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JohnLBevanon XKCD: Time

I assume that eventually this will just show a flat (relative to the circumference of XKCD-Earth) expanse of sand due to entropy (maybe followed by a few exciting moments when it gets swallowed by its start red-gianting, is swallowed by a black hole, then billions of years of nothing pending the heat death of the universe).

JohnLBevanon French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article

Given the French propensity to strike it would have been interesting to see the public's reaction had he been held on anti-terrorism laws when it's clear to all he's an innocent person and there seems little evidence of any imminent threat to justify excessive means.

JohnLBevanon Stop externalising your life

I like the effect this has on me. I look at Facebook at the weekend and see some friends were up hours before me to run up a mountain, others have gone into London for the day to see an exhibition then head to a restaurant. I stayed up late the night before watching (and of course, sharing) YouTube videos so missed the best part of the day, but now I see that I'm failing to live life. As a result I up my game and rather than have breakfast and lounge about I head out looking for interesting things to do to justify myself. . . then on Monday when I get a coffee and someone asks "What did you do this weekend" I'm saved of the infamous answer "Just chilled really", which is post Facebook world speak for "Nothing". Now to wait for the up votes and ensuing rush of self-esteem. . . Anyone? ;)

TL;DR Subconsciously believing everyone's better than you forces you to up your game and thus get more out of life.

JohnLBevanon Dashing - A dashboard framework

Great work - this looks amazing. Do you have a mailing list I can subscribe to to get notification of when the .net version becomes available? Thanks!

JohnLBevanon Strangest language feature

There's Code Golf and Programmers to cater for some of these things - but I'm a little blurry on the rules of exactly what the boundaries of each site are. http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/ http://programmers.stackexchange.com/

JohnLBevanon Strangest language feature

I think Hume may have argued with the 'Cogito ergo sum' statement.

JohnLBevanon Researcher sets up illegal 420,000 node botnet for IPv4 Internet map

"Potentially risks thousands of years in jail". Did I miss the post on the invention of cryogenic jails?

JohnLBevanon Twitter granted patent on Twitter-like services

How did Twitter get the patent on BizTalk? The description sounds much more like BizTalk than Twitter to me.

JohnLBevanon TDD, BDD, and the tea tasting lady

Do four tests - TDDers doing TDD, TDDers doing non-TDD, non-TDDers doing TDD and non-TDDers doing non-TDD. From this you can get a better idea of whether it's the method or the coder's skill affecting the results. Clearly if TDD is better the TDDers will do better than the non-TDDers when both doing TDD because they've more experience. Comparing the non-TDDers in TDD vs non-TDD will show you if the method alone is enough, or if other factors have affected it (e.g. learning curve of the new method, ability of programmers who chose that method). The TDDers doing non-TDD helps contribute to the question of are they just better programmers (i.e. do they do comparatively well in non-TDD / are they worse that those TDDers doing TDD).

Doing other tests with entirely randomly chosen programmers ensuring they're trained up in these techniques would be another way - though as you point out the training would have to ensure they got the techniques they were being tested against / you'd need to avoid bias of people having spent the last few weeks exclusively in an exclusively TDD environment due to the training.

JohnLBevanon TDD, BDD, and the tea tasting lady

Another thing to take into account is who's coding, what they're coding in, what they're building, how big their team is, how mature the team is (i.e. how long have they been working together) and how their environment's set up. As with most questions, context is everything, so should anyone experiment to find the best solution you'd want them to include those details in their conclusions, and ideally to alter and test against each of those variables and show the effects of BDD/TDD under those conditions.

JohnLBevanon Life is wasting my time

Great article, but I couldn't help thinking my time could have been better spent elsewhere. ;)

JohnLBevanon UK Court of Appeal rejects Tesla's appeal in BBC/Top Gear case

Why go the lawsuit route - that just brings attention back to a bad review. If the claims of the BBC are false, play the media - suggest a rematch, ensure the terms are fair but supportive of your case, and use the latest model to blow them out of the water.

JohnLBevanon How we hacked Facebook with OAuth2 and Chrome bugs

It seems strange that you can use a browser bug to get into a site. Since the browser's outside of FB's control (i.e. theoretically anyone could write their own, including one which said it was Chrome but had been created for malicious purposes) any security protocol should not rely on browser implementations.

JohnLBevanon Show HN: a web-based xkcd-style comix editor

(code now updated to include animation)

JohnLBevanon Show HN: a web-based xkcd-style comix editor

Thanks, you made mine too - it's rare that I can find a library which I can create something with within an hour of coming across it, and this is also my first contribution to the world of memes, so chuffed that I got to do it using such a great utility. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next.

JohnLBevanon Show HN: a web-based xkcd-style comix editor

Great project - really easy to use and works well. As other comments have said there's tonnes of potential / additional functionality which could be added, but this is a great start.

