Hacker News Reader

random_guyon I made a ruby library for accessing hacker news - check it out!

The idea is interesting indeed - and easily doable as well: Entry.all gives you all the links on the front page, you'd just have fetch the main page between regular intervals of time (say, once every hour) and then save the entry information to a database.

Could you elaborate on this? If you can provide better "specifications" I'll implement this and add it to the library.

random_guyon Ask HN: I made a ruby library to access HN...suggestions/impressions?

Clickable url : http://github.com/bolthar/ruby-hackernews

random_guyon Why is computer science a sausage fest?

This is really sexist, and the very fact that she can get away with it (and even get lots of praise) should make us all reflect on how fucked up social conventions and politically correctness are.

I've written about the topic here -> http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/men-and-women-on-r... and i've been smiten to death in the comments because i dared to state the fact that only around 1% of the opensource projects on rubygems are made by women and that we all should reflect on that.

Here's a passage of her article:

I believe it is these tangential code-cowboy qualities women are unable or unwilling to emulate, and not their skill or capacity for abstraction, problem solving, creative thinking, or communication — All of which actually make them better developers

Think about if a man dared to write the following:

I believe it is this inability to go straight to the point that men are unable or unwilling to emulate, and not their ability to understand other's needs and to understand how social situations work — All of which actually make them better marketers

random_guyon Looks like a wiki, smells like a wiki, but it a web based IDE that runs on GAE

Web MS Access?

random_guyon Top Ten Questions and Answers on Data - Microsoft Answers them

I wonder why Microsoft insist on using this kind of language when talking to programmers: they're just asking for the hate of the hacker community.

Couldn't they at least try to fake competence? Sentences like:

Today, “M” is not yet a shipping product, so customers should definitely use T-SQL for their mission-critical applications.

Smell like FAILED PROJECT from 1000 miles away.

random_guyon No Hacker Left Behind

Thank you for this comment. Now, instead of wasting our time considering the article, in which the founder of the SANS Institute is lobbying the government to set up semi-official capture-the-flag contests (which he'll presumably get paid for) which I couldn't care a flying f*ck about and I had to read until half before realizing that.

random_guyon No Hacker Left Behind

I couldn't care less about changing what hacker means to the general public. I'd just like to be able to recognize if a topic is about either hacking or security at first glance.

random_guyon No Hacker Left Behind

Changing them often causes confusion (editorialising) if I misplace emphasis

You're right.

Besides I'm pretty sure most here know the distinction b/w "hackers" & "crackers".

I think that's not the problem: what annoys me is that, as it was for this article, I am expecting something very different from what I find. It took me 1/3 of the article to understand they were not talking about hackers at all. Yes, stupid me, but that's what happened :)

random_guyon No Hacker Left Behind

Please, clueless journalists, stop using "hacker" as a synonym for "cracker". And also: when posting an article on HN which title contains the word "hacker" it would be nice if you put quotes around it if it's not intended as it should, like:

Steven Levy On The Hacker Spirit (no quotes, hacker is used correctly)

No "Hacker" Left Behind (quotes because hacker is intended as cracker)

random_guyon Why Microsoft turned Office into a Game.

This is so full of corporate bullcrap that it makes me shudder... Game mechanics in crappy apps -> ???? -> PROFIT!

random_guyon Daring to Discuss Women in Science

I've collected and studied data from rubygems a while ago and I came to the exact same conclusion. (you can find the post here -> http://usingimho.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/men-and-women-on-r... ) While at the time I wasn't so sure about my thoughts, since the amount of lynching i received in the comments, not I'm totally sure that this issue needs serious and unbiased scientific studies.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

I'd like to be able to believe that once again.

It's really as you said, social skills and no more: it's just about trial and error - knowing a lot of different situations and mindsets and learning how to 'work' with them.

I don't really know about all the esoteric stuff that these guys often talk about: I think they've been created so that someone can make a living out of it. But if they give the guys that are buying enough confidence to actually give it a try I guess it's okay.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

I know I repeat myself but the thing that scares me to death is that this is not about j.random college slut or the housewife looking for adventure. Or about any specific group of belonging.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

I have absolutely no idea how it works.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

I'm not talking about pick up artists: they explicitly target those kind of girls, and they've developed techniques tailored for that. I don't even know about that stuff, honestly, all I know comes from The Game.

I understand your disbelief: I didn't believe it myself before trying it first hand. I know very well that going out alone hitting on strangers requires a lot of motivation but, if you ever feel like that, I can only recommend the experience. After that you will judge by yourself.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

(Mind that this is my experience only, so I don't pretend to be right: don't get me wrong on this one) I've been travelling quite a lot and I've been hitting on pretty much any kind of woman and the scary thing is the consistency of the response, regardless of looks, ethnicity, social and relationship status. I've discussed the matter with other guys and there are some arguing that if the woman's married/engaged it's even easier, because of the novelty factor involved. My thoughts come from the reality i've known and experienced, if you wanna call it mysogyny i guess it's fine by me.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

The issue lays in what exactly are the 'idealised versions' that women actually like.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

I started with 'The Game' from Neil Strauss, that gave me the idea. From then it was all downhill, you just have to go out and try. I never used canned openings and that kind of stuff, i also never read any kind of specific 'technical' material like the Mystery method.

I think that the really important things are to grasp the concept, learn to use the feedback that you receive from them effectively and (most importantly) get over the fear of rejection that goes with the approach. Once you lose the fear everything becomes easy.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

I have to say, i lost that too.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

Nope. This terrible things work because they leverage some very powerful mechanism that is deeply and unavoidably bound into women's brain. It's not just _statistically_ valid, it's _theoretically_ valid.

If you try it ten times and works only once that means you've messed up nine times: if you do it right, it works.

random_guyon The New Dating Game

It's all true. The effectiveness of the approach is amazing, I lost every single bit of respect in the female gender in the process of trying it out myself. Now I'm searching for someone on which this stuff doesn't work. I'm afraid i'll end up alone.

random_guyon Programmers are a commodity... right?

Agreed. But: I don’t really know exactly what these guys are looking for, still I’m pretty sure (because of the ads) they’re having an hard time finding it. I won’t say programming as a profession is special, because it’s not, but from my experience even finding just a good coding “cog” is a huge win from the employer’s perspective. What I think it happened is that those guys went looking for somebody “ready for industry” into the university, and they hit the wall. I know a lot of very, very smart guys that are studying CS: I’m sure one day they will be awesome hackers but they will need a lot of experience under their belt before they can provide real value to a “real world” project.