Hacker News Reader

From the comments:

I think it's safe to say that if you're browsing HN with IE, you are using 9 or 10, which have very fast Javascript engines.

davuxon Show HN: my Mac app just got fireballed

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/feature...

Not exactly the most novel thing...

I'm hardly a fan of Aero Shake though, wish they used the gesture for this on Windows. :-)

davuxon SkyDrive is a threat to Dropbox

That's exactly what they've done. Mesh became the SkyDrive desktop app. It lets you get remote access to your PC (either files or remote desktop), as well as sync with the cloud.

davuxon How to cope with the Gmail redesign

Thanks, I know about the basic HTML site. It's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me, though. The basic site is literally worse than the 2003 version.

davuxon How to cope with the Gmail redesign

I ended up leaving Gmail a few months ago (knowing this was coming). The new design works really poorly with browser zoom. I need to view the page zoomed in to 300% or so most of the time (I don't have good vision). Zooming really worked pretty well on all of the past iterations, up until this one. There are a number of panes that stay visible when scrolling, so the content area on the web page becomes really really small. (I'm not usually one to complain just because things changed, I didn't like the mystery meat icons either, but I can get over something trivial like that.) It just doesn't work.

I couldn't really figure out where else to go, but OWA 2010 doesn't have these problems, so I went to Office 365 for my own domain (and forwarded Gmail). I never thought I'd pay for email but considering how vital mail is, having real support is a nice piece of mind.

I remember how awesome webmail seemed in 2003 (when I switched from Outlook to Gmail), but now that I've gone back to Outlook, I see all the awesome stuff that I was missing. This is really not to credit Outlook though, I'm sure Gmail (threading) influenced them greatly in the past 8 years. I know you can just use Outlook+Gmail, but sadly IMAP isn't nearly as good as Exchange.

davuxon NameCheap Overtakes Go Daddy In Google

I believe this may be referred to as a glue record.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System#Circular_dep...

davuxon "Tap the spacebar with your phone." - Bump unveils new photo uploader

Is this it?

http://www.quora.com/How-does-Bump-work

davuxon 'Anonymous' hackers plan to shut down the Internet this Saturday

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL_Slammer

davuxon Firefox in 2011 – Firefox plans for 2012

Since there is no mention of Firefox 'Metro Style' for Windows 8, should one gather that it won't happen during 2012? I realize they just announced that they're starting it, but I assumed it would come sometime around the launch of Windows 8.

davuxon Windows 8 & Metro with Mouse and Keyboard - Super User Blog

There's an overshoot buffer. Move past the corner and then slide back to invoke the tip in the bottom left. For the charms, move past and then swing your mouse up into the middle. Kind of like a U shape.

davuxon Windows 8 & Metro with Mouse and Keyboard - Super User Blog

Bob at home is probably not upgrading his 5-year-old computer to Windows 8. Upgrades are something like 10% of all Windows PC's. It's common in the tech world to upgrade, but for most people, a PC is a PC and it comes with software for its lifetime.

davuxon Why did the Windows 95 Start button have a secret shortcut for closing it?

Actually, CAD taskmgr is slower because it has to switch from the secure desktop session to the current session.

As it happens, Raymond recently did a blog post on this as well! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/01/30/10261...

davuxon Why did the Windows 95 Start button have a secret shortcut for closing it?

Actually, you can Ctrl+Shift+Click anywhere on the Start menu in Windows 7 to get this menu, not just the power button. In Windows 8, it was also added to the ctrl+shift+click menu on the taskbar as well.

Ctrl+Shift+Click (and sometimes just Shift+Click) works all over Windows Explorer to provide extra context menu options. For example if you Shift+Click on a jumplist program item, you'll get more options on that menu as well (Run as admin (Ctrl+Shift+Click on the taskbar icon to invoke this as well)).

There's even more new in Win8 (I don't have Win7 handy to test on, not sure if these were in there too): Shift+Right-cclick will give you 'Open in new process' and 'Open command window here.'

Edit: Thanks SquareWheel - you're right only Shift is needed for 'Open Command window here' and some other options.

davuxon JavaScript Jabber: Backbone.js

I can't believe you're being downvoted, this is exactly why progressive enhancement can't be abandoned. As someone with poor vision, I've found most of the crap HN thinks is 'cute' to be completely unusable. The modern web is a huge pain to use, it was actually /better/ in 2005 than it is now, from a usability perspective. This is very scary, considering the renewed emphasis on good UI/UX.

The saving grace is that the 2012 internet has excellent mobile sites (they suck on mobile with user-scalable=0 or maximum-scale=1, but on a desktop browser things flow excellently).

Sadly you're sane understanding doesn't jive with the HN echo chamber, but you're spot-on. The web is more than just tech demos.

davuxon Introducing Chrome for Android

I don't believe the iOS sandboxing would allow for V8, though. Isn't this the same problem as "my third party app WebView is slow because it doesn't support Javascript JIT"?

davuxon Dear Boss: For a programmer, 10 minutes = 3 hours

This is what I'm getting at. I don't believe most people are so laser-focused on a single one task that they have nothing else to do but read HN. If you have one and only one thing to do, you still might as well attempt to complete some facet of it. If you really can't find things to fill your time, perhaps you have a different problem. I don't see how reading HN is less frustrating than reading documents. It sure makes a nice excuse, but it's nothing more than an excuse to waste time.

