Hacker News Reader

danielnicolleton Want to Block Common Passwords? Sorry, That is Patented

time to reform the patent review process. there is so much energy wasted fighting patent trolls. furthermore, this produces nothing, it just leaches on the wealth creation efforts of others.

danielnicolleton Google now has its own Beer

interesting use of punitive downrating - maybe HN is just to full of Google employees and stockholders to entertain an objective critic of the company.

danielnicolleton Google now has its own Beer

I love a good beer story. This said, if Google keeps diluting its focus and its brand with these somewhat unrelated moves, I am going to start believing those who read these as early signs of its future demise.

danielnicolleton Kelora law suit

Heard about this. Sounds like Kelora is fishing for money. Good luck upholding this in court. I hate what these patent trolls are doing to the industry! Time for government involvement.

danielnicolleton The Decline of Unfettered Research (1995)

Interesting paper. This is a big problem that I only see solved when public dollars start to pour again in research as opposed to the corporate sponsorships that have replaced them and demand applied science and quick profits in return for their investments.

danielnicolleton Comcast Decided To Shut Down SearchYC

yep or http://searchhackernews.com/

danielnicolleton This Tech Bubble Is Different

Best minds of any generation have always thought about ways to make money.

Yes but making money by building things that truely further the good of humanity is very different from doing so while trying to separate more consumers from their cash

danielnicolleton This Tech Bubble Is Different

your view is a bit dramatic but probably closer to reality than anything else I have read in this thread. The so called A-players taking B and C outcomes also gradually increase their power and influence in the infrastructure of what the net economy has become because they are able to win in almost every cycle. The hipsters, usually only win once and then fade away from fame ;-)

danielnicolleton Poll: Hottest new area in technology?

SaaS

danielnicolleton [dead]

My take on this is that the sly Putin loves to play Mr Democracy by outlining the failures of Western Democracies which Wikileaks has brought to light, not because he loves democracy but because it's that much difficult for the US and Euro democrats to criticize his constant censorship of dissenters in Russia once he can also finger their own totalitarian leanings.

danielnicolleton Umberto Eco: "the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s grasp..."

Great article. I especially liked this thought provoking segment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1976276

danielnicolleton Technology now advances crabwise (backwards)

More at his clickable article link: http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/article/414871-not-such-...

danielnicolleton State Department Warns Students Against Discussing WikiLeaks Social Networks

misleading? maybe. but if you read the diplomatic cables, and if you look at them as an example of the modus operandi of the state dept., you can honestly and rationally wonder if this official (along with others maybe) wasn't ordered to go disseminate this kind of fear in some of the leading academic institutions... as a matter of testing the response or just as a matter of getting youth to reconsider any public support they might choose to give to the wikileaks movement here.

At least, this tells you what a high ranking state dept. official thinks of student political engagement behind the ideas carried by this movement. These ideas are perceived as an indicator of a potential for treason in any individual being considered for government work.

danielnicolleton The Inner Workings of Wikileaks

this is clearly a prominent endorsement of wikileaks as a legitimate player in the cycle of information dissemination, don't you think?

danielnicolleton Sweden renews Assange arrest warrant

that link is dead for me

danielnicolleton [dead]

well, I guess that if wikileaks was indeed the agent of some foreign anti-american or anti-west rogue state, like many anti-wikileaks analysts, imply, they should have no problem hosting in that country, right? if they only host in the US and Europe, it means to me that they are clearly a manifestation of our own occidental political contradictions. do I make any sense?

danielnicolleton Level 3 outbid Akamai on Netflix by reselling stolen bandwidth

did you actually read the post? Consumer or Business ISP bandwidth is not at play at all here. We are talking ISP-to-ISP.

danielnicolleton How Obama Raised $60 Million by Running a Simple Experiment

This post is an ad and at the same time an effective demonstration of the usefulness of advanced multivariate A/B tests. This dual purpose content/ad is very relevant to this community because we care about usability and good UIs. So while being a self-promoting piece it is also a well written tutorial of sorts.

danielnicolleton Comcast demands Level 3 pay fee to deliver online movies to their subscribers

tor just doesn't cut it. I have tried to use or similar services like yourfreedom.net with VPN (german tor) but there is no way to stream even half-way decent video through these... They usually top around 350 kb and you need at least twice that to start to stream well.

danielnicolleton Comcast demands Level 3 pay fee to deliver online movies to their subscribers

How can Comcast argue they incur so much costs? when other providers are able to offer triple-play (isp/cable/phone) offerings for a third of the price or less. Example: in France Proxad (http://www.free.fr) offers 179 cable channels, on demand movies and shows, 18 Mbits DSL, free unlimited VOIP calls to the whole country + 40 foreign countries - all for $40 flat (no catch - I have used them happily for 5 years and I am still a customer in France where I own a home).

danielnicolleton Hacking Ikea products to make them personal

points well taken, but would it be OK to then post a few years ago about this for instance which also showed (now proven) promising prospects based on a winning marketing strategy: http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Site=CN&#...

danielnicolleton Hacking Ikea products to make them personal

sorry for the meta comment here but how can such a post end on the front page? Custom furniture stickers. OK there is a startup. This seems so out of place don't you think?

EDIT: Please no need to downvote me if you disagree - just state your POV. Thx

danielnicolleton Processing XSLT Transformations in Windows

Actually, I found the right solution for windows - hopefully this is helpful to someone else: http://www.zlatkovic.com/libxml.en.html and for more details: http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/InstallingAProcessor.html and http://www.sagehill.net/docbookxsl/HtmlOutput.html Worked very well for me!

danielnicolleton How Israel handles airport security

Exactly nosse! I meant "heavy metals" versus "metal". The latter makes sense. The former doesn't. I am sure you can hurt people with manganese for instance, but a gun would make more sense, no?

danielnicolleton How Israel handles airport security

"This is to see that you don't have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious," said Sela.

Sorry but what do heavy metals have to do with airport security? is this just typo or have I completely lost my understanding of basic explosives chemistry and other terror related topics?

danielnicolleton The day Steve Jobs dissed me hard

This posts proves something that I feel many seem to forget at times. Despite great products, Apple is human after all.

danielnicolleton Electric Audi A2 with 375 Miles Range on 6-Minute Charge

full article with pic: http://green.autoblog.com/2010/10/27/converted-audi-a2-claim...

danielnicolleton Give Us Our Data, Facebook

This soo wrong. Arrington keeps using the word "friends" as if emails from your FB contacts were those of your actual friends. Imagine Arrington being able to turn 4000 "friends" on Facebook into a mass email list!!! No way! That just so wrong and I don't want that to happen. The premise under wich we befriend someone on Facebook just never included them being able to email you directly.

In my case, it would be the last thing to happen before I quit FB entirely and stuff my account with bogus info or close it altogether.

danielnicolleton IFixit's Self-Repair Manifesto

I spent a good part of my teenage week-ends at a dump in France with my brother and our friends recuperating small engines and moped parts, hacking them back together, creating strange 2 or 3 wheel novel vehicles. Every time we see each other, we have the best time remembering those memories. We all have all in one way or another kept doing the same thing at work with other types of technologies.

All this to say that this manifesto goes for companies too of course!! and that it's not owned by ifixit.com, but should be yours too if you care about waste and overconsumption.

danielnicolleton Ask HN: Has anyone hacked their homes?

True. So difference between hacking and just using is sometimes a question of time... Cavemen hacked tree branches into sticks to beat eachother up. Today's version of cavemen just buy baseball bats.