Hacker News Reader

JCB_Kon Facebook To Launch Music Service With Spotify

But the countries where Spotify is available only make up for 200 million people, out of 730 in Europe.

JCB_Kon Newegg stores your password in plaintext

That's not the point. If you complain about being unsafe in your neighbourhood someone can't just respond with "buy a gun". No, in this case your city council should do their best in changing the situation.

JCB_Kon Many don't have $2,000 for a rainy day

That is crazy. A couple of months ago I had to go to ER, was there for 2 hours or so, and went home. A week ago I got a bill of £12 for the penicillin they gave me for a week, as that wasn't for inside hospital. I'm not insured (in the UK), and I don't pay taxes (anywhere).

JCB_Kon Many don't have $2,000 for a rainy day

I'm definitely not in the part of my life yet when I have to worry about money...but still I do. I actually just made my first proper budget (proper as in not just write down what I'm expecting to spend, on the back of a napkin, but doing it by month, comparing it to what I get per month, planning stuff.) and you know what? It actually made me feel good.

Knowing exactly what I can spend on what is a really comforting thought. When I'm in a shop and I see something I want, before I would have to quickly count up the big expenses of the coming months, see what I have left, and decide if it's worth it. Now I know exactly in what category the item is, and how much money I have left. If I don't have enough and I feel like I really need it, I can take a look at my budget and adjust it slightly.

On a sidenote, I'd love to start a business one day, but as long as it's not completely necessary (and safe) I would never want investments. I'd much rather bootstrap my product instead: the risk is much lower, and the relaxed feeling much higher.

JCB_Kon London Is Gonna Be Pissed, But We Prefer Berlin for Startups

To what degree is the tech scene in Berlin international? My German isn't bad, but I'm definitely not fluent. Are there so many internationals that tech meetups etc. are usually in English, or is German still dominant?

JCB_Kon Any desktop app based startups?

Wunderlist, Hype, Spotify, Sparrow. Just a quick list of desktop apps. But I agree, most startups are focussing on the web (and rightly so.)

JCB_Kon Guy Asks For Software Crack, Creator Provides Free App Instead

or on the internets

JCB_Kon Twitter’s Shit Sandwich

Seriously...they're not stupid.

JCB_Kon Show HN: Scrambl - Golf Without the Hassle

Safari on OSX. (1024x768, maybe that's it?)

JCB_Kon Ask HN: Is Music Bad For Concentration?

I think it really depends on both the music and the person. For me personally, I can only really concentrate with music on, preferably on headphones. This way I can really close down from stuff happening around me. On the other hand, if the music is very lyrics-based, I'll usually start focussing on that instead.

So for me, the amount of lyrics in the music I listen at a given moment is inversely proportional to the level of concentration I need ;)

JCB_Kon Show HN: Scrambl - Golf Without the Hassle

Oh and something is wrong here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2819425/Picture%206.png

JCB_Kon Show HN: Scrambl - Golf Without the Hassle

My initial thought is...why just golf? Surely people don't just have problems planning stuff only when it comes to golf. There are more solutions to this problem online sure, (doodle.com, agreeadate.com) but I don't see the merits of focussing on golf.

JCB_Kon Twitter Misson:Permission

Just hoping this won't affect Tweetie. Obviously it's replaced by Twitter for Mac, but that doesn't work on Leopard. Some bugs have showed, for example, many Twitter clients now offer RT's in a "@user: ..." style. If this ends with a url the url won't work, because it includes the quotation marks in the link.

This is obviously a small thing and I don't really mind it not being fixed, but it'd be a pity if DM's break with this update.

JCB_Kon Facebook email is live

...since about 3 months.

JCB_Kon Show HN: JavaScript implementation of Spotify client (Chrome only)

It's not really similar at all. This is just another web radio service, whereas on Spotify you can listen whatever you want. Also, the UI is horrendous.

