shajith

I don't use Facebook as much, but I follow a similar strategy for other things, like GMail. Instead of a different browser, I set up a 'site-specific-browser', like Fluid[1], for each such website.

Aside from the benefit of not staying logged in to your email/FB/Twitter when browsing random websites[2], this also lets you treat constantly open web-sites as legitimate apps in your switcher, frees up those permanent tabs on your browser, and provides for features like an unread count badge on the application icon when you switch apps.

[1] http://fluidapp.com/

[2] Obviously, this means that features that rely on you being constantly logged in to FB/Twitter (those Like and Tweet buttons) won't work.

Does anyone know if the "Message from Earth"[1] sent towards Gliese 581c can conceivably be received at this new planet?

If there is intelligent life in that system capable of detecting and transmitting signals of that form (NOT assuming that by any stretch), a response is due in ~2049.

While we're on that topic, wouldn't such a hypothetical civilization already have discovered other electromagnetic radiation from our system by now? Or does it have to be a focused high-power signal as this one?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Message_From_Earth

Note that this specific fix doesn't need you to open/monkey-patch ActiveRecord::Base, you can just do ActiveRecord::Base.send(:attr_accessible, nil) in an initializer.

Thanks for the web-app security pointers in the post: the RoR security guide[1] and the OWASP Top 10[2]. These should be required reading for anyone making a public web application.

[1] http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html (Well-written, like the other guides. Totally worth reading fully).

[2] http://www.owasp.org/index.php/Top_10_2010-Main (Open Web Application Security Project's top application security risks for 2010)

Here's something that illustrates the sort of thing you can do in this game: a 12x5 LED display built in-game[1]. Reminded me of the Dwarf Fortress Computer[2].

[1] http://www.minecraftforum.net/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=24213

[2] http://www.geekosystem.com/dwarf-fortress-turing-machine-com...

I agree with everyone else: try to get your old job back. Throw away the 'it will look ridiculous' idea - none of this will matter in a couple of months.

If they were disappointed to see you go, they will welcome your return.

As another person who has had a similar experience before, and whose immigration status is tied to employment, I can imagine how distressing this must be[1]. I hope the general outpouring of support on HN eases your mind a bit! Think it through clearly and move on.

1: In fact, I'm pretty much in the same situation as you were: accepted an offer with a bay area company and undergoing the visa process, and this post does give me pause. I'll respect your decision to not name names though.

You move your finger over the stock chart, and it reads out the X and Y values to you. Eg: "May 28 10, 256.17" (i.e, on May 28 2010, the stock was trading at $256.17). You can scan the chart with your finger to get the whole thing described.

That's quite a touching account. On a whim, I enabled VoiceOver on my iPhone (I'm sighted), and I must say I'm quite blown away.

I recommend you try it if you aren't aware of this feature. It's easily enabled in the system Settings app (look for Accessibility). Just remember that when VoiceOver is active icons/buttons will require double taps instead of single taps, and you need to use triple-touch to scroll in menus or between home screens.

I'm sure that as a sighted person with no context I'm completely missing any nuance in the way this feature is implemented, but even handicapped so, it is quite impressive.

"In reality, for a vaccine to be effective, the portion of the population that needs to receive that vaccination is significantly less than 100%."

I'm curious to know if there have been results that show what sort of percentages of vaccination are needed to be safe from specific diseases. I presume this will vary between diseases as well as demographics.

Part of me wants to say 'Cut them some slack, they just put their work-in-progress code on Github like they promised!'[1], but I understand that most of the criticism stems from caring enough about the project to want it to succeed. At this point, they should be thankful for the attention and the guidance more experienced people are providing for free.

The question is, do the problems in the code establish beyond doubt that this team is not capable of delivering a final product that will see some level of acceptance? I really hope not.

1: I'm assuming that - I would hope they didn't think this was release-ready material.

Well, I hope they do, and soon. Been reading the code, and it's.. not good :(

I think part of it's that the README is SO long. They should really move the installation documentation into a different github page or something.

There is now a security email ID you can contact: exploits@joindiaspora.com

It's been added to the README at http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora

You should try giving feedback about the query, Gabriel's usually prompt in responding to issues.

Regarding decompiling Flash-to-iPhone apps, CS5's iPhone app packaging feature produces binary executables[1], not embedded SWFs - so they should not be vulnerable to decompiling.

1: From Adobe's FAQ at http://bit.ly/cxpzFe

"Is the Flash Player runtime bundled along with the application?

No. iPhone applications built with Flash Platform tools are compiled into standard, native iPhone executable packages and there is no runtime interpreter that could be used to run Flash byte-code within the application."