For anyone interested, here's my play: http://cmx.io/#4949114

JohnLBevanon Why Would You Ever Give Money Through Kickstarter?

Same here; there was recently a pay it forward thing going around social networks where you offer a gift of any value to 5 friends who sign up if they agree to do the same. All my gifts are sourced from the rewards of Kickstarter projects since that plays into the altruistic/community theme. There's also a guy who's written a script to randomly buy him presents from Amazon, which ties in a little with the per month budget for an investment in something random theme. It probably won't be long before someone does the same for KS.

JohnLBevanon "TLDR" is unnecessary

I see the tl;dr as a failover to the full story. Those who have time you walk through the journey of discovery. Those who don't you'd rather they could at least see a summary of your conclusion than leave with nothing.

JohnLBevanon "TLDR" is unnecessary

Agreed. Aside from assisting in removing bias from the reader, working your way through to the conclusion allows it to remain a mystery to the reader, allowing them to enjoy being walked through the process of discovery, rather than just giving them an answer, then doing a "here's how we got there", which (in some cases) becomes less interesting once the answer is known.

To respond to Fusiongyro's point that this is a narrow view I point out that generally in writing style should change with context. In some cases the author of the article is exactly right about summing things up in the first sentence, in others johnfn is.

TLDR: Whether to use tldr depends on what experience you're looking to give your readers, what you're writing about, and who you're writing for.

JohnLBevanon Ask HN: What is the best way to advertise my first Chrome extension?

Looks good. I'm no expert on this area, so what's below is conjecture; hopefully you'll find it useful though.

A post here called "Show HN: Crowd Reviewed Websites (Chrome Extension)" would be a good place to start. You can set up facebook and google+ pages where you give information on your extension, and have these point to a blog where you deliver progress updates on developments. Once you've got the pages up, tweet links, get friends/existing users to like and share the links so that more people become aware. If it's something people are interested in the news will spread. If it's not spreading fast enough through that, be a bit more creative. Contact people who produce good content (e.g. popular bloggers/YouTubers, other indie developers, tech journalists) asking for their help. Some may like your product so will publicise / link to / review / for free, others you may need to offer incentives to (what that is depends on who they are and what you can offer them).

It's also a good idea to create a brand and have your extension as part of that brand. Publicise the brand more than the extension. The reason for this is you may have other projects in future - you don't want to start from scratch each time. Once you have the brand, you can talk about other products within that brand's context, and people who've subscribed to your brand because of your previous work will then be informed about your new stuff.

JohnLBevanon Ask HN: What is the best way to advertise my first Chrome extension?

What does it do? Assuming it solves a problem, hunt for people with that problem (e.g. on stack exchange / forums / Google) then comment saying you can resolve their issue & here's the link. Put in a full disclosure note so that folk know you're the developer - just to keep things polite & fully above board.

JohnLBevanon Write Gambling Software, Go to Prison

(sarcasm)

JohnLBevanon Write Gambling Software, Go to Prison

It's nice to know that those who are happy to ignore the law and gamble illegally still pay their licensing fees.

JohnLBevanon Show HN: Mashing up Facebook, Pinterest and Amazon for Christmas

When searching for friends by name, if I have a friend called Jonathan Smith and I type Jon Smith the filter stops the moment I hit space. It would be good to put wildcards around spaces, or build a dictionary of synonym names (not sure what the proper word for that is).

JohnLBevanon Show HN: Mashing up Facebook, Pinterest and Amazon for Christmas

Another nice feature would be a price range filter.

JohnLBevanon Show HN: Mashing up Facebook, Pinterest and Amazon for Christmas

Great site - unfortunately I'm based in the UK and a number of the recommendations only exist on Amazon.com; not .co.uk. If you could make this international that would be great - though I suspect that's lower on your priority list than it is on my wishlist.

JohnLBevanon The hum that helps to fight crime

If you're not worried about the time; just proving the recording is continuous simply play it back through speakers and record from a microphone near the mains supply. The current mains noise will be significant enough to drown out the noise already in the recording, and you'll have your continuity for very little effort & no money.

JohnLBevanon Proper use cases for Android UserManager.isUserAGoat()

@shocks: you only get this on certain OSes; it seems this is on *nix systems, but the teleporters are currently unable to get through gates / into windows.

JohnLBevanon Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

I think it's good to qualify your opinion with your level of expertise. There's no rule that says HN should only be for discussion by experts (hopefully there never will be), and if you don't know something for sure it's best to say so that others don't take your word as gospel. That said, I'm no expert ;).

JohnLBevanon Why Google Went Offline Today and a Bit about How the Internet Works

Would it be possible to claim to own Google's IP, then on receiving the packets intended for Google forward them on to the real IP (without accidentally forwarding them back to yourself)? That way someone could hijack & interrogate these packets without being spotted (at least without causing service outage / only adding slight delay). Alternatively could they route these requests to a clone as an advanced phishing scam?