HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

cmoylan

42 karma · joined September 19, 2010

submissionscomments
cmoylan··on How and why the government is stalking you
Exactly. You read about things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A and you just have to wonder. That's an Internet backbone, who knows what they're capable of parsing and retaining from it. And if the capabilities existed to data warehouse the entire backbone, why not (if you're the NSA)?
cmoylan··on Reuters editor indicted for helping hack Tribune website
I was a developer on the CMS in question when this happened. The possibility of this guy getting up to 10 years in prison seems harsh.
cmoylan··on [dead]
I was a developer on the CMS in question when this happened. The possibility of this guy getting up to 10 years seems harsh.
cmoylan··on Farewell, neighbors
I used it for information about crime in my neighborhood, not much else.
cmoylan··on Lend wings to Rails development with Hermes (A shell development framework)
I accidentally Ctrl + W my terminal window quite a bit. With tmux my session is persisted and I can get back to it easily.
cmoylan··on What's it like to work at GitHub?
"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell
cmoylan··on HN Chicago Meetup: Tomorrow night at 7pm Hophaus
I will possibly be in attendance.
cmoylan··on Ask HN: Desperate Python Hacker Seeking Help and Suggestions
I'm a Python/Ruby developer in Chicago originally from Michigan. If you want to stay close to Michigan for whatever reason, but need a job, Chicago is a great compromise.

Chicago has an excellent Python user group: http://chipy.org/ Get on the mailing list and let them know your situation. Also consider learning Ruby on Rails. If you Python, Ruby will be easy to learn. If you know any Javascript at all, leverage that.

cmoylan··on House panel approves broadened ISP snooping bill
EFF also has a good form letter: https://secure.eff.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=Us...
cmoylan··on Google AI Challenge 2011 (Ants)
I was going to build a bot in Python. (Javascript is also a possiblity) Care to team up?
cmoylan··on American Kids Aren't Getting Dumber; They Were Just Never That Smart
This was a period when you could support a family and live a comfortable middle-class existence while working on an assembly line. It wasn't a question of the education, just much less global competition.
cmoylan··on Ask HN: How Many of You Are Like Me?
Same for me. I find that someone usually says exactly what I was thinking, but phrases it 10x better.
cmoylan··on Sony suing fail0verflow & geohot over PS3 jailbreak [pdf]
It's also not true for most hardware, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be true. I can be hopelessly optimistic with my blanket statements.
cmoylan··on Learn Python the Hard way Class At PyCon 2011
I would guess he was just being sarcastic.
cmoylan··on Sony suing fail0verflow & geohot over PS3 jailbreak [pdf]
If you buy hardware, you should own that hardware and be able to do with it as you please.
cmoylan··on Ask HN: Is del.icio.us the last remaining yahoo service you were using
I still have a Yahoo email address that I use whenever I don't want to give away my real email address.
cmoylan··on Why You Need To Work For A Big Company
It really depends which large company you work for. My very first job was at an average large company and it was rather soul crushing. I currently work at a huge media company that has a terrific work atmosphere/culture. I think the difference between the two companies was a bankruptcy. The later company went bankrupt, projects were canceled, the hackers in the room figured they would be laid off any day and started working on whatever they felt like. Clients caught wind of what the hackers were developing and started buying in. The upper management saw all of this and didn't dare mess with it.
cmoylan··on Richard Stallman Says You Should Worry About Chrome OS
I use a spare computer and a couple virtual machines. The only thing that makes me nervous is the possibility of natural disaster or hardware failure.

The Pogoplug looks like it's geared towards file sharing, but it's very promising.

cmoylan··on Richard Stallman Says You Should Worry About Chrome OS
The best case scenario for cloud computing would be some sort of device that you could run on your home network that would provide services like email, web hosting, and file sharing. It would have to be painless to setup. Maybe it could backup heavily encrypted copies of your stuff onto off-site servers just in case. You could VPN/SSH into your cloud wherever you had an internet connection.

Unfortunately, I think such a device would STILL be too much work for the average computer user when all it takes is a couple seconds to make a dropbox account.

cmoylan··on SARTRE "road train" update
This is pretty cool. I've always wished there was a way to hitch my car to a truck during long drives.
cmoylan··on 2600 releases a digital edition of their magazine.
I have a subscription. In terms of hard technical information, Phrack has them beat. Still, I find most of the articles in 2600 interesting. The tone of the magazine is rather neutral, compared to Phrack which sometimes reads like it was written by an angry 15-year-old.
cmoylan··on Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?
This book was terrific and restored my faith in Javascript.
cmoylan··on Steve Jobs' Not-So-Minimalist Home Office
Considering the photos were taken several weeks after his pancreatic tumor surgery, I doubt keeping his office tidy was a top priority.
cmoylan··on CoffeeScript Roundup
Some interesting links, but not a lot of original information here.
cmoylan··on World's largest association of pilots boycotts body scanners
I flew a few days ago and opted out of the body scanner. The pat down was definitely very thorough and a little uncomfortable, but I could tell the TSA officer administering it was just as uncomfortable as I was. It held up the line for about 5 minutes because they didn't let anyone through while I was being searched. I never felt intimidated and will continue to opt out, so if that was their intention, they failed.
cmoylan··on The Way I Work: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington
The toolbar was so bad that I turned No-Script back on. I had given Javascript the benefit of the doubt, but sites like that ruin it for me.
cmoylan··on Down with fun: The depressing vogue for having fun at work
Rather than force fun, I think it's much more effective for management to simply loosen up and let people be themselves. I work at a large company where management doesn't really care how people go about their work, as long as it gets done.