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hewhowhineth

33 karma · joined April 8, 2015

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hewhowhineth··on Cloudflare ReCAPTCHA De-Anonymizes Tor Users
I stopped visiting sites with image recognition reCAPTCHAs. It has to be one of the worst UX patterns ever devised. It's dirt cheap to automate them away so it doesn't really stop any self-respecting bot maker, and it comes at a price of being a huge pain in the ass for a real user. Every time I run into them I felt used and abused.

It's really sad. So much brain power and this is what they come up with.

Apologies for the rant, couldn't help it. ReCAPTCHA is one of very few things I genuinely hate.

hewhowhineth··on Doctors Without Borders doesn't take money from EU anymore
According to first vice-president of the European Commission, citing some internal report from the Frontex (EU border agency), 60% are economic migrants.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/most-fleeing-to...

hewhowhineth··on Doctors Without Borders doesn't take money from EU anymore
"More than half of those fleeing to Europe from the Middle East and Africa are economic migrants and not asylum seekers fleeing the horrors of war in Iraq or Syria, according to first vice-president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans.

Quoting what he said were new, unpublished, figures from the EU border agency, Frontex, Mr Timmermans said: “More than half of the people now coming to Europe come from countries where you can assume they have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status … more than half, 60 percent.”

Those 60 percent were predominantly from north Africa, mainly Moroccans or Tunisians who were leaving their own countries for “economic reasons” and attempting to travel to Europe through Turkey, the former Netherlands foreign minister told the Dutch national broadcaster, NOS."

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/most-fleeing-to...

hewhowhineth··on This is not a place of honor
Outstanding documentary. Thanks.
hewhowhineth··on Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation
Read again: most of those countries. Now make a list of countries that had its forces on the eastern front, and the list of the ones that didn't. Still Bizarro World?

Not that facts matter to you, but Poland attacked Soviets in 1920. Slovakia (Tiso regime) joined Hitler's forces on eastern front. They also attacked Poland and had a war with Hungary, both in 1939.

But given your attitude I'm pretty sure there won't be any meaningful discussion so I'll leave it at that.

hewhowhineth··on Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation
We also seem to forget that most of those countries were part of Hitler's forces that attacked the Soviet Union a few years before that. Small example would be Hungary that sent ~500,000 soldiers to the eastern front. That invasion resulted in ~5 million civilians being killed, let's ignore the military casualties and general destruction.

Every country/nation did all kinds of nasty shit, it's just a matter of how far back you want to look.

EDIT: typo

hewhowhineth··on Show HN: What every browser knows about you
If you're Firefox user go to 'about:config' and set 'media.autoplay.enabled' to false
hewhowhineth··on Google and ASUS Launch the $85 Chromebit, a Chrome OS Desktop on an HDMI Stick
You're right. That may ruin it for some. It differs a lot from country to country, I guess. Where I'm at the moment there is no import tax on <150 EUR items, and handling is 1 EUR.
hewhowhineth··on Google and ASUS Launch the $85 Chromebit, a Chrome OS Desktop on an HDMI Stick
You can get those Rockchip HDMI sticks for $50 on aliexpress, shipping included (RK3288 ones support 4K). They usually ship with Android 4.4 these days. But for $70-$80 you can get a stick with Atom Z3735F 2GB/32GB and have full desktop OS, Windows or Linux.
hewhowhineth··on Lithium-air battery research shows potential paths to next-gen batteries
Well at least it's not the Q4 2016 :) https://xkcd.com/678/
hewhowhineth··on Chrome and Safari extensions to view AMP versions on the desktop
It's even better idea to boycott it. Embrace-extend-extinguish may work for a big player but it will harm everyone else. We've been there before.
hewhowhineth··on Chrome and Safari extensions to view AMP versions on the desktop
Can we please stop pretending that this has anything to do with loading pages faster?

Stop breaking the web. It's stupid. You can try to just shove the ads down someone's throat but you're in for a surprise, again. Any attempt to force it will actually hurt the advertising. People don't hate ads. People hate obnoxious, obtrusive ads that bloat the page to the point of making it completely useless and the whole experience fruitless frustration.

