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shock3naw

107 karma · joined October 12, 2011

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shock3naw··on The amount of crap Windows users have to put up with is incredible
Get real? Why the hostility? Eli's comment is aimed at how unintuitive OS X's system is, not how inconvenient it is compared to Windows.
shock3naw··on What Pandora Pays Top Artists
Seriously not impressed by the generalization that interns are the ones responsible for "making the web a terrible place." So as soon as that same developer takes a position as a full-timer they're magically imbued with all the best practices and knowledge required to run a great website?

Also, you just admitted that your own place of work serves large images. Let's not throw blame around that we're not willing to take ourselves.

shock3naw··on Using the HTML5 Fullscreen API for Phishing Attacks
I agree that Firefox's certificate warning page is much better designed. I'm not blaming 'dumb' users for anything, I was providing supporting evidence of the fact that when browsers make warnings easy to bypass, users will simply click right through them.
shock3naw··on Using the HTML5 Fullscreen API for Phishing Attacks
To corroborate your point, one of the Chromium developers spoke about this sort of problem, but in the context of invalid SSL certificates and the associated warning that Chrome displays. A ridiculous percentage of users ignored the warning that the site they were visiting wasn't verified and simply clicked 'Visit this site anyway.' Most users don't understand that there are potentially serious costs to ignoring security warnings.
shock3naw··on Core Values
To be honest, this seems like a set of 'nice company policies,' rather than core values. A lot of these could be summarized with a single value that they are idealizing. This list looks like a good way to implement those core values.

Edit: Here are the core values of Google, Apple, Facebook, Zynga, Salesforce, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Netflix, HP, Zappos, Twitter, LinkedIn, SAS, and Cisco.

http://bestengagingcommunities.com/2012/07/31/a-sample-of-th...

shock3naw··on I’ll Give MongoDB Another Try In Ten Years
Saying that different defaults should be documented prominently is like saying that because every piece of software is different, you should be required to read the documentation before you use it...
shock3naw··on Twitter responds to IFFFT
Don't feed the trolls.
shock3naw··on Rackspace accused of patent infringement for hosting Github
They're not even trying to hide the fact that they're patent trolls:

"We are located in East Texas, and we are developing innovative technologies and products. We have a team who is responsible for some of the web’s most popular software and applications, and we own some really amazing patents."

shock3naw··on Jonah Lehrer’s Journalistic Misdeeds at Wired.com
Is the sunburst background behind Lehrer's head in the table necessary? I thought this was about being 'professional.'

That being said, I'm glad the journalism community is cracking down on people who are recycling, plagiarizing, and not fact checking.

shock3naw··on Twitter Removes 'Via' Stamp From Web Client
That's your own fault for following spammy accounts.
shock3naw··on Why Are People So Upset With Twitter? Let's Grab a Bite
Everyone keeps quoting this acting like it validates the sense of entitlement everyone feels they have to all of Twitter's data.
shock3naw··on What Jamie Wong did at Khan Academy
The cool ones, at least.
shock3naw··on The White House just open sourced their first Github repo
They don't care about keeping the country safe, they know _they_ won't be safe if everyone knew all the shit they've been up to.
shock3naw··on What Jamie Wong did at Khan Academy
Was? :)
shock3naw··on Ask HN: Why don't people share our viral page with their friends?
Do you have to use LaunchRock? If it's holding you back form presenting a great first impression, then dump it.
shock3naw··on I'm Not Japanese
Google isn't being lazy & insensitive. I18N is hard.
shock3naw··on Ask HN: Why don't people share our viral page with their friends?
Besides the points about not sharing products I haven't bought/tested/tried/etc., your page is not visually appealing. It's hard to take anyone claiming to 'design' shirts seriously when their launch page is poorly designed.

Things you could improve:

* Use a nicer font.

* Use horizontal space more effectively.

* Even if the shirts were great, tweeting about 'HappyNerdShirts' is just asking my friends to flame me.

shock3naw··on I just left 200 fake parking tickets at YC Demo Day...
There's a huge gap in the complexity of getting your product perfect and not making grade-school level grammar errors on a 20 line 'parking ticket.'
shock3naw··on Books every developer should read
I'll be honest, I've read a very small number of books on software development throughout the years. I've learned all my stuff on the way, from mistakes I've made, associated documentation, and from reading the code that's powering production systems from the engineers before me. In the end? I'm doing pretty well. I'm sure that anyone else in a similar situation would agree.