Maybe I don't get it since I have a BigCorp job, but I've always got tons of little things I can do, if/when I want to. That sure seems like significantly better use of the companies time. Making the argument that "well this shouldn't happen!" is hardly solving any problem.

Interruptions are a fact of life, embrace them when they can't be avoided.

davuxon Dear Boss: For a programmer, 10 minutes = 3 hours

We all know that context switching is bad, and it's tough to switch so much, but did Ed really have nothing else to do? He seems bothered by what the boss was asking him, yet he blows most of the 3hrs not working on what he said he needed to work on originally? That just doesn't add up to me.

I get the point, and it's definitely true, but I spend those idle minutes doing mail and other short tasks. I don't see how one can justify "well I'm waiting for you so I'll just not work for a while."

Is this common outside of the computing industry? What do other people do in their 'in between' time?

davuxon Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12359/bing_spyw.png

I'd never searched anything like this before, and I'm not using the Bing bar or anything. I didn't even try it in Google first (I did try it after, obviously)

davuxon Larry Page to Googlers: If You Don’t Get SPYW, Work Somewhere Else

I just checked on Bing and it's in the description of the second result, from a Jan 13th article.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=SPYW

> Jan 13, 2012 · Summary: Google’s Search Plus Your World (SPYW) announcement has ruffled some feathers. Both Facebook and Twitter have reacted ...

I've been banging the "Bing needs to do so much better to make even a tiny dent" drum for a while now, but they've made strides in the past 6 months.

davuxon Dropbox flagged as unsafe by IE

SmartScreen addresses the security 'hole' that is the user itself. I'm curious about what you are really asking them to address here? I'm not seeing a solution other than for the OS to only run signed code. What OS is secure from arbitrary executables that the user chooses to run?

I agree that it is annoying, but I'm very interested to hear what they should be addressing here.

davuxon Megaupload down, FBI Charges Seven With Online Piracy

Perhaps more interestingly, can Amazon S3 be shutdown? My understanding is that Dropbox is effectively an S3 client, so how is that line drawn?

davuxon FIRST Robotics Competition kickoff live stream (10:30am eastern)

I always promote FIRST to high school students when possible. I very much feel that it was one of the most (if not the most) important experiences of my career. Nothing else has even come close in terms of how much there was to learn, both in electronic and mechanical terms, but also in team building and other ancillary skills. I didn't really realize it at the time, but I really do feel it was pivotal to my career so far.

I had FIRST on my resume through college, and that work was always the top question for interviewers. It was easy to give a really passionate response, and since rarely had they heard of it, I'd get a chance to explain how the program works and exactly what our team did. I just wish that it was more widespread, not very many schools have FIRST teams. We were able to gain some school-wide attention for our team as well, and it grew significantly after my senior year. If FIRST was a 'sport' at schools across the country, we'd be in much better shape for the next generation of engineers and scientists.

If you have the chance to join a FIRST team (as a student), you absolutely must take the opportunity--it'll pay huge dividends.

(I was on team 195, I'm now an engineer at Microsoft.)

davuxon Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture

Wouldn't that be a really hard line to draw? The barista example is solid, but isn't the spectrum so broad that it'd be impossible to really say what is and is not their field of study [for many people/cases]?

I'd sure like to see such numbers, though.

davuxon Want a Job? Go to College, and Don’t Major in Architecture

Can you mention what the two degrees were? Maybe you've implied something but I'm not seeing it.

davuxon Facebook machine learning technology improves; Redditors alaramed.

http://www.google.com/ads/preferences

See "Your categories"

Edit - Sorry, I copied the link from the Google results page, it acutally shows up as adspreferences in the ad, but ads/preferences below. Kind of strange.

davuxon USB Stick Contains Dual-Core Computer, Turns Any Screen Into an Android Station

Not quite the same, but Microsoft is doing 'Windows To Go' for Windows 8. Might be neat if it integrated with the phone somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go

davuxon Apple iPhone Safari Crasher (iPhone 4 & 4S, iOS 5.0.1)

This doesn't seem to crash in IE10, but I can't right-click on the page to view source, so perhaps the child process is frozen or otherwise isolated from causing harm.

davuxon Gmail’s new look

Each time Google updates Gmail, there is another hit on accessibility for visually impaired users. With each new version, zooming makes the content area smaller and smaller, while making the (significantly less useful) editing elements and other mostly uninteresting things larger and larger. Adding more padding and reducing contrast is completely at odds with accessibility (and, potentially, a good desktop mail experience). I think I can still get by with Gmail at high zoom, but one or two more changes and I’ll have no choice but to jump ship to something else (or go fulltime with Outlook, which is overkill for personal mail).

It makes me really sad to see that accessibility is getting worse at Google, not better. The problem isn't limited to Gmail, it's also now in core search and probably just about everything else since the G+ wave of updates. :(

davuxon It’s Time For Google To Let Google Voice Live Up To Its Promise

I have used the Android app a little bit, the integration looks great on the surface. The problem (as I understand it) is that the GV app uses data, which means it uses more battery than just SMS, and doesn't work as well in low signal circumstances. I don't have first-hand experience of this though, and I can imagine for some people it wouldn't be a problem.