News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

mcastner

I realize this is an opinion piece but it was posted on HN so I wanted people to see both sides of the story.
Seems like this is written by a conspiracy nut. Facts are wrong (Michael Mann isn't a professor at UPenn) and the story is one-sided. There's no mention of what else Tallbloke wrote on his blog or the fact that the equipment seizure was due to the email hacking that occurred (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-police-seize-e...), not because of any comments.

Here's the opposite side of the story with its own biases: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2011/12/computers_of_crimi...

Re:Reducing runtime memory in Windows 8 on Friday October 07, 2011 @02:06PM (#3085133)
Oh I should've read the whole article first...apparently reduced memory usage leads to longer battery life which is a worthy goal.
Re:Reducing runtime memory in Windows 8 on Friday October 07, 2011 @02:04PM (#3085124)
I'm starting to believe that memory usage may be a red herring in modern operating systems. Memory prices have been crashing, every day on Slickdeals I see 8GB of notebook (and netbook) memory for less than $30. Is this a problem worth solving anymore?
Re:Improvements in Windows Explorer - Building Windows 8 on Monday August 29, 2011 @11:55AM (#2937571)
The copy path button is only necessary because Explorer hides the real path with the fake address bar they use now. I'd bet that mostly power users need to copy the path anyways, and they'll be able to figure out how to click on the address bar and Ctrl+C.
Re:Improvements in Windows Explorer - Building Windows 8 on Monday August 29, 2011 @11:41AM (#2937521)
The background information and analysis seemed so reasonable, then they threw that ribbon on there and it looks like a confusing mess.
Re:Google Calendar has a new look on Thursday June 30, 2011 @03:45PM (#2715470)
I'm starting to appreciate the black bar more and more. At first I was skeptical, but it fits their new designs pretty well.
You can see the new navbar in action on Google+: https://plus.google.com/

I preferred the lighter theme personally…

If you look at the removal process in the support document from Apple it doesn't really look all that bad: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4650

Just kill the process and delete the .app file. Compared to Windows malware this is a breeze to remove.

Re:The Node Beginner Book on Tuesday April 19, 2011 @11:49AM (#2462957)
I definitely noticed this weird lack of information on Express. I've found the best thing is to check out the examples from Express' own github: https://github.com/visionmedia/express/tree/master/examples

That's useful to see how something is done, but not why or the different options available. For that, there's still a definite lack of a clear guide. The guide on the Express website reads more like an API reference and doesn't go into detail on how to use the different features, which I think would be very helpful.

Right now I'm working on my first application using Express. Over the Summer, when I have free time, I'd like to write a tutorial series for Express and put it up on github so it can be updated as Express evolves. That's really one of the main issues right now, all this stuff is changing so rapidly that a tutorial can become outdated in a few months.

Re:Dressed for Success on Sunday April 17, 2011 @03:26PM (#2456771)
I've heard good things about IndoChino: http://www.indochino.com/ but I haven't tried them myself.
Re:IE10 platform preview available - with native HTML 5 on Tuesday April 12, 2011 @01:09PM (#2438091)
This reads like a political attack ad. So many half-truths in here.

Just an example: they claim that Chrome "dropped support on Windows XP for functionality that [IE Team] think is fundamental to performance." Linking to this blog post: http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2011/02/dev-channel...

The reality is that Chrome disabled it temporarily on the dev channel due to crashing, and in fact brought it back for v11: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=72975

Microsoft doesn't even acknowledge the fact that they don't even have a version of IE10, or even 9, for Windows XP!

Is this really what the browser wars are going to come to? Lies and marketing? I thought we were over that.

Re:"Why I'm Dropping Posterous This Weekend" on Sunday March 06, 2011 @09:32PM (#2295753)
Yup, that's why I picked Tumblr over Posterous. The toolbar is just ugly, I'd be fine if I could make it that 2D tag they used to have, but I couldn't get it to work.

Tumblr is definitely less stable, but my blog isn't that important anyways.

Re:Stylus, the Revolutionary Successor to CSS on Saturday March 05, 2011 @03:22PM (#2292277)
I think this article is not a great introduction to Stylus, it's a better idea to check out their Github page: http://learnboost.github.com/stylus/

While you can write functions to create abbreviated versions of CSS properties, it's entirely optional.

Also I actually prefer Stylus' mixins and functions to SASS'.

