HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

timw6n

1,402 karma · joined July 20, 2012

submissionscomments
timw6n··on Build Apps for Cars on the New Automatic Developer Platform
I really hope you've had some good legal advice on your international returns policy: In particular I imagine that "our policy cannot cover damage incurred during shipment" is not going to prevent CC chargebacks if that were to happen.
timw6n··on Fernvale: An Open Hardware and Software Platform
They're using a CACert (a kind of community-based CA) certificate, that isn't trusted by default on most systems.

If the root certificate you're getting is from "CA Cert Signing Authority" and matches the details given on http://www.cacert.org/index.php?id=3 then you're probably not being MITM'd.

timw6n··on SpaceX CRS-3 Mission
Anyone know what the timeframe is for the test of the first-stage soft landing? The livestream was just showing the Dragon and seems to have ended now.
timw6n··on UK official involved in national porn filter arrested for child porn
Even more worrying is the fact that it appears that he was tipped off about the police investigation by senior Downing Street figures.

He resigned from his post at the policy office several hours before the NCA came to arrest him at his flat, which meant that he could potentially have had the opportunity to destroy evidence.

timw6n··on 2013 Tesla Model S: Stuck on the Freeway
Just put the car into 1st gear and keep cranking the key and it'll lurch forwards even if the engine won't start.

It's not exactly healthy for the starter motor but can be useful in emergencies for getting the car over to the shoulder or out from the middle of a junction.

I'm not sure how it'll work with automatic gearboxes (a small minority of cars here in the UK) but no reason why it shouldn't work on any car with a manual gearbox and key ignition.

timw6n··on 2013 Tesla Model S: Stuck on the Freeway
This isn't a Tesla-specific point but this article does highlight some of the downsides of cars (both ICE and electric) becoming more high-tech.

In an older car, even if there's an engine failure, it should be possible to get the car into neutral and either let it roll or propel it with the starter motor to the side of the road. Similarly the brakes will still work, although they'll be very heavy once the assisted-braking is depleted.

Once everything is electronic and drive-by-wire you lose this redundancy - I've heard of new Range Rovers, as one example, being very difficult to tow because if the electrics fail then it's impossible to take it out of gear and to remove the parking brake.

timw6n··on 2013 Tesla Model S: Stuck on the Freeway
The article said that the error message was 12V battery low; my understanding is that's the same sort of battery as in an ICE car, not the main electric power-pack.

Since the 12v battery is (presumably) powered from an alternator from the drivetrain the only way it could get flat while driving is if there's a fault with the car.

timw6n··on Redesigned Python.org
...and a python 2 print keyword instead of the python 3 print function.
timw6n··on YC Alum GoCardless Raises Another $7M
Just as another datapoint, my bank charges the same £15 fee for a failed transaction regardless of whether it's a debit card payment or direct debit.
timw6n··on Y Combinator Reaches Farther Beyond Silicon Valley
I was wondering that as well.

I guess many foreign founders will be from countries that are part of the visa waiver program, but my understanding is that it doesn't strictly allow working (as opposed to business meetings) within the US, which would seem to rule out being actively involved in a YC startup.

timw6n··on Californians: Ashamed of Senator Feinstein's lies on surveillance? Join Us
The fact that there's an "Is this safe" link next to the button for signing the petition is itself a telling indicator of the chilling effects of this sort of surveillance.

A couple of years ago people wouldn't even have imagined the possibility that there'd be consequences from this sort of very low-level, very legitimate, democratic participation.

timw6n··on Majority of Web Sites Blocked by O2 Parental Controls?
It looks like the middle "Default Safety" row is the normal mode however, and that doesn't seem particularly onerously restrictive. It seems to only be blocking actually NSFW sites, plus selected pages on Reddit, Tumblr etc.

The bottom row appears to be an (properly) opt-in service for much younger kids that must be whitelisting only a few destinations, which is not the same thing at all as the filters that Cameron et al are pushing for.

timw6n··on Apple Doesn’t Want to Pay the Feds’ E-Book Lawyer $70,000 a Week
Not that I'm disagreeing with your main point, but the listing on that Apple page is in alphabetical order, so I'm not sure anything can be inferred from that...
timw6n··on The copyright cartel's plot to indoctrinate California kindergartens
I agree that giving kids an accurate understanding is important — the problem with these teaching materials is that they're being very selective in which parts of copyright law that they teach: According to the linked article, there's no mention of Fair Use provisions, which the record industry would much rather you didn't take advantage of, in the curriculum at all.
timw6n··on Please don’t bring your parents to work with you
American HNers, is this really a thing in the US?

