News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

jdfreefly

Re:Man Accused of Making 97M Robocalls on Wednesday April 18, 2018 @01:15PM (#16869075)
I'm against the death penalty, but I'm willing to re-evaluate the position.
Re:Silicon Valley Struggles to Add Conservatives to Its Ranks on Friday December 01, 2017 @03:34PM (#15827143)
* Healthcare isn't a right. It's the product of someone's hardwork and as such, you have no "right" to it.

* Making college education free for US citizens is a terrible idea.

* We've taken the idea of "sanctuary cities" way too far.

* Gun control is a bad idea

These are a few conservative ideas that I think plenty of people would be afraid to express in a workplace that is disproportionately filled with ardent "liberals".

I would think Netflix's strong ties to AWS would be a non-starter for Apple.
Re:Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered on Thursday March 30, 2017 @03:47PM (#13998333)
Sorry, I can't really comment on our roadmap and our priorities within it.
Re:Voice Calls: Secure, Crystal-Clear, AI-Powered on Thursday March 30, 2017 @01:34PM (#13997283)
Have you tried Amazon Chime? We are ridiculously aware of the latency issue in high quality voip. We do not at the moment support user generated keys the way Telegram does but we do use TLS/DTLS encryption end to end for our VOIP streams.
Boyle's law - 1/2 the pressure, twice the volume.
Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2014) on Wednesday June 11, 2014 @02:10PM (#7879468)
Rails & Server developer at biba.com - San Francisco

We're building a unified communications platform that provides audio, video, screen sharing, text messaging and group messaging on Android, iOS, OSX and Windows. Competing against established companies like webex and new disruptors like UberConference.

The rails team provides the backend api that drives and enables the clients and media teams to deliver a smooth collaborative experience.

Great office in downtown San Francisco (2nd & Mission). Rails team is 5 people, supporting the demands of the 20 or so engineers on the other teams. Fast paced weekly release cycles with room to grow as an engineer.

We work in rails, but languages used elsewhere are C, Go, Java, C#, C++ and we love developers that can switch hit between teams when it's needed. We have a lot of our infrastructure built in AWS so experience there is a plus.

Meetings don't need to suck, and we're making that happen. Come join us. Contact [email protected] and put [Hacker News] in your subject to make sure I get it.

Room on the team for novices and experts.

No recruiters please.

Re:GoPro S-1 on Monday May 19, 2014 @06:38PM (#7770201)
Skydiver with 3 GoPros in the family. I started with the 1, got my wife a 2, and then I upgraded to a 3. The V1 is still alive and kicking, but the image quality was so much better on the 3 that I felt like I had to upgrade.

Also, we see new jumpers every year, and the first thing they want to do is start jumping with a GoPro (even if we don't want them to for safety reasons).

I think they're doing a good enough job with new features that people like me will keep upgrading for a while.

Re:Bitcoin rising star Autumn Radtke found dead in Singapore on Thursday March 06, 2014 @01:27AM (#7352232)
I think it's safe to say suicide is rarely anything but mental health related. There are triggers for sure, but people in good mental health don't generally face those triggers and put suicide on the table as a potential solution.
Re:Rhetoric of Cyber War Breeds Fear and More Cyber War on Friday April 12, 2013 @05:56PM (#5541315)
s/Cyber //
Re:Sometimes the bug isn't in your code, it's in the CPU on Monday March 05, 2012 @04:58PM (#3668546)
First off, I would say that is some pretty awesome work by this guy to chase this down. Including his work with the manufacturer to help them reliably recreate the issue.

Second, I would say that over the course of my 10 year career in managing developers, I've heard many, many times that the bug was in the kernel, or in the hardware, or in the complier, or in the other lower level thing the developer had no control over. This has been the correct diagnosis exactly once. If I had to guess, I would say about 5%.

