Hacker News Reader

qbprogeron How the US Treasury imposes sanctions on me and every other "Stephen Law"

It's so easy for this mistake to happen and inconvenience the wrong person. It seems all they check is your name. What happens if they change their name? Does the entire hassle go away?

qbprogeron Rust on Computer Language Benchmarks Game

Python uses GMP while having a bignum implementation. I believe any language is allowed to use it.

Python: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/program.php?test...

Ruby: http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/u64/benchmark.php?te...

qbprogeron Cryptocat Considered Harmful: The Root Cause

https://heml.is/ should be on the way. I've been keeping on eye on it. It'll be interesting what the security community thinks of it after release.

There is also TextSecure (https://whispersystems.org/), but it requires text messaging.

qbprogeron Google knows nearly every Wi-Fi password in the world

Is there a way to lock down a router in a way that can't be so easily spoofed?

qbprogeron Epic, The Privacy Browser

Can't spell check be a completely local feature without hitting any outside servers? I didn't understand why that was disabled.

qbprogeron What HN Users Use (45% Mac, 63% Chrome)

I was surprised to see that iOS is beating firefox. While this is just one website, I hadn't realized firefox had dropped so much in the ranks. It's still my browser of choice.

qbprogeron A Gallery of Apps Powered by Parse

Sorry, I guess the random sampling I did was all iOS.

qbprogeron A Gallery of Apps Powered by Parse

It looks like this is only iPhone apps, is there a gallery for android?

qbprogeron Show HN: Brandseen - A logo coloring game built in 24h

Are you allowed to use these logos for this purpose?

qbprogeron Humiliation in Startups

Is there a YC reading list somewhere? I've been looking to do more reading lately, and this looks like a good title to start with.

qbprogeron JSON or XML: Just Decide

YAML :)

qbprogeron Poll: Which search engine do you primarily use?

Can you provide a link? I don't think you're doing all your searching at spotlight.com.

qbprogeron Why I canceled my college subscription

I agree with you. I went through Computer Science in college. While I've never worked with someone who didn't finish college, even working with people with different degrees you see where a computer science degree helps. I have friends with computer engineering degrees that had to teach themselves algorithms and algorithm analysis. Of course they did a good job at this because they were disciplined about it.

That said, every once in a while I'll say something and we either ended up having different terms for it or something they missed in their studies.

Another thing to note, while they may be able to get an entry level job now. The places I have worked required a CS degree. We tried relaxing that requirement one time with horrible results (inability to finish played into it). I'm not saying you can't be good without a degree, just saying from a company's perspective you may be a safer bet.

qbprogeron PyPedia: a Python IDE and method repository in a wiki

What do you suggest instead that's in Python?

Also, what markup to you prefer?

qbprogeron Put your programming skills to the test

It takes a long time to get from challenge to challenge. It'd be better if from my profile maybe it opened a new window and I could just go down the list doing them all. As it is now it goes to a page explaining the times and then asks me if I'm sure I'm ready after that.

It's a cool concept.

I also found that I like sites that don't focus on rankings so much. It's better if to achieve a level you get a certain number of points. When you have rankings, if a new person joins your site it looks like a daunting task to get to the top.

Also, I would include forums for discussing solutions after you've solved it or attempted a problem a certain number of times. Maybe let people see the solution forum and 'solve' the problem, but they only get 1 point for that. It can be frustrating to be stuck on a hard problem for someone trying to learn. Maybe it'd be cool if you let people ask questions about problems and other users could get points for answering questions, while making sure not to give away too much.

Some functions are missing from Python, and being able to use the standard lib would be nice.

qbprogeron Premium prices for GPL software: The curious case of commercial Wordpress themes

I think a huge point is being missed. If I bought a wordpress theme, I wouldn't be inclined to resell it or give it away simply because I want my site to look more unique.

qbprogeron Microsoft IE9 site compares IE9 to Chrome 6

It has more up to date browsers if you click the image: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/internet-explorer/product...

qbprogeron Ask HN: Review my startup, suggestashow.com

I choose what TV show to watch based on what's on while I'm sitting on the couch. In addition to that, it has to be agreeable with anyone else here. If I'm looking for a show to watch, I'd check tv guide before this site. If you integrated show times, that might make it more valuable to me personally.

qbprogeron Show HN: AdFrenzy.net is trying to make online ads better

I forgot I had AdBlock running. Sorry about that.

qbprogeron Share HN: StarChart.me statistics from 1 day on HN front page

Is there a way to see a sample chart without signing up?

qbprogeron Show HN: AdFrenzy.net is trying to make online ads better

I like the idea, but I'm not a fan of the website design. I'm not a web designer or anything so take my advice with a grain of salt, but the concentric circles and red makes the site feel really in your face. I'm using google chrome and the ad shows up as a blank brownish box.

While I like the idea, I probably wouldn't use the service on my blog because if no one buys ads on my blog I'm just advertising your service. Maybe let advertisers choose categories and if you have a blog about that topic you can present it to the advertiser?

qbprogeron Ask HN: Learning Chinese Mandarin

It's tonal, so speaking it correctly is quite hard for Western people. I'd say try and find someone. Without someone to talk to you'll have a very hard time pronouncing it correctly.

One of my friends tried http://www.livemocha.com/ for a language and had a positive opinion of it.

qbprogeron [dead]

Not a comment about the service, but I was surprised at the choice of Comic Sans. Especially with the hate that font seems to receive.

qbprogeron Ask HN: What tools do you use to test your website?

http://browserling.com

This will also let you interact with the website in the given version of a browser.

qbprogeron Arewefastyet.com is just the beginning.

It looks really cool. I may have missed it, but it seems to be lacking the comparison aspect of arewefastyet.com (ie - missing chrome/safari data).

I'm not sure how portable this is to other projects, but it reminds me of http://speed.pypy.org, which is open source https://github.com/tobami/codespeed.

qbprogeron Unemployment by degrees

I was expecting a comparison between different college degrees, not high school vs college.

qbprogeron My friends new Saas startup, Warhead eCommerce - sweet name, awesome product

Is anyone else tired of these types of welcome pages? I'd like to know what it does before signing up.

qbprogeron HN: DuckDuckGo, Blekko, or Stumpedia?

duckduckgo is pretty good. http://donttrack.us/ is a decent piece of marketing. Overall they have a really good momentum, and are probably the most promising.

Blekko has some nice features too. It'll give you pretty good information about a site with the /seo search tag. I find it interesting to see that information. I know it can be obtained from other sources though.

I haven't heard of Stumpedia. I'll have to check it out sometime.

qbprogeron Ask HN: What Python IDE do you use?

On my system (Window 7) undo/redo seems to mess up after a bit, which was quite annoying. It'd eventually start removing lines or something. I don't remember exactly, but in the end that's why I stopped using it. Also, I think I remember long running scripts freezing the IDE.

NotePad++ does a decent job for editing a file here or there. PyDev is my editor of choice when working on a project.

qbprogeron W3Fools - A W3Schools Intervention

While the author offers alternative places to learn CSS, Javascript, and HTML, PHP and SQL didn't seem to make the cut. If W3Schools is doing a poor job, what are good PHP ans/or SQL resources?