News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

cgusto

Re:Vine will be discontinuing the mobile app on Thursday October 27, 2016 @03:48PM (#12809110)
I think this is the wrong way to look at Vine's impact.

If you search Youtube for monthly Vine compilations (ie Oct 2016 Vines) these videos have millions of views - enough to make some of these Vine stars into minor celebrities (look up King Bach).

Vine pretty much started the short form video craze.

Twitter missed the opportunity to make it so people visited the Vine app to view these compilations, which would have maybe encouraged the creators to only make content for Vine.

They dropped the ball, and now the top creators all use their competitors.

Re:Amazon’s Ambition to Compete Directly with UPS and FedEx on Wednesday September 28, 2016 @04:22PM (#12601022)
I'm also a Prime addict, and have noticed vast improvements in the past year or so with Amazon Logistics (Bay Area).

Just like you mentioned, it was really bad at first. Packages would routinely arrive late, wrong address, etc. I live in a gated apartment complex and they would always leave the package with the leasing office instead of using the code I provided (UPS, FedEx, would always leave at my door).

Now it is indistinguishable from other carriers, in that all my packages arrive on time, at my door, without any problems.

The only thing I don't like is PrimeNow, which uses 'part time' carriers like Postmates, and they ALWAYS get confused by my apartment complex - so I stopped using it.

Re:Loophole Ends the Privacy of Social Security Numbers on Thursday September 15, 2016 @04:31PM (#12509580)
Wasn't even that long ago. In 2006, the CSU I was at still used your SSN for everything - including logging into the computers. This particular school has since changed this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the practice is still used elsewhere.
Re:AT&T, Apple, Google to work on 'robocall' crackdown on Monday August 22, 2016 @05:42PM (#12339664)
I have noticed an uptick as well (upto 3-4 calls a day). If it's not a number I recognize, I just silence the ringer and let it go to VM. And then block the number.
Re:Ask HN: Do you still play with VR actively? on Wednesday August 03, 2016 @04:50PM (#12221401)
I play it a few times a week. Project Cars and DiRT are what I spend most of the time with. I'm also enjoying Chronos right now, which is more of a RPG.

Echoing what a few others have said, there are not a lot of great AAA titles for either the Vive or Rift. This will change over time.

Are you excited about VR, or are you looking somewhere just to make money? If you're into this, then yes, I would recommend you learn about developing for VR. No one I know has tried the Rift and just shrugged their shoulders and said "that's kinda cool'. Everyone, even my most techie friends, drop their jaws and lose their minds. That's exciting.

This is a brand new field with tons of potential. That being said, I don't think it will be a very lucrative market to indie devs for sometime.

Re:Google Self-Driving Car Project on Friday June 05, 2015 @03:41PM (#9667646)
IMHO, fully autonomous cars for the general public are at least 10+ years away.

What I'm excited about is how we will soon see more and more autonomous 'features' i.e. lane changing, smarter adaptive cruise control and parking lot mode.

Re:Apple Gears Up to Challenge Tesla in Electric Cars on Friday February 13, 2015 @07:54PM (#9048226)
Wow, this rumor is out of control.

I guarantee they are not working on a complete vehicle. Probably battery systems and some type of autonomous control, if anything.

I think this is just a moonshot program to attract engineering talent.

Re:IBM Plunges as CEO Abandons 2015 Earnings Forecast on Monday October 20, 2014 @03:43PM (#8484070)
Agreed. The stock dropped around 7.5%. Although significant, it is not "tumbling".
Re:Submarine Cable Map 2014 on Friday August 29, 2014 @06:36PM (#8244821)
Yes, it is scary when you realize how susceptible some of this infrastructure is.

Reminds me of an instance in 2009. I was working in Santa Cruz, CA. I was configuring some of our servers remotely, when suddenly I lost internet connection. The whole office was out. VoIP was down - no signal on my cell phone as well. I went to the front desk and tried the land line. No dial tone.

This was weird.

I saw a few people from other offices milling about the courtyard. I went outside. They were all experiencing the same thing. A few of us went to Starbucks. Couldn’t buy coffee because their registers were down.

At this point, people were starting to leave their offices in droves. Santa Cruz PD actually began to have a few officers walk around the area, since no one could make phone calls.

The only thing that worked was Verizon cell phones. These were being passed around so people could make calls (data did not work however).

All in all, this lasted about 6 hours.

This was caused by a single frustrated former ATT employee. He just went in and clipped some fiber lines and left.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2344762,00.asp

Re:I got shipped to California to date tech guys on Thursday May 29, 2014 @08:01PM (#7819378)
There are tons of bat shit crazy ideas everywhere. Despite all the sensationalized stories, SF is a great area, filled with great people (for the most part).

But you will be paying nearly $2k/mo to rent a bedroom; that much is true :-p

Is anyone else curious on what data setup the NSA is using? Do they have some crazy non relational ZFS setup that makes Hadoop seem like a kid's toy? Or is it just a bunch of off the shelf enterprise SQL servers duct taped together?

My bet is on the latter.

Unless I'm mistaken, every cell phone maker has only a standard one-year warranty. I agree with all the points you made. I just don't think a longer warranty would have helped them.
Re:You Can’t Quit, I Dare You on Monday March 25, 2013 @09:48PM (#5440934)
So you quit using Google, but you advocate products by Apple and MS? Clearly those companies don't want to monetize your data. Ever.
Re:AmazonBitcoins shut down by Amazon on Tuesday March 19, 2013 @07:45PM (#5404471)
Had their website been called buywithbitcoin.com or something similar, they would probably still be around.

They used Amazon's name/logo. What did they think was going to happen?

Re:Andrew Mason's statement about being fired as Groupon CEO on Thursday February 28, 2013 @09:01PM (#5302415)
+1 for the Battletoads reference. I probably broke a couple NES controllers out of frustration back in the day.

As morbid as it sounds, it is refreshing to see such a painfully honest email. I wish Groupon and Andy the best.

Re:Tech press misses Google/Amazon name grab on Friday June 15, 2012 @07:49PM (#4119316)
Agreed. This will just add unnecessary confusion for a lot of people. Might look good for marketing, but I bet most of these will just redirect to the '.com' site.
Re:Yahoo announces 2,000 job cuts on Wednesday April 04, 2012 @06:49PM (#3800275)
Sorry you have to go through this, but you shouldn't have any trouble landing a job.

Along with the other great companies listed above, Facebook is hiring as well. I work with infra systems - if large hadoop clusters, compilers, or kernel work tickle your fancy, feel free to send me an email: cael2 [at] fb.com.