Re:Zynga launches new Platform for social games on Thursday March 01, 2012 @04:26PM (#3654126)
no, you short on good news, buy on bad.
Re:Node.js isn't a silver bullet, but it's still a bullet. on Friday February 03, 2012 @02:35PM (#3548514)
Languages are tools. Good carpenters use the right tool for the right job. Can you use sand paper to sand a door down to fit the space? Sure...but there is a reason the plane was invented.
Care to elaborate?
If they don't like Zynga re-implementing their idea, they should keep adding features and innovating so their game is better.

You can't be against the patent game the big guys play but for protection against this kind of behavior.

edit to add: If I worked on the blatant copy, I wouldn't exactly be proud of that work.

Re:On Blackout day, teach someone how to stop SOPA/PIPA on Tuesday January 17, 2012 @12:08PM (#3475520)
A large part of my family is going to have no idea what is going on or why large parts of the web are dark. I imagine that will be true for many here.

It would be a good idea to have a form letter we can send to family and friends today that explains what is coming with links to places (like this one) where they can learn more.

Re:Poll: How much did you earn from your stock options during exit? on Wednesday December 07, 2011 @03:58PM (#3325982)
At the time I didn't realize how rare this was, but the company was sold for cash, all options were accelerated to vest at close and people were payed with a check.

There was a 50/50 chance we could have grown the company to be very cashflow positive (ie - we sold too soon) and there was a 50/50 chance we would have folded (ie - we sold at just the right time). We were bought for our novel technology and the engineering team was for the most part kept around and given good incentives to stay on for a bit.

That job and the acquisition kind of launched my career so I don't spend too much time worrying about whether the CEO or the board pulled the trigger too early.

Re:TSA Puts Off Safety Study of X-ray Body Scanners on Wednesday November 16, 2011 @08:41PM (#3246021)
"This won't hurt you, but it will protect you. I can't really explain to you why, but you should trust me."

I have never gone through one, and I don't intend to ever go through one. If I do it will be against my will.

Re:How Karma Should Be Measured on Wednesday August 24, 2011 @12:21AM (#2919443)
Agreed. I lurk...a lot.

I rarely open my mouth. There was a short period where I looked to snipe with some witty comment, but I quickly out grew that.

I've made one post and I am rarely finding things pertinent to the tribe that haven't already been posted, so instead I look for new interesting content here and only open my mouth when I think I have something valuable to add to an existing discussion.

I think something like the proposed solution would leave a user like me out in the cold. I am by no means saying this objection should kill the idea, you gotta break a few eggs, and if I happen to be one of them, so be it. It should be given some thought though.

Re:787 Dreamliner teaches Boeing costly lesson on outsourcing on Wednesday February 16, 2011 @12:12PM (#2227196)
I'll take planes I don't want to get in for 1000 Alex!

Seriously, think of software projects that took years longer than predicted and went way over budget. What kind of product was finally delivered? I don't want to be a seller of fear (I hate that about the US) but I won't be surprised to see serious issues with this thing when it enters service. Anyone here ever work on a 3 year long 1 year project? I have and its rare to see the attention to quality at the end of that 3 year death march that you see in the beginning.

Re:Ask HN: Who's Hiring? (February 2011 Edition) on Monday January 31, 2011 @12:14PM (#2162263)
Successfactors (Redwood City, CA)

Formerly cubetree.com. Recently acquired by SuccessFactors. We're no longer a startup but we still have that startup feel. We push code on a weekly basis and we've got a very strong, talented and well connected team.

We work in ROR with a mysql backend and CSS and Javascript on the front. We're building a secure and global social platform for businesses.

If you're interested send me your resume ([email protected]) and a brief description about what kind of a position you're looking for.

Re:What do YC Founders think about working at Big Companies? on Wednesday November 10, 2010 @01:52AM (#1889453)
Maybe these two things are related, but having just given my notice at a big corporate software company my experience is a bit different; It wasn't the bureaucracy that drove me away it was the mediocrity.

Day by day, I saw us doing things to account for the fact that we had a lot of mediocre developers working there. Worse yet, I felt myself sliding into mediocrity as well.

