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scottjacksonon Does anyone still need Google Wave invites?

I have some too, if zck runs out.

Seems like Google Wave invites are worth about as much as Gmail invites are now.

Are Google Voice invites still hard to get a hold of? I'm in Australia, so I can't even use the thing.

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

I'm not sure what the distinguishing features are between a command-line app and a terminal app (I think that it's pretty pedantic to say that there's a difference, though I'm all for pedantry and I'd love to know what the difference is).

I think hnsh is a command-line app. It uses text-based input to do things based on that input -- sometimes opening other applications, and sometimes printing things to the screen.

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

The thing is, I could, but because I'm not at all related to HN in any official way, it would be up to me to change how the API gets data from HN whenever HN changes anything at their end. That would mean there'd probably be a delay between HN making changes and me making changes, during which time any applications using the API wouldn't work.

I'd happily do it with the blessing of the officials at Y Combinator :)

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Done - http://github.com/scottjacksonx/hnsh

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Update - the code has been uploaded to Github!

http://github.com/scottjacksonx/hnsh

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Interesting ideas. They're the kind of thing I'd like to look at in the future. In the mean-time, I suppose you're aware of the "Threads" page for each user? http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=YOUR_USERNAME_HERE

I use that for keeping track of who replied to my comments and stuff like that.

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

At the moment, the most you can do with comments is open them up in your browser.

Could you be more specific about the feature you're describing? Comments are an area I'd like to look at expanding on. I guess you mean tracking whether or not there are new comments on a story?

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Thanks a bunch!

It's getting pretty late now (just hit 3am), but check back at http://github.com/scottjacksonx/hnsh (or http://scottjackson.org/software/hnsh/) some time late tomorrow and the project should be hosted there, as well as your proxy fix.

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Oh man, here's the part where I show my total ineptitude when it comes to code licensing...

Anyone have a link to a quick guide to code licensing for total newbies?

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

I'm not accepting patches at the moment, but that's not out of fierce overprotectiveness of my code -- I just didn't think there'd be any demand for it.

I've joined github, and this will be the first thing that I put there, so check http://github.com/scottjacksonx or http://scottjackson.org/software/hnsh/ in a few days and we'll see what I did!

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Just to be clear, you're trying to run the program from behind a proxy, yeah?

Thanks for the stack trace -- having that makes a big difference :)

I'm not sure I can make it work with an arbitrary proxy, but I'm pretty sure I could get it to work with a proxy you know the address of. Proxies aren't my strong suit, sorry. We'll see what happens!

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

The source code is in the .zip file, in the hnsh.py file that you run. That's all there is -- it's only about 550 lines or so.

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

You're right -- lynx would do it (and even better with the markup change). Would it do stuff like remember the stories you'd read or the way you like looking at stories though?

(totally legitimate question, btw -- I'm interested in this stuff.)

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Neat! I hadn't heard of elinks before. Sounds like a good idea. Do you use it for many sites other than news aggregation sites like HN and Reddit? Do normal sites render OK?

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

Unfortunately, yeah, I'm just getting the HTML of the home-page and slicing and dicing it.

Oh, how I wish there was an API... I kept the HTML-getting stuff in its own class, so if HN ever adds an API, I can slot that right in there instead.

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

I can see it now -- a switch you flip that makes the program print "Do your work" to stdout every time you try to open a story.

scottjacksonon Hnsh - Hacker News from the command-line

hnsh is a program I wrote to let you catch up with HN from the shell. You can browse the front page, open up stories and open up comments. There are a couple other nifty features, but they're all listed on the page for you to read, so there's no use re-posting them here.

Hacker News, all keyboard, no mouse. Let me know what you think, HN.

I'll have to head off in a while (it's just past midnight here in Australia), but I'll definitely get back to any comments I miss.

scottjacksonon How to Make a Million Dollars

It's an old Steve Martin bit.

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/77/77imono.phtml

(Video of it is a bit hard to track down, sorry)

scottjacksonon How to Make a Million Dollars

You say "Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?" First, get a million dollars. Now you say "Steve, what do I say to the tax man when he comes to my door and says, 'You have never paid taxes'?"

