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canistr

4,808 karma · joined June 20, 2011

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canistr··on Don't let a single day pass without doing something towards your goal
Rather unfortunate that you must sign in with a fitness app. Any way around this? I don't really want to connect my Jawbone/FitBit account to a random app.
canistr··on Windows Now Showing Full-Screen Ads
Eh. I don't use Gmail because their login page is ad-free. I use it because my workflow is better.

I was expecting your screenshot to show the minimized amount of ads within the inbox. But you could argue that Outlook is reasonably minimal, Gmail is only text, and Yahoo/AOL are panelled ads.

canistr··on GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
To further extend from the suffrage movement, it is important to note that minorities (men & women) didn't legally have the right to vote until the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

So Sanchez has a point in claiming that historical precedence has shown that "discrimination" was thought to have ended after the suffrage movement when it wasn't until many years later that minorities were legally secured the right to vote. Hence the hierarchy is that white women are the "next-in-line" when it comes to diversity before any other type of minority group.

canistr··on GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart
Hold on.

Before we make judgment based solely on mentioning race in a slide. I highly recommend reading Nicole Sanchez's full take on the issue here:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2015/02/12/wome...

canistr··on Secret US flight flew over Scottish airspace to capture Snowden
I wouldn't conflate tech-savviness with being a Snowden-supporter.

And I wouldn't suggest people suddenly align themselves one way or the other based on the premise of tech-savviness, education-level, political-savviness, etc.

canistr··on How Target failed in Canada
My thought is that because Target's downfall was really location. Zellers got significantly worse and worse over the years that eventually, people stopped shopping there and took their business elsewhere. As a result, Zellers only existed in dead-end malls with low foot traffic because the majority of people went to Walmart.

Target decided it was a good idea to buy up all the Zellers locations and put their stores in there. But by that time, people's habits changed. Target wasn't going to revive dead malls.

canistr··on Marc Andreessen sells nearly half his Facebook stake
Also consider that Peter Thiel sold $100 million worth of stock back in August at $93. A significantly larger size at one price as opposed to Andreessen's multiple sales in the past 2 weeks.

You can see a list of Insider Trades here: http://finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=FB

canistr··on ESPN to lay off nearly 4% of workforce amid changing pay-TV landscape
I don't know how related it is, but it does feel like the rich are getting richer.

In this case, because of the massive NBA TV-contract (9-year $24 billion with NBA-ESPN-TNT), the net losers out of this are not the millionaire players or executives, but the 4% workforce getting laid off.

So while it's all fun to say that Lebron James is getting underpaid, this new contract and the subsequent increase in salary cap means that you're not paying for the ESPN employees to do their job but giving it to the rich.

canistr··on Chinese Hell Money (2014)
It should also be fairly easy to find in Toronto. I can attest that my grandparents tend to burn stacks of Hell money whenever we visit the cemetery. Followed by the usual feast afterward.
canistr··on Latest Snowden Doc Shows NSA Spied on German Intelligence
I disagree.

Grabbing everything because you don't have time to sift through the data and passing them to so-called "respectable journalists" doesn't make it right. In the same way that people claim dragnet surveillance is wrong to catch terrorists if it's violating the privacy of everyone else.

canistr··on iOS at Facebook [pdf]
I'd say Facebook's emphasis on developer tools shows they'd be more committed to go down the route of building custom hardware for their devs like mouses, keyboards, laptops, workstations, etc. As opposed to building hardware for end-users.
canistr··on The world's fastest human-powered vehicle tops 85 mph
I agree. If you read a tech article with MIT/Harvard/Stanford Alumni, you can be sure they'll mention it front and centre.

Meanwhile, whenever I notice something with a Canadian origin, I usually have to dig pretty deep before I figure out which university it's from.

canistr··on Android libstagefright still exploitable
It's not better. Look at the proposed target released dates for StageFright patches by Telus. And considering that it is not even fully patches, this only adds to the insanity of the situation with regards to Android fragmentation and carrier's controlling releases.

http://forum.telus.com/thread/54211/category/top/board/Mobil...

