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lucasoman

143 karma · joined January 30, 2008

Web software developer in Savannah, GA, USA. LAMP, Ruby. Husband, violinist, amateur entomologist.
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lucasoman··on Show HN: My iPad Hacker News Client, Hacker News Paper
Well maybe you're right. Since the author openly offered his contact information, maybe the best way to resolve the situation is to discuss the matter with him directly and privately. I wish you both success.
lucasoman··on Show HN: My iPad Hacker News Client, Hacker News Paper
I understand that it is frustrating to you to feel that someone may have been inspired by some aspects of your project. However, I think it's important to consider a few things for perspective:

1. Your web app is close to, if not already, dead: http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2011/03/i-may-let-hacker-ne...

2. So what if this guy was inspired by your app? Who doesn't do research before implementing an idea?

3. Your most persuasive evidence--the header font--appears to be the most unpopular aspect of the app, judging by the comments, and so will probably be changed shortly, anyway.

4. The developer is not in direct competition with your project, as he didn't even code it for the same platform (yes, an iPad can browse the web, but yours was not, specifically, an iPad app).

lucasoman··on My project, updated: Trending Tech News. Feedback appreciated
I think a feed would be too high-volume. But you can get topic updates from @TECHNOSPLODE on Twitter.
lucasoman··on My project, updated: Trending Tech News. Feedback appreciated
I wouldn't be opposed to posting a dynamic list of feeds on the about page.

To answer your parenthetical question: not very well. Since articles are sorted based on the weight of their feed, and since I only show the first few articles for each topic, articles from feeds with lower weights may rarely appear. They will, however, contribute to the overall weight of the topic and force it into the top ten.

lucasoman··on Why Startup Founders Should Stop Reading Business Books
... and business blogs.
lucasoman··on Ask HN: I don't get this privacy awareness outburst, can anyone please explain?
People don't comprehend how insecure the Internet is. They take for granted that their information will remain private unless they explicitly wish to share it publicly. This may be naive, but ideally this is how things ought to be.

The reason these issues have been at the forefront lately is that mainstream media has picked up the story. Facebook has, to use a cliche, reached critical mass. Everyone and their dog has a Facebook profile, so when something involves Facebook, even if it's a slightly more technical topic than usual, people are interested and want to understand.

Combined with other coincidental events, like Google being compromised by Chinese hackers, and people start thinking about it.

lucasoman··on Will jotting down license plates pay the rent?
But, for the love of god, think of the children!
lucasoman··on Indian courier service hires only deaf workers
Interestingly, it's a popular viewpoint in the deaf community (at least here in the USA) that deafness is not a handicap at all and, in the opinion of a minority, is in fact an advantage over those who are hearing.
lucasoman··on Indian courier service hires only deaf workers
Aside from the obvious reasons, this is also great because it allows the deaf to work in a deaf-friendly work environment; everyone or most there probably sign.

Much of a deaf person's life is spent watching, in silence and isolation, as the hearing people around them communicate freely. Depending on the area, socializing a deaf family member can be a real challenge. Finding a job like this would be a huge help.

lucasoman··on Singing 'rewires' damaged brain
Finally, this makes sense of Ozzie Osbourne.
lucasoman··on Ask HN: Programming on Mobile Phone.
Thanks for this! Just installed on my Droid.
lucasoman··on Google launches WhatBrowser.org, talks web browsers for Mom and Dad
I think the most conspicuous spin on the site is repeatedly calling the browser "the most important piece of software on your computer." Google has made it very clear that they intend to move computer use off of the desktop and into the cloud.

Personally, though, I don't see a problem with it. They're right--the world is moving that direction. They're just smart enough to see it.

lucasoman··on Google launches WhatBrowser.org, talks web browsers for Mom and Dad
Um, why wouldn't they want to track traffic to their own website?

