Hacker News Reader

wendroidon John Gruber's Post-I/O Thoughts

My Sony Walkman gets 35 hours continuous mp3 playback.

wendroidon Chrome-To-Android Extension: Awesome, Deadly

Bookmarks : I already do this with Firefox / Delicious and it goes both ways and to every computer I use and anyone who is interested.

Maps : I already do that with Google's My Maps Editor and any Google Maps compatible browser. I sit at my desk and update pins to my hearts content and when I want to see them on my G1 phone I just run the My Maps app, including single clicks to Street View etc.

One feature I actually want is 'reply by voice message' like Nokias have. I think it is an under-explored area. I've oft wondered why store-and-forward voice messages aren't more widespread. Scroll to a contact, click 'send voice msg' say what you want, hit send.

wendroidon What programming language to learn RoR or PHP?

Visual Basic sounds right for you

wendroidon Nero files Anti-Trust suit againts MPEG-LA

~Go Nero

Stop this madness

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33723&id=142983457...

wendroidon Hedy Lamarr, femme fatale and inventor of spread spectrum communications

thanks Capt. Buzzkill

wendroidon Ask HN: Which vitamin supplements do you take?

and legumes (they fix nitrogen too!)

You think carbon dioxide is bad news, wait until you find out about what all the nitrogen we introduce to the ecosystem does.

#timebomb

wendroidon What are your favorite programming-related academic papers?

Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (aka utah2000 or utah2k)

By Rob Pike - August 05th 2000, 23:59 EST

http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/

wendroidon Ask HN: Which vitamin supplements do you take?

Vegetables

wendroidon Ask HN: Want to help me root out some spammers?

it's back % host discokenny.com discokenny.com A 38.106.76.52

wendroidon Ask HN: What streetsmarts have you learnt?

Hitting people with a house brick makes them stop chasing you.

wendroidon Issues Linux game developers face: a post-mortem from the creators of Osmos

Linux is a kernel. It has over 400 syscalls.

The userland, with which you are probably familiar, is the GNU part of GNU/Linux.

So if you want to blame somebody, blame Stinky Stallman, the baby hater.

http://edward.oconnor.cx/2005/04/rms

wendroidon [dead]

Even in 2005 it wasn't true and these days one can list a whole host of top organisations that use it: BBC, McLaren & Renault Formula 1 Grand Prix teams, the 3000 Munich Local Govt. Linux desktops, French National Police Force....

wendroidon Ants have a sense of number

hehe read that as "sense of humour"

wendroidon Unanswerable multiple choice question

Your rubric doesn't denote whether I can answer more than one item for the question therefore based on "you can only choose one" then 25% is the chance of being right, as the correct answer is still one of A,B,C,D.

wendroidon Ask HN: Want to help me root out some spammers?

Oh and running mail and DNS on the same box. I hope they know how to administer secure installations. It's not a risk I would be taking.

wendroidon Ask HN: Want to help me root out some spammers?

hmm, maybe it is in your DNS cache or utterly firewalled from the UK

    % whois discokenny.com
    ... snip ...
    NS1.NAMEDNSSERVERS.COM         38.106.76.52
    NS2.NAMEDNSSERVERS.COM         38.106.76.53

    % traceroute 38.106.76.52
    ...snip...
    4  vlan128.10ge.lon3.uk.griffin.com (217.79.112.98)  21.697 ms  19.927 ms  19.757 ms
    5  vl423.mpd01.lon01.atlas.cogentco.com (149.6.2.177)  28.760
    ...snip...
    9  te4-2.mpd01.ewr03.atlas.cogentco.com (154.54.1.30)  219.641 ms 
    10  38.104.188.146 (38.104.188.146)  97.547 ms  109.962 ms  96.691 ms
    11  38.106.76.52 (38.106.76.52)  100.634 ms  99.136 ms  99.728 ms

    % host discokenny.com 38.106.76.52
    ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
    % host discokenny.com 38.106.76.53
    ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

    # nmap -PN  38.106.76.52
    All 1715 scanned ports on 38.106.76.52 are filtered

wendroidon The havoc the XML purists wrought

(sorry I want to reply to the reply but there's no reply button for it)

Saying there are no s-expression parsers for non-Lisp is ridiculous.

