Hacker News Reader

I like the picture too. Now I have a longer list of places I want to visit.

On the other hand, I switched to Bing since day one and I was a happy user for the first week or so, but lately I find myself going back to Google too often. Does anyone else feels like the quality of results in Bing has been degrading?

skeron New IE8 marketing materials

This is almost funny. IE8 is the only one of the major browsers that I haven't installed yet. So I'm wondering, what if it's true? What if it's really better than the others?

Has anyone here actually given it a try to confirm how good/bad it is?

skeron Python to get Google-backed speedup

I think the most important point here is not the speedup itself, but the fact that Google is officially backing Python. That'd give Big Corps confidence when adopting the technology.

skeron Ask HN: Would you guys visit a purely hacker-oriented version of HN?

Count me in. Sometimes I go to dzone for my fix of programming news but they have pretty much zero discussion, which is essential in order to debunk the crappy articles.

skeron Facebook | Username

Thanks for pointing that out. I was having a hard time choosing between name.lastname and namelastname.

skeron Why Mono doesn't suck

Mono has such a bad reputation. If they want to get market, they will probably have to pull a Bing, i.e. rebrand it.

Unfortunately, they don't have $100m to pour into marketing.

skeron Evaluating Bing with Mechanical Turk

You have a point there. Also, what would happen if they show them both lists with results from Google? They would probably get similar results. Same for Bing, same for Yahoo.

From the test site that compared results from G, B and Y a few days ago, I felt the results were so similar that I couldn't bring myself to click one as the best engine because I didn't think I was making an objective choice.

skeron The iPhone is White Label Hardware

People get so excited about Apple that and Apple this, that functional alternatives like the G-1 and Blackberry go unnoticed

They don't go unnoticed. It's only in geek-apple-loving communities like HN where they make it seem like the iPhone is the only viable choice for a joyful mobile experience.

Out there, normal people are buying other phones and are happy with them. Last time I checked Blackberry was still outselling the iPhone. http://www.phonemag.com/blackberrys-dominate-top-five-us-sma...

skeron TechCrunch Now Number Two Tech Blog As Mashable Surges

What about Engadget? Or are only web 2.0 sites considered tech anymore? http://siteanalytics.compete.com/techcrunch.com+mashable.com...

skeron HN suggestion: A larger margin at the bottom of comment pages

This has been brought up before and I happen to agree with you, but inevitably some of the purists will get mad at you for posting a meta-post and they will tell you to use the feature request section (at the bottom of the page) for this kind of things.

Just so you know.

skeron Did Bing Just Leapfrog Yahoo Search?

Well, a startup is doing this. Powerset is supposedly behind Bing.

Do you honestly think an unknown startup can take a bite out of Google and not get acquired in the process?

skeron A hundred million mistakes: Microsoft's Bing search engine

I wonder what decision is driving them to screw their chances in other countries. Because that's what they're doing. Anyone who gives it a try outside of the US is probably never going to look back.

One of the reasons for the rebranding was because people wouldn't give Live another chance. Now those same people are gonna see that Bing sucks and that image will get hard printed on their mind.

I already recommended it a couple of times to people in my country and they always tell me it sucks. I'm not gonna spend the extra effort of telling them to switch to the US version. They don't pay me to do that.

skeron E Ink bought for $215M

Just out of curiosity, why is E Ink the important thing here? I'm located outside of the US and I don't know who either company is, so they both hold equal importance to me. Actually if I was from Taiwan, PVI would be the important thing to me.

skeron Bing Is Live

After using it for a few hours, I second that.

1. Similar quality of results.

2. Superior image search. Actually, I think Google's image search is a result of them being on top for so long, it's been the same for years with little improvement. I mean, just look at Bing's.

3. Better video search. I love the hover-preview feature. I can see Google implementing it next year after some other mainstream sites implement it and it's no longer a "Bing thing."

