Hacker News Reader

aryon Netflix Loses Toy Story 3, Tron and 1,000 More Movies

People forget why Universal Studios was originally founded. The monopoly envisioned by Edison and company (slowly) gave way to a cartel that arose out of opposition to the incumbent surrounded by a desire to capitalize on untapped opportunity. See this Ars Technica article:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/thomas-ediso...

Far from being a hinderance, the actions of the MPAA and its member studios are an opportunity for smaller, more agile companies to start producing content and refusing to license it to the incumbents. There is a whole new world of distribution out there, and no forced middle-man. Get out there and make it happen.

aryon Forget $3B In Revenue: Things "Don't Look Good" For Facebook

Since your evidence is anecdotal I'll point out that there have been a number of "unhappy ending" stories regarding Facebook advertising on the front page of HN over the last year and a half. Perhaps your niche works well with their offerings, but it seems like you're the exception and not the rule.

aryon Objective-C literals for NSDictionary, NSArray, and NSNumber

> Why did they choose '[' over '{'? Oddly enough, NSDictionary uses '{'.

Who knows, but it seems to mirror Python in that respect. Being a fan of Python I can only approve.

aryon Mountain Lion: John Gruber's personal briefing

That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now.

Seems to me that not everyone at Apple was thrilled with the one-man spectacle that Jobs made the company into. I'd wager that most of the executives (especially Forstall) are going to raise their public profiles in the coming years in an attempt to use the rather high launching pad that is Apple to make a mark. Under Jobs that wasn't easy.

aryon Apple will require apps to ask users for permission to address books

A few years ago developers were bemoaning all the arduous controls as hurdles. Today people cry out for them. I, for one, am thankful that people are at least expecting a higher standard.

aryon Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

Usability (as I've employed it) is when someone non-technical can derive benefit from something beyond their understanding. Rest assured I've read every line of the GPG man page and then some.

aryon Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

That's what I'm getting at. Have you tried using GPG? Most "security" products (or projects) have terrible usability.

Disclaimer: I work on a "security" product.

aryon Why do self-respecting hackers use Gmail & Co?

When people have to choose between usability, accessibility, and reliability VS security and privacy they almost always choose the former. My response to this would be "Why do self-respecting open source and security advocates refuse to do the hard work of making security and privacy easily available to everyone?"

<IMHO>Laziness, disinterest, and fear of killing off lucrative security consulting.</IMHO>

aryon Never Make Counter-Offers

No where in there did I say that the best employees have to quit and leave for better offers. I'm part of a startup that underpays me (based on job offers I've had since joining) yet I wouldn't dream of leaving. Incentives (and priorities) make a difference.

aryon Never Make Counter-Offers

This is counter-intuitive from a business standpoint. Managers behave this way because they've learned through experience that:

1) Most of the worst employees hang on for dear life to their jobs and don't dare risk losing them for any reason (asking for a raise, etc). Incompetence or sub-par job performance not withstanding.

2) Occasionally employees get a fire lit under them by a spouse, mid-life crisis, etc and attempt to obtain a raise. Doing so communicates that the employee wants to stay at the company, and that they can be low-balled.

3) The best employees have mobility in the job space and can get better offers. This is why quitting is the only reliable way to get a raise (counter-offer). The employee has clearly shown market value above their current position, and the psychological effect of social proof kicks in.

There are of course exceptions, but even a moderate amount of time in a large company shows this to be generally true. Managers are incentivized to keep personnel costs down, and only give in if their hand is forced. It's just human nature at work.

aryon Why iCloud won't beat Dropbox and the failure of Airdrop

Since you can sync your contacts with your computer via iTunes, and then sync your new iPhone with your computer, I am genuinely curious as to why you "had" to manually type in this information. Having owned every iPhone except the 3G this has never been my experience.

aryon A Redditor's insightful message for discouraged students

Don't take the bait.

aryon My Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Mac OS X (2011 Edition)

Given my personal experience I have to warn people away from HTTP Client. It is bug-ridden and broken. Many of the UI elements break in weird ways during normal use. I had to quit and re-run the application many times just to bring it back to a usable state (only to have it break again immediately).

Spend your money on Rested instead. I don't quite understand the OP's assertion that "RESTed is a little bit more complex than HTTP Client." Considering Rested actually works I'd consider it a lot more simple than HTTP Client.

Edit: To be clear, I am in no way connected with the author of Rested. I'm just a very satisfied customer.

aryon Famous Last Words by Bosses I've Had

On 99% of the projects I've been involved with:

Boss: So you can do <anything> in two weeks then?

Me: No, what I just talked about is a multi-month endeavor.

The reasoning behind this is probably formed from a multitude of influences. Executive desire, manager's attempts to look good, and a complete lack of comprehension of what building software is about all rank high on the list. The one I, for the life of me, cannot understand is why programmers insist on pushing the "I can hack that together in 48 hours" mythology. Surely it has had an effect on the management psyche and influenced the mental math used to conclude that the maximum time it should take any feature to be developed is fourteen days.

aryon LocalWiki, a really easy to use geographically-based wiki, released

This sprung out of DavisWiki (http://daviswiki.org/). Poking around that site you find that the citizens have a sense of humor. Does your town have a Zombie Attack Response Guide?

http://daviswiki.org/Zombie_Attack_Response_Guide

aryon Imagine a world where Bash supports JSON.

Ultimately the point was that shell scripting shouldn't be used for "serious" programming. Yet it has been used for decades to accomplish and automate some of the most important tasks on UNIX/Linux systems. I happen to know and work in several "serious" programming languages, and yet I can knock out a functional, reliable, and understandable shell script in a fraction of the time it would take many people to do the same in X.

