Hacker News Reader

Indeed, as was discussed before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4551907

I really like the atmosphere of the old git design[1]. The new design[2] is so corporate and soulless. Open-source projects can afford to look more human than companies, I'm happy that they do.

[1] http://web.archive.org/web/20090303081943/http://git-scm.com...

[2] http://git-scm.com/

jknon The Plus in Google Plus? It’s Mostly for Google

Indeed it does what RSS used to do for me. It also adds comments and pictures, something RSS could also do depending on the reader. The real added value of G+ compared to RSS is the original content: a lot of people in Open Source and science, for example, use it as a blog platform. I do wish social networks were less ghettoized, but as a publication medium it doesn't seem less open than a blog to me. There are even tools to generate RSS feeds from G+ streams I think.

jknon The Plus in Google Plus? It’s Mostly for Google

I fire up my G+ stream and get:

A post by Timothy Gowers about Mobius strips and Valentine's Day: https://plus.google.com/103703080789076472131/posts/gYmEcGuN...

A repost by Michael Chui with an animation of a double star + planet system showing chaos: https://plus.google.com/113476531580617567600/posts/Y3yiBojn...

A post by an acquaintance about local politics with interesting infographics.

A post from Rajini Rao titled "An Academic Valentine: The Science Behind Flower Color": https://plus.google.com/114601143134471609087/posts/7mWzModf...

A post by David Brin on an interesting sci-fi TV series I hadn't heard of: https://plus.google.com/116665417191671711571/posts/CJFcZkUf...

A report from Human Rights Watch on sectarian violence in the Central African Republic: https://plus.google.com/113055770163061121890/posts/jYRxedAB...

A repost by Romain Guy about an open source live wallpaper for Android that shows works of art: https://plus.google.com/109538161516040592207/posts/1zueVNE8...

A post from the EFF on the history of surveillance and the Black community: https://plus.google.com/113175636916099066477/posts/ZUoVA3u5...

There's quite some noise around those posts of course, but far less than on Twitter, and the pictures make it easier for me to sift through it. I'm not a fan of social networks but I like to check my G+ stream now and then when I'm bored on the computer. I definitely don't use it as a Facebook replacement (which I don't really use at all actually...).

jknon How to Burn Out Programming

Thanks a lot for this.

jknon As Argentine Peso Falters, President Keeps a Low Profile

Interesting. I think that long-term coherent policies are best supported by strongly multi-party systems: when the power is shared by several parties, you don't get the political swing after each election that can happen with two-party systems.

To take it to the extreme, consider Switzerland, where the largest party has only 26.6% of the votes. 11 parties are represented in the parliament, and the executive power is shared equally among 7 ministers representing 4 different parties. The system offers an unusual continuity in the executive branch:

The Swiss executive is one of the most stable governments worldwide. Since 1848, it has never been renewed entirely at the same time, providing a long-term continuity. From 1959 to 2003 the Federal Council was composed of a coalition of all major parties in the same ratio: 2 each from the Free Democratic Party, Social Democratic Party and Christian Democratic People's Party and 1 from the Swiss People's Party. Changes in the council occur typically only if one of the members resigns (merely four incumbent members were voted out of the office in over 150 years); this member is almost always replaced by someone from the same party (and often also from the same linguistic group).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Switzerland#Executi...

jknon What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years [pdf]

I'll take this opportunity to share another amazing optical illusion:

  http://9gag.com/gag/a9d1jxj

I wonder if dynamic optical illusions such as this one will prove relevant to VR somehow.

jknon Evernote, the bug-ridden elephant

I found it rather reassuring. I was expecting a simple "sorry, here's a small freebie to make you happy" but the CEO recognizing the problems is exactly how to make me think they might actually fix them soonish.

jknon How to Make Perfect Thin and Crisp French Fries (2010)

One difference would be that Belgian fries are traditionally fried in beef fat, which changes the taste quite a bit.

jknon N.S.A. Phone Surveillance Is Lawful, Federal Judge Rules

Thanks for including the important "essential" and "little temporary" qualifiers that are so often left out.

Even so I don't like this quote. The notion that some people don't deserve safety because of their poor valuation of liberty, is so obviously wrong...

jknon Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke

The absence of Mexico from the FATF blacklist simply means that Mexico makes a good effort at implementing the FATF recommendations. Which makes sense since Mexico is a FATF member (I don't think there is a single FATF member in the FATF list of high-risk and non cooperative countries). It doesn't account for the high risk of money laundering associated with the social context of drug trafficking (this was also the government's point I think).

For what it's worth, the 2009 IMF report on Mexico's FATF compliance[1] identifies a lot of issues regarding Mexico's AML process (see the ratings table starting at page 311).

