Hacker News Reader

xdon ZX Spectrum Next – Issue 2

I remember one of my friends would make us wait outside his bedroom whilst loading "Daley Thompson's Supertest" .. if his picture on the loading screen was to see us the load would fail. Good times.

xdon Older men charged more for using Tinder's premium service

I've only done a quick bit of research but can't seem to find a clear list of protected characteristics in Oz like we have in the UK, age being one of them.. I don't use tinder but just looking up their pricing model it's £3.99 for under 28yo and £14.99 for 28yo and over in the UK... how is this not a breech of the Equality Act 2010?

xdon Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

In the UK we have what's know as youth offending services, the main aim of which is to keep youths out of the courts and criminal system by utilising more appropriate methods of disposal for minor offences like drug possession.

xdon Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

I agree up until you say "few good people living in those neighbourhoods" it's the other way around .. you'd be amazed at how few people are generally responsible for crime in any given area.

xdon 25 Years of PHP

Rasmus Lerdorf look at the last 25 years of PHP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCZ5TJCBWM

Really interesting for anyone wondering what the thinking was behind function naming and other inconsistencies jump to: https://youtu.be/wCZ5TJCBWMg?t=987 and https://youtu.be/wCZ5TJCBWMg?t=1466

xdon Data and graphs showing millenials' bad economic odds

Don't let the downvotes get you down. Your understanding of the opportunities in front of you coupled with a positive-can-do attitude is what the world needs right now.

xdon A look at modern PHP

One of the great things about PHP is the development has always taken backward compatibility into mind.. so while true it's not the PHP you know, it still pretty much knows the PHP you knew.

xdon A look at modern PHP

Definitely, learning to solve problems is key.

xdon A look at modern PHP

When I started I struggled with browser inconsistencies. Over the years Javascript has come a long way and whilst I'm not 100% sold on node.js, I like the idea of using the same language across front and backend so likely would have gone down that road.

xdon A look at modern PHP

I've been using PHP professionally since ~1999. I remember ripping the Perl fanboys in the early 2000's until the foundations of PHP started to crumble with what are issues that stick in peoples minds today; so I do wonder if we brought it on ourselves sometimes. But PHP moved on carefully to preserve backwards compatibility. I still have a SaaS first developed back in 2005 on the latest version of PHP that's happily ticking over with the minimal of maintenance required - the code base is horrendous but that's because a developer I had with me at the time made a massive case for "software design patterns" that he crowbarred into every nook and cranny regardless of if it was required or not.

I've done things with PHP that would give people nightmares. It's a far more capable language [1/2] than most realise and with version 8 bringing us JIT things just keep getting better. Would I use PHP if I was starting out today? Unlikely, but I know PHP inside out and can wield it to my wicked ends with ease so won't be dropping it anytime soon.

[1] https://stitcher.io/blog/php-in-2019

[2] https://stitcher.io/blog/php-in-2020

xdon Coronavirus: Some scientists say UK virus strategy is 'risking lives'

This verbal diarrhea helps no one or anything to do with the situation, it's just more main stream media styled hysteria inducting fuckwittery. You are making utterly pointless arbitrary links .. it's embarrassing to see this as the top comment on a HN submission in these times.

xdon Coronavirus: Some scientists say UK virus strategy is 'risking lives'

Can you cite your experience in these matters and the data from which you have come to this conclusion.. or is this just your feelings from consuming to much main stream media?

But really, I'd love to hear your opinion on how the trajectory shoud be shifted.

xdon Coronavirus: Some scientists say UK virus strategy is 'risking lives'

I live in the UK and volunteer on the front line; current events won't stop me doing so irregardless of the risk to myself or my family. The comments here on the UK's response are disappointing to say the least and just the product of modern day hysteria. No one knows how this is going to play out, so stop pretending to have some great insight - just focus on protecting yourself, instead of spreading fear, if you are that way inclined and let the rest of us get on with handling the situation.

xdon New Evidence of Age Bias in Hiring, and a Push to Fight It

"(eg I’ll take an older more experienced surgeon over the new junior attending any day, but I’ll bet on the young person in a football match or tasks that require a lot of cognitive flexibility)"

You seem to be contradicting yourself there, why you would you think an older surgeon lacks cognitive flexibility?

xdon Teen shot herself with gunshot through mouth while hands cuffed behind back

Lot's of conspiracy theorist style comments being made so lets look at this objectively:

1, "inside the car where she was a passenger, "contorted" her body and shot herself through the mouth" So she was able to get her hand cuffed arms in front of herself which would allow for control of a weapon.

