Hacker News Reader

moneypennyon Secrets of the London Library

I have been a member for some years now and it's definitely my favourite place in London (and thus, the planet) but that's entirely because I'm somewhat institutionalized and feel quite at home here. Only a few weeks ago I discovered an entire stairwell and section I had no idea about. An absolute treasure and packed with treasure.

moneypennyon Don’t buy an SLR if you’ll only use the kit lens

Photographer/photojournalist here. What a panamax-sized-load of complete nonsense. "Don't use the kit lens!" Says who? Some kit-obsessed "coffee enthusiast". And I'm keen on indoor-outdoor breathing! Let's be buddies!

Marco Arment knows fuck-all about

(a) quality (b) photography (c) camera hardware (d) captioning photos

There isn't a sentence in that blog post that isn't either wrong or half-true.

Use the camera however you want. When you start finding that your tools can't keep up with your imagination, improve them. Photography is about light, and capturing it, first and foremost. See the light, see it change, make it change, appreciate it, capture it, and stop reading trash from insecure baldhead attention whores who take godawful photos like this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcoarment/5196670116/in/photo...

Sure, some people think sharp lines, high contrast and Schneider-Kreuznach-like resolution == high quality. And it does, in context. If you want sharpness, high contrast and resolution. You may also want to play an Ibanez RG1570 in the same context. But to others, artistic quality is a more useful way to describe things - and it can cheerfully describe all types of optics in that useful way, a way that doesn't need to stick things on a scale of good to bad. Marco appears to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time and caught me on full-flame-on mode - but he's also being narrow-minded and only looking to one context, which doesn't help anybody make better pictures, it just helps them make sharper and bigger pictures.

moneypennyon Sunsetting Flash

That's exactly why I thought Flash would be repurposed - especially as they have a track record in making tools for creating (D)HTML and JS - anyone remember GoLive? Maybe they're still working on it, it can't be an easy task.

Actionscript 4 -> Web, anyone?

moneypennyon Sunsetting Flash

Flash Player not withstanding, the rest of the product line is very good IMHO. ActionScript 3 is a decent language with great compiler support, three good IDEs (FlashDevelop, FDT and Flex Builder) and libraries galore. Desktop support with AIR (i.e. iPlayer) is right there too.

But the runtime, Flash Player, sucks. It pains me to see Adobe throw away everything else just because the runtime is horrible. I would LOVE to see ActionScript shift towards browser-native or HTML5 runtimes. Seriously. Flex can go walk the plank along with the Flash VM, but please, Adobe, take the maturity of that platform and make it do something useful. You managed to compile to iOS, Android and Blackberry, so we know you are capable of really good work, it just needs to be web right now.

moneypennyon Explosions near Boston Marathon finish line

Two of my friends flew over from the UK and were running in it, it happened right in front of Chris, luckily he's ok, she's ok. Fucking bombing bastards.

moneypennyon Why or why not Dart?

And after using a John Carmack quote to back that up. ROFL.

moneypennyon Why or why not Dart?

I was hoping for a well-reasoned and insightful post, but unfortunately this is not. The author appears to not quite understand how Dart works, with its optional static type system, and how Dart's imports work.

I started laughing when reading that apparently having an IDE instead of using a Text Editor would alienate "a whole bunch of developers".

moneypennyon AP wins big: Why a court said clipping content is not fair use

As a journalism postgrad, I am extremely cool with this. AP employ thousands of stringers all round the world to gather and verify news, in dangerous and hostile places. Meltwater literally (not figuratively) took that news without giving anything back. So fuck Meltwater, and the horse they rode in on, when lovely people like Tim Hetherington give their lives to report.

moneypennyon Gitlab 5.0 released, Gitolite now gone

HURRAH! Gitlab is an excellent product but Gitolite and Resque were making the baby Jesus cry, ran off with your girlfriend and kicked a kid over on his bicycle.

V5: Thanks very much, team Gitlab.

moneypennyon Just Use Sublime Text

God, there's a massive sense of humour failure from HN posters today.

I really enjoyed the post, he hits a lot of nails square on the head. It's a well-written, poetic tribute.

TLDR: Vim is great, but it's not always, but we're stuck with other, but I quite like it really. But don't do it, kid.

i.e. they're married.

moneypennyon Freenode's Parent Organization Dissolved

Really? It took six years for PDPC to disband? How come? I don't know the whole story, but I'm a donor/got my cloak/etc, so am curious.

moneypennyon Ask HN: If we Open Source our platform, would you use it?

