Hacker News Reader

mythealiason Education Is a System of Indoctrination of the Young (1989) [video]

Lot of closed caption is not even close to what Chomsky is saying.

mythealiason Cross-border credit reporting is at last becoming a reality

I would rather have police follow through on this rather than private businesses.

mythealiason Ask HN: How can I stop forgetting “things”?

Also know as triple tap or 3 point check. I am now so used to it that I feel uncomfortable if I intentionally leave one behind.

mythealiason TSA Body Scan? Just Say 'No,' Leading Expert Says

I am surprised that speed at which this article fell off the front page. There are older article with fewer comments and points that are still on the front page.

Is it due to the downvotes for the forbes link?

mythealiason Firefox 42 will not allow unsigned extensions

I don't think what chrome does is relevant in this discussion at least not in the context of defining what is the the correct way for mozilla to go forward.

mythealiason Help, I’m Trapped in Facebook’s Absurd Pseudonym Purgatory

I think that is an other can of worms. I would assume there will be some law to not allow that esp if it is a govt. issued document. Right now they might not be connected to govt database, but if they ever do then one can be in unnecessary trouble. All for an useless (imo) account.

mythealiason “Thank You” in Hindi and English Mean Very Different Things

Similar to the cultural difference when Russians do not smile [1].

[1]: http://www.russianlife.com/blog/why-dont-russians-smile/

mythealiason Uber Closes in on Its Last Frontier: Airports

There is a direct MARTA train connection from Atlanta airport to Sandy Springs. And compared to NY and Chicago subways, I have found MARTA to be lot cleaner. It would have been more time and cost effective to take the train and then a hail a cab to your final destination. I doubt money was your primary concern if the cab driver was going round in circle. Also I believe that uber drivers are more tech savvy than regular cab drivers.

mythealiason Passport Index – How much power does your passport have?

it comes down to trust. if i were to guess you lock the door to your house. why would you do something which limits the movement of people who want to be in your house. but at the same time you do not have problem giving access to your house to specific people (people you trust). it is same with countries just more complicated as now you are dealing with bunch of people rather than an individual.

visa free travel exists before countries agreed to trust each other for whatever the reason may be (economic/social/etc.). other countries can workout ways for travel but they do not think of it as a priority.

mythealiason Passport Index – How much power does your passport have?

yes of course :)

mythealiason Passport Index – How much power does your passport have?

Would be nice if it also listed the countries that you could travel to.

mythealiason The Last Line Effect

kind of like the error check excel does when it finds inconsistent equation in an array or cells

mythealiason Hertz puts cameras in its rental cars, says it has no plans to use them

Additional fine print. It is your responsibility for informing your guests that there is an active camera in the car.

mythealiason China's Great Firewall Gets Taller

just like in every other country in the world ...

mythealiason How Grigori Perelman solved one of math's greatest mysteries

It might be he is burned out with all the politics surrounding the claim of his work but not with the work in general. People who enjoy doing something rarely get burned out doing it lifelong.

From the newyorker article linked by deuill:

    The prospect of being awarded a Fields Medal had forced 
    him to make a complete break with his profession. “As
     long as I was not conspicuous, I had a choice,” Perelman 
    explained. “Either to make some ugly thing”—a fuss about 
   the math community’s lack of integrity—“or, if I didn’t do
     this kind of thing, to be treated as a pet. Now, when I 
    become a very conspicuous person, I cannot stay a pet and 
    say nothing. That is why I had to quit.” We asked 
    Perelman whether, by refusing the Fields and withdrawing 
    from his profession, he was eliminating any possibility 
    of influencing the discipline. “I am not a politician!” 
    he replied, angrily.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/08/28/manifold-destin...

mythealiason Email Is Still the Best Thing on the Internet

Last I checked Gmail allowed me to create an account without providing an email address or phone number.

mythealiason A Problem With Amazon’s Fire TV

jun 7 and 8 happen to be sat & sun. so it is possible the author was browsing different shows and the tv trying to keep up with it.

mythealiason Massive increase to Onedrive storage plans

There was also some discussion about metadata being changed once the files were uploaded to OneDrive. So if you plan to use it just for plain file storage then it might be an issue.

mythealiason Essential LaTeX packages

From stackexchange: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/553/what-packages-do...

mythealiason U.S. may act to keep Chinese hackers out of Defcon

Ignoring the NSA debate, do such actions achieve anything (from security point of view)?

mythealiason Fine Line Seen in U.S. Spying on Companies

Time fixes everything. We have a short term memory. But what I feel the problem here is that there is no government will to stop what is being done. Which means that such acts will keep repeating. They are being sold as securing national interests which is a bit vague term in itself.

mythealiason Earnest – A writing tool for first drafts

Browser zoom (Ctrl + +) works fine for me.

mythealiason A fridge that is more tolerant of power interruptions

There is also pot in pot refrigerator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator) based on evaporative cooling, which does not use electricity. Although it will not work well in humid places, it is still a much cheaper option.

mythealiason Why we don't sell ads (2012)

I agree. I thought there was some change in the policy given the recent event.

mythealiason Mathematicians find way to put 7 cylinders in contact without using their ends

Yes, length to radius is important factor. Here's a discussion on 7 cylinders touching (using their end) ...

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/cigarettes.shtml

mythealiason What India Is Doing To Stop Cheating At Board Exams

Cheating would hypothetically cease to exist if students didn't feel like they have a need to prove themselves on paper by a score

I can bet that it won't happen. As long as people need to complete, they will try to cheat.

mythealiason Solution claimed for Navier-Stokes equations, one of the millennium problems

Basing opinion on citation index is like saying if this person is not widely cited he is likely to be wrong. From what I know, it is common for researchers in US and EU to cite each other. However work from say China or other Asian/African nations is not cited as often.

I know many (well-established) professors who don't bother updating their webpage. In fact some of them wouldn't have eve bothered keeping a webpage had it not been for the courses.

That said I will take this news with a grain of salt because it is not an easy problem and definitely needs a through review.

mythealiason French-UAE Intel Satellite Deal in Doubt – US Parts Raise Security Concerns

Wake me up when US decides to sell it military tech for security and not money. I agree that financial consequences might not be a priority in decision making, but at the end of the day US (or rather the corporations, which can no longer be attributed to just US) are interested in money. I don't think UAE will stop buying stuff just because it is know to be tainted, but they get upper hand in bargaining the price.

Also I don't understand your analogy to staplers fully. If US is a house of staplers and UAE (or any other nation) is not an employee there then the only reason they are not stealing is because they lack the skill.

On an individual level it is relatively easier to make decisions regarding moral issues like stealing but that doesn't work for a group.

mythealiason Show HN: LightPaper for Mac – Free Markdown editor

I agree but then again everyone uses the superlative adjectives as a default.

mythealiason If a Drone Strike Hit an American Wedding We'd Ground Our Fleet

Lets see our options are 1: do nothing, 2: involve the military through use of force. I wonder what happened to plain old diplomacy. I guess that is too slow and seems ineffective. So is training the locals to fight their war. After all they all live in dark ages and only know how to use stones and sticks to fight. But we cannot put forward these options to general public so we are left with just two.

Even then I feel that more than Obama or any other politicians or military official it is the general public to blame. The public wants democracy but does not understand that democracy does not work out of the box. One needs to get involved to make it work properly. It is a good system but needs fixes. The problem with democracy is it treats my stupidity same as your intelligence and my apathy same as your concern. And as long as people like me hold majority there is not much others can do.