Hacker News Reader

nfnaaronon Gmail has become unusably slow

Would be curious to know if IMAP is slow for Weinberg specifically. Others report good web experience, and disjoint others report good IMAP experience.

nfnaaronon Gmail has become unusably slow

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" ... um, they're a private company. ..."

Screeeeeeech! http://www.google.com/finance?q=goog

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nfnaaronon Duck Duck Go = Perfect search engine for programmers

"I use !bangs a lot, but I wish they worked at the end of your search terms instead of just at the beginning."

In addition to, not instead of. (And why not just allow it anywhere in the terms?)

I like seeing that my previous search was a ! search in my ff search bar. If it's a long search term I wouldn't see it at the end.

nfnaaronon Tell HN: Flesh out your profiles please

My profile is blank.

So is my life.

nfnaaronon [dead]

They don't need to "go" anywhere. They can just quit.

I deleted today. I'm not looking for a replacement, I already have email. My email privacy settings haven't changed in twenty years. Oh, wait -- I don't have privacy settings. It's just "private."

nfnaaronon Should Mozilla Fork Firefox?

skip everything but the last three paragraphs.

nfnaaronon Facebook advances the new unit of reporting?

"I want to suggest abandoning the article for the constantly updated topic page (a la Wave). The problem with an article online is that it has a short half life and gathers few links and little ongoing attention and thus Googlejuice. It’s for this reason that Google’s Marissa Mayer has been advising publishers to move past the article to the topic."

I like the idea. A lot. I would want an updating history of immutable canonical versions of a story, to reduce the re-writing of history that the internet makes relatively easy.

But I wouldn't want Facebook to actually be the repository of objects.

nfnaaronon Debugging in Python (2009)

this is sweet

nfnaaronon [dead]

Are there good backend web frameworks for C, C++ or Java, with enough users and mind share that they won't die from lack of interest?

nfnaaronon Ask HN: How can a brilliant hacker make the greatest impact on the world?

The one that pays the most money. Donate most of it.

Edit: added second sentence.

nfnaaronon Ask HN: How can a brilliant hacker make the greatest impact on the world?

If "the hacker" is truly brilliant, at hacking, then he likely will be brilliant or smart at other things too.

Besides your options 1-5, think about things that are wrong or lacking in the world, and work on fixing some of them. That might require code, but most problems don't. Even problems that do require code are not saved by the code, they're saved by recognizing the problem and doing anything at all that's effective. Coders don't save the world; deployers of code and other resources save the world.

Your 1, 2 and 5 will build your chops, whether the first focus of those efforts are world changing or not. You also might benefit by working with someone who has a vision and has figured out how to execute on it.

If you take away the implied requirement that 1, 2 and 5 need to be code-focused, your first efforts might build chops and allow you to focus on problems rather than solutions in search of problems.

I'm not saying you shouldn't code, just open your mind.

nfnaaronon Have aliens hijacked Voyager 2?

"Nasa claimed that a software problem with the flight data system was the cause but Mr Hausdorf believes it could be the work of aliens.

This is because all other parts of the spacecraft appear to be functioning fine."

The display on my car radio no longer works, but the rest of the car appears to be functioning fine.

Film at 11.

nfnaaronon Using vim inside irb

http://ipython.scipy.org/doc/nightly/html/config/editors.htm...

"TextMate¶

Currently, TextMate support in IPython is broken. It used to work well, but the code has been moved to IPython.quarantine until it is updated.

vim configuration¶

Currently, vim support in IPython is broken. Like the TextMate code, the vim support code has been moved to IPython.quarantine until it is updated."

I tried vim in ipython, it worked in a very simple test: define a function, :wq and run the function. Was able to get back to the same edit because ipython reports the /tmp file name after the editor returns. Dunno what's broken.

Fallback: you can use ipython, python or anything else as the argument to ScreenShell in vim.

http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2711

nfnaaronon Ask HN: What to use for world zip codes?

Upvoted for the "sensible" solution of freeform, but I'd like to hear from folks who need each piece broken out, and why.

I imagine zip codes are useful for auto-filling/formatting city information.

Shipping account software?

nfnaaronon How Cornelius Ryan’s 'The Longest Day' changed journalism

"Meanwhile, The Longest Day was reissued in 1994 for the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. It still sells—a fact that belies the glaring omission of Ryan’s work from so many anthologies of literary journalism, and also offers a powerful lesson for a trade trying to figure out what people will pay to read. There is nothing, it turns out, like a densely reported story propelled by the palpable sense of a reporter chasing his story."

nfnaaronon Ask HN: Simple exercises for a python beginner?

No. Not to learn C. These books, and others like it (for C and any other language (including Python)) have exercises.

The guy was looking for exercises.

You can implement the exercises in whatever language you're learning. Python, for example.

nfnaaronon Ask HN: Simple exercises for a python beginner?

Implement (without looking) or re-implement (after looking) the examples and exercises from the following or similar books; the book's language doesn't matter:

The C Programming Language, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language

The Elements of Programming Style, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Programming_Sty...

Writing Efficient Programs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Bentley

Programming Pearls, http://netlib.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/

The UNIX Programming Environment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_UNIX_Programming_Environmen...