I don't think my mom will be looking at the variables in the query string. As for the actual information on the site, it's very even-handed and doesn't seem to favor one browser over another. If anything, Firefox--not Chrome--may be the center of attention more than any other.

lucasoman··on Ask HN: What's in your .vimrc file?
My cure for that is putting my .vimrc on my site; then, from a foreign machine, I just do:

wget -O ~/.vimrc http://lucasoman.com/vimrc

And just like that, I'm in my comfort zone. Of course, this doesn't cover plugins and such, but I don't use those very often.

lucasoman··on A Different Way: Traits in PHP
That's the situation I find myself in: a developer stuck with PHP.

In response to the first bit, a friend observed that Warnock applies.

lucasoman··on A guide to preventing SQL injection
Why the downvotes? It's a superficial glance at SQL injection fixes with little explanation or education. Just like you can't put a novel in a comic-strip, you can't explain SQL injection security with a single block of code.
lucasoman··on A guide to preventing SQL injection
So if you want comic-strip security, just go to this site. Perfect.
lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
yawn
lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
Yes, I understand the business side. But I studied Computer Science in school. I take pride in my work, and I regard an expertly-forged piece of code as a work of art. It's not simply a means to an end, and, even if sometimes I complain a lot, I hope even my employer sees the benefit in my taking what I do so seriously.
lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
Fixed, thanks for pointing that out. And as "the guy who built Digg.com for $10/hr", that's all the feedback you'll give me?!
lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
Sorry; it wasn't meant to be attention grabbing. It was more out of frustration, I suppose.
lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
I'm not complaining about what features PHP has. In fact, I was never that annoyed that PHP didn't have lamdas or closures until now.

My problem is that it wasn't implemented _correctly_. If you're going to implement a feature, do it right or don't do it at all. Their lack of concern or pride in their project does not bode well for the community.

lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
Exactly! I'm not interested in link bait. I'm just really depressed after I finally made the realization--just last night--that the language I've been using for years is going nowhere but down.
lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
My biggest interest in PHP is job-related. I work for a large travel website whose software is all OO PHP. If it weren't for that, I'd probably be in Perl-, Ruby- or Python-land.
lucasoman··on PHP Is A Husk
And that's where PHP truly fails. On the surface, it appears to have many nice, advanced features. But they're implemented so poorly. They're not thorough about use cases or testing.
lucasoman··on [dead]
"Terrified" is a strong word, especially if you're not even going to mention privacy concerns about such an all-encompassing protocol with a centralized server.
lucasoman··on [dead]
Doubly agreed. I particularly like how one of the articles refered to in the title of this thread basically said 'I surveyed my options and counted out all of these others because I don't have any experience with them.' Yeah, nice scientific decision-making there. I want back the five minutes of my life I took to read it.
lucasoman··on Ask HN: Why did this idea of Internet Time not work?
Meters by themselves don't solve anything. But the whole metric system makes a lot of sense; everything is a power of ten, a cubic centimeter equals a milliliter, which makes length=>volume conversion trivial, etc.

From infancy, seconds, minutes and hours are ingrained in our minds. 60 is also a beautiful number, being divisible by 2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30. Given a time, like 10:42AM, a person can conjure feelings, instincts and memories about that time. Using a system based on 1000 "beats" would make time measurement meaningless for a very long time.

Outside of the Internet, most "normal" people communicate predominately with people in their own area and timezone, making the benefit of no timezones moot.

lucasoman··on Ask YC: Opinion of new startup Simplist?
I guess that's the real problem here: people assume this is a to-do list. It's a tree that can contain any type of list. Do I need to make that more clear in the docs?

I use it for everything--to-dos, favorites, projects, priorities, packing lists, shopping lists...

lucasoman··on Ask YC: Opinion of new startup Simplist?
Ok, how would you suggest I change it? I would really like to have a valid email address because, as I said above, some site functionality depends on it. Should I allow them to immediately use the Simplist and just disable email-dependent features until it's confirmed?
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