Hacker News Reader

nisse72on U.S. Postal Service Logging All Mail for Law Enforcement

With a system like that, the intersection itself would be capable of logging the passing of every vehicle: time, direction, speed. There is no escape.

nisse72on Pirated Apps in the App Store

Hm, if I were to pirate your software, I'd much rather direct any support requests to you than deal with them myself. As long as I get the app store revenue, that's all that matters. Don't you think that's all they care about?

nisse72on Inside An Illegal Party In An Abandoned Subway Station Deep Under NYC

Sometimes, the only way out is through!

nisse72on USA must not hunt down whistleblower Edward Snowden

Interesting comparison, considering it was with help from the USA that Pinochet got into power after that "other" September 11. Sad perhaps, but maybe not entirely unexpected.

nisse72on We Should All Have Something To Hide

I get the point he is trying to make, but my problem with this argument is that it seems to be based on an idea that the default is that a thing is illegal until a law explicitly allows it, which is contrary to the way I've always understood things to be.

In other words, in some (perhaps distant) past, marijuana was not illegal until a legislator decided to pass a law prohibiting its use.

nisse72on Wi-Fi signals enable gesture recognition throughout entire home

One of my cats has actually done this a couple of times. He walks along the ledge around the bathtub and squeezes past the shower handle, forcing it away from the wall and turning on the water. It's a problem that seems to have solved itself, because it scares the shit out of him and he gets wet.

nisse72on U.S. Secretly Obtains Two Months of A.P. Phone Records

http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-war-on-democracy

nisse72on 0 second visits according to Google Analytics

Google Analytics is like loyalty cards for the web: they track user behaviour for the benefit of the service provider, not the consumer. But a "real" loyalty card at least pretends to serve the user by offering an occasional special deal or some savings, as opposed to added cost (bandwidth, load times etc). I vote with Ghostery.

nisse72on Your heart attack bill: $3,300 in Arkansas, $92,000 in California

And presumably, there are nearly 10 times as many taxpayers in the US to fund such a system. Why do the absolute numbers matter? In fact, shouldn't there be better economies of scale in the larger country?

nisse72on The Setup: Joe Armstrong

I'd guess SICStus: http://sicstus.sics.se/

nisse72on Show HN: My side project – Do I need a visa for...?

I like the idea, but the entries in the citizenship dropdown seem to be "not quite" sorted. Some examples of out-of-order entries:

Ivorian (between Costa Rican and Croatian), Salvadorian (between Egyptian and Equatorial Guinean), Burmese (between Mozambiquan and Namibian) etc.

[ edit ] Ah are they ordered by country name, not the adjective that's being shown? Unexpected and confusing.

nisse72on Australia Post's free Amazon locker-style service

NZ post is introducing a similar service, currently on a trial basis:

http://www.nzpost.co.nz/products-services/online-shopping/pa...

nisse72on Preventing users from pouring water into coffee machine beans compartment

We have a cafe style coffee grinder (next to our manual espresso machine) that has two hoppers: one for the beans, and one where the ground beans end up, from which you dispense into the porta filter.

I am guilty of filling the wrong hopper with beans (talking instead of paying attention). Twice. Not quite as bad as water, but still a PITA to pour everything out and separate the beans from the ground coffee.

nisse72on Kim Dotcom puts up €10,000 bounty for first person to break Mega's security

"His" home, the one in Coatesville, is actually a rental. I don't doubt that he could afford to own it, but he was prevented from buying it by the NZ overseas investment commission.

nisse72on How Did the Duck Hunt Gun Work?

Back in the early 80's I became the owner of an IBM light pen, IIRC salvaged from a 3270 terminal. By replacing the connector, I managed to get it to work with the CGA card in my IBM PC, which had a light pen connector and a couple of supporting registers.

When the pen was clicked against the screen, it notified the card when it saw the scanline, in a manner quite similar to the duck hunt gun described here. The position of the pen click could then be read from a register on the card.

nisse72on Man With 4th Amendment Written on Chest Wins Trial Over Airport Arrest

> pretty corrupt

Based on those two examples?

According to this: http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2012/results/

...4 nordic countries place in the top 7. Sweden is nr 4. The US is nr 19.

nisse72on Ed McMillen: Ubuntu Store Sold Super Meat Boy Without Permission, Has Yet To Pay

At least in the case of Megaupload, that remains to be seen.

nisse72on Macy's parade: 'Shredded police papers in confetti'

Learned something today: Macy's has an "official confetti".

nisse72on Lessons for uncultured web developers

> Why is nobody using the ISO format for dates?

Sweden uses it. In informal situations you often see d/m but whenever a year is present it's always y-m-d. In fact people identify themselves using this format as part of the national ID numbers that are used for everything from healthcare to newspaper subscriptions.

nisse72on Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

This reminds me of the old guy in Ghost World who waits for the bus that doesn't run anymore, until it picks him up at the end of the film.

nisse72on Fake Bus Stops For Alzheimer’s patients in Germany (2011)

Germany and Europe

Hmm...

nisse72on One Thousand Dollars an Hour

If waffles cost $450, then $1000/hr wouldn't seem so unreasonable. Oh wait...

nisse72on Ignoring the Wisdom of Crowds

Something else they often do is say something like "I'm thinking it's B, but I'm not sure so I'll ask the audience". Well guess what the audience guesses after hearing that?

nisse72on The 144 Million Dollar Button

> It's enhanced dramatically by it.

Not everyone would agree with your assessment. Case in point:

http://blog.fogcreek.com/why-do-we-pay-sales-commissions/

nisse72on Unemployed game designer creates mind-blowing solar system explorer app

Here's another take on that, a scale model of the solar system that stretches across much of Sweden:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System

The sun is 110 m in diameter ("including corona" they say). A 65 cm Earth is 7.6 km away.

nisse72on Using Non-Newtonian Fluids to Fill Potholes

You mean like this?

http://www.gizmag.com/bumpfree-dynamic-speedbump-gives-you-a...

nisse72on Humans hot, sweaty, natural-born runners

"While animals get rid of excess heat by panting, they can’t pant when they gallop"

Why can't animals pant and gallop at the same time?

nisse72on Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill

I agree completely. In Sweden "everybody" knows the practice of negative option marketing (or billing) is illegal, and it surprises me after a few minutes of googling that that doesn't seem to be the case in most of US and Canada.