Trying first webs & posters", maybe "Designing first web sites & posters"

And, here's my OCD peeking through, the images seem to have a colour profile associated with them, which clashes with mine producing: http://i.imgur.com/6BV6o.png (try making the background transparent)

Best of luck!

aaront··on HP Kicks webOS To The Kerb
He brings up the point of Symbian going open source and having a fallout. I think this is different. Symbian was a old, tired OS that wasn't extremely exciting. webOS has a fairly active homebrew community that will do some pretty cool stuff with the source.

Also symbian was pretty much a phone-only OS, and I'd imagine was pretty tied down to feature phones. webOS will most likely be ported to netbooks pretty early on when it's released (the development emulator runs an x86 version), thus making a low-power consumption cloud-based netbook environment.

aaront··on HP's decision means webOS could end up more open than Android
Enyo is absolutely amazing as a javascript dev framework. Very easy to use and understand, even for someone just starting out with JS and mobile development. In some ways, this was the thing I wanted to be open source more so than webOS itself.
aaront··on HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source
Enyo is most definitely the best mobile development I've ever done. Clean & simple implementation, and I can use the Chrome dev tools to debug.
aaront··on $149 for a Touchpad if you sign up as a developer
I just put my name in there.
aaront··on Why is HP producing now more TouchPads?
Interesting that the author asks the question about how many were sold, and then mentions a few hundred. We already know that at least 5 digit values of TouchPads were sold before the great unraveling of HP, and now that number is no doubt into the hundreds of thousands, judging by demand and ad impressions (as well as the download numbers on my webOS app).
aaront··on Microsoft courts webOS developers; 1,000 make the leap
"leap"? I think us webOS devs just wanted free hardware to expand our apps beyond webOS, but many still remain (especially in light of all the people with webOS devices over the weekend).
aaront··on Touchdroid - Android for the HP Touchpad
I was initially going to stop development and wait, but after hundreds of thousands of potential customers emerged over the weekend, it's full steam ahead.

I know it's the same for some other devs, as well. A good number of us are sticking around, at least supporting and fixing bugs on our apps, and creating new ones.

The ecosystem is definitely not dead yet, but we can only run on fumes for so long. If they get a hardware parter and new hardware that people lust for (imagine webOS on the likes of a Nexus S or Galaxy S II), we might be OK.

EDIT: Also, I should mention, many devs received loads of downloads over the weekend, myself included. http://www.webosroundup.com/2011/08/devs-see-boost-to-app-do...

aaront··on Open Source Fact and Fiction: HP Should Open Source WebOS
Touchpads at rock bottom prices, ripe for toying with? Check. An OS (that is known to be compatible) to mod and run on this hardware? Hopefully their next step in this royal screw up.

I mean, they could even make it more open than Android, completely transparent development. I would probably contribute to the project.

aaront··on Report: Best Buy tells HP to take back its TouchPads
This is a known issue to HP. It really stinks. The demo units aren't even using 3.0, they're using a special demo build.
aaront··on WordPress For webOS
Well, pre-release hardware was pretty hard to come by. I'd imagine performance fixes to the VM image are also coming. Even webOS for phones was sluggish in the VM.
aaront··on WordPress For webOS
Thought I should chime in here and say that the video demo is a bit laggy because he's using the Virtualbox emulator of webOS 3.0, which doesn't have the greatest performance.
aaront··on Oracle to move OpenOffice.org to a Community-Based Project
The damage is already done. Most of the major distros are switching to LibreOffice in their next versions. I've been advising those with OS X or Windows to follow suit.
aaront··on Ask HN: What are your side projects?
A little site to help university/high school students speculate what they need on exams to get a certain grade in the course, or vice versa: http://calcmymarks.appspot.com/

Really just a hobby, something created out of my nervousness when preparing for exams, but I've gotten some good usage from people at my university.

aaront··on Why LaTeX is Superior to Office
One of my favourite reasons why it's superior to Office is that LaTeX documents are VCS friendly.

Definitely helps when working on SRSs and SDDs in my final project course (being that it's a group of 7 makes it even more valuable).

aaront··on Do I need to go to a big-name university?
In Canada, at least, the quality of education is monitored closely by the accreditation board. A degree from one university, for all intents and purposes, is equal to another.

I go to a fairly good school for Software Engineering with a good reputation, but definitely not the best (by some standards). A lot of people consider Waterloo to be the "best" CS/Software Eng. school in Canada, but I end up getting the exact same degree. I've done the same courses, with some brilliant minds behind the podium.

Mind you, my choice was also on the environment surrounding the program. The impression I had when I visited Waterloo was fairly bad. The campus is a huge sprawl, and not too many people on campus looked like they were having a good time. My tour guide, a software engineer, told us that Waterloo was the only place to go if I wanted to get a good job when I graduated. As well, beyond residences on campus, there wasn't a whole lot of housing surrounding the campus. Students are sprawled out around, leading to (in my opinion) not the true university experience.

I'm currently a tour guide for my program, and I usually get the question: "Why would I go here when I can go to Waterloo?". First of all, I know this guy/girl is probably being forced to look at other schools as a backup plan, and I also know that I have about 60 seconds to state my case before he/she loses interest.

My university was one of the first in Canada to have a Software Eng. program, and had several interesting "sub"-degrees with Software Eng & Game Design and Software Eng & Embedded Systems. The campus is beautiful and fairly compact--you can get from the furthest point in the campus to the other side in less than 10 minutes. People are socializing outside. In the spring, the field in the middle of campus is full of people having picnics and playing pick-up soccer, football, and cricket.

I tell the student that it's not so much about where you'll be in 4-5 years, but how you get there that's important. University was my first taste of the world, and I'd much rather have a good experience transitioning to the working world than asking myself about what I actually did in the past few years.

aaront··on The only script in your head
Very interesting. Will have to try this for some of my projects.
aaront··on Opera 11 Alpha is out, brings plugin support
I started using it at version 10.0 (when it finally started looking better, thanks to John Hicks).

And the whole Cocoa conversion sealed the deal for me. That, and the fact that I can control it fully with only the mouse or only the keyboard.

aaront··on Opera 11 Alpha is out, brings plugin support
Technically, it should be. They're using W3C Widget specifications, an open standard, to do extensions.

EDIT: But I don't think they're compatible out of the box, unfortunately.

Page 1 of 2Next →