Hacker News Reader

JS_startupon Fields medalist Tim Gowers: Elsevier — my part in its downfall

The technology isn't the hurdle here, it's the prestige. The academic publishing world is all about who you are, what institutes you belong to, etc. To put it bluntly, a Reddit-like journal site just wouldn't have enough "cred" to attract decent content.

JS_startupon Microsoft calls for Gay Marriage in Washington State

Framing civil rights in a logical or business argument is the smartest avenue of approach, especially in the US. Moral or human rights arguments can easily be dismissed by religion, but an economic or practical argument?

Plus Microsoft would probably be sued by its shareholders if they didn't give a good, strategic decision for taking an overtly political position.

JS_startupon Microsoft calls for Gay Marriage in Washington State

Sounds like he means fundamentalist in the religious sense. Believe it or not the evolution of the neo-con and American Christianity's attachment of itself to the GOP is a pretty recent development. Not long ago an average Republican was mainly fiscally conservative and the "family values" types were the outliers.

JS_startupon Death sentence for Iranian web programmer

A man is being executed because software he wrote was used in a pornographic website.

It's pretty reprehensible that you feel the need to try and derail the topic and apologize for Iran by drawing similarities to the US as if that makes it OK. But hey, thanks for downplaying this dude's impending death!

edit: I'm also not sure that the detention of captured combatants and the execution of a native citizen are quite the same thing

JS_startupon This site cost $18m to make

In general web developers seem to kowtow to the most to ridiculous compatibility requirements--how many still fret about IE6 and IE7 compatibility?

In no other industry do consumers get that kind of luxury. It'd be like the music industry putting new releases on cassette tapes for the people who haven't upgraded to CD or MP3 yet.

JS_startupon Copyright King: Why the "I Have a Dream" Speech Still Isn't Free

MLK's descendants have turned his speech and legacy into a commodity, sued each other, stolen money from his estate and setup businesses solely for capitalizing on the speech.

Something tells me they would not be interested in releasing the speech under the GPL.

JS_startupon Best TLD that can't be taken down by US/etc?

PO boxes are not a legitimate solution for someone needing total anonymity. Anyone can fill out a request for boxholder information form to find out the identity of the person who registered it.

edit: The USPS will provide this info no questions asked, no subpoena or court order required.

JS_startupon Ask HN: SOAP vs REST - help me understand

If your clients only use your provided libraries then there is no difference between SOAP and REST in this instance as the primary attraction of REST (accessing the methods through HTTP requests) will be abstracted by the library.

So either that 25% wants a RESTful interface because they're going to opt not to use your libraries or because they're conditioned to vote for REST over SOAP.

JS_startupon Ask HN: How do you do your email delivery?

Because the risk isn't worth the money saved, and I imagine if you got deliverability statistics on those e-mails you'd find that many of them don't make it to the recipient.

Many web-based companies would effectively be out of business if their web server was listed on a few major blacklists.

JS_startupon Schlep Blindness

I think Paul over simplified this one. The average hacker is attracted to things like recipe sites because these are solutions which can be accomplished entirely by code and execution. They are driven away by problem spaces which require foreign skills or unknown social networks, namely startups involving payment processing and banks.

So really a schlep is just a hard problem, one that the person considering it doesn't have the skills or know-how to solve.

It's easy to say that there is hidden value in these "schlep niches" but not if you don't have the slightest inkling of how to approach it. It'd be like me telling the average hacker to go start a farm.

JS_startupon Google's Kenyan ripoff?

To get the drop on an emerging market. Obviously the 200 rupee hosting costs are negligible, but becoming the de facto tech provider in an emerging market like Kenya is worth millions.

JS_startupon Google's Kenyan ripoff?

I have a theory that posits that the bulk of HN's subscribership is made up of Google employees who are here to astroturf. Initial test results: inconclusive but promising.

JS_startupon Google, what were you thinking?

This needs to be at the top. Google confirms that it was their representatives who pulled off the scam, not someone posing as Google. We can all stop making excuses for them now

JS_startupon Google's Kenyan ripoff?

A European Google VP just confirmed that it was not scammers or someone posing as Google, it was Google employees.

