News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

gregbair

* comments sometimes are posted, then disappear, then reappear a short time later.
Re:Standard model Higgs boson explained on Wednesday July 04, 2012 @08:03PM (#4201217)
Yeah, this doesn't really help.
Re:Stand up for Julian Assange before it's too late on Monday May 28, 2012 @09:13AM (#4033183)
Because he did not die while serving his country? That's what Memorial Day is.
Re:Stand up for Julian Assange before it's too late on Monday May 28, 2012 @09:10AM (#4033173)
Really? Do you really think a democratic country like the UK, Sweden, or the US would be so stupid as to kill such a lightning rod figure? We're not talking about backwater banana republics here, these are G20 countries with well-established legal systems.

From what I've read, he's not facing treatment any different from anyone else in this situation([1] and [2]).

It all appears to be by the book. This is not a railroading, as there have been much back and forth and waffling by the Swedish authorities whether there was a crime and whether to continue the investigation.

I think people see a conspiracy where there is none.

[1]http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/extradition-intro11/extr... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4ktning#H.C3.A4ktning_.2...

Re:CSS arrow please on Wednesday May 09, 2012 @04:09PM (#3950235)
IE8 as well.
It is surprising that as sole guardian of the girls, he would run the risk of them going into the state foster system just so he could get (illegal) lolz online. That's very irresponsible and I have no sympathy for him.
Those generally use FastCGI, which again, is not vulnerable.
Re:Dunning–Kruger effect on Friday May 04, 2012 @07:16AM (#3927893)
I've always observed that those "unskilled" (entry-level) developers that are humble and know that they don't know much learn much better than the cocky, "I've been programming for two years in VB and I'm a programming expert!" kind.
It's impressive, but would it be worth investing in on Kickstarter? No.
Re:Announcing the Windows 8 Editions on Monday April 16, 2012 @11:26PM (#3850895)
That's silly. Microsoft sees the ARM-based tablet future, and doesn't want to miss out. But, they don't want to piss Intel off too bad, since they work hand in hand to develop Windows' interaction with Intel chips in desktop/server environments.

Saying ARM will only run Office and Metro apps is like saying Macbooks have the huge advantage of being able to run all Mac software to date. iOS will only run iOS apps. That's the point.

Re:A Year with MongoDB on Friday April 13, 2012 @03:32PM (#3838467)
If you're going to have a (management|engineering|whatever) blog for your company/project, have a link to your company/project home page prominently somewhere on the blog.
Re:Released: Python 2.6.8, 2.7.3, 3.1.5, and 3.2.3 on Thursday April 12, 2012 @12:42AM (#3831068)
How does that explain the four "current" versions, then?
Re:Racist Twitter user jailed for 56 days on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @01:24PM (#3762679)
That makes no sense, I'm sure in the US we've had many more race riots and such (The Rodney King riots and the riots when MLK was assassinated come to mind), but we still offer freedom of speech to idiots.

Besides, from my cursory reading of the Brixton riots, the protestors were mad at police inaction, not hate speech.

Re:Racist Twitter user jailed for 56 days on Tuesday March 27, 2012 @01:17PM (#3762652)
>So there’s plenty to debate. But I don’t think anyone is saying that “hate speech” is just the expression of ideas. It’s the expression of ideas that is held to incite criminal and/or illegal behaviour.

Not always. Hate speech is just that - if you're dumb enough to go and do something stupid based on what someone else says, that's your fault, not his.

I'm not, I was simply saying that if all those things were legal, criminals (the cartels, not the users) would find something else illegal to peddle. These people look for an easy buck, and right now, that happens to be in illicit drugs. Take that profit away, and they'll just find something else.
Well, first of all, this article is complete BS with no corroboration or even references.

Secondly, even if there weren't a war on drugs, the gangsters would find something else to peddle, like people. Gangsters existed before prohibition and existed after, they just moved into different rackets.