And, er, Learning Python, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_Python

nfnaaronon Ask HN: Best places to ask "please review my startup?" question?

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz

nfnaaronon Even rally drivers have co-drivers.

No, just that the track is limited and easy to navigate.

nfnaaronon Even rally drivers have co-drivers.

Those are all "go fast, turn left" racing, with relatively little navigation load on the driver, and almost no way to get off track. Memorize the course, plan your strategy and tactics, and run the course over and over. (Not to trivialize the skills required.)

Rally and programming have lots of chances to go off into the weeds or get off course.

nfnaaronon The Enemy Within: What is Conficker's Botnet For?

"What if it is being controlled by a foreign superpower ..."

Or a foreign minor-power with delusions of super.

nfnaaronon Ask HN: Hacker Hobbies?

Crossfit.

nfnaaronon Diaspora team takes on Eben Moglen as informal advisor

Yes, it's a rule of thumb called called "Tillys anything but a law" as discussed here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1319054

The idea is that a network is more valuable the more connections there are in the network. Think of the difference between two new people added to the end of a line connected front to back, and two new people added by connecting them to everyone already there, who are also connected all to each other. The latter is more like a social network than the former.

nfnaaronon Diaspora team takes on Eben Moglen as informal advisor

"Laurent Eschenauer, one of the OneSocialWeb developers, says his project and Diaspora share the goal of providing a “free, open and decentralized alternative to the social networking silos that are Facebook and Twitter.” He says he hopes that Diaspora looks to work cooperatively with his project, rather than “reinventing the wheel."

...

"Both OneSocialWeb and Appleseed share the same problem: getting enough users to make users want to sign up — the so-called network effect where a network gets exponentially more useful as it gets bigger. (Think of the fax machine as an example — two fax machines in the world aren’t very useful, but your fax machine becomes much more useful when there are 1,000 of them, and even more valuable when there are 10 million.)"

...

"Users don’t have to choose to stop using Facebook or Twitter and will be able use the Diaspora client to use those all those services in one place — much like Friendfeed currently does. But when Diaspora knows that the person you are trying to communicate with also has Diaspora, it will use peer-to-peer, encrypted methods to send that message. And as more and more people start using the free software, they’ll slowly find themselves weaned from for-profit services, according to Moglen."

I think if the various social networks coming up interoperated, on some significant set of features, it would be good for all of them and all of us.

If service A has Ua users then the value of A is Ua^2 (or whatever). If B has Ub its value is Ub^2. If they interoperate then the value of both approach (Ua+Ub)^2. E.g. 3^2 = 9 and 4^2 = 16, or (3+4)^2 = 49. As service A adds users, services A and B both enjoy an increase in the value of their networks.

Edit: math notation.

nfnaaronon Things to Stop Doing on Facebook

"100% is impossible" is never a good argument.

nfnaaronon Facebook launches new security feature

Me: You've taken all my curtains!

Them: Here's a better lock!

nfnaaronon Dovecote

What the imap server dovecot seems to be named after.

I never knew such a thing existed, but after reading the page then "of course something like that has to exist."

  * 1 History and geography
        o 1.1 Columbaria in Ancient Rome
        o 1.2 Dovecotes of France
              + 1.2.1 Colombiers (or pigeonniers) in mediaeval France
        o 1.3 Dovecotes of Italy
        o 1.4 Dovecotes of the Netherlands and Belgium
        o 1.5 Dovecotes of Transylvania
        o 1.6 Dovecotes of the United Kingdom
        o 1.7 Dovecotes of North America
  * 2 Architecture
  * 3 Gallery
  * 4 See also
  * 5 References
  * 6 Further reading and external links

nfnaaronon A FB ad targeted at one person (my wife)

It may not (or may) be a privacy issue, but it still feels creepy when the Eye focuses on you, even if the Eye doesn't know who you are.

nfnaaronon Why All Americans Should Carry ID Papers

I almost never read Modest Proposals, Open Letters or Dirty Little Secrets anymore. The use of those phrases in the title tells me that the body probably won't have much original thought either.

Can we have some new cliches? These things are so last year.

nfnaaronon Things to Stop Doing on Facebook

Lots of vague and specific scary things that parents think about. It comes down to limiting information to reduce the risk of information combining into something dangerous where the parts weren't dangerous by themselves.

You have a picture of your kid. You have your kid's name, on the picture or in your profile. Other information in your facebook finally gives a clue about where your kid goes to school.

It's relatively easy to snatch any random kid, although they might kick and scream and call attention to the kidnapper during the act.

It's a little easier to trick a kid into "helping me find my lost puppy."

It's easier still to talk a kid into a car with "Hey Bobby, I'm a friend of your dad. Yeah, your dad Joe Smith. He asked me to come pick you up 'cause he's going to be late."

Just one example, hopefully that doesn't work with most kids but it might with some. The point isn't this specific scenario, it's that when information is combined it becomes completely new information usable in ways you may not have foreseen. Kid snatchers are thinking about it way more than we are. Identity snatchers are thinking about it way more than we are.

I took down all my kid's pictures (actually all my pictures) last week.