verysimple

The title of this story is over the top. The document confirms nothing. It says "someone claimed some flying saucers have been recovered. We decided it's a matter not worth pursuing."

This law basically says that if you do e-commerce, you better not have your service hosted in France. If you're not hosted in France, you might as well not pay any taxes in the country. Nice playing french government, genius move.

I don't know why your answer was downvoted, you are spot on.

Notice that many of these services offer copyrighted contents online. I think the primary issues they had with doing business outside the U.S. is that there are less copyrighted laws to adequately protect the material and that sort of business in those countries. It would also be notoriously hard to sue people who abuse them.

Other services such as telecom have to deal with Canadian collusion and protectionism towards the readily established telcorps. It's an uphill battle. One that Canadians have been paying the price for, with high wireless phone bills, high internet fees and the recent attempt at imposing Usage-Based Billing.

and would probably be cheaper.

direct link to the google preview http://docs.google.com/gview?url=https%3A%2F%2Finformation-t...

I'm not a typographer, but I am a reader and I don't agree with his opinion that the list with hanging bullets makes it more legible. I find them slightly confusing. Maybe it's my programming background, but it just makes sense to indent something positively to emphasize context.

I do agree though that the hanging bullets add sophistication, but when I write that's not really my primary concern.

This wikipedia article shed some light, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoid, but yes that seems to be a more accurate depiction of the physical Earth.

Pictures of planets taken from outter space, usually also capture the gases trapped by their gravity (athmosphere). It gives you a nice round shape.

No he's suggesting to allow people to log in with their email and let them pick whatever username/nickname they want. Think Stackoverflow for example.

It's not too late to change its name.

Come on young rubyist. embrace the dark side. You will like it. /jk

I adopted Python because I was told Ruby is the dark side. oO

I had a reply that said a few things along those line, deleted it. Yours is much better.

Just wanted to add a few things:

1- some contributions in this world are only accidentally world changing (see various open-source software). They were not done with some zealous ambitions. Their instigator merely had an itch to scratch and it turns out that the rest of the world appreciated it so much that it just took a life of its own.

2- I am a notoriously trashy person, yet I love a clean space, but I'm also notoriously slow to clean stuff. There's this little lady who has a business cleaning apartments in the neighborhood and she comes once in a while to clean up my place for 30$ (takes her about 30-45min). By some people's standards she's only making herself happy with her business. But I'll tell you, when she leaves my place my brain starts functioning again. The place is spic and span. I produce some of my best code and sometimes throw in new features for my clients for free. I'm pretty sure it might make their own clients happy. This is the butterfly effect of small contributions. You don't need to change the entire world to make a difference.

In this context it is. There may be some serious implications when saying that x or y pattern in language z is considered harmful.

In Java accessors are almost mandatory if you intend for your object's properties to be publicly available (even the IDEs imply it, by automatically creating them for you). Whereas in languages such as Python and JavaScript, the implementation of this "pattern" makes them optional. You don't have to use accessors if you don't need them right now, since you can always go back and create them later without affecting client libraries.

What the article shows is that, surprisingly, JavaScript's native feature to do this is actually slower than the Java way (what the author called old-fashioned). Is this really a reason to revert to a clumsier pattern because we're optimizing for speed?

Saying that it's "harmful" might get many newbie JavaScript programmers run to start peppering their code with getter and setter Java-style. What happens later when the different scripting engines fix the bottleneck.

Also, many (not all of them) designers don't understand the difficulties of usability, and sometimes mistakes it with "shiny". Usability of a desktop application is way more complex than a website[...]

I think usability is a blend of user experience, usefulness and intuitiveness. I have a hard time associating the latter with either the programmer or the designer.

My experience, as a programmer working often with designers, is that many of them (not all) are more concerned with the visual appeal of an interface and to a lesser extent its intuitiveness and usefulness.

For example, I've built quite a number of web management systems. Most times, when I team up with some designer they'd want to make pretty icons. However, I've come to the realization that we get more praises when the client can just look at his system and recognizes what he asked us to build and can easily guess where to go next. And that more often happens with text buttons. I believe that visual cues have their place, but I also think that many graphic memes have gone beyond useful, which probably doesn't help the relationship between programmers and designers.

On the other hand, I remember a time when I would build some quick ass functionality, but presented in such a convoluted way that only other programmers could understand the prowess and usefulness of the feature. You had to get up up early to get me to change them!

Programmers tend to be very minimalist, whereas designers are often very expressive. I think there is an effort to be made on both parts to reach a middle-ground. Designers need to learn that pretty doesn't necessarily mean useful. And programmers need to realize that just because their work is useful doesn't warrant that it's usable.

There's hope though. In time I've learned and now strive to make features as intuitive as possible. I now also favor very pretty, text-only, icons.

[...]and the current trend of "removing functionalities" is not always welcomed by developers...

In my not so humble opinion, graphic interfaces should be designed with the Pareto principle as a guideline (80-20 rule http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle). Is the feature useful? Yes. Will it be used often? No. Lets put it in the "nice to have" list.

