Hacker News Reader

allyton Why Google's hiring process is broken

It matches you with interviewers that know the languages you say you know well.

allyton Who is accessing your Gmail account?

the Facebook give-us-your-login-temporarily style stuff is unacceptable

Agreed. IMO, asking for your password when there are API's readily available is alone enough to disqualify a company from being "trustworthy". Just the idea of keeping a bunch of GMail passwords in some decryptable database is quite a bit scary.

allyton Starbucks to Offer Free Wi-Fi Service

I'm a big fan of Subtle Tea on Madison and 30th: http://subtleteastore.com/

But there are a ton of them around I don't know by name. Usually smaller places frown on non-customers using it, or using it on busy nights (Friday/Saturday after 9pm or so), but I haven't had an issue readily finding wifi to work during the day.

allyton Adobe Responds to Jobs

The topic was Flash running in a mobile browser. Like Android, which Adobe originally said would ship Flash for over a year ago. I think Adobe's utter engineering incompetence is one of the obvious points everyone seems too polite to make.

allyton Adobe Responds to Jobs

Let's keep in mind, however, that there is not really one monolithic "market". Just as McDonalds co-exists with Jean Georges, the legions of Android clones running Flash, etc. will peacefully coexist with iPhones, except without the responsive UX, battery life, or even a fundamental sense of taste. (edit: would the downvoters like to justify themselves? have they seen a Android device with a responsive UI? I haven't...)

allyton Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Believe In Privacy

Err, he didn't admit it. An anonymous employee of Facebook alleged it, "off the record". Most people I know treat Facebook as if it were a public-facing website, anyway, and should be more upset that Facebook isn't making people's information readily available to the public.

allyton Why I'm Angry About the iPhone Leak

> I think the key here is how Apple deals with it now that everyone is watching.

Andrey predicts [1] that the new iPhone launch will be canceled (or delayed?), and that Gizmodo will pay dearly for the leak.

1. http://andreyf.tumblr.com/post/540380259/two-points-about-th...

allyton Is Hacker News Slow for You?

http://ycombinator.com is down, and it looks like Paul is hosting the static content of the site there...

allyton Will Apple’s history repeat itself and make Android the winner?

>> When people start realizing how to easily pirate their Android apps, I predict Apple will be the clear winner here.

> You could've said the same thing about Windows apps.

Precisely! Except the easier it is to pirate Windows software, the more valuable Windows becomes (at no loss to Microsoft). Handset manufacturers, on the other hand, are trying to make a profit by taking a cut of the app sales. The more iPhone apps are sold, the more money Apple makes. Their bottom line is negatively affected every time someone opts to pirate instead of buying. Not so with Microsoft.

allyton Top Motivators For Developers (Hint: not money)

I don't think you have dueling anecdotes, just observation of the existence of red weasels and blue weasels. Until someone starts claiming that most weasels are some color, or that certain colored weasels tend to occur in certain kinds of environments, there's no need to fund extensive studies ;)

allyton Google to Open-source VP8 for HTML5 Video

They chose the path that would lead to the fastest adoption of the technology which lowers their bandwidth costs. Keeping the technology Chrome-only is against their financial interests.

Apple and MS pay yearly licensing fees for H.264. As soon as they adopt VP8, they can stop.

allyton Apple Slaps Developers In The Face

I think what he was looking for was the link between the rules Apple uses to accept/reject things from the store and the SDK agreement... but yeah, it seems to be a moot point.

allyton Apple Slaps Developers In The Face

I think Gruber's interpretation is one that any person reading the document will have.

Not necessarily. See: http://andreyf.tumblr.com/post/508678742/stop-interpreting-l...

allyton Apple Slaps Developers In The Face

We have something official, more official than any press release: the developer contract

We have Gruber's interpretation of a complex legal document, taken completely out of the context in which "Application" is defined. Lawyers don't get paid big bucks to interpret this stuff for nothing.

allyton Milgram experiment redone: crowd "tortures" man on fake TV show

Showing that there are those among us who will gas women and children, and many more who will not do anything about it as long as it doesn't affect them personally is a repeated lesson of history, not some psychology study.

allyton Wikipedia over DNS

Explain or link, please?

allyton Wikipedia over DNS

DNS is basically a huge associative array [which] gets cached at nameservers

Uhoh. This might be a dangerous meme.

allyton David Pogue’s Review of the iPad from 2 Angles

I think the idea is that the individuals in your family already own iPod Touches or iPhones (we do), so as soon as someone has a iPad, you're set.

allyton David Pogue’s Review of the iPad from 2 Angles

Yes. Apple completely changed battery designs between the removable and the non-removable versions. The latter will last significantly longer.

allyton Good code needs few unit tests

From what I know, Andrey (the poster) is pretty neutral on TD, maybe even a proponent. He's saying you should have an interface in mind when you start to write unit tests. Sometimes you can do that before writing code. Other times, exploring with a REPL first is better.

allyton Milgram experiment redone: crowd "tortures" man on fake TV show

For all we know, these are the kinds of people who, when approached on the street, said "sure, I'll go on The Death Show". They're the same kids who stomp on worms after it rains - a small minority of the complete population.

allyton Milgram experiment redone: crowd "tortures" man on fake TV show

The good news is that once you start to understand where our biases are we can compensate to a degree, or at least include them in our mental models.

Isn't it backwards to realize the logical models of our actions are only justifications for unconscious drives, and then try to categorize those drives through the very same logical models we just agreed are only good at hindsight justification? What is the point? To justify your self-image of being part of some "rational elite"?

allyton Milgram experiment redone: crowd "tortures" man on fake TV show

I think what he is trying to say is that the experiment conducted for the documentary was not a robust peer reviewed phenomenon, but rather a for-pop-consumption "backyard demonstration". Real science takes a lot of effort (avoiding the before mentioned sample bias being one), effort which was most likely skipped in the creation of this "pop sociology" for-mass-consumption show.

Ironically, the fake violence of reality shows they decry is precisely what they are demonstrating - an unreviewed, unpublished study which concludes "4/5 of everyone around you is a potential murderer".

allyton Dear Mozilla, Please Don't Kill HTML5 Video

they refuse to see this

Nah, just hadn't read up/thought about the issue enough, thanks for explaining. I'm actually a bit of a supporter of software patents, as they give business reason to invest boatloads of money in things like H.264 to begin with.

allyton Dear Mozilla, Please Don't Kill HTML5 Video

Ugh. Please, read the other side of the "argument", I was going to say "research", but seriously, the information is 5 seconds of google-fu away: http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/01/23/html5-video-and-codec...

allyton Garmin Connect team asked to relocate - this is how they declined

Right - you don't maximize shareholder returns by being generous with handing out stock. IMHO, being generous handing out stock is just stupid.

allyton Dear Mozilla, Please Don't Kill HTML5 Video

Because you need to pay licensing fees measured in "millions of USD per year" if you're going to distribute software which decodes H.264.

allyton PEG.js - parser generator for JavaScript

I'm really interested in human-readable grammars. Thanks for your work.

allyton Native Client and Web Portability

Looks like learning the workings of LLVM is moving only up and up on my todo list.

allyton Garmin Connect team asked to relocate - this is how they declined

that's why there is equity compensation

And as little equity as possible, for identical reasons.

An employee is responsible for making sure the terms agreed on are ones they're happy with, not an employer. An employer has a legal obligation to shareholders to minimize the costs of her business, one in direct conflict with "being generous in compensation" to her employees.