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superkon Stack Overflow: Defend PHP - convince me it isn't horrible

Somewhere I read a quote that went "if you take the top 100 most popular websites on the internet... 90 of them use PHP". I don't have the source and I don't know if it's still true.. but you can add Yahoo, WordPress, PhotoBucket, SourceForge, etc...

superkon KISSmetrics' bizarre pricing decision

Nothing. I looked at KISSMetrics ages ago when the private beta was first leaked. Similar to crazyegg it focuses on a single aspect of analytics, in this case conversion funnels. So it is simple to setup funnels for every possible conversion point (which if your website is effective should be almost every page). However, you can do this on GA too, which is also a hugely more powerful and integrated tool. Someone mentioned previously how expensive enterprise analytics is... this is _not_ enterprise analytics. I'm really not sure who they're aiming this product at.

superkon Google Labs launches Android app for finding open parking spots

> Do they have an expiration on these spots that are marked empty by the person leaving?

Not exactly. But if you look at the top of the example image they provided there is some indication of how long the empty spot is expected to last.

superkon Post from "weev" (AT&T/ipad data hacker) on his arrest and treatment

I feel sorry for the dude. He is asking for our help via cash or writing to our local, state and national representatives. That's a rock and hard place.

superkon Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

http://www.travelatlas.org/

Based on the terribly original idea of writing about your travel experiences. A couple good features (imo):

- Inherent credibility. I figured if you ask someone you meet on the street where's a good place to eat or stay - being a complete stranger - the chance of them giving you good information is about the same as flipping a coin: 50-50. So everyone starts with 50% credibility. As you write reviews and people are in agreement (via like/don't like or comments) your credibility goes up (influenced of course by the credibility of the commentor).

- Built in messaging and chat. Added some "bots" to make it look like there were actually more users at one point. The idea was to implement a parser so that you could ask someone in chat: "where's a cheap place to stay in guam?" the app would parse the query and a bot could answer with the highest rated hostel in that location for example.

- Parse search terms with ability to search by category. So if you search for "a bed to crash on" while you're in manhattan, the app prompts if you'd like to search the "lodging" category.

Reason for failure:

- Other people did it better (tripadvisor, virtual tourist, etc)

- SHOCKWAVE (although this was 2005)

superkon Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

Add to the failure list:

* Terrible performance - practically first rule for optimizing page rendering is "don't use CSS expressions"

http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/docs/rendering.html http://developer.yahoo.net/blog/archives/2007/07/high_perfor...

* Only work on IE natch.

So, you have Javascript which was better performance and worked everywhere.

I think it's a little misleading to say it's the best feature no one ever used. CSS expressions were re-born as hardware-accelerated CSS3 transitions - with a much better, more focused implementation, and are pretty popular these days - especially for mobile.

superkon Ask HN: What's the best feature you've built that no one uses?

To understand... are you expecting Google to enter every possible search term into your search box and index the results? BTW, your site _requires_ javascript = SEO fail.

superkon Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

They'll only float if their lungs are fully inflated with air (from your link and my own experience). If they've been choking on water and are now drowned (as opposed to drowning) I would assume that's no longer the case.

superkon Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

In regard to 3... How do you know when the drowning person is unconscious... that would be when they dip under and don't come back up? They're lungs would be full of water then? So you would have to swim down to them, pull them to dry land (they won't float) and resuscitate them? I understand sometimes that could be the only option... but seems like a heavy responsibility.

superkon Data URIs make CSS sprites obsolete

I'll add... it really makes sense for mobile/webkit where you can depend a lot more on CSS3 and most images are small icons or tiles. I've seen Apple use it a lot in their mobile web apps.

superkon Data URIs make CSS sprites obsolete

The problem I see, is that if you change a single line in the stylesheet, the client has to re-download all images - nothing is cached.

superkon [dead]

Have you checked out Dashcode that comes with Apple's SDK? It does some webkit-only hooks in the HTML/CSS/JS it generates, but as a real-life example of what you suggest it comes pretty close.

superkon Spinning wheels [Storing energy using flywheels, not batteries]

Right. Except the smallest synchronization error between the two flywheels becomes disaster.

superkon Spinning wheels [Storing energy using flywheels, not batteries]

> Why do you state that when the article linked clearly says: > "The cause of the accident was not determined, although > Buckminster Fuller reported that the accident was due to > the actions of another vehicle that had been following the > Dymaxion closely.".

