Hacker News Reader

ROFISHon Poll: Did you transfer your domains from GoDaddy today?

I definitely moved mine from them long before this incident and many others. Yet I am still outraged. "I once used them before!"

ROFISHon Gift Cards Are Worth Less Than You Think [data viz]

The problem with Amazon is that you become very, very aware of the items not on Amazon. I recently got an Amazon gift card and realized that I can't get an iPhone.

ROFISHon Gift Cards Are Worth Less Than You Think [data viz]

Grocery store giftcards aren't really for presents, they're more for situations like parents ensuring a college student is spending money on food.

ROFISHon Google Checkout Is Dead, Long Live Google Wallet

As an online store that sells T-Shirts, Google Checkout accounts for roughly 5% of all orders, but a very vocal minority that really, really hate Paypal and likes to click any option that guarantees they don't use Paypal.

ROFISHon TwitchTV Launches iPhone App

I wish the J.TV app was free. I would love to do wireless recording!

ROFISHon The Problem With Client-Side Analytics

This is a solution looking for a problem.

I know my Google Analytics aren't 100% correct, but I don't think people are spoofing them. The differences lie more in people who click through faster than GA can load (which can be easily possible on those still on 56k), or have "privacy blockers" in their ad block to remove GA altogether.

ROFISHon The Styrofoam Cube In This Letter Serves A Bureaucratic Purpose

As someone who ships items daily with the postal service, the cube is not necessary. Yes, you have to pay extra for the "package rate" to get delivery confirmation, but you don't actually have to add extra items to make it a package.

This is the fault of the shipper, not the postal service.

ROFISHon PayPal is now an identity provider

Maybe it would behoove them to use the "x.com" branding for login?

ROFISHon Die, VPN: We're all "telecommuters" now—and IT must adjust

I thought I was slowly going insane trying to find the "All Documents in My Company" feature of Google Docs. Glad to know I'm not the only one desperately missing it.

ROFISHon Bank of America to charge monthly fee to debit card users

I'm with BofA simply because they have branches everywhere. I was in a situation where I needed to deposit checks in six wildly separated cities.

ROFISHon What should Apple do with the iPod?

I think the classic will die when you can fit 256GB into an iPod Touch, either through flash memory or a thicker hard drive version. Otherwise the iPod Classic still sells to those that _HAVE_ to have 200+ GB of music with them at all times.

ROFISHon Rails 3.0.10 Released

I saw your talk on Rails at RailsConf and how to lower the stack depth of the middleware by using a standard interface. How's the progress? From someone who hasn't helped out Rails before and would like to, what can I do?

ROFISHon Letterbomb: Wii 4.3 Homebrew Installer Without Need For Special Game Disc

My Wii's disc drive is in the process of dying, and I doubt I will get a replacement after it kicks the bucket. I rip legitimate games that I own and use a USB hard drive addon to play them from. (Bonus: less loading time)

ROFISHon Lion removes Java?

Yes, but "bring your own" solves a lot of Apple's support problems related to sole exclusivity on old and insecure JVMs.

ROFISHon I Broke Justin.tv

I've had nothing but great experiences from the Justin.tv/Twitch.tv team regarding their tech. NASL and Dreamhack both just had fairly crappy streaming setups and equipment, in my opinion.

ROFISHon Square’s Disruptive New iPad Payments Service Will Replace Cash Registers

Thanks! We use Square to handle credit card payments for conventions, but it's quite annoying to swap between an in-house iPad webapp that handles inventory, receipt printing, and sending the order data to a master database.

Allowing simple iOS protocol handlers like "square://pay?product1=Mug&price1=20.00&product2=Shirt&price2=22.00&callback=inventorify%3A%2F%2Fsquare_callback" and it callsback to url "inventorify://square_callback?success=true&paid=42.00" would be amazing as I don't have to have the awkward step of "Exit the inventorify app and charge the customer for $42.00 through the Square app" and then the cashier forgets the amount to charge for.

ROFISHon Square’s Disruptive New iPad Payments Service Will Replace Cash Registers

Does anybody know how programmable their POS is? (ie. if there's a sale, is there a webhook that can be called?)

ROFISHon Ars Technica Investigates the State of Malware on the Mac

Actually I wouldn't be surprised to find Norton on a Genius Bar Mac, mostly because an anti-virus is required for PCI compliance to handle credit cards.

ROFISHon Angry Birds on Chrome

Funnily enough, it runs smoother on Firefox than Chrome on my Mac.

ROFISHon Angry Birds on Chrome

Force update Chrome.

ROFISHon Apple’s boring hardware updates

I wouldn't be surprised if AT&T still did it to band-aid hemorrhaging to Verizon.

ROFISHon MacRuby is moving to Github

Plus the latest release of XCode, which MacRuby is preferred to use, supports Git natively.

ROFISHon A Rare Disagreement

I think part of the reason why there is such a "user revolt" (opposed to a tech or developer only revolt) is the prospect of functionality of current apps such as Amazon Kindle or Netflix or Hulu will go away, and that Apple hasn't provided any assurance that they'll stay.

Right now I'm in "wait and see" mode where I don't want to invest in the iPad 2 unless I know for sure that Hulu will still be able to function.

ROFISHon [dead]

I bet there are more people following to closely watch the meltdowns than as a fan.

ROFISHon Last.fm co-founder: Apple just fucked over online music subs for the iPhone

It's one thing if Apple provides a competing service to Netflix, Hulu, Rhapsody, et al. (And may be accused on monopolism.)

The thing that boils my britches about this is that Apple DOESN'T have a competing service. When the services leave, the iPhone is left only with iBooks and iTunes, both of which are expensive and not very good.

ROFISHon Google releases OnePass, a payment system for publishers

That was two years ago and it's not worth the effort. It's better just to explain the moral of my story when Paypal vs. Google Checkout debates occur: Paypal at least has a phone line.

ROFISHon Google releases OnePass, a payment system for publishers

Except that Google's forums don't help when Google locked five figures from you on a spiky day, continues to accept money with no way to withdraw, provides no telephone support, and offers only an (apparently overloaded) email support. (Eventually I got my account unlocked and funds released... six months later.)

Coincidentally, I've never had such a problem with Paypal. (My gripes with them generally revolve around the glacially slow history search.)

ROFISHon Expert Exchange gets narky after snub from Q/A site review

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=6064978

IANAL, but it appears that simply having a "question and answer" site doesn't apply to this patent. If you read the patent, it's mostly related to the idea of asking a question costs points and giving the best answer, as chosen by the asker, receives points.

Any variation on this scheme, such as a general moderator or the public via voting choses the best answer, or not having the asker assign points to a question to be received (avoid the economy, still have asker chose best answer) can avoid this patent.

ROFISHon More on Apple's 30% cut of Kindle book sales, etc.

What about incumbent subscription services? For example, Hulu requires you to be paying $8/mo to view their shows on an iPhone or iPad. Since a subscription is required, MUST they be required to Apple's subscription service, or can they just not do anything until you sign up elsewhere?

ROFISHon Coca Cola's secret recipe revealed?

The fact that "the Coke formula is secret" is a marketing tool itself. I've seen a few ads along the line of "only two guys know the Coke formula and they each only know half." (Which I'm betting isn't true, since that makes Coke a bus factor of one.)