Hacker News Reader

darkaneon It's time to level up headphone tech

It's a running joke, because he was voted President of the Internet in a TechRepublic poll a few years ago.

darkaneon It's time to level up headphone tech

I recall President Laporte doing an interview at CES with a company producing headphones that already perform this functionality, and then some. I can't recall the name at the moment (CES was basically 85% headphones, too many to recall), but I know the TWiT CES coverage is up on the YouTubes for anyone less lazy than I.

darkaneon Aziz Ansari releases DRM-free standup special for $5

Those are more anomalies than exceptions, as neither group was beholden to a recording contract at the time of those releases.

darkaneon Milk Inc. to shut down Oink on March 31st

Just curious. Why are you ruining such a good domain by redirecting to www.chee.rs?

darkaneon Linux computer the size of a thumb drive

Ignoring the absolutely horrible name, this will be dead on arrival because of the price alone. Even for a new or small company that doesn't have the industry clout or initial unit production numbers necessary for minimal component pricing, there's just no way to justify a $200 price tag for what appears to be less than $15 worth of actual hardware. Especially when the only significant difference from competing hardware (priced nearly an order of magnitude lower) is wi-fi and what will amount to an unnoticeable performance increase.

Yes, controlling via wi-fi is a nice potential feature, but they would really need to have the appropriate third party software interfaces (Android, iOS, and browser) ready by the ship date. And even then, it is unfortunately not a $165 feature.

darkaneon Netflix: Streaming vs. DVD margins

The reasons for this are obvious, and probably have nothing to do with the cost, difficulty, or politics of streaming. It's more likely due to the majority of their by-mail customers routinely going inactive for months at a time, while still paying for the service.

That inactivity is so well known that it became a talking point in social commentary and has even been the punchline of late night jokes.

darkaneon Anonymous Takes Down FBI.gov

It's even worse than that, unfortunately, as it's already being reported (by people that should know better) as a "hack":

http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/19/anonymous-hacks-doj-univer...

darkaneon SOPA lives—and MPAA calls protests an "abuse of power"

That's a double-edged sword. If a significant portion of the population adamantly boycotted any particular industry, their response would be to claim piracy as the cause and use it as ammunition for their argument.

It's nearly impossible to win an argument when one side is so willing to not only lie, but engineer those lies to manipulate a population that doesn't know any better (including the folks making decisions on behalf of that population).

darkaneon The distinction between music and noise is mathematical form

Consonances are sometimes described as being inherently more pleasant to the ear and dissonances as less pleasant.

This is probably the only article I've read about harmony that properly uses ambiguity when describing the pleasantness of dissonance. As a (very) long time, die hard metal head that both appreciates and enjoys the musicality that dissonance can produce, it irks me whenever someone makes outrageously definitive claims that it causes physical pain, depression, et cetera.

darkaneon How rel=nofollow Works

Where in Google's blog post do they claim to still follow the link? They provide no technical details for their process, so if we're speculating, it would make far more sense that rel=nofollow adheres to the same guidelines as a meta/robots.txt nofollow.

And this speculation for the "shared on" functionality doesn't exactly add up, either. If they're not following links with rel=nofollow, why should Google be legally or even morally responsible for storing a massive and entirely extraneous relational database, and then checking against it every time they follow a short URL from another site, just to see if it was shared on Twitter at some point?

darkaneon Why I Hate Android

Perhaps "most of" the tech enthusiasts. The average person has no idea.

darkaneon Teach Hacking in High Schools

Out of the three high schools I attended in the late 90s, there was only one computer related class available, in one school, and in one grade.

It was an intro to programming with C++, and the teacher was simply writing information on a whiteboard word for word from an outdated book. She couldn't answer any questions because she had no idea how any of it worked. Having already become reasonably proficient with C++ many years prior, I essentially took over teaching the class after just a few lessons, even making my own (and better, I thought) lesson plan.

Looking back on where the public understanding of computers was in the 90s, I can understand the lack of capable instructors. I actually feel privileged (now, anyway) that my class had a brief introduction to Logo back in 3rd grade, even if there wasn't another computer class until high school. But here we are 14 years after a student had to teach C++, and I see virtually zero computer classes available for my nephew in middle school. In fact, the only one available to him until high school is, and I kid you not, an Intro To Word Processing.

Part of the problem is the laughable education system in the US, where actual education and life skills don't even make the top 10 on the list of priorities, and where schools (and more importantly teachers) are grossly underfunded. But the other part, I think, is that the pool of capable and willing instructors is still non-existent. When I talk to CS students or graduates, even ones with relevant minors, the idea of teaching as a career isn't even something they consider. And whether it's lack of incentive or just unwillingness, existing K-12 instructors don't seem to have any interest in becoming savvy enough to properly teach tech courses.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I fear it won't happen in any satisfying time frame.

darkaneon Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome

Do you honestly believe that Chrome is gaining significant market share because there is a single, rather uninformative blog post on sites like Telecommuting Mommies and The Debt Princess?

darkaneon Tumblr asks users (via dialog box) to uninstall popular Missing e browser add-on

If the add-on is actually causing excessive page requests and erroneous support inquiries, this seems like a very reasonable response. And they didn't ask the users to uninstall the add-on, they notified them of a supplement to the agreement stating that users shouldn't expect support if they wish to continue using it.

darkaneon Solving ITA's Word Numbers Puzzle

Ah, good call. Very easy to miss that link.

darkaneon Solving ITA's Word Numbers Puzzle

Interesting that this and the OP's solutions result in different answers.

darkaneon Poll: Will you move your domains from GoDaddy today?

I don't think you understand how the government works. Most dystopian legislation is written and paid for by those "random" companies.

darkaneon Poll: Will you move your domains from GoDaddy today?

I don't think those are proper analogies. The reason everyone is so outraged by GoDaddy's stance is because they claimed there are no moral or technical downsides to the bill, and being so intimately involved with DNS, they should know that's simply not true.

So they either: don't understand their own business, they don't care about their customers, they have no ethical standards, or all of the above. Whichever it is, it's clear that they're run by truly horrible people.

darkaneon GoDaddy loses 72,354 domains this week alone

Except they didn't cave. They made a press release that they thought would appease the general public as a stop-loss measure. GoDaddy still supports SOPA privately, and likely even monetarily.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/23/godaddy-ceo-there-has-to-be...

darkaneon Paul Graham: SOPA Supporting Companies No Longer Allowed At YC Demo Day

The push for these bills really started years ago when pharma companies were desperately trying to prevent the purchase of drugs from Canada and other countries. The entertainment aspect is rather new and actually somewhat secondary.

darkaneon Apple’s Latest Patent Victory: In-Call Multitasking

How could this possibly be patentable? We've been able to make calls and multitask from laptops for over 20 years. You can't claim it as inventive just because the laptop can now fit in your hand. In the patent world, this is the very definition of obviousness.

darkaneon Fliers Must Turn Off Devices, but It’s Not Clear Why

Don't you ever get tired of being reasonable and/or logical, Nick?

darkaneon Hackers destroy water pump via SCADA abuse

I would say any system whose failure quickly results in the loss of life should always have properly trained staff either on location or trivially close. Anything less than that would be, as you put it, criminally irresponsible, as is the idea of connecting such infrastructure to publicly accessible networks.

darkaneon Stop SOPA, save the Internet

I wouldn't argue against contacting your representative, but I'm curious: Has there ever been a documented occasion where a politician actually switched their stance based on e-mails, letters, phone calls, or anything other than a significant amount of money? I've never received a response from my local or state representatives that wasn't a convoluted and cordial "fuck you."