Got it, thanks. I finally got around to learning JSONP.

JQuery's $.ajax API handles it automatically for you too (if you use the 'jsonp' or 'script' dataType options), which is very nice.

I'm curious: how do you get around crossdomain XHR limitations using <script> tags? Thanks!

One great starting point is ActiveSupport, specifically the core extensions:

http://github.com/rails/rails/tree/master/activesupport/lib/...

Though this library isn't really Rails-specific, it has a bunch of self-contained ruby files, good to learn about the style of doing things elsewhere in rails.

Examples: Array#uniq_by, String#pluralize, Numeric#hours, etc.

The Rails router, while considerably more complex than ActiveSupport, is also a self-contained chunk of code you can read: http://github.com/rails/rails/tree/master/actionpack/lib/act...

Also: When reading Rails code (or any ruby library's code, for that matter), I've found that reading the specs first is very effective.

Maybe McAfee has a patent portfolio that Intel fancies some use for?

They have awesome swag too, I love my EFF cap:

https://secure.eff.org/site/Ecommerce/267350841?VIEW_PRODUCT...

Re: the timebox. I noticed that the 'strongness' of it makes the whole page jump visually when you update them en masse at each poll. I don't know what to think about the time-ago being updated live, too, while we're on it. Maybe some kind of subtle way to change them will help?

Re: mix of stories. I'm currently staying away from Techmeme (had to disable my no iPhone/Android news user script to actually compare the headlines), so my input there is of marginal use. I'll say that the headlines didn't put me off - there was good diversity of content instead of half the page being filled with hoopla about cellphones. I learned about Real Time Farms[1] from a lifehacker story via the Kitchn blog, so that's something!

1: http://lifehacker.com/5589590/real-time-farms-is-a-user+supp...

Great clean type! Love the non-fussy auto-loading at the bottom of the page too (is there some kind of fade-in happening there?).

I don't know if the italicized time of the post at the beginning of each blurb is useful, it feels like cruft when I am looking for information (I just skip over that piece). It also loses meaning lower down in the list (6:45PM 3 days ago? Do I care?)

Also: Have you played with de-emphasizing the time box on the left of each post somehow? Like, make it use muted colors unless :hovered?

I'd kill for an RSS reader that worked like this, though.

I share this sentiment towards RSS readers to some extent. I've done a similar signup-giveup dance with Google Reader several times. It is all the work it adds to my day that I dislike. I've tried desktop RSS readers too, with the same result. It gets harder to go back after a while too - I can almost feel the stress increase when I am trying to use an RSS reader again.

I've often felt that something like the "River of News"[1] notion that Dave Winer likes to talk about would work really well, I wonder if there are any public services that behave in that manner.

The basic idea is:

1) No read/unread counts. 2) No bold-ing/un-bolding of stuff I have or have not read. 3) No emphasis on grouping by site - should work out of the box as a single stream of posts to any of the sites I am interested in. 4) Subscribe via single-click bookmarklet, ala Instapaper's Read Later bookmarklet.

1: http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/riverOfNews

Nate Lawson debunked this and other arguments in a blog entry linked in the thread:

http://rdist.root.org/2010/01/07/timing-independent-array-co...

The original post to the mailing list mentions the ruby open-id library (along with Java and Python libraries) as being vulnerable.

Checking out the code, it looks like the string comparison at the end of the check_message_signature method will leak timing info (uses rb_str_cmp internally?).

Link: http://github.com/openid/ruby-openid/blob/master/lib/openid/...

Edit: Was wrong about what could leak.

Here's a screenshot: http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/7628/screenshot20100716at23...

It looks like they used a low DoF lens (or similar post-processing effect) for most of the shots.

I remember some reports on Twitter saying a backup-and-restore helped with 3G slowness on iOS4. Worth a shot?

I second this! Passage is what convinced me of the possibility of Art in games.

Art as defined by Ebert in this post, not beautiful visuals or anything like that - which is kind of the wrong way to seek art in games, IMO.

> that simply can't be experienced in any comparable way in any other medium.

This is the crucial bit.

I'm tempted to buy a Kindle, especially with the Woot deal on the Kindle 2. I tried a Kindle at work the other day, and I couldn't help but notice the 'flashing' of the screen when I move to a new page. I'm talking about this thing it does where the screen gets erased and redrawn, a process that seemed to take 1-2 seconds. I thought that was quite.. awkward. Kindle users: does that bother you when reading? Or is it something you don't notice at all during normal operation? (Or even non-existent on current models, maybe).