If the application caters to a broad audience with varying levels of expertise and usage, it should present interfaces with varying degrees of complexity. I've seen this applied in real life successfully (e.g. in Ubuntu: dpkg >> apt >> aptitude >> Software Center). I definitely agree with you though, that too many software nowadays try to make things too easy without offering a way to go beyond the basics.

Zed Shaw has some guidelines about that http://learnpythonthehardway.org. You'll learn some basic programming in a very good and versatile language. I learned web programming a few years ago. In my opinion, I gained about a 3 weeks head-start in productivity by choosing PHP, but I ended up making up for it for the next 3 years. There are other commendable books geared towards beginner programmers, but only a few that also target web enabled languages come to mind.

JavaScript: http://eloquentjavascript.net/ (I recommend the interactive HTML version). Ruby: http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/

If I were to begin programming with the goal of working in the web today, I would love that someone pointed me to any of these 3 resources.

Like I said there are other beginner books and online tutorials using languages that aren't usual for the web like The Little Schemer (Scheme). It's always a plus.

You'll need to learn to use a good text editor or an IDE. I'm biased toward Vim, it takes time, but it's a good investment.

You'll need to learn HTML and some CSS. There are countless lists of recommendations out there for best books on x. Just checkout StackOverflow with similar queries for JavaScript, CSS and HTML. e.g. http://blog.reybango.com/2010/12/15/what-to-read-to-get-up-t...

You'll need to learn to interact with databases. You'll need to learn some SQL. However, I've been doing this for quite some time and I've only recently been playing with document oriented databases (aka NoSQL), it is my opinion that there are very few situations where they might not be suitable. Seeing that nothing prevents you from mixing solutions (SQL + NoSQL), I would frankly recommend to a beginner to invest in NoSQL first. Redis, MongoDB, CouchDB are the NoSQL DBs I've played with and would recommend.

How about having a news thread dedicated to articles considered off-topic, that yet still manage to garner enough interest from the HN crowd. That of course does not nullify the guidelines, people should keep posting using their best judgment while abiding by it. The only difference now would be less ambiguity about the nature of a post. Is it off-topic? yes. Are there people still finding it interesting? Lets put it on the off-topic, yet relevant thread.

Maybe the voting in such topics would be symbolic. It would be visible, but would not really affect karma. StackOverflow addressed their similar concern with Community Wikis.

Hahaha man, are you a comedian? I can't even downvote you. Why would you think I would care to? lol.

Looking at that thread, I think I understand what's going on, which was really not very clear from your intervention. I thought you were being petty about terminology.

I could not understand why you were bugging me for my use of the term good hackers, when the obvious main point to be made was, if yes or no the article was, in fact, HN material, which I felt and continue to feel it is.

Many of us haven't been around this site as long as some of the people raising their concerns in the thread you pointed me to. We don't know what it was like in the old days, our only compass for what makes a good HN post is the guidelines, which can be interpreted subjectively in many situations ([...]That includes more than hacking and startups[...], [...]anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity[...]). Some of the best articles that I've found on this site snuggly fit within those characteristics (e.g. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978295). I believe the current one to have some of those same characteristics, because it highlights an out-of-the-box approach to a problem so very uncommon in the mainstream. 4 days ago I was chatting about homelessness with my business partner, and we were discussing hypothetical solutions to fix it, or at least make it less of a problem and reasons why they would or wouldn't work and some of our solutions were pretty much along those lines and also raised some ethical/moral questions. We're both programmers and though this is arguably not hacker material, we're also entrepreneurs and our ideas often stem from these little discussions that help us look beyond the status quo.

It seems from the thread that you posted that some old timers are trying to get HN to fit back into its old box. I'm still unsure if it would have much appeal to the kind of topics I'm referring to. If their veteran status grant them a say in the direction of HN, I can only suggest to push for clearer guidelines.

Btw, I cannot remove the good hackers from the original post to the thread, it appears that the "edit" timer has expired.

I just told you I was not trying to be literal. I used the term because the assumption is that HN is for good hackers in the sense that it is employed in the guidelines, intellectually curious people. Obviously this is seriously bugging you. Would you be happy if I remove the term?

As far as the article being off-topic.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

Eh, I try to be a nice guy, I like to assume the best of most people. Of course the voters are good hackers.

Dude, I'm just another HN reader who decided to support this cause. If you made a point in your original message, I most certainly did miss it. You have issues with paypal and email? That's your prerogative. Maybe Geohot didn't expect people to have both these problems.

I don't think I have a problem with it yet, because I'm rationalizing. It somehow makes sense. I'm not sure I would feel the same if someone I cared for decided this would be the solution to their problem though.

I suspect many people will feel similarly. If my suspicions are correct, I wonder if we're witnessing a paradigm shift about problems such as alcoholism, drugs and homelessness. Are we as a society beginning to accept that some people are beyond redemption and should just be considered a "loss"? How far can we take this?

Taken from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Are there good hackers that find this interesting? look at the votes.

