Hacker News Reader

ceolon Big-O notation explained by a self-taught programmer

As an aside, you can't be self-taught in psychology. It's like being a self-taught doctor: Being educated in psychology is predicated upon you having a degree in psychology, because it's a very certification-heavy field.

I would actually advise you to not brag about being "self-taught in psychology" because it's a very strong indicator that you don't know what you're talking about.

ceolon Scientist banned from revealing codes used to start luxury cars

Why do you think VW would do anything when you admit your own car manufacturer hasn't done anything, despite that information being out for years?

ceolon Samsung overtakes Apple as world's most profitable mobile phone maker

There is no American comparison to a chaebol, especially Samsung. Fanboy arguments aside, you can't compare the two.

It would be like if Apple built your car, held your insurance policy, and owned the apartment complex you lived in. None of that comes close to having to buy digital apps on your Apple phone from Apple.

ceolon Drone Blimps Hovering Over D.C. to Stop Cruise Missiles

What's the point in protecting the one US city where hundreds of the most important political figures gather each and every day?

ceolon Legal Weed is Hurting San Francisco's Hippies

Exactly. The reason they fight it is because talking about legalizing drugs is a sure way to lose votes.

Opposite of how we all like to think of the tech industry, politics are slow, clunky, and bureaucratic — for good reason. It takes a long time to go from "random HN/reddit commenters talking about legalizing drugs" to "politicians talking about legalizing drugs."

ceolon Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

Their only gross incompetence was not informing customers in a timely manner, which I could forgive them for. Having a security breach is something that happens to, quite literally, every hosting provider.

I say all this as someone who dropped Linode for DO due to not being able to afford them anymore.

ceolon Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

Ahh, Wordpress. You have my deepest sympathies.

If you don't mind my asking, is there some key feature of Wordpress or its plugins that holds you to it? I'm always interested to hear why people stick with it.

ceolon How do I “think in AngularJS” if I have a jQuery background?

I was about to come back here and yell at you for making a post about accessibility unaccessible to the hard-of-hearing (and those of us who browse with SOs sleeping right next to us that we never, ever, ever want to wake.) Then I saw the transcript below the fold.

Cool post, thanks!

ceolon Obama Promises Disappear from Web

I think we're passed the point where someone on the internet needs to clarify they made a 1984 reference.

ceolon Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

It sounds like you should have moved from MySQL to PostgreSQL instead of switching hosting providers.

ceolon Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

At that point, you should be using S3 or something similar.

ceolon Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

From what I remember, it was a 17 year old kid who built and ran the site, and it was his first time ever handling financial transactions (there was another bitcoin-related hacking around the same time, so I might be confusing them.) It was a recipe for disaster.

ceolon Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

The message isn't for the attackers but for the customers. Tim Cook sneezes and there's 50 different blog posts about his snot; what do you think would happen if an Apple developer site when down with a message that said, "There was a security breach!" and no additional context? Fox News would be running stories about how Russian hackers stole your grandmother's iTunes gift cards.

They played it safe by waiting until they actually knew what happened before releasing any information.

ceolon Storage Space Doubled For All Linode VPS plans

Every hosting service will have at least one security breach, especially if someone is doing something reckless like storing $230,000 worth of digital money on one of their servers. Leaving a provider because of a breach just means you're in an endless game of VPS musical chairs.

The way they handled the breach is another thing, though.

ceolon An open letter to Jeff Bezos: A contract worker’s take on Amazon.com

> you will be rewarded for doing things that SEEM frugal and cheap.

It's exactly this. Temps are used because they appear to be saving money when reported to The Boss (whoever that may be.) People seem to forget the majority of folks in these companies only care about what they need to do to keep their jobs, so if HR needs to appear to spend less money, they're going to utilize the easiest method for that to happen.

I think everyone has this image in their head that companies operate as efficiently as possible, and if they aren't doing something, there must be a good reason. Often times, this isn't the case; it's more like a freighter being held together with duct tape and shoestring, and through some miracle, it floats.

ceolon I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

> we need to question it every time it appears

We really don't. You playing armchair internet detective will not stop people from getting more attention than you.

What do all of those things hurt? Nothing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a story on the internet for a few days. It's not being shoved in your face, you're not being made to read about it. You chose to join this thread, like you chose to look up those four examples of the thing you hate so much.