JCB_Kon Muting annoying users on Twitter without unfollowing them

You can set up lists of friends, and on every post there's a hide button, where you can either hide the person, or the kind of post.

JCB_Kon Interview with Kasper Hulthin, co-founder of Podio

Podio is a great app. A build-your-own-app Tool is usually not that great, but they really worked out a good way to do it. The variety of apps you can create out of the small pool of functions they provide is much bigger than you'd expect.

JCB_Kon Dutch carrier has been secretly spying on customers for at least 9 months

Clarification: Marco Visser isn't CEO, he's basically the VP of Mobile. Eelco Blok, mentioned later, is the CEO of KPN.

JCB_Kon Stackoverflow Makes Hackers Lazy

There's apparently a balance between questions and answers, seeing that most answers on SO get answered. If that wasn't the case, I would feel like I need to answer questions if I ask them, to give something back to the community, but right now it's apparently not neccesary.

Also, the answers on SO are usually of such a high quality, that you learn a lot in the process. Often an answer will push me in another direction than I was going, because someone gave a better way to do something.

JCB_Kon Spotify says hello to the iPod

Spotify seems to really focus on playlists in their marketing, but I don't see people around me using them that much. They just see Spotify as their iTunes catalogue, but just with a lot more music in it.

JCB_Kon Apple economics: a free laptop every year.

Interesting. A friend of mine used to be an amateur cyclist, at the highest (non-pro) level. Through his club he could buy a bike for very good prices. So he'd buy it for 2.5 grand instead of 5, use it for a year, and sell it half price...so 2.5 grand.

It's a one-off big investment, but from then on he had a new bike every year, practically free.

JCB_Kon TechCrunch BCC Fail Reveal Emails of Everyone Who Applied to Disrupt Hackathon

it's fake. just didn't want to get 100+ stupid emails in my inbox ;)

that's brilliant!

JCB_Kon Ask HN: Not a design or code ninja - how do I pursue a great idea?

Learn to code and make it yourself. The only person who can really put the passion in it is you.

Regarding your next question, Stackoverflow is good for the technical questions, Sparkmuse is still small but is a good community for entrepeneurs.

JCB_Kon Hacker News Analysis

I'm surprised there's little under 4000 users. Always thought it was much more.

JCB_Kon Spotify Programming Challenge Registration

If you sign up you get access to last years website.

JCB_Kon Ask HN: Who is Hiring? (May 2011)

your email is not visible (it needs to be in the About field, otherwise it's not visible for others)

JCB_Kon Bitcoin hits US$ 4, after being mentioned on CNN yesterday

ha! that reminds me of my Economy class in high school. We used to do a weekly game, where in the beginning of the year we'd have a certain amount of money, and we'd have to buy stock. The teacher would every week update us with the latest stock information, and based on that we'd have to make decisions. The person with the biggest amount of money at the end of the year won.

So I picked stock of a company which was basically bankrupt already, but was still on the stock market (why I don't know, I'm not an expert.) I think the stock was £0.02. So I waited a few weeks, and it happened to be at £0.05. I sold everything, didn't do anything for the rest of the year, and won. Didn't make the game very exciting, but at 15 years old I mainly cared for winning :)

JCB_Kon Bitcoin hits US$ 4, after being mentioned on CNN yesterday

Unfortunately I neither have a blog with big reach nor $4 million. :)

JCB_Kon Bitcoin hits US$ 4, after being mentioned on CNN yesterday

So say I'd have a blog with a huge reach. I hear about bitcoins. I buy a million for $4 each. I blog about it. Next day it's at $8. I'd sell the bitcoins, maybe 10000 a day to not let the market crash, and in 3.5 months I've got $4 million more than I used to.

JCB_Kon 1.15 gigapixel royal wedding picture

I love searching in pics like this.

A few sliced bodies:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2819425/Sliced.jpg

And, more interesting, a few seemingly undercover agents:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2819425/agents.jpg