For the obvious reason why 3 wheel vehicles have never become mainstream.... If you work with computers you should know about Single Point of Failure. If you are cruising on the highway and get a flat with 1 of your 4 tires it's no Big Deal. How do you think that would figure with only 3.

Or another example. Why so many wheels on an 18-wheeler. Wouldn't it be awesome if a truck could do a u-turn in it's own length? Those things blow out tires all the time. But it doesn't matter because they have 18. SPOF. 3 wheel vehicles will never catch on in the mainstream. They'll only ever be the equivalent of glorified motorcycles - the ultralights on the road.

superkon Spinning wheels [Storing energy using flywheels, not batteries]

Flywheels come up every once in a while (I remember seeing them for the first time about 20 years ago).... but I wager they'll never become mainstream. The problem is the more energy they store, the more explosive they become.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage#Advanta...

Same kind of thing with the Dymaxion car (1930) - a 3 wheeled car that could transport 11 passengers @ 30mpg, reach speeds of 120mph and do a U-turn in it's own length. Sounds brilliant.. except what happens when something happens to one of the tires.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car

superkon MVC and Purity

I always thought fat models and skinny controllers were the preferred design pattern:

http://www.google.com/search?q=fat+model+skinny+controller

superkon Inside the Amiga 1000 (25th Anniversary)

I have a bunch of 1200's w 040 accelerators, extra memory and whatnot boxed up somewhere. Still have a library of boxed games too... and Amiga Power of course ;)

superkon MVC and Purity

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Functional_programming#Pu...

superkon IPad and Kindle Reading Speeds

Kinda misleading title... "Thus, the only fair conclusion is that we can't say for sure which device offers the fastest reading speed."

superkon Protocol Buffers by Google

See also Apache Thrift (from Facebook) and Caucho Hessian

superkon Ask HN: Which Android Phone to Buy?

I have the GSM version - branded as the Motorola Milestone - so that could be a factor. But Droid's instability problems have been reported before (ie. this 56 page thread: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1587731-Official-...)

superkon Ask HN: Which Android Phone to Buy?

I have both the Droid and Nexus One. Nifty keyboard aside, Nexus One is a much better phone hands down. Lot's of instability problems with the Droid, and performance overall is much slower (and the keyboard while neat does make the device heavier and clunkier).

superkon Ask HN: 2 page simple term sheet and 100+ page contracts. What to do?

Engage a law firm will take your time and your money.

superkon Ask HN: 2 page simple term sheet and 100+ page contracts. What to do?

Honestly, I would hand it back and ask them to reduce it to less than 10 pages. There's nothing to be intimidated about legal documents in general (reading through them you can make any changes before signing) but 100 pages just isn't fair in a business relationship.

superkon Thoughts on Google's "Terrain" maps

You can report mistakes (http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...). I reported one once... about 6 months later received an email from google saying it was fixed... it was. Of course a wikipedia-API would be awesome. Google usually likes things like that: http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

superkon Ask HN: I really don't understand node.js, could someone explain it to me?

What he said... I'll also add, that it's written for Javascript should not be understated - not only is it one of the most widely used and accessible languages around, but I'd wager no other platform has the amount of competitive development that Javascript does - right now - with a slew of engines that improve in performance by magnitudes year after year.

I don't know why Ryan didn't just call it Node. I think most people are thrown off by the .js.

superkon Recovered: Thomas Edison’s Voice, frozen in time for more than 80 years

Does anyone know if there's a link to the actual audio file somewhere so I could hear it?

superkon Ask HN: where do you get your SSL certificates?

Seconded - their support and checkout process all suck hard. What's great about SSL's... they are all scams.. but you get to decide the level for which they screw you.

superkon Stanford's Javascript Crypto Library

The problem with clientside crypto (besides the security) is what do you do with it in the backend? Without matching code to decrypt on the backend it's pretty useless - unless you're using node, rhino or something. Porting javascript to another language is a pain because of the way javascript handles the long integers generated by these kinds of algorithms.

superkon Iphone 4.0 official video

No.. the cure to cancer is in iPhone 5.