Reading these books isn't going to make you a rockstar/ninja/allstar programmer. Keep doing what you're doing, learn from the mistakes you make; the lessons you learn from them are going to last a lifetime. The lessons you learn from these books might make you a better programmer, but almost all of it will be gone in a week.

shock3naw··on I Have 50 Dollars
You should! Make sure you pick up the 6th book by Eoin Colfer (of Artemis Fowl fame), 'And Another Thing...' who's actually done a marvelous of picking up the series where it left off after Douglas Adams' extremely unfortunate passing.
shock3naw··on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Mediocre Entrepreneurs
He's not joking, he's a master at personal branding. As much as you might want to think he's a narcissist -- it's really hard not to, at times -- he's simply found a superb way to make you remember who he is.
shock3naw··on I Have 50 Dollars
Except, that isn't even close to the actual quote: "Okay, so, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, okay?"
shock3naw··on T.js - A tiny templating framework in ~400 bytes
Stating his opinion is not being pedantic, quoting the definition to make a point is being pedantic. I think what he's saying has merit; I would call this a utility, or something more along those lines, rather than a framework.
shock3naw··on Google has a new favicon
https://www.google.com/images/google_favicon_128.png (found in the source on the homepage)
shock3naw··on Wikipedia Redefined
Should have been 'times per day.' I made a typo and couldn't edit it; I don't know why HN isn't letting me do so.

Asides from that, why post a correction here? Only other HN readers are going to see it, which inherently means you aren't writing the comment in the hopes of them fixing it, but to show the error to other commenters. Perhaps malicious was the wrong term, but your comment certainly wasn't trying to help them improve their copy.

shock3naw··on Wikipedia Redefined
So they check it exactly one dozen times per day? Your correction also doesn't seem valid. Perhaps they meant to write that "We check our mail dozens of time per day."

First impressions are very important; I too find copy errors an indication of an inadequate effort to communicate effectively. However, that doesn't validate a malicious attempt to bash the writer(s) when a simple correction would have sufficed.

shock3naw··on ToS;DR — TL;DR for Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
I like the idea and the layout is nice.

That being said, use the same categories for each company, don't re-write the description based on how good/bad it is. It would be far more useful for creating a table (which would also be a great way to organize this information, businesses looking to improve the transparency of their ToS would need only look at top scored candidates to find inspiration).

shock3naw··on Dear Mark Zuckerberg
Let's be clear, the only purpose of this post is to bring attention to App.net. Calling Facebook 'rotten-to-the-core' isn't a great way to capture the sympathy of its CEO.
shock3naw··on After Carping About NBC’s Olympics Coverage, Journalist Suspended from Twitter
Why is that not a private email address? Just because I have a corporate email address, that doesn't mean I expect random fan mail or people I don't know emailing me complaints/whatever. Twitter received a complaint from NBC, and according to the Terms of Service, the account had to be suspended. Obviously this backfired, but that's not the point.
shock3naw··on On the Deadness of OAuth 2
I highly doubt that most spec/project leaders abandon their projects because they consider it a 'professional disappointment.' I can't think of any such projects off the top of my head. On the contrary, I imagine that many feel that they have little left to contribute and want a fresher pair of hands to guide it forwards.

Everything 'should' be judged on its own merits, but humans have a tendency to make snap judgements. We make them everyday when we see someone we've never met, or are introduced to someone new. To be fair, my statement was based on my personal opinion and feelings after reading Eran's piece. Perhaps OAuth 2 really is going to take off, but I can't imagine how terrible something would have to be to give up 3-5 years of my life's work.

edit: To be clear, I should acknowledge that sometimes snap judgements are wrong. Sometimes they are right. But when we make them, we save ourselves the burden of exhaustively investigating _every_ possible technology, or that everyone might be a great person and friend. Eran's post was enough to convince me that I should stay away from OAuth 2 until convinced otherwise.

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