Non-obtrusive ads work just fine. I know that for a fact, they pay my bills.

hewhowhineth··on Mobile browser traffic is 2X bigger than app traffic, and growing faster
Web for the win!
hewhowhineth··on Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads
Nothing destroyed the quality of web content as much as AdSense did. So many websites turned into "made for AdSense" and started doing stupid things that actually severely reduce their earning potential.
hewhowhineth··on Give Google Contributor a try: Pay to remove ads
Sounds like racketeering :)
hewhowhineth··on Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Baidu Announce Joint Investment in CloudFlare
It kinda depends. You'd have to test it yourself. Here's CloudFlare's home page accessed from Europe a few moments ago, via 3G dongle.

http://s21.postimg.org/8gn6f7i2f/cloudflare_com.png

Nothing to write home about :)

That being said, I've seen CloudFlare cutting down DNS lookup from 800ms to 60ms for a tiny website.

Another thing is that it depends if you're really concerned with visitors far from your server. I had some WordPress websites hosted in LA and with some really basic optimization page speed was almost as good as Google's home page.

Don't drink the paint, I guess :) It may not be worth it, it may be great. Test it. Of course, CF has other benefits too, it's not just about the page speed.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not claiming anything here. It's just a quick rant and a screenshot. Don't take it too seriously.

Other than that, it is becoming somewhat concerning just how much traffic goes through CloudFlare. Nothing against you CF guys. Just good ol' paranoia :)

EDIT: For most places CloudFlare does a great, well, amazing job and keeps the page speed down to <1s, often <500ms. But again, it really depends where your visitor are. Check the History tab here http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/#!/blmbP5/http://cloudflare.com

hewhowhineth··on Data is not an asset, it’s a liability
DIKW Pyramid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIKW_Pyramid Now your turn. What's the name of the book? :)
hewhowhineth··on How do you dismantle a nuclear submarine?
Dismantling Russian Typhoon class submarine (47 min)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGhxGgQ-Cd4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon-class_submarine

hewhowhineth··on Russia’s Cold War Mapmakers
Not sure if this applies to the maps in question, but legal rights (and obligations) are handed down to successor country/countries. International treaties, debts and everything. Even Olympic medals I believe.
hewhowhineth··on The decline of US power?
There was a beautiful thought yesterday somewhere on HN, on a completely unrelated subject. Forgive me for not remembering the author, or the thread. I was half drank :)

  Every generation thinks it invented sex, rebellion, and curiosity.
It seems to me that the similar thought could be applied to many things. Is this a known logical fallacy, does it have a name?
hewhowhineth··on Get rid of boolean function parameters
Why not

   $route = new Route($pattern, $recursive = true);
hewhowhineth··on How a Russian Syndicate Scammed Us for $25K
Best of luck, but is there any danger for you to get in legal trouble with Namecheap, eBay, SitePoint, etc?
hewhowhineth··on How a Russian Syndicate Scammed Us for $25K
I feel for you, but shady market, no buyer screening, plain text passwords, doxxing, ... not a lot of trust there.

When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. I hope next thing you do won't be looking for a hitman on the dark web :)

hewhowhineth··on Antisocial Behavior in Online Discussion Communities [pdf]
Given the stated accuracy and such a low base rate it looks like it would yield ten times more false positives than true positives. To eliminate some of the trolls you effectively eliminate anyone outside the consensus trance. You might as well use astrology.

But very interesting to see the actual CNN, ING and Breitbart numbers.

hewhowhineth··on 'Troll hunting' algorithm could make web a better place
You forgot to add pedophilia, racism, terrorism, and drugs to that list.

Hundreds of millions of people all over the world speak English as their second, third or fourth language. That fact alone makes them more interesting than some grammar sharia asshole.

Edit: grammar :)

hewhowhineth··on Why people hate PHP, a book from hell
There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses. - Bjarne Stroustrup