You know, nowadays opening a random one-time email account takes less than 5 minutes. Just go to hotmail and register as oks03wsdjf. You can do that and find out how you can donate.

It would also be good to let Sony itself know this. So that when they wonder why their sales went down, they wouldn't pretend to attribute it only to competition and market trends.

The problem with blaming a mob is exactly that. You're blaming a 7 year old and you can't really point a finger. I suppose blaming the victim is easier. It allows people to cope with an injustice that has them wonder what they would do if it was them. The first thing that comes to most people's mind is "I wouldn't go there, period", or "I would be extremely careful".

These are journalists and this is news. Their work requires that they go and report it. I like to believe that having done this for a while they are aware of the dangers and take some measures of precautions, but sometimes a bad call can change all this. It's not their fault, they're human.

However, saying that these journalists' bosses are clueless and that Ms. Logan speaking up might change their opinion when it comes to sending a female is a bit naive. They've also been doing this job long enough to have heard hush stories of what goes on in those remote areas in time of crisis, and what happens to journalists male or female.

What I would like to know is what steps are taken by news companies to ensure their people's security while in harms way to bring us those scoops. Why do we have to wait until the damage is done to start pondering on these questions? Also, I'm wondering if the bravado reporter's cliché isn't a little bit to blame for journalists taking abuses silently. Maybe the solution to the problem might even be really simple and has just never been introduced, because the culture has people believe that they need to wear their stigmas as a badge of honor to be considered for the journalism's pantheons.

Somehow I feel for the Chinese government (not really). They're caught between a rock and a really hard place.

On one hand they have to control the flow of info over 1.5 billion people and it's getting increasingly hard. With every piece they ban there's always a bit of Streisand effect. With people getting more and more knowledgeable about how to get around the system to get their sources (see Egypt 2011), that effect gains more and more amplitude.

On the other hand they just can't pretend to release their grip by ignoring that kind of material. It's 1.5 billion people. If they let go even just a little bit, they're bound to lose some control they'll never be able to regain.

A rock and a hard place. I really can't fathom what the future holds for China.

The analogy is actually directed more to the "slow down people's engagement on the site" part of the sentence. The part about people opening anonymous account is a fantasy that presumes that people care. We've been spammed through email for years now, yet only few people can be bothered to open a dedicated account just for the purpose of signing up to various services.

Given that many entrepreneurs just keep failing and then trying again and again and again it doesn't make much sense to me at all. There is no risk.

I used to work for a web design shop. My fellow programmers and I hated the fact that our bosses were making money on our backs. They would bill clients these huge fees for our hours and pay us 10% of that amount. What did we do about it? We complained to each other during lunch hours. Until one day when I threw in the idea, "lets start our own company". Then the truth came out, all those brave soldiers started backpedaling. I was in awe. I quit my job soon after, became a freelancer and 3 years later partnered up with another programmer to start a development company. We went through ups and downs at the beginning, not garnering much support, even from our own social circles. It's been a year and only now are some of our clients finally realizing the appeal of our offer. We have more work than we can handle and have had to moved into a larger office in a downtown area. I'm literally starting to hire next week. The same people we tried to get help from at the beginning, who were instead doing nothing but discourage us, are now more than willing volunteers.

I've had many similar experiences all throughout my life. I have once tried to organize a class action lawsuit against a company orchestrating an organized scam. I knew many of the clients personally. So I tried to gather them and the same thing happened, there was fud and people chose to wait and see what would happen as they left me to handle the initial steps on my own. I eventually reached an agreement with the company and got somewhat compensated. Later on when people heard, they tried to join in on the action, but by then it was too late, I had moved on with my life.

Another example, about 2 years ago, I had dealings with an agency that wanted to build this really ambitious website for one of their clients. I was hired as a developer along with other professionals from various fields (design, ux, marketing, etc). The agency ended up not paying any of us and while everybody were emailing each other trying to figure out what to do? I threw in a couple of bold ideas, such as bypassing the agency and dealing directly with the client, suing the agency. As expected the brave mouths didn't feel so tough anymore. I ended up hiring my own lawyer and a few months ago, I obtained a court decision. When people heard, I started receiving emails about "maybe ganging up to get our money".

All 3 stories have the same pattern. There is a problem, a risky proposal gets thrown in, people react to the idea, someone does something about it. I've come to the conclusion that being an entrepreneur is a character trait. You either have it or you don't.

Soon after I quit my job 4 years ago, I read or heard something somewhere, I don't remember the source, but it basically said, you get paid what you deserve. It's only now that I have a small and growing enterprise and that I have to explore the compensation question that I understand this. My coworkers from 4 years ago still work for the same boss. Maybe they got salary bumps, maybe they didn't, maybe they're still complaining during lunch, but one thing is sure we all got what we deserved.

To answer the question: No.

... That alone isn't going to derail the Facebook juggernaut, but it might slow down people's engagement on the site as they realize maybe a private, unknown email account is a better way of sending sensitive messages.

That isn't going to happen either. It's like saying that because people are aware that smoking is a cause of cancer they'll only smoke half a cigarette.