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Derferman

615 karma · joined April 20, 2009

www.kyleconroy.com

http://www.hackernewsers.com/users/Derferman.html

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Derferman··on The greatest trick Apple ever pulled was making you think it’s Your fault
If you're laptop fan is loud then I assume either

1. you are doing some computationally heavy task or 2. your fan may be faulty

Simple as that.

Derferman··on An HN style social news site written in Ruby/Sinatra/Redis/JQuery by Antirez
> Don't use templates, they suck.

This is surprising. Why not make minimal use of ERB or Mustache?

Derferman··on K&R&You - A Tribute to Dennis Ritchie
I updated the front page with a large "SUBMIT YOUR K&R STORY HERE" button. My contact info is on the /submit page. Thanks for the feedback.
Derferman··on K&R&You - A Tribute to Dennis Ritchie
Hey guys, this is a project I put together last night. I thought it would be great to gather photos and stories about the impact of K&R on your life as a programmer. So if you have a second, snap a photo with your copy of K&R. Upload via http://kandrandyou.org/submit. If you don't have tumblr (which I'm assuming most of you don't) you can post your image in this thread or send me an email at kyle.j.conroy+kandr@gmail.com
Derferman··on Large-scale Amazon EC2 Outage
I must have picked a bad time to become a Linode customer. My node in Fremont has been up for two days and has already seen two network outages.
Derferman··on MtGox Bitcoin exchange hit by DDoS attack
The machines currently mining for bitcoins have powerful cpus and gpus. My guess is that a botnet consists mainly of lower-end desktop computers.
Derferman··on Wallets that Metamorphose Depending on Your Financial Situation
I like the concept of these wallets, but the idea of having to plug my wallet in every night to charge a battery is less than appealing. I think the simplicity of the wallet, especially in today's world of smart phones, is one of its most attractive features.
Derferman··on Be a Good Jedi: Build Your Own Blog
Instead of writing your own blogging engine, I would suggest using one of the many extensible blogging platforms as a base and building from there.

I personally have become a huge fan of statically-generated blogs (using Jekyll[1] for Ruby or Hyde[2] for Python) as they integrate great with version control and require little maintenance. Another benefit is speed, as nginx serves static content with ease.

[1]:https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll

[2]:https://github.com/lakshmivyas/hyde

Derferman··on Between the Bars: Snail-mail blogging for prison inmates
After reading the article, I looked into similar services available online. While I couldn't find any blogging sites, both WriteAPrisoner[1] and PrisonPenPals[2], while dated, offer to connect visitors with incarcerated pen pals.

Even more interesting, however, is that the State of Arizona banned these types of interactions in 2000[3], only to have to the law struck down as unconstitutional four years later. Specifically, the law banned any "attempts to correspond with a communication service provider or remote computing service" such as the sites listed above.

[1]: http://www.writeaprisoner.com [2]: http://www.prisonpenpals.com [3]: http://www.ojr.org/ojr/law/1082592378.php

Derferman··on Give Us Our Data, Facebook
Facebook can't claim that "every person owns and controls his/her information" when the Graph API allows access (via friends permissions) to your friends' status, likes, notes, location, photos, relationships, checkins, website, groups, events, activities and birthdays[1].

In fact, the only information about your friends not available via friends permissions are email addresses and full streams.

[1]: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/permissio...

Derferman··on Facebook Finds A New Way To Liberate Your Gmail Contact Data
Your photos are easily accessible using the Graph API[1]. I wrote a python script which downloads all your photos and saves them to your computer[2]. However, I agree that Facebook doesn't make it easy for other web services to access stored data.

[1]: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/photo

[2]: https://github.com/derferman/scrapebook

Derferman··on Amazon CloudFront Support for Custom Origins
Anyone using CloudFront in production care to share their experience?
Derferman··on Gift HN: Anybody want a subdomain of ww.com?
No need to apologize, I totally understand. Could I get derf.ww.com? It appears to be free.
Derferman··on Gift HN: Anybody want a subdomain of ww.com?
Awesome, thanks :)

api.ww.com CNAME kyleconroy.com

Derferman··on Creative Commons announces the "Public Domain Mark"
Shouldn't you be using CC0[1]? Your blog posts are automatically covered by copyright when they are created. I think the Public Domain Mark is only for works already in the public domain.

