Hacker News Reader

zainon Another Blanket Denial By Last.fm

Let's assume last.fm did indeed provide information to the RIAA. Won't we find out the truth once the RIAA starts suing people based on that information? Surely last.fm would plan for something like that instead of issuing denials.

This leads to one of two conclusions: either (1) last.fm isn't guilty, or (2) the RIAA doesn't intend to act upon the information they got. If (2), why did they request the information in the first place?

Personally, I'm inclined to believe the TechCrunch story is nothing more than linkbait, and last.fm is trying to give them as little attention as possible.

zainon Silicon Valley/Entrepreneur/Hacker Poker Night: Wed 5/19, 8:00, Mountain View

How come you switched to using eventbrite instead of anyvite like last time?

zainon Poll: How many HN readers are working on a Startup?

Approximately the same number as when this question was recently asked: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=532814

zainon Ask HN: Building a simple utility site to build pre-launch traffic?

A bookmarklet for Password Chart would be cool.

zainon Ask HN: After SICP, what next?

Here's the second edition from 2008: http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steven-Skiena/...

zainon EuroDjangoCon Presentations

Are there going to be videos of these presentations?

zainon [dead]

It looks like the article was taken down. I'm getting the following message.

  The article requested can not be found! Please refresh your browser or go back.

The story was covered on Slashdot though, so you can get a summary here: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/08/1438221&...

zainon Ask HN: Merchant account and payment gateway for subscription-based web apps?

Pedantry aside, thanks for the links.

No pedantry intended, friend. Every single one of those threads is in my bookmarks folder because each of them provide a variety of options. And searchyc.com is always nice to bring up since the primary way new people find out about it is by reading about it in a comment.

zainon Ask HN: Merchant account and payment gateway for subscription-based web apps?

Feel free to look at any of the plethora of past threads about this.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526517

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=200920

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175186

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=344030

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389692

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198502

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=470128

Also, you might find the site http://searchyc.com/ useful for finding answers to these and other common questions.

zainon Why the 5 Star Rating System Isn't Suited to Local Reviews

Is everyone looking at a different Yelp than I am? I see the same ratings distribution as Amazon on Yelp, as well as a "trend" graph that tells you how the ratings changed over time.

Here's a screenshot:

http://img.skitch.com/20090504-n2jsr44y1py38pbd5wgcqs5uyn.pn...

zainon Facebook pays 150 employees ~$50K to keep the site clean

"Since the site tracks the geographic locations of log-ons..."

Wow, that's scary. Did you know that Facebook has a database of every location you've logged in from?

zainon Poll: Male or female?

What exactly is "forward thinking" about funding startups based on biological traits of the founders instead of their skills, aptitudes, and achievements?

zainon [dead]

It was done to get around the dupe filter: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=580816

zainon Screencast: A CSS Framework that is actually a framework.

Hour long video behind the submitted link. Some bite-sized info about Compass for those who don't want to watch the whole thing:

With Compass, you write your styles in Sass which is compiled to CSS. This helps with code reuse and general cleanliness, not unlike the tool demo'd in the Reddit keynote at PyCon.

You can use Compass to create CSS styles on top of a framework like BluePrint or YUI, which is why Compass calls itself a meta-framework.

Website: http://compass-style.org/

More Info: http://wiki.github.com/chriseppstein/compass

zainon Ask HN:Plausibly deniable email

Look into the protocol for OTR:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging

It is used for plausible deniability in a secure IM conversation, but I don't see any reason it couldn't be applied to email.

zainon Discuss with HN: salary confidentiality

If she is doing the same work as me, why is she making $5k more than me?

The problem here is unfair payment; by not disclosing salaries, the problem is hidden, but it doesn't go away.

zainon The $23/month iPhone

Did you actually RTFA? Or, even the article you posted? From your link: "The unlocking process is still a bit complicated and requires SSH on your iPhone"

So you still have to jailbreak your phone. And really, this article is only tangentially related to jailbreaking. It's about using the iPhone with Skype and a GoPhone plan.

zainon Your eyes suck at blue (neat image compression trick)

Blueberries?

zainon Is there a good free tool on the mac for capturing video from the screen?

Sorry -- I missed that.

In that case, the program you're looking for is Jing: http://www.jingproject.com/

However, if you're distributing your screencast to the web (or even more than just one or two techies), Screenflow is worth every penny.

zainon Is there a good free tool on the mac for capturing video from the screen?

Screenflow: http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/overview.htm

It has won a number of Apple design awards and I've found it to be excellent all around.

zainon W3C web site redesign in beta – send in your feedback

If you guys are anything like me, here's a link to the next page you'll be going to...

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fbeta.w3.org%2...

Yeah, the new design does indeed validate.

zainon Qimo: A desktop OS designed for children

What makes you say that? Looks like PHP/Apache running on Linux: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.qu...

zainon Introducing the Boxee API

The iPhone actually auto-capitalizes most stuff for you, so I find myself typing better english on an iPhone than on my normal keyboard :)

zainon Apple’s iPhone App Refund Policies Could Bankrupt Developers

the reason Apple has refunds is to zealously protect their "All interactions with Apple should be mindblowingly awesome for our customers" reputation

Funny you say that, because you can't return Apple hardware without incurring a 10% restocking fee.

(source: http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/salespolicies.html#...)

zainon Apple’s iPhone App Refund Policies Could Bankrupt Developers

Just to note, this policy isn't new. It has been in place since the SDK came out. So far, it has been neither enforced by Apple nor abused by customers.

Source: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/iPhone+news/news.asp?c...

zainon [dead]

This has been debunked. It actually jailbreaks your phone.

http://i.engadget.com/2009/03/24/debunk-jailbroken-apps-on-a...

zainon Ask HN: how do you process payments?

I'll second this. Paypal is a huge hassle to develop for. Their sandbox goes down very regularly, and it's one of the most annoying things, because you don't know if it is a bug with your code or if it is Paypal.

They are the biggest, most popular, and probably most trusted; but if you're going on technical merits alone, Paypal is one of the worst.

zainon Review: New iPod Shuffle is the first invisible MP3 player

There is a separately purchasable dongle that has the controls and lets you plug in any headphones you like.

zainon Girl wants to work for Twitter. Creates site.

Someone linked her to this comment thread and she responded on her twitter:

Haha, they aren't very nice over there. Enthusiasm apparently is a threat to the bitter.

http://twitter.com/jamievaron/status/1307535902