Hacker News Reader

mrviron Study: Staying off Facebook can make you happier

I admit the convenience of Facebook. I use it.

But voluntarily giving your contact list and location info, and passing your private conversations via a for-profit data mining machine seems, in principle, not very enlightened.

One day some of that data is going to leak. It's bound to happen.

mrviron Microsoft’s Downfall: Inside the Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant

Remember reading that Enron was also one sad example of stack ranking system.

mrviron Chromebox

If this box really is a secure, maintenance free computer, I see a lots of places where it could shine: elementary schools, small business, info kiosks, libraries, my parents ;-)

mrviron After Facebook fails

Even if they could do all that it is still wild guesswork with too many possibilies. And the effectity of that fantasy also assumes that there is endless supply of advertisers from all different industries. The reality is that if, for example, only some dating sites and hosting companies are willing to pay for ads that match your profile then it is only dating and server hosting ads that you will see.

mrviron DNS Tutorial For Beginners

No, it's about DNS resource records generally used by all name servers (RFC 1035).

mrviron Bootstrap 2.0, From Twitter

I'm trying bootstrap in my latest project, but have to say was surprised the first time I viewed it with IE. Even with IE9 the navbar and buttons look poor. Any advise?

mrviron Erlang - overhyped or underestimated?

Don't really know Erlang, but having worked for Telecom industry earlier, I would guess Erlang is getting its concepts and messaging model from SDL [1] rather than from OO.

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

mrviron Facebook Is Secretly Building A Phone

Sure some juicy rumours to awaken speculators interest as facebook IPO is drawing closer ...

mrviron The rich are different from you and me

One counterpoint for super rich:

http://givingpledge.org/

mrviron What's wrong with C++ (from the point of view of someone that uses it daily)

One man project with 25 KLOC? A bit limited example IMO. No problem with C++ strings if you don't use 'em. Well, that's a solution ...

mrviron Facebook Apps Must Now Ask Users for More Specific Permissions

No, they just want you to bear the responsibility of using third party apps.

mrviron Ask HN: What were your naivetés in your twenties?

I wish that, in my twenties, (1) I knew this, and (2) I had the balls to be brutally honest with myself about what my strengths and weaknesses were

I actually agree with the advice on working on your weaknesses early in life, because pushing your limits helps you better understand yourself. I don't think I was dishonest about myself earlier, maybe too idealistic trying to fix some weaknesses that I nowadays consider part of my personality. And I'm not talking about skills here, but more about mental debugging of your emotions, ambitions, relationships etc.

mrviron How to kill a company's morale in one easy memo

And the irony might be that he gets a company that outwardly looks exactly like he wants. The sheep willing to conform will stay and others will move on. Now I'm not saying anything about productivity, that's another question then.

mrviron A failed entrepreneur

Seems like he was quite a champ. Far more precious if you can teach your kids to think for themselves and use their wings, than leave them a multi-million dollar company, me thinks.

mrviron HTML5 vs Flash

Yes, and I would like to see HTML5 version of that Asteroids demo that would work in IE. I mean a nice demo, but not working in half of the browsers out there.

mrviron Ask HN: How do I become smarter?

That's why he is here, I would assume.

mrviron Ask HN: accounting resources for startups?

Shoebox :-P

mrviron The Value of Ideas

Yes, provocative illustration, but very entertaining, I admit. The magic trick was to reduce every idea to one word or one sentence. Can be used to make any movie plot sound weird.

mrviron Apple & HTML5

Sure, I agree that 2022 sounds absurdly conservative estimate. By then all browsers will support at least HTML8 :-P

But my point was that giving impression that one company already has it all ready is stretching the truth as HTML5 is still a moving target.

mrviron Apple & HTML5

Upvoted. You are correct. HTML5 is not yet even approved W3C candidate recommendation.

To be more accurate Apple should have said that it is committed in implementing HTML5 standard, not that it has done it, because at the moment HTML5 is not ready.

From Wikipedia: "Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification, expects the specification to reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012, and W3C Recommendation in the year 2022 or later. However, many parts of the specification are stable and may be implemented in products"

mrviron GCC starts move towards implementation in C++

Interesting indeed. It's good that GCC people start eating their own dog food and allow the use of C++. I'm sure this move will bring improvements to g++.

mrviron Web app ideas

IMO (La)TeX output looks professional when printed on paper with a decent laser printer. You need to look very close. Difference is in very small details. I would guess that it has more accurate font face calculations and positioning as every character looks perfect.

mrviron Facebook's Problem Isn't Privacy

Cringely gives good advice would facebook target to be a web service. Seems clear that their first goal is not to be a popular web service but to harvest data. Business wise this makes sense as the potential value of that huge pile of information should surpass the earnings of any subscription site.

mrviron Ask HN: I sold my company last month for $5m. What do I do with the money?

You have an excellent list there.

Recently there was some discussion about simplest possible portfolio on Dilbert blog: http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/worlds_simplest_portfolio/

mrviron Making Control Simple

Facebook has kept taking two steps forward and one step backwards for the last years. The direction has stayed the same however. On the Washington Post article Mark said: "Sometimes we move too fast", which is totally different than saying "we went to a wrong direction".

mrviron Modern business plan

Some common sense advice about business plan making by Seth Godin. Nothing new on the list really. Maybe it is his POV from marketing world the he sees a need for more realism. I have a feeling that people reading HN are very down to earth and doing their risk analysis carefully, so maybe advice about hyping your product would be more useful here. YMMV.

mrviron Facebook caught sharing secret data with advertisers

Yes, the rumour is out and people have started to question. And it's actually a good thing if people become more cautious about what to share and where.

For IT professionals Internet can be a great opportunity to show our work. Equally anything you share can bite you in some future job interview, for example. Discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, family situation etc. is illegal, so you cannot really ask questions about those topics, but if all that info is easily available online... Now I'm not saying it would be a negative thing to be open about yourself, but I'm sure to monitor what my family is putting online.

mrviron Metasploit 3.4.0 released

So will the police come knocking on my door if I launch a test scan to my Internet Bank site?

Curiosity.... must resist...

mrviron Sergey Brin: Native Apps And Web Apps Will Converge Soon

Care to elaborate a bit?

mrviron [dead]

These blogs will continue beating facebook as long as that gets them a flood of page views from confused/concerned users. FB has a PR problem. If it fails to communicate the intent and vision people will run around seeking the story from elsewhere.