However, I am not entirely sure about this, so clarification would be great.

[1]:http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero/

Derferman··on Facebook Now Allows You To “Download Your Information”
I wrote a similar Python script[1] a couple of months ago that crawls the Graph API and downloads all your Facebook notes and photos. I recently started work on the script again, but after today's announcement, I will probably stop development. Oh well.

[1]: http://www.github.com/derferman/scrapebook

Derferman··on Homemade spacecraft reaches 100,000 ft, films the whole way
At an altitude of 100,000 ft (30.48 km), the balloon reached the stratosphere portion of our atmosphere. The space shuttle and other spaceships reach the thermosphere, which is the layer between 95km and 600km. The space station orbits at an altitude of 350km. The edge of space, called the Karman line, is 100km above the Earth, meaning that the ballon technically did not enter "space". Regardless, this experiment and it's footage are fantastic.

More info at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth

Derferman··on My relentless pursuit of the guy who robbed me
Rapleaf.com offers similar services. With just an email address you can find "Demographics, Influence, Interests, Social media memberships, Occupation, and much more."[1]

[1]: http://www.rapleaf.com/developers/api_overview

Derferman··on 3-D Printing Is Spurring a Manufacturing Revolution
You might enjoy Cory Doctrow's Print Crime[1] which centers on this exact topic.

[1]: http://craphound.com/?p=573

Derferman··on Ask HN: IE and my web app: keep trying to support it or give up?
The decision to drop IE should be made after consulting your logs. How many users would you be turning away? If a substantial portion of users are on IE, it may be best to just support IE8 (or maybe only IE9) to ease development problems.
Derferman··on Hacker News Instant Search
While the new crop of "Instance [website] Search" projects are cool, I feel like most are missing the key feature of Google Instant: predictions. Without predictions, the user never knows what search returned the current results. Instead of instant search, these examples feel like instant filtering.
Derferman··on Show HN: VoiceForms 4000, my submission to the Wufoo API contest
I completely agree about developing more integration points. Right now, this project is more of a tech demo. Not sure if I am going to invest the time to monetize.
Derferman··on Show HN: VoiceForms 4000, my submission to the Wufoo API contest
Sorry that your form didn't work out, I will poke around the logs to figure out what happened.

One of the most difficult tasks in call flows is properly handling errors, and it's obvious I have a few more edge cases to work out.

Thanks for the feedback.

Derferman··on Show HN: VoiceForms 4000, my submission to the Wufoo API contest
Yeah, the trademark was mainly for comedic value, but I can see how it is out of place.
Derferman··on Show HN: VoiceForms 4000, my submission to the Wufoo API contest
Spelling, the bane of my existence. Thanks for pointing that out.
Derferman··on Ask HN: What does your development environment look like?
Terminal and Emacs on OS X. 21" ASUS monitor and a late 2007 Macbook Pro. Firefox, Chrome, and Safari open all the time.
Derferman··on Install PAC-MAN on Sequoia voting machine w/o breaking tamper-evident seals
The Open Voting Consortium is working on an open-source solution that uses everyday PCs and printers instead of these ridiculously expensive voting machines. Their solution[1] is actually paper-based, allowing for increased accountability and transparency. The source is available here[2] although the project hasn't seen activity in quite some time, so I am not sure of the status of the code base.

[1]: http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/our_solution [2]: http://sourceforge.net/projects/evm2003/

Derferman··on In Death, Nexus One Does What It Couldn’t Do In Life: Sell
The problem is voice. What are you using for VOIP calls?
Derferman··on Use brute force to find an available domain name for Web 2.0 projects
My favorite name creator (and domain name search) is http://www.wordoid.com. Created by someone on Hacker News, not sure whom.
Derferman··on Ask HN: What are you working on (hacking)?
Stashboard, an open-source status dashboard. More at http://www.stashboard.org. Also hacking on some small App Engine sites.
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