Re:Cloud9 IDE - Your code anytime, anywhere on Tuesday March 01, 2011 @11:11PM (#2278411)
I was just thinking about something like this a few weeks ago, mostly the Git integration being a killer feature. Good luck!
They could also make the darned "Reply" link easier to find! It takes me way too long to find it every time I want to reply to a message.
Is that a Vonnegut reference in the title?
Re:A hacker's easy dinner: Vegetarian Tacos on Friday August 14, 2009 @02:01AM (#762472)
I agree with the cumin sentiment. I'm also a big fan of cutting up any leftover meats: sausage, bacon, cooked ham/steak; and throwing it in a pan with some onions and leftover veggies. Then, after they're all heated up and the onions are soft, I throw in a bunch of scrambled eggs and cheese and serve it on a tortilla with salsa. It's not necessarily the healthiest meal ever but you can do the same with tofu instead of meat to make it a little less caloric. In that case you'll probably need a little oil or butter though.
This is neat but I'd like to be able to try it out before having to register. The register popup should be when you wanna save or print the mockup maybe.
Re:Ask HN: Review Our Club's Site on Friday July 31, 2009 @01:37PM (#734906)
Wow thanks for the feedback. We do have a little content bloat right now due to some over-eager Liberal Arts majors writing for us. We'll see what pages can be eliminated over time. The original idea for the page when you click on a section heading was to have a list of pages underneath but somehow that changed during the course of development.

The reason for the drop-downs isn't quite obvious right now but we run some big games through the site and we want to make all the functions available with minimal clicking from every page.

The reason the image cycle and welcome text on the front page is so big is because we really want to emphasize "This is what we do" and "This is where to join" on the front page. The news and upcoming events and everything is below the fold because it's not as important for prospective members.

Support section is kind of redundant, I agree.

We'll keep working and refining though, thanks!

Re:Ask HN: Review Our Club's Site on Friday July 31, 2009 @01:27PM (#734876)
We're worried about all of our features working on IE6 and it's just easier on us if we don't support it at all. I'll try to go ahead and make the warning dismissible though.

Also, Penn State won't let you connect to their network if you have IE6 (in their ToS) and overall our percentage of IE users is around 15%, IE6 users is exactly 0.

Ask HN: Review Our Club's Site

All summer our small team of 3 people has been working on the website for a small student organization at Pennsylvania State University. Our club hosts battles with Nerf guns, scavenger hunts, and other outdoor games. After 3 months of hard work we've finally finished our site and we're all curious what the experienced hackers here at HN think of it!Our site is: http://urbangaming.orgSome tech...

( Read More... | 8 comments | 6 points | on HN )
Re:GUI Icon Sets for Web Designers on Wednesday July 29, 2009 @12:47PM (#730361)
I like Fugue a lot as well. It's also CC-By Attribution which is a very easy license to work with.
I've never been a big fan of these sort of hacks. Conditional comments work fine and I don't mind the extra request on the part of the users who choose to use an inferior browser. I'd rather have my IE users load more data than have everyone load more data.
Re:Ask HN: What website project are you working on? on Friday July 24, 2009 @01:45AM (#721051)
Working on the site for the club I'm in at school: http://urbangaming.org

Not much info on there but the new site will be up in exactly 1 week so stay tuned. You can check out our Facebook page for more info: http://facebook.com/urbangaming

Funny story related to this article: I'd never heard their music before so I googled them, went to their official website, and checked out their videos section for some music videos. The music videos they link to on YouTube were all taken down due to Warner Music Group filing a copyright claim…against one of their own artists.

Oh, and I still don't know any of their music and I'm not motivated enough to look elsewhere to find it, so WMG kinda just lost a potential sale there.

Re:Ask HN: Rate my app: PNGSquash on Saturday June 27, 2009 @05:44PM (#677218)
I compared ImageOptim and PNGSquash and PNGSquash made both files about 4KB smaller than ImageOptim did, both were using the highest optimization settings for smallest file size. I had PNGOUT installed too.

I like PNGSquash and I think I'll use it to optimize all my images. The only features I'd like included that ImageOptim does have are the ability to drag a folder into the window, so I don't have to pick out the pngs from a project I'm working on, and an auto-updater. Growl support would be nice as well.

For an auto-updater framework I like Sparkle a lot: http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org/

Also, I agree with weaksauce's comment, you could just have the user download and install pngout separately, just tell them to drag it to /usr/bin and look in that folder for it, that's the usual location for it anyways. ImageOptim does this already.

Re:JamLegend is hiring interns this summer on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @02:56PM (#551447)
They seemed to be about as in sync as any other game of this genre. Your eeepc might be part of the sync issues.
Re:JamLegend is hiring interns this summer on Tuesday April 07, 2009 @02:55PM (#551444)
That's really cool, I'd never heard of either of these sites before. Too bad I'm on the east coast or I would definitely apply for this internship.

Now I'm looking for internships closer to home on SnapTalent.