JS_startupon DuckDuckGo gets a new look

It looks gorgeous. DDG has become my search engine of choice over the past month; clean design, no social media or other things garbaging up results. Use it!

JS_startupon Google's Kenyan ripoff?

The boingboing article explicitly states that it is an IP range that Google has used for international business before.

JS_startupon Google's Kenyan ripoff?

Shortly after, that IP range stopped visiting Mocality's servers, but another range, this one registered to Google's Mountain View headquarters [edit: this address has previously been used to conduct official Google business in India]..

The article is implying that the IP range was one that has been officially used by Google for international business in the past, making it the smoking gun in their accusation.

JS_startupon Google, what were you thinking?

You must not have gotten the memo--HN still has a creepy, starry-eyed obsession with Google and sacrilege like yours will have you burned at the stake :)

JS_startupon Google's Kenyan ripoff?

If the statement about the Mountain View IP address is true then it's hard to imagine that these were scammers masquerading as Google.

My bet? Google's statement will blame some third party contractors or a miscommunication. Massive damage control and fire fighting for the rest of the day.

JS_startupon UK Government Betrayal of Open Standards Confirmed

Agreed. From the way the article is written you would think that some Microsoft thugs held a gun to the Queen's head instead of, you know, lobbying for their interests.

JS_startupon UK Government Betrayal of Open Standards Confirmed

The author certainly didn't make an attempt at being objective or hiding his allegiances. Most humorous is his assertion that businesses should have no voice in the decisions of government because that is "interfering"

JS_startupon Spamhaus Nightmare: Domain Shut Down, No Notice, Over A Million Pages Down

Paul is right on this one. Maybe Spamhaus used to have good intentions but all of my recent dealings with them indicate that they're as unethical as the spammers they claim to fight. Their "shoot first ask questions later" methodology proves that they have no problem railroading anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in their crossfire.

JS_startupon I am so sick of job ads

He is criticizing the ubiquity of cheesy job postings trying to attract top talent with trivial/hackneyed promises of things like bagels and beanbag chairs. His solution is for job postings to stop doing this.

JS_startupon Am I a douchebag micromanager?

1) Your developer is way out of his or her league

2) A more popular framework than .NET? Really?

.NET has built in membership providers which means the encrypted password should be a non-issue. If your lead developer is rolling their own login system then they shouldn't be your lead developer.

The timezone issue and recurring events are also no brainers. I don't think you're micro-managing at all, you're just trying to avoid horrible design decisions which will hamstring your application down the road.

JS_startupon Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome

Clearly my comments aren't appreciated.

No, because they were jingoistic and myopic. IE9 is a decent browser (by all measures superior to Firefox) and IE10 looks to be better. Your blind platform hatred is showing.

JS_startupon Google’s Jaw-Dropping Sponsored Post Campaign For Chrome

The "stickiness" of Microsoft's products had nothing to do with the anti-trust case, They were leveraging their dominance in one market to exploit another; the permanence of the product has nothing to do with the illegality of their actions.

JS_startupon Ask HN: Is working under pressure important?

I'd say pressure is part of any startup and the ability to work under it is much more important than at a larger company.

When you work a 9-5 at an established company there are usually several degrees of separation between you and the anxiety that comes from a business. The sales and support teams will be handling the clients. The testers will handle bug reporting. The management will worry about biz dev and making money.

At a typical startup you're going to be taking the brunt of all of those worries. The stakes are higher because you're usually fighting for the company's survival, not just your Christmas bonus check. For these reasons and more I'd say working under pressure is an extremely important skill if you're looking to get into startups.

JS_startupon Ask HN: How can I convince my co-founders not to use a LAMP stack and should I?

I'd say let the technical people choose and use the tools they are familiar and comfortable with. There isn't a hugely material benefit from jumping on newer, sexier technologies. At the end of the day it's about having a product to sell, not platform jingoism and technological pissing contests.

JS_startupon Ask HN: What websites do you spend the most time on?

HN, Reddit, SomethingAwful, Google Finance

JS_startupon Ask HN: How to version control DB data?

I don't know of any type of version control that will work like that. You could, of course, add your databases to an SVN repository but you won't be able to branch/merge individual rows in the database.

I'd re-examine your requirements on this one. You normally wouldn't be doing intense revision control directly inside of the database