Hacker News Reader

ohwpon Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life

I agree. A selfish society forgets it's collective responsibility.

These 'parents' can't even look after themselves. But why would they listen to a government who is also grabbing what they can?

You can't change these problems by force. I think this can only be changed from bottom to top. People around this family could learn them how to take care.

ohwpon Show HN: Minecraft clone in 2500 lines of C - even supports multiplayer online

Some days ago there were comments about Notch being a bad programmer. And when I see posts like this I think that's unfair.

2500 lines of C doesn't mean a thing. I could do it in 1 line when I removed all line breaks.

Did the programmer created the concept, interaction design, graphic design? No, Notch did.

So maybe Notch does write bad code but I think being a programmer is more than just writing code. In the end Notch got the job done and people are enjoying the result.

But yeah! great to see another Minecraft clone. It's always nice when people share there knowledge!

ohwpon Your location history

Maybe they don't connect to any telco, but most mobile devices are trackable. They send and receive data.

ohwpon Your location history

Well don't be to sure about that. Google locations is very inaccurate.

ohwpon Your location history

Well you can opt-out from Google but can't from your telco. They have been tracking you for over decades.

Mobile device = tracking device.

http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protecti...

ohwpon NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

"Because the truth is, I can’t do anything."

I think this is a lie (but I share your feelings). All the oppression is driven by the greed. Me myself and I is the norm. Not only in politics but a lot of people are turning to the believe that the world is all about self.

The selfish world doesn't care about others. But I can tell you from my own experience that if you care about others (everyone included without exception) people will change little by little.

Some things I have to remind myself all the time to achieve this:

  * Separate what people do from who they are
  * First blame yourself then others
  * Don't put yourself above others

People at the top are standing on the foundation of people at the bottom. I think both the people at the top and the bottom don't realize this all the time. This means that the top position is as strong as its foundation. And that the foundation can change what's happening at the top.

A small spark can cause an explosion.

ohwpon Kicktrolling

This article is full of assumptions. Maybe the backer lost a lot of money so he had to cut his fund.

We don't know anything about 'Lee' and his financial situation. So we can't make any assumptions about his motivations.

ohwpon F1 2014: All aboard the 'power train' - new rules explained

It's called Trackmania ;)

ohwpon Poll: HTML 5 or Native mobile development ?

Native, but with the use of C# (Xamarin / Mono).

And I don't think native takes more time. Debugging is much easier with native apps (imho).

ohwpon Why GNU grep is fast (2010)

Why? Because it doesn't apply anymore?

ohwpon I Am Not Satoshi

The term "proof-of-work" (with the dashes) is not used very often. But in all Bitcoin documentation it's written with the dashes.

Now there is one Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system started by 'Julian Krause', so Satoshi might be Julian Krause.. ;)

ohwpon Best countries to work and live in as a developer

Note: ~1600 datapoints from around the world.

ohwpon UK Prime Minister: We have put in place Internet filters to block extremism

There is a difference. A filter is a dumb blocking mechanism while blocking a specific site could involve research, warrants and so on.

ohwpon Intro to images in Go: Fractals

Very nice! I think the best way to learn a new language is to have graphical output instead of 'hello world'.

This will get me started with Go!

ohwpon How Money Moves Around The Banking System

"in my expecience, almost nobody actually understands how payment systems work"

This was my experience as well. I can't understand why everybody fell for the hype. Loads of money are transfered every hour.

And we don't know anything about the $150m Bitcoin transaction. Maybe the owner just moved it to one of his other wallets.

ohwpon Facebook is for grandparents: What we need in a next-gen social network

All the kids are already switching to WeChat, Vine, Flickr and others.

With the mobile number as identifier, mobile is the next Facebook.

ohwpon Hack of Cupid Media dating website exposes 42 million plaintext passwords

Well they were lucky you fixed it.