2, Where did the weapon come from? Maybe it was in the patrol car, maybe she had it on her person.

Anyway flagged as irrelevant to HN.

xdon Peak California

Ah, seeing as you are a mod (I assume) that makes sense so all I can do is apologize for my response. The quick look at your comment history looked to me like all you did was jump on people for having opinions.

I still support the comment pointing out the generalisation of smart people and believe it's also fair to give a frank opinion of such arrogant assumptions without being told your opinion isn't "substantive" enough.

xdon Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

Flawed how? This is a problem solving furum keep in mind.

xdon Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

You invest in bitcoin and lose your key or it's stolen.. how does that work out in the end?

Edit: don't get me wrong, I have crypto currency I've blown many a kw/h on. But you can not as a society rely on a currency with such flaws. Hell maybe insurance startups will popup to handle the issue but I'm not holding my breath.

xdon Accepting Bitcoin as a Small Business – 4 Years In, No Customers

It shows your customers that you are a forward thinking company.

Bit of a loaded assumption that; accepting bitcoin has nothing to do with being forward thinking.

Bitcoin appeals to human greed, that's it. The comments comparing this to Linux and TCP/IP is apples and oranges.

Why would I as a hard working member of my society with a house and kids invest money into a system completely unregulated. I'm all ears.

xdon No, you can't take open source code back

Sounds like he needs dealing with via law .. codes of conduct won't fix his behaviour.

xdon Build your own dial-up ISP in 2019

Please, one day, do a write up on this!

xdon Tarrare

You should look up the LA beast.

xdon My PHP Development Setup

I've struggled for years for a decent PHP IDE, I've used everything from nano, to vi to Eclipse, I even developed my own in PHP using wxwidgets (wxphp) which fell to the wayside when PHP7 came along and the support for wxwidgets was dropped. I used PHPStorm a couple of times but had various issues and finally I have settled on Atom[1] which in the almost 20years I've been developing in PHP must say is hands down the best IDE for PHP yet... and it's free.

[1] https://atom.io

xdon Type 2 diabetes: NHS to offer 800-calorie diet treatment

It's targeted at people with type 2 and are obese .. which is an ever increasing issue in the UK. The BBC don't like to rock the boat.

xdon RPG.net bans vocal Trump/Trump Administration support

There are two things that need to be understood, there is the discourse and then there is the way the discourse is conducted - which can very easily break the law. HN does not restrict discourse, just how it is conducted. What rpg.net has done is restrict discourse; instead of it's conduct. As I said, a dark road to follow.

xdon RPG.net bans vocal Trump/Trump Administration support

So who get's to define evil? It's incredibly dangerous game to restrict free speech in this way and force political alignment .. no one is forcing anyone to agree with anything anyone says, but to outright ban certain topics of discussion is a dark road to follow.

xdon Academic Torrents – Making 27TB of research data available

Weird to think this was what the internet/www was designed for from day one..

xdon Ask HN: Plenty of large sites down; Reddit.com, GNU.org, Discord, coincidence?

Well I guess the whole essence of HN is now lost... no room for some "random" startup dude to do anything that can be trusted.

xdon Riot Games Approach to Anti-Cheat

I've been out of gaming for some years but this reminds me of similar issues with PunkBuster. I'd spend hours pulling my hair out trying to figure out why I was being booted from games. The worst bit was, it didn't actually stop cheaters.

xdon A biologist who believes that trees speak a language we can learn to listen to

I'm not a big fan of humanity. We are pretty awful.

Self loathing of the human race needs to stop, there are an incredible number of hard working people making the world a better place one step at a time. Our impact on the world barely registers to past extinction level events. Humanity has just as much right to exist and be as any other species. If you don't like what we are doing, work to improve things.

Are you aware how many countless people have and do work to improve your quality of life, protect you, make sure you are fed and watered and provided with distractions like HN to complain about how awful we are.