Re:Bulletproof email infrastructure setup guide on Thursday March 15, 2012 @01:46PM (#3709578)
I'd be careful about using the term "bulletproof" in this context. Before reading the article, I assumed it was talking about sending spam without getting blacklisted.
Re:Bulletproof email infrastructure setup guide on Thursday March 15, 2012 @01:45PM (#3709572)
it's down for me for some reason, but here's the article in the gh repo: https://github.com/iafonov/iafonov.github.com/blob/master/bl...
Hyperbole much?
Re:Having fun with 404 on Monday March 05, 2012 @07:28PM (#3669115)
This made me laugh from that: Emo I don't know what you're looking for but it's no use. Might as well kill yourself.
But why do you single out Facebook? They offer a total of 15(!!!) ways to log in, including traditional and any form of OpenID.

It really does smell like link-bait by singling out two large sites.

Re:Comparing PHP, Perl, Python and Ruby on Tuesday February 28, 2012 @06:14PM (#3645518)
not true at all. Maybe if you're looking at old sites, but PHP5's been out for a long time now, and most of the code in circulation is made for 5.2 or higher. No serious MVC framework, for instance, will run on anything less than 5.2.
Re:Ask HN: Why do hackers work for suits? on Thursday February 23, 2012 @03:41PM (#3626648)
The difference is, hackers aren't inherently not suitable, but they're not inherently suitable either.

A good CEO can be a good CEO everywhere, but a good hacker isn't necessarily a good CEO anywhere.

Re:Ask HN: Why do hackers work for suits? on Thursday February 23, 2012 @03:38PM (#3626637)
You're telling me there's not one person in Google who's not an engineer/geek? Advertising people? Accountants? The CFO, Patrick Pichette, includes time at a management consulting firm and has an MA in "Philosophy, Politics, and Economics". I'm sure there's some geeks out there that do work for the financial people there.

Sounds like a suit to me. Don't get me wrong, there's lots of great suits out there, but that's my point, there's nothing wrong with working for competent suits.

Re:Ask HN: Why do hackers work for suits? on Thursday February 23, 2012 @03:22PM (#3626567)
It's because you'll eventually run into a suit if you go high enough in an established company. A company run by all tech people will not last as long nor be successful as one that at least has some semblance of a corporate structure.

The clue as a geek to find a place where your superiors are if not as technically adept as you are, at least trust you and your opinions and decisions.

Re:Every $1 spent on food stamps resulted in $1.73 in GDP growth on Thursday February 23, 2012 @10:34AM (#3625264)
I don't doubt that. The question becomes then, how much does that GDP growth increase federal revenues? If it doesn't increase it by $1 per $1.73 in GDP, it's still a net loss IMHO.

Also, the mere fact that food stamp recipients are prevalent and increasing signals a failure in our system.

Not saying we should get rid of food stamps, they're a necessary safety net, but that figure is misleading. How much should the government spend to increase GDP?

Is it valuable to have a high GDP and a high federal deficit? Or will that just end up in necessarily higher taxes down the road (so we don't end up like Greece) that will wipe out that GDP growth?

It's a sticky issue that can't be boiled down to a simple statement.

$1.73 in GDP growth != $1.73 in revenue to the government.

Re:How I sped up Beanstalk’s test suite by 5x on Tuesday February 21, 2012 @11:55AM (#3617119)
So, basically, the guy screws up in the first place by not using mock objects, then claims a 5x speedup because he switches to some weird gem that runs things in a transaction?

If he would've just used mocks in the first place, he wouldn't need to waste time trying to cut it down to five minutes.

Re:WordPress has left the building on Tuesday January 10, 2012 @02:22PM (#3448521)
Repeat after me:

Wordpress is not a CMS. It's a blogging engine.

Re:Reddit makes me hate atheists on Wednesday December 28, 2011 @02:39PM (#3401034)
I don't think it is. When I started reading it, I was thinking, oh, man, this is just someone else who can't take a joke, then I started thinking what if I was a woman whose views weren't being taken seriously simply because I was a woman?

How awful would that be.

But, then again, this happens so often in the IT world.