  OEM	 	Model	 	        Target Release
  HTC           One M7	 	        August 14th
  HTC	 	One M8	 	        August 14th
  HTC           One M9	 	        August 14th
  HTC           Desire 320a	        August 28th
  HTC           Desire 601	        August 14th
  LG	 	Nexus 4	 	        Completed
  LG	 	Nexus 5	 	        Completed
  Motorola	Nexus 6	 	        Completed
  Samsung	Galaxy S5	 	August 11th
  SamsungGalaxy S5 Active	 	August 11th
  Samsung	Galaxy Alpha	 	August 21st
  Samsung	Galaxy Grand Prime	August 21st
  Samsung	Galaxy S6	 	Completed
  Samsung	Galaxy S6 Edge	 	Completed
  Samsung	Galaxy S4	 	August 28th
  Samsung	Galaxy Note 3	 	August 30th
  Samsung	Galaxy Note 4	 	August 11th
  Samsung	Galaxy Core	 	September 4th
  Samsung	Galaxy Tab S 8.4	September 4th
  Samsung	Galaxy Tab S 10.5	September 4th
  Sony	 	Xperia Z3	 	August 14th
canistr··on How to Reject Engineering Candidates
We appreciate your huge desire to learn and your creative instinct. You’re obviously excited to code and solve hard problems. But tech-wise we don’t think you meet the bar that we’re aiming for a candidate for this position.

Stopped reading right there.

You don't need to provide a wall of text why I'm not the right candidate. I don't intend to read your summary of my resume. There's really no point. I'm already in a mad/frustrated/disappointed/etc. state and giving me a great wall of text is adding insult to injury.

Engineering candidates are really looking for feedback on how the interview/technical component went. The "cultural fit" answer is a blackbox and stating it doesn't really answer what you're looking for.

You're better off just telling me I'm not the right fit and for legal reasons, you can't go into details. That's really it. Don't tell me about what you think of my previous experience. Don't tell me about the other candidates (frankly, I don't care unless they become my co-workers).

canistr··on It's the Future
New, new hotness is React Native (or whenever FB decides to make it also available on Android) and JSBlocks.
canistr··on Vim's speed is not really the point (2013)
VIM/VI aren't simply editors themselves. Most editors have a VIM/VI-like plugin to give VIM users the ability to navigate their code in same style.

I use VIM plugins heavily in Sublime (the Vintage plugin) and Android Studio.

canistr··on Apple now rejecting apps with Pebble Smartwatch support
IIRC, this has to do with specifying "Pebble" and competitors in the App Store description. Same issue has occurred with apps that specify Samsung, Google, etc. in their descriptions and screenshots.

You just have to remove them.

canistr··on How a Toronto professor’s research revolutionized artificial intelligence
Keep in mind that this is the Toronto Star. A local paper here in Toronto for obviously a broad audience outside of tech.

For a country and city that has a heavy inferiority complex and suffers greatly from the "Brain Drain" of technical talent to the US, this is one of those articles that's meant to inspire. Not an article for Canadians/Torontonians to puff their chests.

So I wouldn't be so critical about it's so called "propaganda" aspect.

canistr··on Introducing Messenger Platform and Businesses on Messenger
I don't think it's an either/or scenario for Facebook. Ultimately such experiences benefit the user regardless of where/when the initial innovation occurred. We've seen it over and over again. You don't need to be first or even last to the game. You just need to be the best at implementing it and your users will follow.
canistr··on Show HN: Tilepad for Twitter – Twitter in Pinterest Layout
What's fascinating to me is that this layout makes it much more difficult to understand the timeline as linear since you have to read across the page (left-to-right) and down with noted differences in the sizes of each tweet.