As a so-called "millenial" in the UK, I just can't imagine myself, or any of my peers, actually bringing parents into job interviews.

Surely there's something wrong if, after 4 years of college, people are so unprepared to stand on their own two feet.

timw6n··on Dear USA, my data has left your building
http://www.bigv.io/ is UK based and seems rather popular.
timw6n··on Didn't Get Enough Sleep? You Might As Well Be Drunk
Be very careful with modafinil: the side effects can be very severe

"later in the evening she fainted from exhaustion and woke up blind. It took the longest two minutes of all our lives for her eyesight to return fully, and she developed shakes like I’ve never seen, which we couldn’t stop"

“I was mid-conversation and my nose started to bleed uncontrollably, blood was gushing. I completely freaked out”

“Physically, he looked rough, says Charles. He was completely exhausted, his cheeks were pasty and grey, and his body was exhibiting clear signs of sleep deprivation.”

“One friend tried the drug just once, and was plagued by serious, mind numbing headaches. Another couldn’t sleep for two days, despite spending 8 hours in bed per night trying."

Source: http://www.nouse.co.uk/2009/06/30/modafinil-the-new-wonder-d...

timw6n··on [dead]
Anyone else notice that google.com now seems to force ssl even for non logged in users?
timw6n··on [dead]
I'm sorry, but there's so much utter nonsense on this site that I'm unable to take this seriously at all.

> US Birth Rates Plummet by 310,000 Babies: Responsible Economic Planning or Shadow Depopulation?

> FDA: ‘Nuking Fruits & Veggies Will Make Them Safer.’

Not to mention that illustrating a story about 2 (unarmed, I would guess) Norwegian police officers visiting someone's house with a picture of a full-blown US SWAT raid is rather disingenuous to say the least.

timw6n··on Efficiency, Imported From Europe
1 US mpg = 1.2 UK mpg

and the EU method for calculating those numbers is, so I hear, more lenient than its US equivalent, so those numbers sound more impressive than they really are.

timw6n··on Heathrow fire on Boeing Dreamliner 'started in battery component'
The AAIB (the UK equivalent of the NTSB) special bulletin referred to in the article is here[1] with a few more technical details.

Looks like it's just unlucky that this happened with a 787, given that the ELT is a standalone component apparently fitted to around 6000 planes of various types.

[1] http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/S5-2013%20ET-...

timw6n··on UK government invests in Sabre air-breathing rocket engine
A couple of months ago there was an excellent BBC4 documentary about Alan Bond and Reaction Engines called The Three Rocketeers[1], which I believe has been re-posted on the internet.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01mqv45

timw6n··on Anti-corruption blogger Navalny sentenced to 5 years behind bars
Which is not actually that different from the US, where the conviction rate is 93%, of which 97% accepted a plea bargain prior to trial.

Source: http://www.justice.gov/usao/reading_room/reports/asr2011/11s...

timw6n··on How Edward J. Snowden Orchestrated a Blockbuster Story
> while making sure to take in a maximum amount of profits

The Guardian is owned by the Scott Trust, a UK non-profit, so perhaps at least some of your cynicism is unwarranted.

Of course they will want to keep this running for a while, releasing everything at once would lead to significant stuff getting buried and would reduce Snowden's overall impact.

timw6n··on Mozilla should move Persona out of the US
All the Scandinavian countries you list are actually EU members — a better term for your first group would be Western Europe.

But, really, I'm not sure how much confidence you could have in any of those countries: The UK's GCHQ was very heavily involved in Prism themselves, much to our national shame, for instance.

timw6n··on All major UK ISPs prepping network-level porn 'n' violence filters
Actually it was even earlier than that; adverse inferences could be drawn from silence after the passing of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.
timw6n··on Show HN: Stay foolish and dumb - went and built xervmon.com
Haven't had time to look at the actual app yet, but the homepage looks very broken on iPad — not only do I need to horizontal scroll for some things, but other things are getting cut off at the viewport width. You need to add a meta viewport tag, or better still, redesign for circa 960px wide — there are still quite a lot of people, especially if you're going for the enterprise market, with 1024x768 screens out there.

(edit: http://imgur.com/Qdwu3 for screenshot)

timw6n··on Sparrow acquired by Google
A shame. Sparrow was one of the few players still innovating in desktop email clients, especially now that Thunderbird has been similarly abandoned. They had already brought us custom smtp aliases, which I really came to rely on, and cloud app attachments. Who knows how far the boundaries could've been pushed with another year of independent operation.