Hacker News Reader

r12eon Firefox OS Apps run on Android

This is great for me, I've just rebuilt my Android phone without GAPPS as an ongoing effort to minimise my reliance on Google. The Twitter app does what it says on the tin. Looking forward to the Facebook app supporting Android too. I've always used simple bookmarks for these two services anyway (because why should their Play Store apps need all those permissions?) so the performance hit isn't something I'm bothered about.

r12eon Google Search Results: Dictator Not Found

Clear public interest, request denied. The EU ruling works.

r12eon AdBlock Plus’s effect on Firefox’s memory usage

Have you tried using Chromium[1] instead? Once I got serious with ABP/KISS Privacy/Ghostery I figured it made sense to switch from Chrome to Chromium.

And discovering Chromium-Updater the other day has plugged the only missing piece in the jigsaw, for me.

[1]http://chromium.woolyss.com/ [2]https://github.com/benbristow/Chromium-Updater/releases

r12eon The TLA

Not to be confused with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-letter_acronym

r12eon Comic Sans, meet Comic Neue

I've always loved comic sans, it's like a family Labrador that just wants to have fun.

When more discerning people around me criticise it, I send them off to read: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/im-comic-sans-asshole

Thanks for the refresh, OP. I can't wait to see where I can sneak this in.

r12eon Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

Strongly agree. I was expecting another low-quality Facebook-bashing article but was pleasantly surprised with how thoroughly the author tracked the visits (FB reports > server logs > Analytics). The whole mis-clicking on mobile rings true for me, particularly. I'm forever accidentally 'liking' posts when just trying to view the comments.

I've run a few campaigns and always managed to break even. I believe the key to success is very selective, and often slightly obscure, targeting.

r12eon Apple Pursuit of Samsung Starts Bordering On Farce

Apple can't innovate any more because Apple are too busy fighting a legal battle with Samsung.

I think this statement is the biggest problem with the article. I can't reasonably see how the innovators within Apple would be too bothered by what the legal team are up to.

r12eon Backup Awareness Week

As it was ambiguous, I figured you must have been talking about the more likely scenario whereby files become corrupt on the live server, unknown to the either users or admins. Over time, these corrupt files then make their way through all generations of backup until no good copies remain.

There's nothing special about an rsync/ssh solution that precludes the backup server from creating a read-only copy of each and any backup.

r12eon Backup Awareness Week

Of course, and the same is true of every backup solution. The way to mitigate that problem is with a decent backup rotation scheme:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_rotation_scheme

r12eon Backup Awareness Week

I simply rsync my entire server (over ssh) to a large disk on another box. Super easy to set up and the backed up data doesn't need any special software to read/restore, beyond standard 'nix tools.

r12eon Tor: Directly connecting users from Turkey

> the first 6 URLs are Google products

One of which is Google+, every cloud has a silver lining.

r12eon Why Does Backspace Go Back A Page?

I think it's because that particular statement is the foundation of the complainant's argument against the shortcut. And for someone who never experiences this failure scenario, the vitriol against the backspace key is nigh on impossible to understand.

r12eon [dead]

Couldn't resist optimising the script.

  <html>
  <body>
  <script>
  setTimeout(function() {
  var page = ["http://bluestatedigital.com",
  "http://microsoft.com",
  "http://ngpvan.com",
  "http://mongodb.com",
  "http://comcast.com",
  "http://scientology.org",
  "http://timewarnercable.com",
  "http://godaddy.com",
  "http://loggly.com",
  "http://php.net",
  "http://eclipse.org",
  "http://intuit.com",
  "http://mysql.com"];
  window.location = page[Math.floor(Math.random()*page.length)];
  }, 1500);
  </script>
  </body>
  </html>

Any good ideas for compressing the array? At the expense of legibility, obviously.

r12eon How to block semalt.com referrer traffic using .htaccess

http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpRefererModule

r12eon A format for creating press releases

Ignoring the fact the main focus of the following website is a world away from anything HN-related, perhaps you might find the following article, from an ex-journalist, on the subject of crafting press releases helpful:

http://www.rocknrollbride.com/2012/04/how-to-write-a-press-r...

(Disclosure: although involved in rocknrollbride.com, I didn't write the article)