Two simple words. Two simple words in the English language: "I forgot."

scottjacksonon Three easy ways to fix the App Store. And one really, really hard way.

http://www.obsessable.com/news/2009/01/26/android-applicatio...

> The application has reportedly deleted all the contacts from the device's internal memory, as well as all data on SD cards on the device.

I'm not justifying Apple's review process, I'm just saying bad stuff has happened on Android before.

scottjacksonon Ask HN: Is there a cheap way to get money from customers (Not PayPal etc)

If there was an answer to this question, I don't think PayPal would be in business.

At this point, PayPal is like Microsoft Office -- it's the de facto standard, no matter how crappy the product is. Sorry.

I know this is a really shitty answer to your question, but I think it's the truth.

If anyone else has an answer, I would love to hear it, and there is no irony or malice in that statement -- as a developer who uses PayPal for donations as payment for my software, I would love a way to get a bigger cut of the money.

scottjacksonon Facebook iPhone Dev Quits Project Over Apple Tyranny

> It is the most popular free iphone app. That wouldn't be the case if it weren't well made.

I believe iFart was fairly popular for a time (where popular is defined as "downloaded many times"), and it even cost money, putting a financial barrier to entry in front of potential users. Does that make iFart a well-made app though? I don't think so (though maybe you or others do).

I think the Facebook app's popularity just comes from the popularity of Facebook the service.

scottjacksonon Ask HN: What is your Home Page in your browser?

http://start.io

Totally customisable, good-looking start pages based on a really well-designed CMS. You can make some of your links private and some public.

I didn't make it, I just really like it. One of the guys that did make it works at Tumblr.

scottjacksonon Everything Should Have An API

Here's the thing -- I could come up with individual answers to those questions based on arbitrary decisions that I make ("the user selects the source", "it's implied that a WiFi network already operates in the house", "the position is only synced to the source computer", "you can listen to the podcast at a different computer"), but you're totally right -- arbitrarily-decided-on answers doth not a standard make.

Like I said in another thread, I am just a peon with access to a keyboard. I trust that there are developers and system-setter-upper-ers much smarter than I who could put this into place.

scottjacksonon Everything Should Have An API

That's probably fair. I honestly don't think we're at the point where we can abandon text files altogether, but you're right -- a lot of data could definitely be stored in slightly higher-level data structures.

I still really like text files though :)

scottjacksonon Everything Should Have An API

I don't personally know because I'm just a peon with a qwerty keyboard, but I think there are some great developers and talented architects out there who could figure it out and make it happen.

scottjacksonon Everything Should Have An API

Maybe. I think that if we get enough smart, awesome people working on it, it could be secure, safe and open all at the same time.

scottjacksonon Everything Should Have An API

You're right -- that's almost certainly the reason you don't see stuff like this happen.

Though, didn't Bank of America make that iPhone app a little while ago that allowed you to photograph a cheque in order to deposit it? They're obviously OK with sending financial data around. I guess maybe it was OK in that case because they were the ones that wrote the app?

In any case, you're right. Security is definitely the reason this kind of stuff hasn't been implemented. I still think that it's possible to write an open, secure interface to things. Email is the example I fall back on here. Like I mentioned above - sensitive information gets sent around in emails all the time, yet there are countless email clients and they're almost all secure (I say "almost all" to cover my ass if there's some that aren't). I think that if it can work for email, then maybe it can work in other domains.

scottjacksonon Everything Should Have An API

I think it could be done -- I mean, Pine's an example of a secure client application that uses a kinda-API (SMTP) to deliver data.

If we don't make APIs because someone might write an insecure client, would anyone make any APIs ever?

I do agree with you though :) It's probably not going to happen in the real world any time soon. C'est la vie.

scottjacksonon The power of "no"

I'd argue that, in general, all software gets better over time. I'd also argue that there are as many exceptions to that rule in commercial software as there are in open-source.