Hacker News Reader

catweaselon Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

I'm not sure his comment was disingenuous. But you're right, it's bizarre that FB jumps to remove breast feeding images and yet leaves the most vile rubbish untouched. And unsurprising activists are targeting advertisers after repeatedly getting nowhere with FB itself.

catweaselon Facebook agrees to block sexual assault 'humor'

They (the advertisers) are under pressure from feminist activist groups like /DestroyTheJoint , and www.womenactionmedia.org/fbagreement

catweaselon The PyCon Incident

This whole thing is elevator gate all over again. Feminists heading into "male dominated spaces" with the intent of shaming men over whatever minor transgression they can find. The foulest mouth in my workplace is a woman, a dongle joke would be a cake walk for her. The day I see a feminist publicly shaming a woman in a context like this is the day I'd take feminists seriously.

catweaselon Google's Autonomous cars complete 300,000 miles without an accident

carjackers aren't known for their brilliance

catweaselon 400,000 American homes have dumped pay-TV so far this year

This is very much the reason Rupert Murdoch (and by extension News Limited papers) is so opposed to the NBN in Australia.

catweaselon TJX hacker receives second 20-year sentence

Prosecutors acknowledged that Gonzalez did not obtain any of card numbers in the case or receive any proceeds from the thefts.

I understand the need to provide some kind of deterrent but sheesh.. you could get drunk, take your car out on the road and kill somebody and not get that much jail time.

catweaselon Ask YC: [How] do you maintain a daily routine?

I think I'm pretty much in the same boat. I don't stick to any particular sleep schedule except I religiously sleep for two hours in the early afternoon.. just can't help it. I find my most productive time is between 6am and 10am .. by noon I'm tapped, then after a siesta I'm back into productive mode again.

catweaselon Ask HN: Idea Management App

I would have thought google wave might be a good fit for this. Or even a wave plugin if you require something more specific, like the 'accept/reject' feature?

Concept Draw Office also offers something like it.. integrating brainstorming, mindmapping and project management in one suite.

catweaselon [dead]

As an Australian I'm not really up-to-date on US politics, so I have a question.. why are democrats unhappy about health care reform? I thought that was what they wanted?

catweaselon Daring blogger tests the limits in China

As a racing driver I think this guy understands the concept of "steering into the slide". In the case of blogging in China, if you're going to be a little bit courageous, it's probably better to be a lot courageous.

catweaselon The Deadliest place on Earth? Surviving The Giant Crystal Cave

If you can't make it to that one you could try Lechuguilla in New Mexico. Also a crystal cave, formed from acid running through limestone, it was featured in David Attenborough's "Planet Earth" series. The prettiest part is the "chandelier ballroom", massive crystals hanging from the ceiling. Access is highly restricted though, you'd probably have to join a queue and go with an official research team. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lechuguilla_Cave

catweaselon Mac OS Evolution: From System 1.0 to Snow Leopard

Gads! Those shots of Explorer 5 gave me some horrible flashbacks. My first mac, Mac II System 7, fond memories

catweaselon Confirming Passwords Is Annoying: Is There a Better Way?

One option might be to not ask for a password at all and auto generate it. Most sign ups include some form of confirmation email, perhaps a password could be sent with it? Not appropriate for every app but registration with nothing more than email address is getting as stripped down as possible.

catweaselon Tell HN: Need some FourSquare Users for my app, Sharedsquare

http://sharedsquare.com works, but your www subdomain isn't configured.

catweaselon [dead]

This juvenile practise of downvoting simply because one disagrees does not change the fact that legislation != regulation, in fact one can legislate to remove regulation. And btw, the Community Reinvestment Act was introduced in 1977, I doubt it played a major influence in the GFC of 2008. In 2000 regulation was removed for credit default swaps, Lehman, AIG, Bear-Sterns,FM & FM and others all went under due to overload of toxic credit default swaps. Proper regulation could have avoided that... now we have the undesired result of Government owning some of these failed creatures.. which is even worse than government regulations.

catweaselon [dead]

An act which may encourage banks to lend is not regulation. The belief that gov't would bail out the big players does not indicate over regulation, or even appropriate regulation. Quite simply it was the regulation exemptions that were provided which made this thing far worse than it could have been.. and far more widespread. The idea that large financial institutions would conduct themselves responsibly without regulation, and not give way to greed, is complete rubbish and has been proven so, even the most conservative on capitol hill admit that these days.

catweaselon [dead]

Which specific pieces of regulation made borrowing easier? An interesting wiki on the subject is the GFC timeline- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_crisis_impact_timeline

There's mention there of a political goal ... "of increasing minority home owners by at least 5.5 million by 2010 through billions of dollars in tax credits" ... which is not the same as regulation.