Looks great. I was looking into creating something similar in terms of processing, some years ago, but never took it very far. Your work sounds very interesting and I can think of some interesting uses - I have access to some fascinating data sets.

moneypennyon Ruby - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections

Brilliant - thanks, hadn't found that info.

moneypennyon Ruby - Handling 1 Million Concurrent Connections

dumb question I thought the GC tunings, e.g. RUBY_HEAP_MIN_SLOTS, were only available in REE, rather than MRI?

moneypennyon On Python security amidst recent Rails/YAML vulnerabilities

If the original author is reading, those are George Orwell's "pithy maxims", not Allen Short's, but entertaining usage on getting a Big Brother reference into a security/trust context.

moneypennyon A Short Rant About Working Remotely

Absolutely agree - anyone wandering into one of these opinion articles/discussions would think that developers are a self-centred bunch of arseholes whose productivity is the most important thing in the entire universe, and isolation/concentration is critical. Even brain surgeons need to collaborate and operate - literally - in conjunction with other people.

moneypennyon A Short Rant About Working Remotely

Absolutely - anyone wandering into one of these opinion articles/discussions would think that developers are a self-centred bunch of arseholes whose productivity is the most important thing in the entire universe, and isolation/concentration is critical. Even brain surgeons need to collaborate and operate - literally - in conjunction with other people.

moneypennyon Why Everyone Eventually Hates or Leaves Maven

I don't have too many issues getting latex running either, but I do mostly agree, despite my humorous aside. If I had a quid for every extra hour that Maven added to my work above and beyond the coding, I could take you all to lunch. Tools should at least attempt to get out of the way. Maven is a Swiss-army knife with a blade as the handle.

moneypennyon Why Everyone Eventually Hates or Leaves Maven

TLDR: Maven makes hard things easy and easy things really f hard.

moneypennyon GitLab v4.1 released

Github, as good as they are, aren't the only company doing what they do. Gitorious, Tigris, Bitbucket and Sourceforge (et al.) have all been around a long time. Suggesting Github have had their features "ripped off" is harsh, and more than a bit rude to the other developers.

moneypennyon GitLab v4.1 released

Finally. Resque is such a PITA with Gitlab. Hopefully the upgrade script will work properly now. I have to fix quite a few bits and pieces every upgrade. Top piece of software, though.

moneypennyon Why the Fuck?

The benefit is that you know which tedious people to avoid when they tell you they work at Facebook/Google/etc.

moneypennyon I ported LaTeX to Javascript

This is awesome. Or witchcraft.

Top, top work. I love it. Now to try with my monster list of packages...

moneypennyon Elite video game reboot hits funding target

stunned

may have to eat socks (See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4748382)

moneypennyon Scientist Creates Self-Filling Water Bottle

This is a fabulous technology, but we shouldn't get carried away. Firstly, this is another disruption of the world's water cycle, which we have already managed to a considerable degree, and if we manage atmospheric water extraction on a massive scale, we will wreak havoc with the climate (again).

Note, I said: if we do this on a massive scale.

moneypennyon Anonymous takes down over 550 Israeli sites, wipes databases

As a similar Indian born in Britain, I agree with your observations about the paradox of violence inherent in the movement. I should add that non-violence only works when governments are vulnerable to moral pressure and this was not true in Zimbabwe and it is not true of Israel.

moneypennyon Wingman: Git + GitHub + OS X

Well, if it does everything they says it does, does that still make it any good? raises eyebrow

moneypennyon Wingman: Git + GitHub + OS X

Restricting it to Github is also annoying, if not slightly stupid.

moneypennyon Elite: Dangerous

I briefly worked at Eidos amongst a bunch of avid gamers (really?). The consensus verdict: Elite - best game ever. We played Oolite mercilessly in our free time.

However, regarding a new version of Elite, David Braben is a feckless omega male, a Thargoid runt who never had his fear glands removed. Frontier is a fine developer of new games where there's no legacy to destroy, but if Braben delivers a decent Elite this side of 2015, I will EAT MY SOCKS.

moneypennyon Boyfriend Required

Perhaps this chap would be suitable?

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/tor/881177993.html