Reading the Statement of Facts, I personally find the evidence compelling that there was a lot of blind eye turning at HSBC to say the least. Just one example:

When suspicious activity was identified, HSBC Mexico repeatedly failed to take action to close the accounts. Senior business executives at HSBC Mexico repeatedly overruled recommendations from its own AML committee to close accounts with documented suspicious activity. In July 2007, a senior compliance officer at HSBC Group told HSBC Mexico’s Chief Compliance Officer that “[t]he AML committee just can’t keep rubber-stamping unacceptable risks merely because someone on the business side writes a nice letter. It needs to take a firmer stand. It needs some cojones. We have seen this movie before, and it ends badly.”

(BTW I don't "keep saying this". It was my first comment on the topic. You probably confused me with milkshakes or dalke.)

[1] http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2009/cr0907.pdf

jknon Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke

I don't understand your position on HSBC's guilt. There is plenty of evidence that they have intentionally weakened their AML program. When they rated Mexico with the lowest AML risk in contradiction to every indicator in the industry, they knew of the consequences. They knew it would facilitate money laundering (by definition), in one of the hottest drug trafficking region. Does it matter so much that their ultimate goal was to make money rather than launder money? Of course money laundering was not an end in itself. That's probably why "willfully fail to establish and maintain an effective AML program" was made a crime: to give legislation some teeth in precisely a case like this, no?

jknon President Obama calls on every American to learn code

I think most importantly it's about being computer-literate in a broader sense. Introducing kids to programming should be seen as a general knowledge matter. We introduce children to many fields so that they understand better the world they live in. Coding should be no exception, especially as computing becomes ever more dominant in our society. An introduction to programming would give children the basic vocabulary to understand what it's all about, and maybe the idea to go further when they need to or want to. Importantly, it also serves to demystify the field: a child might feel that programming is way beyond her reach, maybe requiring a significant technical background and complex and expensive tools to do anything? She might look at it differently when she discovers what she can do with Notepad, a browser and 20 lines of Javascript.

jknon David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

Then don't look at different countries but at the evolution of inequality in a particular country. The rise of inequality in the US since the 1980's is an indictment of the current system. Here's an animated map showing this evolution:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/19/w...

And this article has a chart illustrating the inverse relationship between inequality and well-being in the US:

http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/peter-turchin-wealth...

jknon Time to abandon Gmail?

I'm a Google Apps user, which means I have my own domain. I can always switch without losing my email address. If you're using a @gmail.com email address, then you should really stop doing that.

I'm thinking of switching to an Apps account but I'm worried about the complexity of the transition for all my data.. Do you have any advice for that? Also do you miss anything with an Apps account compared with a regular one?

jknon Google launches Portable Native Client

Thanks for bringing some positivity to the debate. PNaCl and asm.js are timely and they are technically very different. It will be interesting indeed to see how it goes from here.

jknon The plot against France

Holland said on television he hates rich people

It is unfortunate to misquote someone in such a polarized debate. What Hollande really said is better translated as "I don't like rich people, I don't like rich people, I have to admit".[1] Why put more violent words in his mouth?

(As mentioned in the linked article, he also later said: "This was too short a wording. I appreciate talent, work, merit. What I don't accept is indecent wealth.")

[1] http://www.liberation.fr/politiques/2012/09/10/hollande-anti...

jknon Nexus 5 Teardown

I'm a big Android fan and have to agree with 'pearjuice'. I have yet to see an Android device without the extra lag compared to iOS. Maybe you're confusing low lag with smoothness? Android can be smoother than iOS, i.e. you slide the finger and get a perfectly smooth animation where iOS shows a small stutter. But this smooth animation doesn't start immediately, and that is the lag we're talking about.

On iOS, putting the finger on an icon and moving it feels more "real" because the icon stays under the finger. On Android, a quick motion of the finger lets the icon trail behind... Perfectly smoothly, but behind. I hope Google fixes this at some point but I suspect the low latency we see on iOS is possible thanks to a tight integration between hardware and software that would be difficult to achieve on Android.

jknon Facebook is using D in production starting today

The responsiveness of this forum is amazing. Is the client side doing some pre-fetching?

I remember finding the website disturbingly fast on my first visit. I wonder if it is just me being so used to loading delays, or if there is a point were you can be so fast that it is detrimental to the user experience. The latter doesn't sound like it makes sense so it must be of matter of getting used to it.

jknon HP Chromebook 11

It's a good question and frankly I was quite surprised to realize, after using my chromebook for a while, that I was subconsciously turning to the chromebook rather than the macbook for browsing because the experience is just better. If you are looking for the least clunky way to browse the Web, it's not the Apple product (that was the surprise). Chrome OS boots faster and feels much lighter without all the icons and menus that you find in a regular OS.

The ARM chromebook also feels nicer because it has no fan. This simple detail makes it feel less like a computer and more like a tablet.

The most astonishing is that these two points give the ARM chromebook the edge over the macbook even despite its very poor screen.

