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emilis_infoon Dear Mozilla, stop watching me

Thanks for the link. I will switch to the plain text version :-)

emilis_infoon Dear Mozilla, stop watching me

It seems so.

On the other hand I outsourced my blog tracking to Google Analytics. I am guilty of the same crime.

Do you do that too?

I have now removed Google Analytics code in my blog until I will find an alternative that keeps my visitors data more private: https://github.com/emilis/emilis.github.com/commit/ad40981a4...

emilis_infoon Dear Mozilla, stop watching me

Author here.

My purpose with this post is not to expose Mozilla, but to show how deep many of us are in this business. I admit I am guilty of similar practices myself.

I think we should use this privacy crisis to stop and rethink what are we gathering about our users, how are we doing it, can we really guarantee their privacy in our countries and on technological platforms we use.

If you really care about your users, think before gathering any of their data. It may end up somewhere you or they do not want.

emilis_infoon Ask HN: do you keep a stash of ideas?

No. Ideas are really useless.

If they are unimportant I will forget them after a while and that is OK. If I forget them they are unimportant by definition. Keeping track of such things is a waste of time.

If I get really bothered by some temporary idée fixe I will work on it: search for more information, check my assumptions, analyze my options, maybe write some code to implement a proof of concept. This way at least I gain some knowledge for the wasted time and attention.

Sharing ideas of the first kind is just noise. I doubt anything can come out of it.

As for the second kind there are blogs, github, kickstarter, etc. They all put you into some process or format. Which is good if you want to make at least something useful from your idea.

emilis_infoon The Open Source Report Card: Dynamic progress reports for Github developers

Me too. The page describes me as a CoffeeScript expert. I haven't written a single line of CoffeeScript and don't intend to in the future.

Actually you would get a much better overview of what I do by just looking through my repository list.

emilis_infoon Expunging Google

Switching to Firefox will not save you.

I recently found out that Firefox sends a request to safebrowsing.clients.google.com for every page I visit. I found out how to disable it, but it wasn't straightforward and there were still requests sent to Google for other things.

Safe browsing is in Firefox Preferences "Security" tab under "Block reported attack sites" + "Block reported web forgeries".

Search for "goog" in about:config to find more interesting things.

LiveHTTPHeaders extension is also an eye-opener, because Firebug usually doesn't show these requests.

emilis_infoon Vim Git Gutter

The answer is here:

http://superuser.com/questions/558876/how-can-i-make-the-sig...

emilis_infoon Heroku Fucking Console

This little Gimp plugin will get you the old shortcuts back:

http://www.shallowsky.com/software/gimp-save/

emilis_infoon Clay Shirky on why love makes open source communities work (video)

Source: http://youtu.be/Xe1TZaElTAs

emilis_infoon How To Build A Kick-Ass Growth Team

I am sorry to put it this way in this forum, but the "bullshit" and "buzzwords" warning lights on my panel have just lit up.

emilis_infoon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2012)

Clarification: we are looking for 4 developers. Not for a single developer with all the skills :-)

emilis_infoon Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2012)

PriceOn (in VILNIUS, Lithuania, Europe) is looking for full-time DEVELOPERS:

- JavaScript

- .NET

- iOS

- Android

We are offering flexible working conditions, good salary, lots of opportunities to use your wide experience and learn new things. You will join a small team that currently has 2 developers.

We are building a platform for optimizing everyday shopping experience -- web and mobile apps for finding best prices, sales, optimizing expenses, etc. Recently funded and expanding.

Technologies we use: Amazon cloud services, ElasticSearch, RabbitMQ, CouchBase, PostgreSQL, nginx, Node.js, LESS CSS, Jekyll, Git, Mercurial.

Send an email to: emilis@priceon.lt

emilis_infoon Naming Things with Hashes

I don't understand the need for "//" in the URI. The thing that follows it is usually an authority (hostname), not a name for an algorithm.

This would still be a valid URI without the unnecessary characters and without the confusion:

    ni:sha-256;UyaQV-Ev4rdLoHyJJWCi11OHfrYv9E1aGQAlMO2X_-Q

See: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt

Also: "nih" sounds like a pun :-)

emilis_infoon Vim Koans

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/koans.html

http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html

http://internet.ls-la.net/comppoems/tao-te-chip.html

emilis_infoon Antivirus software deletes itself

Or should we call it suicideware?

emilis_infoon Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now

Freedom of choice, being able to fix things yourself, ability to work on the same OS your server uses, being able to run old programs or on older/cheaper hardware -- all these and other things are not sentiments.

Why are you guys complaining about a guy choosing Linux over Mac? Is it because of the sentiment? :-)

emilis_infoon The innovations of Internet Explorer

And Hitler built the Autobahns, shouldn't we say thanks to him for that?

Also the rebels where never able to build something as marvelous as the Death Star :-)

Success, efficiency and morality are three different things. Though many people mix them up all the time. If someone (or something) is efficient and successful that doesn't mean we should overlook the harm (or good) it is doing.

emilis_infoon Garry Kasparov Arrested By Russian Police

It is a classical Russian propaganda defense: answer an accusation on human rights violations with "and you are lynching Negroes" or similar.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Kremlin is paying bloggers and commenters in Russia to post positive things about authorities:

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/06/10/russia-networks-of-... , http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/07/hacked-emails-na...

Russian authorities may also be paying or employing some users of HN.

That's how I get it. I was expecting to find the "lynching Negroes" comment upvoted high by just seeing the title. It does not mean that the user who posted it is employed by Kremlin, but you know, the message will be upvoted...

emilis_infoon Anic - Faster than C, Safer than Java, Simpler than *sh

Commits to ANI stopped nearly two years ago. Maybe you should still try?

You would learn a lot and that would make you a better programmer.

emilis_infoon What's with this anti-directory structure movement?

Can you recommend any of the apps?

emilis_infoon Facebook e-mail mess: Address books altered, e-mail lost

Or blog about it, or write an email.

Because people want to keep in touch with their friends, "friends", followers, etc.. They need to notify them that they are using some other way to communicate.

emilis_infoon Shuttleworth on Ubuntu Linux, Fedora, and the UEFI problem

I am going to give my mother a laptop with Xubuntu installed on her birthday next week.

emilis_infoon 5 Million Farmers Sue Monsanto for $7.7 Billion

Or use NoScript: http://noscript.net/

emilis_infoon Please don't learn to code

Not really. I learned to code Pascal 16 years ago, because I wanted to make DOS computer games.

And here I am now: 10+ years of professional web-dev experience, spoke at local dev conferences, won awards for my work, etc..

What I learned during all these years is that methodologies and models help you after you learn how to build apps/plugins/games/whatever. And still they won't save you from wasted hours hunting an accidental typo.

emilis_infoon IAmA a malware coder and botnet operator, AMA

Every bit of bragging about himself makes it easier to find him. He has disclosed this information so far:

* He tried to apply for a job at Kaspersky during last year. Didn't have enough credentials and still whines about it. * He hangs out on Anonymous IRC. * Uses Liberty Reserve. * Exchanges bitcoins to dollars (periodically I guess). * May be German-speaking. Understands Russian.

emilis_infoon Save the Internet from the US

More details about the bill: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120402/04425118325/forget...

emilis_infoon Why does Posix have recursive mutexes? Because of a dare.

Dear HNers: please stop linking to pages that require visitors to log-in.

Dear Google: please stop requiring authentication to read public google group messages.

emilis_infoon Raspberri PI Release Announcement

True, but why bother? US is only 10% of Internet users and 2x smaller than EU.

emilis_infoon New version of Apache HTTP Server released

It may be climbing slowly, but it is the only one climbing in all the categories.

emilis_infoon Better than templates, building highly dynamic web pages

Try for yourself. What the guru's tell you is a heuristic.

When this heuristic fails, you waste lots of time mangling data to fit it into dumb markup instead of writing a simple loop with a couple of ifs.