News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

HalcyonMuse

Re:The Fall of Hacking on Friday August 14, 2009 @08:09PM (#764127)
Wow, thanks for pointing that out - it was fascinating to read.
Re:The Fall of Hacking on Friday August 14, 2009 @07:53PM (#764112)
On the other hand, by dint of being so loud, they've given even the quiet hackers some well-deserved recognition. Intellectualism has too long been shunned in the main stream. It's finally become sort of (dare I say it?) cool to be a hacker.

Thus, their volume has contributed some social capital to us.

Re:The Fall of Hacking on Friday August 14, 2009 @07:50PM (#764107)
(t)he (r)eally (u)nusual (l)ights ... (y)ellows (a)nd (d)arks ... (u)ncommon (m)oods ... (b)rown (p)ackages (o)f (s)traw, (t)oo.

You missed it, but no harm done - it was not very interesting to begin with.

Re:The Fall of Hacking on Friday August 14, 2009 @07:43PM (#764091)
I'm surprised you didn't mention September 1993, the neverending September.

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

This isn't a big date technologically speaking, but as far as the social history of the internet goes, it was huge. I suspect it's one of the big reasons AOL was so demonized. (There are obviously many others.)

Re:The Fall of Hacking on Friday August 14, 2009 @02:33AM (#762502)
Surprised no one has posted this link yet: http://hackingisnotcracking.com/

It's only 100 days old on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=577224

I found the link memorable, anyway. I've been sharing it with my "liberal arts friends" when they talk about hacking as if the sum of its parts resulted in the OP's third paragraph.

Re:Ask HN: Techniques to go around IDS systems? on Thursday August 13, 2009 @02:11AM (#760124)
This seems like a great idea to me, as it could get you a job, and make your service much faster, in that you could build your notification system into the class scheduling system, which would mean you wouldn't need to poll their system every 3-7 minutes - it could be event-driven instead. (Dropping a class could trigger a check of who's watching the class and notify recipients that way.)

Writing in that line or two of code would also take care of the school's strange DoS concerns.

Of course, if profit is the goal, this isn't an option (though it doesn't look like you're trying to monetize this... kudos for that).

Also, this removes the exclusivity from classhunt (as any student would see this while browsing the schedule online). I'm sure you can make more inferences about this option. (Less social capital in the business world as you have nothing to point at and say "I did that," etc.)

Re:Ask HN: Who's Hiring... Students? on Thursday August 13, 2009 @01:55AM (#760108)
In my humble opinion, "very cool" is a huge understatement. Very relevant to my interests.
Re:Ask HN: What email client do you use? on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @08:56PM (#756974)
I, too, was surprised there weren't more. I use this; I like it quite a lot. The search feels quite superior to Thunderbird's native search.
Re:A new superbug found in Britain is major concern on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @08:49PM (#756958)
The article in the comment you replied on has a solid theory: it's hard to patent bacteriophages in their natural state, and tailoring bacteriophages to a specific person presents difficulties with the FDA. Therefore, obtaining profit through these methods is difficult.
Re:Ask HN: Advice for freshmen entering college on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @07:28PM (#756764)
I've heard good things about coffee shops, but I haven't tried them yet. According to a recent article on YC, this is a "third place." (The article was about MMOs.) Pubs and bars are also "third places."

Essentially, though, yes, there is no solution that rivals college. Often people say that their college years were the best years of their life - I wonder if this is a leading factor in that decision.

Re:Free login to any site on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @11:08AM (#755363)
It has a cleaner interface, but I have to click a button every time I find a login that doesn't work to get a new suggestion. On bugmenot, I don't have to wait for code.

On the other hand, this might somehow protect the site from getting scraped by a domain that doesn't want logins showing up there... maybe?