The timeline does attribute removal of regulation for the financial sector .. and also the exclusion from regulation for credit default swaps, which is pretty much the reason Bear Sterns, AIG, Lehman Bros et all went under. They stuffed themselves to the gills with toxic debt, which is fine while everything is going swimmingly, but when the housing bubble bursts it becomes more than just a burst bubble... which is all it would have been if the finance sector had been properly regulated.

catweaselon [dead]

It wasn't a housing bubble that caused the GFC, if that was all it was it would have been contained to real estate. What brought down so many large institutions was the toxic debt and dodgy dealings they had accumulated, this was allowed to happen due to deregulation. Particularly, the introduction of the gramm-leach-billey act deregulating banking, insurance and securities into one finances industry... and very specifically the exemption of swap agreements from SEC regulation (ie toxic debt). At least that's my opinion and the opinion of some very respected economists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act#Criticis...

Further evidence is the current calling, from all quarters, for tighter regulation of the finances industry to avoid another GFC not less.

catweaselon [dead]

We're not in a depression, we're in a recession.. and it was the lack of regulation that caused it not abundance.

catweaselon LHC produces first collisions

then there's the invention of wifi, originally designed to clean up fuzzy intergalactic radio waves.. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/csir...

catweaselon Ask HN: Where to find startup partners?

Are you a member of any user groups? I find them invaluable for networking local peers with the same interests. And, by definition, members are going to be passionate about what they do. I've also come across http://collabfinder.com/ recently, might have been on HN actually.

catweaselon Ask HN: Can someone refer me to a designer that doesn't suck?

Since nobody has mention it yet, one could always submit a project as a design competition at 99designs.com. Though, at design school, we were advised never to enter competitions as it undermines the design process and devalues the designer ... a view I tend to agree with.

catweaselon Apple's Mistake

General Electric, now there's a company that's "evil". http://www.google.com/search?q=%22general+electric%22+%2Bevi...

Do you see my point? To anybody outside the app development community it's going to look a little bit "self important" for developers to be using such strong language and talking of boycotts over something most folks would agree is not evil. I agree what Apple is doing is stupid, in the long term the app store is going to be polluted with crappy apps and they're approval backlog is going to be rather daunting. I think strong lobbying from the development community is in order, but it takes conscious and deliberate inhumanity for me to label someone "evil".

catweaselon Apple's Mistake

Faustian bargain? Assholes? Evil? .. really, if this is the most serious accusation of "evil" one can level at Apple then it isn't really going to affect my buying decisions. It's not like they're dealing in small arms or manufacturing cluster bombs. If you step back and think about it all Apple is doing is stuffing up their own app store, which can be classified as monumentally stupid and short sighted but not really "evil".

catweaselon Good investment for a tech guy?

"I am a developer, isn't there some sort of investment more suitable for me"

You've answered you're own question, you're a developer. Invest in what you love doing. Invest in the area of your skills and knowledge.

If you dont' know a lot about real estate, and don't have much desire to learn, then investments in real estate are likely to go south for you.

I second the recommendation to invest in yourself, that's the one investment anyone can make that will always give a good return.

catweaselon Ten Teen Entrepreneurs To Watch

"...an online network dedicated to supporting and engaging with young people with an internet in the web, technology and entrepreneurship."

How is that even a sentence? Somebody needs to teach the young less about entrepreneuring[sic] and more about proof reading.

catweaselon Google fights to keep four executives out of prison over video clip

I agree with the prevailing sentiment here regarding censorship of user submitted content on sites like youtube. I can also see it would make more economic sense for google to simply deny the service to Italy if the case succeeded. But wait a minute! Doesn't google already censor content for China?

catweaselon Judge Orders Google To Deactivate User's Gmail Account and Disclose Identity

An 'unmissable' notification from Google wouldn't be anymore unmissable than the request email sent by the bank. Which is why the bank wanted Google to disclose the identity of the user. If Google deleted a users emails and disclosed their identity to a third party then Google would be in breach of their own privacy policy. They would be exposing themselves to litigation, hence the requirement for a court order.