Hacker News Reader

jc123on A Better Way to Set Up Rails on Windows

Strongly recommend you move towards using a VM per article.

jc123on Winners of Udacity's CS101 contest

Is youdacity down? What's a search term that works? Keep getting no matches.

Can you clarify, perhaps with some examples, of doing something one might want at large scale and not doing it on a smaller scale? Thanks

jc123on Make Your Email Hacker Proof

Since you're at Google, I hope you've been able to suggest this to gmail team. Even better if it's being worked on, especially the first item.

jc123on Apple Should Open Up the App Store Database

I've seen this doc and this doesn't seem to include data such as user reviews of apps. Is there something that does?

jc123on Chess Archives on YouTube

There's essentially a whole series of Kasparov and Karpov commentary on their 1990 match. Starts with http://youtube.com/watch?v=VUqx5_EsZ1s Not as detailed as the books but very interesting to see their human side in addition to pure analysis. At that time they were a class above everyone else and a privilege to get a peek into what only the 2 of them really understood.

jc123on Githug - an interactive way to learn how to use git

For Mac, I've found this version of GitX to be really good:

http://gitx.laullon.com/

jc123on How to Avoid Being Pushed Out of the Company You Founded

There will always be emotions but "informally agreed upon" is something that can be mitigated early in the partnership, to help neutralize them.

jc123on Update: Looking for Technical Cofounder in San Francisco

Good luck and trust what happens, even if it's not what you're currently after. (it could help avoid some of this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3102143)

jc123on CoffeeScript and Progress

Http://js2coffee.org is also very useful

jc123on Rails Commit: Whitelist all attribute assignment by default

I agree with your points but what do you think could have been done to "convince" the Rails team to fix this? Short of the community abandoning/boycotting Rails, perhaps a revolution/spectacle was required.

jc123on How to Hustle SXSW for Fun & Profit

After loading, article disappears on an ipad. (unable to investigate right now)

jc123on FBI Turns Off Thousands of GPS Devices After Supreme Court Ruling

Sounds reasonable and looks like 8-0 ruling

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-1259.pdf

I wonder what the ruling would be for a case of a search of a trash can that is on the public street: seems it should be allowed without warrant.

jc123on How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic

Tangential, but lede is an interesting word and I always thought it was just "lead". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lede Example: In the era of Linotype and hard copy, an editor might rework a paragraph (or graf) in a story, circle it and give instructions to composing to have it moved to the top by using the word "lede." If the editor wrote "lead," the typographer might think the editor simply wanted "leading" or spacing inserted.

jc123on Why I stopped using Gmail

Did I miss what the author is using instead?

jc123on CoffeeScript Under Pressure

I appreciate the article but disagree about it being well written. It doesn't take enough of a stance and when it tries to, it is still swinging around many directions.

On the whole, though, I don’t think CoffeeScript adds quite enough benefit to outweigh the costs It's not clear what are those costs? The --watch mode bug? Or the generated JS which is perhaps less a complaint about CoffeeScript, and more a warning about versioning and standardising all components of a project.? Or the author's trouble with indentation rules?

I've had to read this article too many times to figure out, but it sounds like the author is looking for a framework like backbone. Author used the wrong "tool" for his main problem. A language doesn't really help avoid spaghetti code, as author concedes: It is still possible that I may find a return to plain Javascript sufficiently painful that I’ll stick with Coffee.

jc123on Farewell Stack Exchange

Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have been wildly successful, but I finally realized that success at the cost of my children is not success. It is failure.

As others have said, thanks Jeff for all the lessons and time saved with Stack Overflow! Super happy for your success and hard to imagine how it could have worked better. Your twins are only months old, your son is less than 3, so your success affords you all the time with your family. Your success story is well balanced and positively enviable.

jc123on Farewell Stack Exchange

Your sacrifice may be worth it. I only have a tiny glimpse into your situation, but you may want to reflect more on what you'd like medium and long-term, to avoid short term decisions that might not help. Life involves tradeoffs and sacrifices, and the best time for some of them is before relationships, children, family. The money you've made could very well help you spend time with your relationships and family.

jc123on Inside Stripe

What is it about Stripe that is taking Google and Paypal a long time to imitate? Article mentioned api took tons iterations and stringent auditing, but the api is now known and auditing established companies should be relatively faster. It seems unlikely that the first mover advantage will allow enough time for Stripe to make a dent in the market. Flying under the radar longer might be better, but congrats to the team for all the accomplishments.

jc123on The First Six Steps of Getting Your Startup Noticed

Just post it on your blog?

jc123on Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs

If you look at the cards that Jobs was dealt with in life (upbringing, fired from his company, cancer...) and what he was able to accomplish, it is admirable and inspiring.

I think Jobs and Gates both exemplify to whom much is given, much more is required.

jc123on Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs

One shouldn't let the notion of Jobs and Gates being "competitors" from being able to admire both of them. I admire each for different reasons. I think that has to be the case since they are pretty different characters: a closer analogy could be between a great batter and a great pitcher.

For some info, Gates wrote this yesterday http://www.gatesfoundation.org/annual-letter

(Was posted on HN but the crowd here seems to prefer something more controversial when it comes to Gates.)

jc123on Matt Mullenweg: On the Evolution of Investing

Misleading title. Better to use a term such as "venture capital" because "investing" is much broader.

Regarding the article, VCs might get disrupted by a large number of smaller groups pooling together to provide the same amount of massive risk capital. But what will not be disrupted is the need for massive risk capital to fund startups such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. There will be startups with tremendous growth where its monetization engine is non-existent or takes longer to develop and start running.

jc123on Google IP Vandalizing OpenStreetMap [Not a comprehensive post]

What were Tom's arguments? It would give better perspective than just his conclusion.

jc123on Search: .lenght - Github

Perhaps some info about the progress being made would be more helpful as elk3 has mentioned contacting support over the past 2 years.

jc123on Circumventing the No-Fly list in thirty seconds

If it was theater only for those who want to feel more secure, I'd be less aggravated with it. But my forced participation into such theatrics, such as removing shoes, no water bottles, seems that it will only lead to more annoying machinations in the future. Furthermore, this theater only makes the people we are trying to protect against, more creative.

jc123on WiFi Protected Setup (WPS) PIN Brute Force Vulnerability

A problem is that it might not be possible to disable WPS on some routers yet, for example Linksys routers: http://superuser.com/questions/374624/how-do-i-configure-my-...

Anyone from Cisco know? Or have the equipment/effort able to verify this claim: That "Manual" switch only affects the GUI, if you look at the beacon (with some WiFi Analyzer) you will notice that WPS is still enabled.

jc123on Ask PG: 2012 Startup ideas you'd like to fund?

Until the updated version gets written, just a reminder that's been said several times and that PG reiterated at this year's Startup School: focus more on solving problems instead of ideas.

jc123on Shunning Facebook and Living to Tell About it

The correction footnote seems eye-opening: Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates 16 percent don't have cellphones.

jc123on JavaScript MapReduce from Facebook hackathon

Techcrunch report at http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/04/college-hackathon