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117 karma · joined January 12, 2012

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ax··on ISIS Drone Dropping Bomblet on Abrams Tank Is a Sign of What’s to Come
The far future may be similar to Banks's Culture novels: each of us supports a cloud of thousands and thousands of micro-drones. As the ages pass countermeasures against these drones lead to counter-countermeasures lead to counter-counter-countermeasures and on and on until our sea of micro-dones essentially becomes an extension of our own immune system.
ax··on Ask HN: What if we legalize cybercrime?
The tragedy of Galois is that he could have contributed so much more to mathematics if he'd only spent more time on his marksmanship.
ax··on ECMAScript 6: new OOP features besides classes
Classes are in IE11 Technical Preview and, I believe, the latest versions of V8 as well.
ax··on Just Use Sublime Text
I considered switching to sublime from vim just for sane line wrapping. If you have indents, vim forces you to hard wrap or else end up with an unreadable soup. Sublime, on the other hand, makes the sane choice of preserving indentation level when a line is wrapped. Sublime's setting makes editing large HTML files in a variable width window much more pleasant...
ax··on Fat arrow functions in Javascript
Each function has its own this binding - the conceptual model for this is that its an implicit argument to every function call. There is no scope chain lookup for "this". Although, there is no way to observe any difference between your understanding of the semantics or the bind semantics (which is a valid desugarding AFAIK) so the distinction is mostly moot...
ax··on Fat arrow functions in Javascript
Both let and const are supported in IE11 as well!
ax··on The NSA Searches Ten Times as Much of the Internet as It Said It Does
I'm getting flashbacks to the VerizonMath Fiasco.

http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2007/08/original-recording-o...

ax··on Destructuring Assignment in ECMAScript 6
Yahoo did and does have a spot at the table because they are a dues-paying member of ECMA. They have as much weight in the committee as any other member (MS, Google, Mozilla, now Facebook, etc.) Presumably Yahoo cares because they have millions of users running JS code.
ax··on Destructuring Assignment in ECMAScript 6
I don't think "threw a fit" is an accurate description. More like, objected to many aspects for technical reasons. And, considering that TC-39 agreed at the Oslo meeting to pursue ES3.1 over ES4, presumably they had a pretty good argument. Brendan Eich's mail sent after the accord[1] has some detail.

1) https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2008-August/00...

(Disclaimer: I work for MS).

ax··on Internet Explorer 11: “Don’t call me IE”
This is explicitly about getting more sites to work /without/ forcing older sites to update their stuff. Older sites have ifIE() checks that return true and serve IE old legacy IE-specific code. IE11 is more compatible with standards-compliant code than legacy IE-specific code so forcing existing sites to serve IE the same code as FF/Chrome results in more sites working in IE.
ax··on Open-plan offices make employees less productive, less happy, and more sick
I could be wrong, but at one point I calculated that the HD280s meet OSHA requirements for hearing protection for certain noise levels.
ax··on JS Objects: Inherited a Mess
I think BE is a fan of the max-min class proposal... At any rate, naming aside, ES6 classes are simple syntactic sugar for a very common pattern in JS development today. It makes sense to provide a syntactic sugar in this case that makes developer intention clear and reduces boilerplate.

TypeScript has (I believe) a mostly compatible implementation of these classes if you want to try them out in today's runtimes.

ax··on GitLab now available in BitNami: installer, VM, cloud
When I go to that page, I only see Linux installers (a .run file). Where are the installers for Mac/Windows?
ax··on IE10 for Windows 7 Globally Available
Yes, IE 10 has IE 6 (Quirks), 7, 8, and 9 mode.
ax··on Letter to TEDx India Licensees
I'm sick of seeing Nitin fucking Gupta at every conference I go to. I'm glad TED is finally taking a stand and blacklisting him.
ax··on My Windows 8 app approaching 100,000 downloads
In truth, employees are not rated at all on whether their app gets downloads, unless maybe you're one of the in-box apps. Apps like the one linked above are covered under a moonlighting policy -- basically, feel free to create an awesome app and sell it and keep the profits, but don't use any company resources or time to make it happen[1]. Getting 100k downloads will absolutely not factor in on your review.

Also, I'm not sure Windows 8 was ever marketed as the most openly developed OS in the world. It IS the most open of any Microsoft OS to date, however, so maybe that's why you are confused.

1) There were some exceptions to this rule I believe for WP8 apps but I'm not entirely clear on the details.

(Microsoft employee)

ax··on Webshell.io: the shell for scripting and combining APIs in Javascript
How do I use typescript? I seem to be getting syntax errors.
ax··on Under the hood of Windows 8, or why desktop users should upgrade from Windows 7
> There is pretty much no other justification for this metro/desktop mashup possible.

There are many, but one compelling reason is having the best of both worlds. You may disagree on whether it's possible or not, but that is the goal: two usage modes in one device.

> Why else would they do away completely with the start menu for desktop use and force the start screen?

Because it's better [1].

(I am an employee but these are entirely my own opinions and experiences)

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/10/11/reflecting-on-...

ax··on How we make 5000 row tables fast in Streak
Is there a way to view one of these tables without having to log in?
ax··on Delivering the Windows 8 Release Preview
No surprise it's boggling your mind if you haven't used it. If you want to stay in desktop mode, you can, with the minor exception of having a start menu that displays more stuff and takes up one monitor worth of space.

Windows key brings you to the start screen or from the start screen back to the app (or desktop) you were viewing. Winkey + D displays the desktop.

ax··on Review my startup : Kinesis.io - Build gesture driven web apps with JS & Kinect
Users must install some software for this to work right? Some browser plugin of some kind?
ax··on Goodbye, MongoDB
The message is, just like every technology, there's an initial period where a vocal minority loves it and tries to use it for everything. Then, there's a backlash where a vocal minority hates it and thinks anyone who uses it is clearly an idiot. All the while, the silent majority go on getting work done. It's been this way for as long as I can remember.
ax··on IOS Low-Hanging Fruit
They'll probably add this. Windows 8 supports lock screen notifications as well. It's really great to see your next meeting and weather right on the lock screen.
ax··on Bitcoinica hacked. ~$100k USD stolen.
There are roughly 1 million USD Bitcoin transactions per day.[1] The stolen transaction accounts for 10% of a single day's worth of transactions.

1. http://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-u...)

ax··on JS.Next Needs You
Members of the TC39 committee include representatives from Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft. Javascript engines from these vendors will almost surely implement the standard. Firefox has prototypes for a few new things already.
ax··on How text editing on the iPad should be
Good points, though I don't agree that Metaphore is an important criteria. It's intuition that's important, and metaphore is just one way to aid intuition. Metro design guidelines even advise against using metaphore in favor of being authentically digital.
ax··on Show HN: A new A.I. Algorithm for Polygonal Mesh Mazes
You could also add -ms-transform, since that works as well in IE9+.
ax··on Show HN: TheReelBox, find tonight's movie
IE9/IE10 will have a goldbar at the bottom of the screen so the green arrow is a bit misleading...
ax··on 88% there: "Don't Mess With The Internet" billboard in Lamar Smith's district
I'm curious, what do you do differently from Kickstarter? What makes your product more ideal for small ticket items?
ax··on Microsoft kills Zune, Windows Live brands; Live ID renamed to Microsoft Account
The services are still there right? This is just a name change?
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