Re:WordPress 2.8.3 Remote admin reset password on Tuesday August 11, 2009 @11:03AM (#755342)
Seems kind of embarrassing, though, as far as bugs go...
Didn't chemistry.com start as a referral engine test by a PhD? (This may be heresy.)
Re:How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @09:08AM (#741130)
Very handy to know! Thank you.
Re:How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @09:06AM (#741127)
"A more sustainable fashion" relative to what? Carbohydrates, I'm guessing?
Re:How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @09:04AM (#741125)
Something important to note is that melatonin is not going to force you to sleep. You're not going to fall asleep staring at a computer screen if you take a dose of melatonin. It will make you sufficiently tired to sleep if you lie down and close your eyes for a bit, but it's not going to overcome the awareness-brainhack that is staring at bright light.
Re:How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @09:01AM (#741115)
For sufficiently high values of drowsiness, the difference can become negligible.
Re:Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @08:58AM (#741110)
A lot of people have left a comment complaining that they keep their money in a bank. This seems to be missing the point - do you also keep your fine china in a bank? How about that jewelry you like to wear on Friday nights? That copy of Adobe Photoshop? Laptop?

There are plenty of things that are exceedingly valuable that AREN'T cash that you may want to hide from potential burglars. The advice in this article is just as salient when it comes to hiding those things as it is to money. (Granted, larger objects can't always fit in the same places as bills, but that's really not the point.)

Re:Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @08:52AM (#741101)
If you hand over a wallet with a reasonable amount of cash in it that appears to be a used wallet, why are they going to decide it's a fake? How many people really carry one?
Re:Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @08:51AM (#741096)
Where do you keep your laptop when you're not using it? Also at the bank?
Re:Where to hide your money - advice from a burglar on Tuesday August 04, 2009 @08:47AM (#741089)
Fake financial accounts are pretty common among corporate companies for detecting database breaches as a sort of last line of defense (or awareness, anyway), aren't they?
Re:New Strain of HIV on Monday August 03, 2009 @01:04AM (#738653)
Do you have a better recommendation?
Re:Jerks actually reduce the risk of traffic jams on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @09:38PM (#731507)
Very cool - I did not know this measurement, though it seems painfully obvious now that you've pointed it out. I will start using the lane dashes; thanks.
Re:Jerks actually reduce the risk of traffic jams on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @09:36PM (#731503)
Definitely the most amusing journalism piece I've read lately.

It also didn't smack of that whole "I don't know what I'm talking about" thing that plagues modern journalism.

"The safe party drug"? I haven't read anything about modafinil being used as a "party drug" in the sense that cocaine or mdma might be used.

This seems like a very poorly written article... and there were no links to the research (or no obvious links).

Re:AH: Did applications ruin Facebook? on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @05:37AM (#727658)
I hate the notifications, too, so I've set my feed to show status updates only by default. Occasionally, I'll switch to the links or notes view to see what's trickling around, since I usually miss these in news feed mode anyway.
Re:The new Yahoo homepage on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @05:34AM (#727653)
I interned at Yahoo for two summers, but I worked in Break/Fix for the search clusters. I was no where near marketing.

As far as I could tell, non-tech-savvy users are their target audience... and there are way more of these people than you might think. Plus, Yahoo's finance property is pretty good.

Funny that you mention netvibes - I use it, but I use it as a glorified post-it note rather than a portal.

Re:Recycling is B.S. [video] on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @05:28AM (#727647)
On the other hand, there are plenty of places that do ship their garbage ridiculous distances. I have no citations, but I think you could find examples with Google. I seem to recall a few instances involving France and Siberia (separately, I think).
Re:Is Google Wave the beginning of the end of email? on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @05:24AM (#727645)
No. E-mail is too fundamental.
Re:Ask HN: What do you drink? on Tuesday July 28, 2009 @05:17AM (#727637)
I was under the vague impression that a little bit of sodium was necessary for keeping the proper h2o equilibrium in the bloodstream.

I don't go out of my way to ingest sodium (I probably get plenty in my diet) and I don't know whether sodium helps or hinders hydration.

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