It's the effect of reading all tweets at once instead of focusing in a single tweet at a time. Clutter adds distractions which take away from the value of each individual tweet.

However, when I hit a batch of tweets that are primarily photos (as opposed to pure text and links), it's much easier to understand what's happening.

canistr··on It's Time to Break Up the NSA (2014)
It seems to be a sort of universal truth in that the people trying to break a system will always be ahead of people trying to secure/protect it. Why then, would prioritizing COMSEC over SIGINT change any of that? COMSEC will never catch up to SIGINT.

I'm curious to know what exactly the NSA currently does to protect the US. Do they already use their existing SIGINT knowledge to update systems ahead of attacks?

canistr··on Introducing Pebble Time
I suspect that the reason to continue using Kickstarter even with the 5% fee is that it comes included with publicity from not just Kickstarter, but the media outlets that will relay this story.
canistr··on Show HN: A histogram of salaries given to H1B workers in the software industry
May further want to account for income tax laws according to state. Take-home pay is really what we're after.
canistr··on Ask HN: What have you achieved in January 2015?
Highly recommend trying out any online courses (Coursera, Udacity, edX) and putting that on your application. I'm certain the Admissions committee is more concerned with whether you will be successful in the program than what your background is. So it's a matter of willingness to learn and preparation. In fact, the application asks you specifically what you are doing to prepare for the program. Try to answer that honestly before doing it.

Definitely check out the Google+ community here [1]. It's a fantasically active community. Great responses from students in the program. It is even frequented by Prof. Charles Isbell who is Associate Dean.

[1] https://plus.google.com/u/1/communities/10890255460754763472...

canistr··on Ask HN: What have you achieved in January 2015?
Thanks for the feedback!
canistr··on Ask HN: What have you achieved in January 2015?
Started online grad school at Georgia Tech in CS and managed to launch a beta of my first product.

http://www.thesnaffu.com

canistr··on GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance
But Blockfinder is returning a full list of IPs of which you could perform nmap scans upon.

That's one step away from HACIENDA.

canistr··on GNU hackers discover HACIENDA government surveillance
Ironically Jacob Appelbaum, allegedly an investigative journalist who reported this issue, is responsible for this project on GitHub that does exactly the same thing:

https://github.com/ioerror/blockfinder

canistr··on Tesla's Infinite Mile Warranty
I was listening to the conference call and Musk also mentioned a goal of Tesla is also to service your vehicle before you even realized it needed service. Here's an excerpt:

"And another key metric we measure is the average time to service something. So our average is less than a day. So the car is -- so, in most cases we can actually pick up your car, fix anything that's wrong with it, and give it back to you, without you even knowing it was gone. So you just tell us like my car is at my office and this is where it is, and we'll pick up the car, fix it, and get it back to you before you finish work.

Our goal with service is sort of invisible up, which is, is there even -- it's like elves [ph] service delivery [ph]. Like you don't even see it. It's like -- it happens so fast. And once done, you'll love it.

And so I think there's like -- there's an interesting opportunity to revolutionize service as well. It's not just like, oh, let's do the same thing as before. I think it was a lot of lessons learned from a Formula One car approach. So, because we're not trying to serve customers for the most amount of money possible in a service, which is typical of the conventional auto industry, we want to get the job done super-fast, and then also make sure that you don't -- like we want to anticipate issues so you don't have to come back again.

And so we actually bring the car and we kind of hit with a pit crew, like a Formula One pit crew. So instead of having one person per bay, the car gets slowly worked on over several days, it actually comes in and a team attacks it, and we're constantly improving the tools and the metrics to say, how can we get the car perfect as fast as possible. We actually bring in people from Formula One to help with the training on this. And I think there's a real opportunity to revolutionize the way service works."

canistr··on Show HN: Pythonpy – the swiss army knife of the command line
I think if Git Tip had a button on a GitHub repo (a la Heroku button), this would be amazing.
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