There are loads of sites built year ago that just work so nobody is looking into the code base ever.

ohwpon Recursive raytracer in 35 lines of JavaScript

With bi-directional path tracing it works something like this:

  * trace a photon from the light source with x bounces
  * trace a ray from the camera with x bounces

Now the end points of those traces are not connected but you can calculate the probability that they can 'see' each other. You can use this calculation for the light transport from the light source (photon) to the camera (pixel).

Edit: maybe this image will make it clear: http://lebedev.as/web_images/historyGlobal/15.png

The 'deterministic step' connects the raydiance from the light to the pixel.

ohwpon Weak passwords brute forced

Note that this can be very tricky. You don't want to keep connections open or waiting.

ohwpon The Mission of Tesla

Also: (from the NFPA data) "Highway vehicles include any vehicle designed to operate normally on highways, such as automobiles, motorcycles, buses, trucks, and trailers"

So in fact this could include electric cars as well.

ohwpon How Ghostery breaks simple websites

My bad, I didn't notice this was Ghosterys fault but commented that his site didn't work.

I really like how Troy Hunt step in to this.

First the "it's my fault attitude". I can learn from this because I blamed his site but in fact it was my own problem because I used Ghostery. I think you can become better at a lot of things when you first blame yourself :|

Second his dive into the problem and notifying Ghostery.

So, sorry for my 'way to quick comment' about the site not working. I'm now using Disconnect and am enjoying your site :)

ohwpon Recursive raytracer in 35 lines of JavaScript

For many year I also tried to build a simple ray tracer. The math got me to, but in the end I was able to write different types of render engines.

What helped me:

  learn about vectors
  learn about (vector) normalization
  learn about camera models http://www.ventrella.com/Ideas/Camera/Arm_Camera.pdf
  learn about pixels (pixels are just dots without size)
  use a 3D coordinate-system that works for you (mine is: x = right, y = forward, z = up)
  start with a simple camera model (always looking forward)
  normalize all direction vectors
  place the screen of pixels 1 unit in front of the camera
  normalize the screen of pixels
  know that the center pixel is on the forward vector of the camera
  try to calculate a vector from the camera position to the left top of the pixel screen in front of the camera

ohwpon Recursive raytracer in 35 lines of JavaScript

This is where path tracing steps in. Bi-directional path tracing combines both photon tracing and ray tracing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_tracing

ohwpon Recursive raytracer in 35 lines of JavaScript

If you like this, maybe you also like this Path Tracer written in 99 lines of C++:

http://www.kevinbeason.com/smallpt/ (+ source code and explanation)

ohwpon Bitcoin $600

It doesn't matter if you buy when it's low or high, the only thing that matters is what will happen in the future [1].

There is absolutely no guarantee that low stock will rise [2].

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

[2] http://www.nasdaq.com/investing/5-stock-market-myths.stm

ohwpon A living death: Sentenced to die behind bars for what?

The prison industry is what's wrong in the US. Most countries like to keep prisons empty, in the US some prisons like to keep all cells occupied.

Keeping prisons empty means that you educate prisoners about what they did wrong and how they can change there behavior.

ohwpon 3D printed, trainable robot arm with Arduino controller

Yes. He should just use the 'train button' to mark the current position and interpolate to the 'trained positions' on run.

I think this is how the Baxter robot works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXOkWuSCkRI

ohwpon Hack of MacRumors forums exposes password data for 860,000 users

The MD5 passwords are not the issue here. The main issue is that the hacker logged in with the admin credentials.

Ofcourse the passwords should be encrypted but what about all the other data?

So the question is: should we store all data encrypted? Because it's not if, but when will the data get exposed.

ohwpon A basic, sub-$1,000 3D printer that prints metal

No, but printers can print their clone ;)

ohwpon A basic, sub-$1,000 3D printer that prints metal

I don't think this will sell. You can use a cheap printer to print wax in a better resolution. And this printer also needs post processing just as the lost wax method.