Hacker News Reader

javanixon Ken Jennings takes AMA questions on Reddit

Not sure what you mean by this, but in my opinion differing UI and RSS feeds are pretty much the opposite of "fundamental differences".

javanixon Ken Jennings takes AMA questions on Reddit

Right, there's really nothing fundamentally different about HN and reddit other than the audience. At their core they are both vote-based commenting communities - and the generally high quality of comments makes me wish more sites (like Gawker, Engadget, etc) would use the same mechanism. Yes there is a lot of herd behavior but it's leagues better than the "First post!" cruft you see everywhere else.

javanixon Ken Jennings takes AMA questions on Reddit

So apparently Ken Jennings is about 9000x more hilarious than I expected him to be. Good to know.

javanixon Adding Millions To Your Valuation Using SEO

I'm not sure the simple SEO steps described here will really add "millions" to your valuation just like that, but this article really was more interesting than the somewhat link-baity title might suggest.

javanixon FreeBSD 8.2 released

If you are running ZFS this release marks a major improvement.

ZFS v15 really helps with the overzealous memory allocation that earlier versions were plagued with on FreeBSD. Upgrading to 8.2 gave me a 20% - 30% R/W performance increase out of the box without any sort of tuning or optimization.

javanixon Eth0 no more?

From the limitations section of the wiki page linked in the article:

Not all add-in cards have a method to expose their Linux interface name(s) to external port mapping. biosdevname may provide incorrect names for such. Discussions are ongoing on the netdev mailing list to standardize a method of exposing such mapping.

Seems like this would be kind of a deal-breaker for any wholesale move like this. I'd be fairly surprised if this got any widespread adoption anytime soon.

javanixon It’s Not a Bubble, People; It’s a Pyramid Scheme

Whoops. If I could still edit my post I would. I'll settle for an upvote here and hope people get the point :)

javanixon It’s Not a Bubble, People; It’s a Pyramid Scheme

What would the draw of a highly volatile pension investment be?

I would think that pension managers would be encouraged to keep something that would generally have a stable (but not necessarily particularly high) yield.

I don't doubt that this sort of thing happens for various reasons, but those managers would, by definition, be taking somewhat unusual risks.

javanixon It’s Not a Bubble, People; It’s a Pyramid Scheme

Not unless your pension manager has some really huge cajones.

javanixon HD 555 to HD 595 mod (or: how Sennheiser cripples cheaper headphones)

In case anyone is wondering, I just did this on my almost four-year old pair of HD555s and you can definitely tell the difference.

Sure glad I bought the cheaper pair now.

javanixon Standalone sandboxed IE6, IE7, IE8 executables (Recovered after a takedown)

I'm having a tough time running the IE7 executable in Windows 7. The VM popup shows up like IE6 and IE8, but the program window closes immediately.

Before I dig too far into it, is anyone else running into the same thing?

javanixon Interest in 3D animation? Get Messiah Studio Pro for $40 ($1200 retail value)

I thought it was an interesting advertising technique, at least, and ties in well with interests that many visitors here might have.

javanixon Michelle Obama Doesn't Want Her Kids Using Facebook

I don't think that's what he meant. Even simple things like "We're going to Disney World tomorrow" could be dangerous in the wrong hands, especially if the trip wasn't publicized beforehand.

javanixon Michelle Obama Doesn't Want Her Kids Using Facebook

With the amount of vitriol thrown around in American politics these days, I wouldn't want my kids directly exposed to a public forum like that if I was in the Presidential family.

javanixon Interest in 3D animation? Get Messiah Studio Pro for $40 ($1200 retail value)

I don't have any first hand experience with it but it looks like the Linux version is running through Wine, not a native port.

Wine is great but for 3D stuff (including games) I've found that its usually more trouble than its worth to get it configured right for my specific systems.

javanixon Do I Owe My Employees a Career Path?

Those improvements aren't as fleeting either. If the employee leaves, whatever process improvements they had gotten with that 5k has a good chance of sticking around and helping for the future.

javanixon Brutal New York - 1965/95

Unfortunately, places like these still exist.

