Hacker News Reader

analogon How Parents Around the World Describe Their Children, in Charts

So it's just your gut feeling that the US is more innovative than the EU? Edit: That comes across as more snarky than it's meant.

analogon Rape Case Solved By Anonymous in Less Than 2 Hours Despite "No Evidence"

Not to be unnecessarily argumentative but do you think a jury would be convinced by that 'she was throwing up due to strenuous exercise' excuse?

analogon Rape Case Solved By Anonymous in Less Than 2 Hours Despite "No Evidence"

"Even if they believed that Rehtaeh Parsons had been raped"

She was under the age of consent, legally there is zero doubt it was rape. Edit: Apparently under Canadian law it may not have been statutory rape.

Edit: Also, apparently she was vomiting whilst being assaulted[1]. I'd like to meet the lawyer who could convince a jury that consent was given.

[1] "One of the boys snapped a picture on his mobile phone of Rehtaeh vomiting while allegedly being assaulted." http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-search-for-...

analogon How Parents Around the World Describe Their Children, in Charts

Genuinely curious, how do you measure innovation?

I had a quick google for some data and the best measure I could find was this[1], which places the US on a similar level to the European/Scandinavian countries with strong economies.

[1] http://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii/main/fullreport/fil...

analogon Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

Lets see, mathematics[1], language[2], writing[3], the printing press[4], scientific method[5]. Each of these innovations are absolutely required for the innovation that pharma companies produce, and none originated in the US.

Your 100 year cut-off point is entirely arbitrary and chosen only because it supports your arguments.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method

analogon Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

I'm not sure why it's useless. If you're going to account for value provided by external sources then account for all sources, not just the ones that support your argument.

analogon Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

The first table in the Wikipedia entry uses UN estimates which have Bosnia at 13 deaths per 1000 births.

analogon Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

Bosnia and Russia are both listed as having worse infant mortality rates than the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mor...

analogon Why Chemotherapy That Costs $70,000 in the U.S. Costs $2,500 in India

And all of that surrounding infrastructure is reliant on Mathematics which didn't originate in the US.

analogon The Tyranny of Taxi Medallions

Unscrupulous landlords will increase the rent.

analogon BitCon: Don't

It's not ad hominem because it's not using the dislike of the author to disagree with the argument.

analogon French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article

Callous disregard for human life is evil.

analogon Australian youth faces 10 years jail for accused Anonymous hacks

I'd have to disagree that a tagger would be more likely to be involved in violence simply as a result of being a tagger.

analogon Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]

The primary effect of anabolic steroids is to reduce recovery times. Bodybuilders get so big on them not because they magically make you bigger but because they let you train incredibly hard.

Long distance runners do use anabolic steroids amongst other PEDs. [1]

"For example, Lyubov Denisova tested positive for Prostanozol and Testosterone in 2007. She has won the Honolulu and Los Angeles marathons and has been 2nd place at New York."

Prostanozol is an anabolic steroid.

[1] http://www.runningahead.com/forums/post/d63143aa7f5246359388...

analogon Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]

Have you got links to those? I'd be interested to see them since I'm in that group. For me personally weight lifting seems to have prevented a lot of injuries that I used to get.

analogon My "Ember" Job Posting on Hacker News

Compared to Backbone it's a lot more magic. You'll need to write less code, but it may be more difficult when you want to do something a bit more custom.

I'd also say that Ember has a steeper learning curve than Backbone.

analogon Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]

You can be pretty sure that marathon runners are using PEDs too.

analogon Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]

There was a recent study which found that running only increased life expectancy if you were running 10-20miles (or km, memory hazy) per week. More than that and life expectancy decreased again.

So endurance running, which I would guess you would categorise as marathon+ will decrease your life expectancy.

Edit: /s/will/could Depending on how much running you already do.

analogon Microsoft Launches Windows QuickStart Kit For Mac Developers

Personally I'd rather download a DMG and put it on a USB I can buy locally. Better than waiting for international post.

analogon Rosetta Stone Acquires Livemocha

I've used Transparent recently and would recommend it. Not free but a lot cheaper than Rosetta Stone at $29 per month. They have a free offering called Byki as well which I haven't tried.

analogon Discourse now available in BitNami

The code is a lot nicer to work with than the other forum solutions I've worked with (PHPBB, Drupal). There is a bunch of spam/abuse management stuff baked in which looks like it's intended to reduce the workload of moderating. I believe the spam/abuse management learns as things get flagged what is abusive.

For me the single-page app makes it feel pretty quick as well running locally. It needs a fast server to run on though.

analogon India as a great power

For rather obvious reasons he's not likely to want to provide proof. Please stop asking for it.

analogon You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

Wordpress and Gmail are both free and the market leaders. I'd bet that most people who use Wordpress don't care that it's open source, they just like the price and that it works well.

analogon Ask HN: Have you ever been sued by your startup?

Walk away, saying "that's fine, you're right". Then call the police on the drunk driver and come back. Follow up with a civil case for damages, you have the poor job as evidence.

analogon You Can’t Quit, I Dare You

Gmail is the Wordpress of email surely?

analogon How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

I agree that it would be better if Google applied the same rules to other vendors selling similar knives. They are entirely free to decide how you can use their service, there's nothing evil about that.

Edit: To clarify, I've used knives professionally (diving instructor) and recreationally (kite surfer), but I fail to see the non-weapon use for a knife that is small (and therefore concealable) and also opens quickly. Not to mention the window-smashing attachment. [1]

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&lis...!

analogon How Google Sliced Away Our Knife Ads

Hang on, what? Refusing to advertise knives which are clearly intended to be used as weapons is 'evil' now is it?

analogon Patterns for Managing Large Scale Backbone Applications

Are you using the r.js optimiser though? We definitely couldn't use a local non-AMD version with other CDN libraries when using the optimiser to build our js out for production.

analogon Digg says it’s serious about building a replacement for Google Reader

The RSS reader I use on my phone lets me view the text content without having to view the web page. No web page -> No google ads.

analogon Patterns for Managing Large Scale Backbone Applications

It's a pain because some libs support AMD and some don't, but it's the least bad solution that I know of. If there's a better option I'm all ears.

Of course you can add a global variable in a module if you want to, but 1. why would you? and 2. If this happens by accident it should be picked up by a linter.

Which mobile browsers have issues? Would be good to know.