This one's http://sexpr.sourceforge.net/ for C, it's been in sourceforge since 2002.

perhaps you prefer one in :

Javascript - http://planet.plt-scheme.org/package-source/dherman/javascri...

Perl - http://search.cpan.org/~nelhage/Data-SExpression-0.34/lib/Da...

Limbo - http://man.cat-v.org/inferno/6/sexprs

I shan't go on

wendroidon British Computer Society wants your votes on the greatest Information Pioneers

Can only be one, Claude Shannon

wendroidon Ask HN: Want to help me root out some spammers?

The only part of an email you can trust are the headers you or your ISP add when it arrives, which is going to be something like :

    Received: from farlep.net (unknown [89.105.247.162])
        by mail.techiferous.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id B1E30EC456E
        for <info@techiferous.net>; Fri, 14 May 2010 10:24:22 +0100 (BST)

everything else - especially the RCPT TO, MAIL FROM, From: and To: cannot be trusted (unless the message is signed etc.).

I administer the mail for 10k domains, finding 1 spammer and doing something about it is hard work.

Spamassassin, SPF, DKIM are all good tools against SPAM, I can recommend using them all in combination; 90% of all our incoming mail is refused / tagged in this way.

I would review your assumptions too :

    % host discokenny.com
    Host discokenny.com not found: 2(SERVFAIL)

If they tried to send it to me, I'd never even know.

wendroidon The havoc the XML purists wrought

I always use the same example as why I dislike XML so much

    <a>
        <b>hi</b>
    </a>

is not the same as

    <a><b>hi</b></a>

But Erik Naggum makes the argument against XML so much more fun

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/xml/s-exp_vs_XML

wendroidon How Linux Saved A Fast Food Giant.

Yes, I concur. There's all sorts of recovery methods available. Though it's nice to share war stories, I'd be a bit embarrassed to reveal the failure.

wendroidon How Linux Saved A Fast Food Giant.

TRWTF is that they didn't prepare for a catastophic failure such as this one. If you have your POS getting auto-updates then why haven't you considered the possibility that it will go wrong with "WILL NOT BOOT" as a consequence.

It should simply be a matter of phoning the manager and tell him :

"Don't worry, just insert the disk that says "RESCUE DISK" on it, reboot and it will roll back the machine to last week".

wendroidon Time Warner Cable tries to put brakes on massive piracy case

It costs us $500 per IP, thank you.

wendroidon What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

I administer the mail for a local ISP, 10k domains.

I think the idea of a Balkanised Facebook is a good one, esp. if was business related. Keeping in touch with customers and aligned groups in a relaxed place but without the threat of one of your personal friends posting pictures of what you did on your drunken weekend away.

wendroidon Even rally drivers have co-drivers.

In the three fastest formulas all the pilots are solo : Champ Cars, Formula 1, MotoGP.

Two person vehicles are available but they are for the experienced pilot to give the novice passenger a thrill.

So use logic, not metaphors.

wendroidon Car hackers can kill brakes, engine, and more

brick -> windshield works pretty good too

wendroidon Car hackers can kill brakes, engine, and more

When I sit in my car I can also apply the brakes, turn the heater on / off, switch to maximum volume, open the windows, heck I can even drive it into a tree !!

wendroidon "Great Web Site, Pixar" -- Seriously?

Just you wait for -1

wendroidon Symantec study misses the point over Linux spam

I'm still not convinced, I've run mail servers for over 10 years, one of the lessons you quickly learn is that if you leave one open you soon find your normal mail choked off by getting on a blacklist and if you're on a supposed domestic IP range, that's a hassle too.

Is the prevalence of fat pipe + linux +clueless admin > fat pipe + windows + clueless admin ?

wendroidon Spreadsheet of the glycemic indices of 4,000 foods as measured by the NCI [xls]

The references are in that document. They found that giving water and pellet feed increased body mass more than pellet feed alone.