Read 'The Corner' by David Simon (creator of The Wire and Treme) if you're interested in a more modern take on the ghetto.

Take home message: the war on drugs in its current form is not working and the side effects are places like this, completely cut off from normal society, almost completely out of reach outside of an economic revival (like happened in Harlem).

javanixon A favicon? That’ll be £585 please.

At my current salary, it would take me about 10 days of work to reach £585 in straight labor costs.

Honestly, that doesn't seem to be too overly ridiculous to me. There is a lot of work that goes into designing them (and installing them into each page of a website, especially if the favicon was new and not an update). If the company in question didn't have someone perfectly familiar with the site in question, I can see it taking a week or so to get it out the door. What costs would be added by going through the process of taking bids? I wouldn't be surprised if those in themselves ran to £100 - £200.

javanixon What on earth are Google thinking? (re: Binggate)

Can we please, please, PLEASE not call this Binggate?

Not everything needs a pithy one-word term of endearment.

javanixon Optimal Employment

That's the impression I've gotten from a lot of people who have worked in Japan. It isn't really an option for me anyway (since I don't know the language and wouldn't have too much of a reason to learn it) but it is certainly interesting how incompatible many people find Japanese workplace culture with American workplace culture.

javanixon Optimal Employment

Has anyone here had experience working in Australia (or as an expat in another developed country) as an actual software developer?

I do enjoy what I do but I'd love to be able to see a different part of the world while I do it.

javanixon Roger Ebert: After 3D, here is the future of film

I was thinking the opposite, actually (though I don't notice the flicker at 24Hz).

My TV has one of those modes called "motion-smooth" or something like that, and what it purports to do is smooth the transitions between frames. It does this surprisingly well - too well, I would say. The end result is that movies end up looking like cheap soap operas, and I can't get over it.

Granted, the 48fps is not the same as 60fps, and maybe the difference is enough for me to subconsciously forget it. But if it wasn't the change would probably be enough for me to forgo MaxiVision films.

I think refresh rate is one of those things that our minds compensate for in the background, and the slightest changes one way or the other are instantly noticeable.

javanixon Asia's new aristocrats

Some Indian gazillionaires are flashy

I wasn't really expecting to read the word "gazillionaires" in an economist article. Has to mark some sort of a first for the publication.

javanixon How Pixar Bosses Saved Their Employees from Layoffs

If anyone is interested, The Pixar Touch by David Price is a pretty fantastic look at the early history (both from a business standpoint and from a technological standpoint) of the company.

http://www.amazon.com/Pixar-Touch-Vintage-David-Price/dp/030...

javanixon For what are the Windows A:\ and B:\ drives used?

I found a set of Windows 3.1 disks at home back in high school once and actually managed to get them installed on my brand new gaming rig that I bought. I was unreasonably proud of that feat.

javanixon Bayesian stats book banned in China

Which seems more than a little ridiculous to me, but ... it is China.

javanixon Micron releases half-terabyte laptop SSDs

I love watching a new technology go exponential. By this time next year we'll be talking about 1TB laptop SSDs, and from there it won't be too long until their capacities outpace platter tech.

javanixon New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

Oh, never mind. I misread the article - I thought it was promising films before they come out on DVD.

My point still stands though - there is absolutely no way this doesn't get cracked.

As long as watchable images are displayed on a screen, someone will figure out a way to "archive" them for later.

javanixon New Intel processors to contain DRM suggested by Hollywood studios

I for one can't wait for the high-quality new film rips to show up on BitTorrent once this is inevitably cracked.

javanixon Facebook-Goldman: Where Is the S.E.C.?

From http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/facebook-and-the-500-...:

The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 sets forth certain requirements for companies to register their shares with the S.E.C.

Specifically, Section 12(g) requires that a company register its securities with the S.E.C. if it “has total assets exceeding $1,000,000 and a class of equity security … held of record by five hundred or more … persons…”

Sounds to me like this law has been around for a while.