4. Slightly cleaner interface. Let me show you: http://r.im/1rf7 http://r.im/1rf8 Bing has a line-height of 130% which makes it a little more readable in my opinion. Sure it has more clutter in some areas, but the search results are cleaner and that's what matters to me when I'm scanning through them.

I don't use maps, travel, health, etc., so I can't comment on them, but so far I'm very pleased with the results. I didn't think Microsoft could pull it off and they did.

skeron Bing Is Live

I don't know, I like it. Results are very on par with Google's. Interface is cleaner, now that Google has a rating system and a lot of other info/links per result.

Only thing I don't like is that I can only set 50 results per page, whereas with Google and Yahoo I can set 100.

I'm gonna set it as my homepage for a few days. That's the only way I'll be able to give it a try and come up with a judgment.

skeron My Language Is More Agile Than Yours: A Study of Arc

Is this similar for all the dialects of Lisp? Because if it is, I might start learning one tonight.

skeron Palm Pre Launch Guide Leaked [pdf]

"We Can't Afford to Sell the Pre to the Wrong Customers." @ page 11

Was this really leaked? If so, it goes to show that they really have a focus on their customers. Otherwise, it might just be part of their marketing strategy.

skeron NYTimes.com Apple Ads

How much do they pay for that? It's like they owned the NYT.

Also, you know you're doing something right when people click replay to rewatch your ad.

skeron Ask HN: I've Got a Project, You Tell Me The Language

I'm gonna recommend .NET here, mainly because that's what I use and like, but my top reason would be flexibility.

You don't have to use only one language, use many. If you already know C# you can start with that. If you get tired of it you can pick up F# to write algorithms and calculations. Want to learn Python? Get IronPython and use it to write Unit Tests or a rich interface with Silverlight. You name it, everything under the same platform.

If there isn't a requirement that prevents you from using .NET, I don't see a reason not to use it.

skeron Mozilla Brings Webapps to the Desktop, Challenges AIR, Silverlight

Silverlight doesn't have desktop apps as far as I know, so it doesn't compete in this realm.

skeron The App Store Is a Classic Example Of A Broken Business Process

I don't know if there's a common term for anti-FUD (hype doesn't quite cover it)

Some people have a name for this particular case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field

skeron [dead]

This is a good time to admit that Apple fanboyism knows no bounds.

skeron A collect of best small icons on the web

Yeah, well, found them with Google. Here's a link for those interested: http://www.ziddu.com/download/1693606/UII_Icons.zip.html

skeron A collect of best small icons on the web

He's probably referring to the UserInterfaceIcons. If someone can provide a direct download link, please do. I want to use them but you will have to kill me before I install Zango.

skeron How do kids these days get started in programming?

Anybody else started with mIRC Scripting? I did. It was cool to be able to do all sort of things, specially if you were IRCop.

Now that I think about it, every "big" program should come with an embedded scripting language. It will bring a lot of people into programming and it would make life easier for all of us. Imagine if all of the main IM clients had one.

skeron Ask HN: Learning resources for MS SQL Server?

I always have this opened in a tab:

http://wiki.lessthandot.com/index.php/Category:Microsoft_SQL...

It's not exactly a beginner's tutorial but I like it because it covers a lot of use cases. Also, it's short and to the point.

I hope you find it useful.

skeron 2008 was a good year, now #13 in the US.

And nobody has mentioned it but PoF is written in .NET. I don't normally see startups using ASP.NET around here so I thought it was worth mentioning.

skeron Apple may use Carbon Fiber in Next Macbook

I hate to be a troll but, how is this relevant? Feels like digg..

skeron The IntelliJ guys have created a dedicated Ruby IDE.

Why do the fonts look so ugly? Doesn't it use ClearType or something?

skeron Investing in a Quality Programming Chair

You tell me. I got varicose veins for spending to much time sitting in front of my computer. It's mostly linked with heredity, but the lack of activity in your legs is one of the main responsibles. So be careful guys, if you're gonna spend all day in your chair, make sure you stand up and exercise your legs periodically. Your back and your legs are gonna thank you.