Perhaps it's a cycle. Once a dev team grows over a certain size you are guaranteed to have 25% of your dev staff being under performers and you start to come up with bureaucracy to account for that. The bureaucracy causes some of your A players to leave. You replace them with more mediocrity requiring even more bureaucracy causing even more of your A players to leave...and then one day you wake up and realize that you've spent 6 billion dollars and released vista on an unsuspecting public.

I'm sure big software companies are good at something, but I no longer care to find out what it is. I'm done with bureaucracy and the mediocrity...as soon as I finish this exit paperwork.

Re:Epic Win for betabrand. Skydiving Picture Over Burning Man. on Tuesday October 05, 2010 @07:12PM (#1761989)
Nice to see some skydiving love on the old hacker news. That's my friend Kurt and he jumps in Northern California.
Re:What, Me Exercise?: The Hacker Exercise Regime on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @06:34PM (#1453451)
Over the last two years I've gone from 220 to 190. The only change I've made was to start riding my bike to work. Granted, I am fortunate enough to live somewhere that makes that possible. Since making the change I now think that I won't move somewhere that I can't do that (at least most of the year), and I won't take a job that won't allow for it.

I have proven conclusively to myself that I am incapable of following a regimented exercise plan. I need to be forced/tricked into it. I don't think of the ride to work as exercise, I think of it as "going to work". In that way, I've managed to trick myself into about an hour and a half of exercise per day that I ride into work.

The downside is having to buy all new clothes, but the upside is I no longer need an inhaler to have sex.

The mind sees what it wants to see

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/407864-intreresting-reading-about-human-factors.html

Found this link on a skydiving website I frequent. It was given up as an example on how things can go horribly wrong when we become complacent in things like gear checks.I've always tried to draw parallels between what I learn in my hobbies and what I do in my professional life. Granted, the stakes are a bit higher in skydiving and they were certainly high in this story (the person involved...

( Read More... | 1 comment | 2 points | on HN )
I've worked on a couple of antispam solutions that did something akin to a more intelligent grey listing. Think quality of service meets IP reputation.

The problem with braindead simple things like postgrey is that they are incredibly easy to circumvent and the more attractive a target you are, the quicker the spammers will get around the solution. For instance, if one of the major providers (Yahoo, Hotmail, Verizon, Comcast) were to implement this, spammers would work around it within the hour. If you're low enough on their radar they won't care that they can't get email through to you but as soon as it starts to bother them enough to care, it stops being effective.

Re:California v Texas: America's future on Thursday July 09, 2009 @08:03PM (#696875)
(take this with a grain of salt...I'm one of the "earners")

You can't invent yourself out of a system of entitlements that has long since divorced itself from reality.

You have a (comparatively) small group of people making a large portion of the income with a much larger group of people making little to no income and demanding more and more help from the earners to support their philanthropic causes.

What makes it hard to swallow is that we see loads of money being thrown at things like education and helping the homeless but we see no improvement.

I'm all for helping educate people, and lending a hand to the less fortunate, but I expect a return on my investment. When you take this much from me and my return is children who can't read turning into violent criminals and the wonderful view of a homeless man crapping in a doorway on the way to work...I want a refund.

Re:Revenue / Browser on mibbit on Wednesday June 17, 2009 @01:22AM (#661408)
"as you sort of imagine IE users as being less tech savvy, more 'used to' clicking on adverts etc."

IE users don't click on adds because they've been conditioned to think long and hard before clicking on anything in IE.

In fact...evolutionary principles state that IE users who are willing to click on any add they see have computers that are so horribly infested with nasty bits, they are unable to do anything useful on the internet.

They've been effectively removed from the internet gene pool...if such a thing exists.

Re:How To Find An Idea For A New Startup on Friday June 12, 2009 @03:06PM (#655235)
LISTEN!

People love to bitch about what bothers them. If you know people that work at a big company, listen to them bitch about their problems. Get them honest...or drunk...or both.

Then, figure out how to make those problems go away with software. I don't know the first thing about what goes on in a doctor's office but I'll bet if got the nurses talking I could find a product that would help them to do a better job.

If you can take that software and prove an ROI for the people that would use it, you've got a product.

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