I would much rather question the people who spend their time trying to denounce others.

ceolon I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

In case anyone misses my other reply to this troll, her initial commit[0] was the default Rails app, which most any newbie can get up on GitHub in a single day. She didn't even touch the app/ directory, where all the Rails-specific code lives, until two months later.[1]

Please, no one believe this jerk.

[0]: https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt/tree/258e91c40f...

[1]: https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt/commit/c0d02c8c...

ceolon I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

Did you see her initial commit?[0] It's the default Rails app. Any tech-savvy person can throw that up on github in a day if they know nothing about it. The next time she changes the app/ directory, where all the actual Ruby code goes, is two months later.[1]

Absolutely nothing she's said has given the impression she is trying to mislead.

[0]: https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt/tree/258e91c40f...

[1]: https://github.com/jendewalt/jennifer_dewalt/commit/c0d02c8c...

ceolon I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

These guys tend to come out of the woodwork when the focus of the article is of a certain gender, if you catch my drift.

ceolon I'm learning to code by building 180 websites in 180 days. Today is day 115

Translation: "I know what I'm saying is coming from a place of extreme bitterness, but I don't want search results for my name showing these comments to my potential employers."

If you're going out of your way to create a new account to voice your opinion, chances are your opinion is shit.

ceolon Security Researchers tell court: We do what Andrew Auernheimer did

Trying to define "talking to your friends about how you're going to sell stolen information" as being equivalent to "daydream" is the tortuous logic I was responding to. Please read the entire thread and not just comments you don't agree with.

ceolon Security Researchers tell court: We do what Andrew Auernheimer did

I think that's fair. AT&T should be reprimanded for a serious lack of security — how much they should be reprimanded would be another topic for debate.

But it doesn't take away from weev's crime (both this one and his previous harassments.)

ceolon Security Researchers tell court: We do what Andrew Auernheimer did

> "Breaking in" suggests that there is access control (locks, doors, walls, etc) in place.

No, it doesn't. See, this is what happens when you start talking about crimes on the internet when you really shouldn't be. If I leave all my doors and windows opened, or if I put a box of valuables in the middle of an empty lot that I own, it doesn't suddenly make it legal for people to steal from me.

AT&T leaving their doors and windows open does not suddenly authorize any ol' grody troll to walk in and take personal information.

Whether you like it or not, his crime will be made into a physical analogy.

ceolon Security Researchers tell court: We do what Andrew Auernheimer did

What weev did crossed many times into criminal territory. He harassed a lot of people in ways that made it either hard or unlikely to press charges.

Seriously, save the reaching argument for people who aren't complete scumbags.

ceolon Security Researchers tell court: We do what Andrew Auernheimer did

It is in fact illegal to "daydream" (i.e. make solid plans) about doing certain crimes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_(crime)

ceolon Security Researchers tell court: We do what Andrew Auernheimer did

You don't get to break into a bank because you want to see if you can exploit a security hole.

What you're talking about is more akin to wiggling the bank's door handle and then leaving. What weev did is break in, steal a bunch of documents, and then talk about selling them.

ceolon Questions about Cameron’s ‘new’ porn-blocking

This is something the majority of HN has absolutely no experience with, so they either a) try to relate it to the tech industry (and fail, see most of the terrible analogies in this thread), or b) reduce it to the most blackest and whitest of situations (see everyone here saying that outlawing pictures of rape is the death of free speech.)

Of course, if 1 in 6 men were victims of an attempted or completed rape, and if 9 out of 10 victims of rape were men,[0] I'm sure the conversations here would be very different.

[0]: http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assau...

ceolon Google+ spamming people every 2 weeks to put up a profile photo

Nonpology, followed by linking to a video of a straight, white, male comedian telling people why being offended at something is stupid?

Please, go back to reddit.

ceolon Ubuntu forums hacked

I didn't take a screenshot, but I can confirm there was a message. Viewing my browser history, it apparently linked to this page: http://ubuntuforums.org/signaturepics/Sput.html

The top was a splash image that linked to this twitter account: https://twitter.com/Sputn1k_

Below was some text (scraped from Chrome's history database):

    Shoutout to @rootinabox.

    None of this "y3w g0t haxd by albani4 c3bir 4rmy" stuff.
    Straight up, you dun goofed. It's as simple as that.

@rootinabox linked to this page: http://wedtm.com/blog/2013/07/11/cubeworldforum-dot-org/

ceolon Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft

According to the article, all they did was send him a cease an desist order (albeit a rather long one.) That's pretty standard.

Just sounds like the public got riled up for no good reason.