Since it's tracking on HN, I'll also point this out: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg...

aryon Imagine a world where Bash supports JSON.

You (and everyone else who feels this way) need to take a look at the startup scripts for your favorite Linux distro.

aryon What's the one Linux command you wish you knew years ago?

Google is what happened. Not to date myself, but when I was first learning (BSDi) UNIX Google didn't exist. The first thing the sys-admin who helped me said was, "type 'man'."

These days most people just know that if they have an unanswered question, ask the Google.

aryon This is a Bad Time to be an FPS Fan

Understood, but what I'm trying to say is that four years isn't a long time. That we got GoldenEye only four years after DOOM is a testament to how fast the industry moves.

Edit: Sorry to pull the comment, but my recollection of the release dates for DOOM and GoldenEye made me want to double-check them first.

aryon This is a Bad Time to be an FPS Fan

The first Modern Warfare came out in 2007... four years ago. It's a little soon to be decrying the entire genre because the publishing companies are wringing all the money out of a waning trend. Remember when there was an endless flood of World War 2 shooters?

Once someone hits upon the next big thing every GameStop will be bursting at the seams with Panda themed RPGs (or whatever). Whining about how one's beloved genre is stagnant is just, well, whining.

aryon Hacker News Needs Honeypots

My occasional check of the 'new' page shows that most stories fall off the end of the page and are never seen again. Seems overcomplicated to rig a page no one pays much attention to (I could be wrong, but my anecdotal experience over time backs this up).

Wouldn't a simpler metric be how many times a specific user's story posts are flagged? Combine this with a karma threshold for submitting (much like the down-vote threshold) and it seems to me to be a viable option.

aryon Steve Jobs left designer Jony Ive more power than anyone at Apple

Apple has been showing "how it's made" videos for a very long time.

http://vimeo.com/11899632 (see 35:05 to 39:00).

aryon Steve Jobs left designer Jony Ive more power than anyone at Apple

I thought this about the first Cars (I've yet to see Cars 2). What you have to keep in mind is that kids loved the first one, and probably the second one too. Even Pixar is going to bow to commercial viability now and again so they can make things like Wall-E.

aryon Biographer: Jobs refused early and potentially life-saving surgery

To be fair I agree with the notion of publisher driven publicity. Perhaps he's obligated.

I suppose my real problem is that the contents of the book are being pieced out to the media before it is available. From my past reading about Jobs this kind of frenzy wouldn't seem to suit his tastes, and you can be damn sure he'd be pissed about information leaking prior to release. I stand by the "bad taste" statement as there is strong evidence that the subject of Isaacson's work wouldn't appreciate what he's doing.

aryon Biographer: Jobs refused early and potentially life-saving surgery

Surely I can't be the only person that wants to just read the book without having Isaacson spill all the beans before my copy comes in the mail. With each one of these excerpts he teases I lose more and more respect for the man. He's riding this thing pretty high and it's starting to be in bad taste.

This is already one of the most anticipated biographies ever. There's not really any need to seek more attention.

aryon Dear John Carmack.

> He has a team of artists who help realise the (visual) potential of the awesome new tech he has developed. The gameplay itself comes second. Heresy, I know, but this has been the pattern for a number of releases and if the id team are happy with that then more power to them.

What it really comes down to is that id games are basically showcases for their latest engine tech. The licensing income from the engines (which they call idTech if I recall) probably overshadows the games within a year of release.

aryon Why I’m scared of the post-PC era.

In the presence of each and every person living in an industrialized society are multiple devices running embedded software that is difficult to modify. Those devices are programmed using more flexible systems which to this very second are programmable any way you like. Where is the outrage over the hacker unfriendliness of my refrigerator? The iPad, iPhone, Android, and comparable devices are a hybrid of PC-like and embedded systems. The tradeoffs were made for reasons outside of anyone's programming/hacking needs. Should you want jailbreak a locked down device much of the work has already been done for you.

A hacker's "freedom" to poke around in the system has been traded for the freedom of an average person to use the damn thing without worry. This argument about post-PC devices and whether or not they're good for hackers is tired. Be thankful that powerful, accessible devices are being put in the hands of millions of enthusiastic people that you have a chance to influence and affect through software and services.

Finally, let's address the specter of censorship. This is brilliantly simple (in the United States at least). Address the entity censoring you. If it's a private entity then accept that they have no legal, ethical, or moral obligation to give you any access to their customers (much less complete access). Roll up your sleeves and compete. Should you be dealing with government censorship then pursue justice in whatever way your heart guides you.

But please stop whining.

aryon Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

Thanks. Wish I'd seen that typo before my ability to edit went away.

aryon Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

When reading this keep in mind that the Mac was still a skunkworks project inside of Apple when Jobs attempted to institute a uniform policy. Some of the comments have suggested this doesn't jive with the "Think Different" ethos he pushed. The Think Different campaign was initiated in 1997 shortly after his return to Apple. Many things transpired and he matured quite a bit in the intervening ~16/17 years.

aryon Mobile apps must die

Maybe.

Why is it so hard to imagine a world where we have both? I don't use Google's dedicated iOS app because www.google.com happens to load just fine in Mobile Safari. I do use the iOS Maps application because maps.google.com doesn't work as well as I'd like in the aforementioned browser.

We have to let go of this notion that for web apps to win, mobile apps have to lose (or vice versa). [1]

[1] http://www.edibleapple.com/2009/08/06/when-apple-and-microso...