That being said, I do occasionally turn to the macbook for in-browser work, when the low power of the ARM chromebook is too palpable.

jknon Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

Well it's not like the proposal is to divert 34% of the GDP into a black hole. A state cannot afford to divert 34% of its resources (materials, workforce, etc.) to build a fancy statue. But the only direct cost of this proposal to the economy is a small administrative overhead. All the resources that these 34% GDP represent are still there, unspent, in the hands of people.

We can argue of course about the indirect consequences to the economy, e.g. how it would affect the competitiveness of Switzerland if unpleasant jobs suddenly require a more attractive salary.

jknon Civet coffee: why it's time to cut the crap

I had a discussion with someone who feels strongly about this recently, and he pointed out that even the few chickens and cows that get decent treatment during their lives are brought to the slaughter house when they're not productive anymore (except for a negligible minority of cases). Even if we assume the best slaughtering conditions (wrongly, most likely) it's not hard to see how that can be perceived as unethical.

He did mention that people who take good care of their chickens and cows during their whole life are a different story.

jknon Microsoft Wins Trial on Google’s Patent Licensing Tactics

What is evil about a high opening bid? Especially when it has been the standard official royalty rate of Motorola for years..

jknon Trickle‐down technology and why it doesn’t work

The premise of trickle down economics is that a rising tide lifts all boats, which has occurred.

I don't think this is correct. "A rising tide lifts all boats" is a metaphor to say that an improving economy benefits everybody, and most people agree on the general idea. But nothing is trickling down with this metaphor, all boats are lifted together. Trickle down economy is the idea that helping the rich get richer will eventually benefit the poor (under the assumptions that the rich know best how to improve the economy, and that they will use the money to do it). Here many people disagree.

jknon Chromecast update breaks AllCast

I can't think of any tech company in Google's league that matches them in terms of device openness.

The Nexus phones and tablets officially support flashing of custom ROMs.[1,2]

The Moto X will have an unlockable bootloader on carriers that allow it.[3]

Google gave a tutorial on how to root Glass (see the I/O talk "Voiding Your Warranty: Hacking Glass" [4]).

All Chromebooks have a developer mode that can be accessed using a hardware switch or key combination. See e.g. [5,6] for the Samsung ARM and Pixel Chromebooks.

Google even provides instructions for disassembling the Chromebooks ([5,6], at the bottom).

I don't think it's wise to ignore Google's history and extrapolate the future based exclusively on an SDK preview.

[EDIT: Downvoters, I would be curious to know your motivations.]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_rooting

[2] http://android-developers.blogspot.ch/2010/12/its-not-rootin...

[3] https://plus.google.com/+PunitSoni/posts/e6oQdFnLGiv

[4] https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/332704837

[5] http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo...

[6] http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo...

jknon Linux 3.9 introduced a new way of writing socket servers

Am I right that this makes it trivial to deploy a new version of my server with zero downtime? I can just start the new server to handle new connections and tell the old one to stop accepting connections and quit when existing requests are completed, no need for another layer routing?

jknon Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms

Thanks for clarifying, that makes a lot of sense.

jknon Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms

Is it fair to label this "extremely authoritarian" though? I tend to agree with Sustein's views as described in your comment (not the views described in OP's comment) but I don't consider myself authoritarian...

jknon A Steve Jobs email exchange that captures Apple’s strategy

Phil Shiller:

While the primary message is that there are Kindle apps on lots of mobile devices, the secondary message that can’t be missed is that it is easy to switch from iPhone to Android. Not fun to watch.

Steve Jobs:

What do you recommend we do? [then suggests as first step to show how better the payment experience is on iOS]

The conversation is about a problem identified by Phil Shiller. The problem is that switching from iOS to Android seems easy.

Jobs proposes (as a first step) to show how the iOS payment system is superior. This is a nice response to a threat from the competition, but it does not change the basic fact: Apple considers that easy switching to Android is a problem, and something must be done about it.

This is consistent with Apple not supporting Android (no Apple app to access iTunes content, etc). Google on the other hand makes apps for iOS, e.g. the books app[1]. When an iOS app is not available (e.g. for music where the app is in the works[2]) users can still use the Web services.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-play-books/id40098900...

[2] http://www.imore.com/google-play-music-all-access-officially...

jknon Hyperloop

Would it really be expensive? 1 mbar is a low grade vacuum. You can achieve that with mere rotary vane pumps:

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

jknon Court: Chevron can subpeona Americans' email data in Ecuador case

To me the origin of birthright citizenship in the U.S. as a means of guaranteeing civil rights to Black people is more significant than having the Supreme Court interpret the text of the amendment in the rather obvious way. On the other hand, it's true that senators acknowledged the consequence the law would have on children of foreigners [1], so that speaks for extending rights to outsiders. In any case, I'd like to see other examples supporting (or contradicting) the view that the U.S. is particularly nice to outsiders. It's rather average on the issue of citizenship through marriage I think. It's obviously not very nice on issues of privacy (NSA scandal) as well as some basic human rights (Guantanamo).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni...