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Revisoron "Do Not Track" HTTP header supported by IE, Opera, FF, Safari but not Chrome

How does it break the web and what has the most breaking impact in your experience?

Revisoron The Inequality Speech That TED Won't Show You

Sir, you have hit the nail on the head.

It was the work of the disgruntled speaker whose talk was refused in a normal editorial process and who proceeded to hire a PR firm to create this ruckus.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3988515

Revisoron Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

Ok, found this, linked by Mr. Torvalds

http://tbaggery.com/2008/04/19/a-note-about-git-commit-messa...

Revisoron Linus Torvalds won't do github pull requests

Can anyone point me to best practices on writing (git) commits?

Or can you sum up yours here?

Revisoron Sign up in seconds...and then what?

That's not evil, quite the opposite - you don't bother the user and ask them for the required information until the very moment it's needed.

It's called gradual engagement and I consider it good practice.

What's structurally similar to this and definitely a dark pattern is letting the user work towards their goal and at the end tell them suddenly they have to pay for the result.

That would be evil. Gradual engagement as you describe it is not.

Revisoron Anonymous Analytics: Hubaboa International is a "pump and dump scheme"

I don't know this company but now I'm curious - what's in the facility in Botswana?

Revisoron Google Drive: Finally coming this April

No, quite the opposite. The more people value their privacy, the more pressure against invasive predatory practices and the better for all of us.

It's not a binary scale: Privacy or no progress. Services we use can respect our privacy, can be paid by subscription instead of paid by data mining and selling your whole life.

So "bitch" people and don't "fucking put up" with ads.

Revisoron Books Programmers Don't Really Read But Recommend

I'm absolutely shocked that someone can defend this code example. OK, you say it's readable for an experienced C programmer which I'm not. But is that really the best practice you want to teach other programmers? Fourfold inline computation? Cryptic variable names like nvtab.nval? No curly braces around a block where they are optional but prone to error if missing? Comments that use deep local jargon (what is nameval, what is nvtab)?

Defend it all you will (and also downvote just because you disagree, why thank you), I stand by what I said: The Practice of Programming is a harmful book and cannot be compared to Code Complete which is much more thoughtful and has unspeakably more attention to detail in naming, syntax, logic, programmer's psychology, project scope, everything.

Revisoron Books Programmers Don't Really Read But Recommend

As suggested elsewhere, read The Algorithm Design Manual, it's much more readable (even if not as rigorous, with math proofs and such).

Revisoron Books Programmers Don't Really Read But Recommend

Having read both I have to respectfully but firmly disagree.

The code examples in The Practice of Programming are atrocious, and I mean it - they are full of really, really bad naming and arcane abbreviations and thus unreadable code.

How is this for readable and maintainable code? (Random code example from The Practice of Programming, copied verbatim letter by letter)

    /* delname: remove first matching nameval from nvtab */
    int delname(char *name)
    {
        int i;
        
        for (i = 0; i < nvtab.nval; i++)
            if (strcmp(nvtab.nameval[i].name, name) == 0) {
                memmove(nvtab.nameval+i, nvtab.nameval+i+1),
                    (nvtab.nval-(i+1)) * sizeof(Nameval);
                nvtab.nval--;
                return 1;
            }
        return 0;
    }

- Confusing function explanation in a custom format. What is nameval? What is nvtab?

- Missing curly braces in the for loop

- Confusing long lines (line starting with memmove())

- Confusing inline transformations: nvtab.nameval+i+1, nvtab.nval-(i+1) directly in function arguments. What do they mean?

- Bad, bad naming (nvtab, nameval)

- Inconsistent case (nameval vs Nameval)

This is just ONE RANDOM EXAMPLE, mind you. The book is atrocious, I don't recommend it to anyone.

Code Complete is much thicker but that's the only disadvantage. It's not bloated, it's simply more comprehensive, it's consistent and teaches to write actual readable code.

Revisoron Apple Has Started Rejecting Apps That Access UDIDs Amid Privacy Concerns

How does the ability to get the UDID combine with the (recently leaked) silent ability to access and upload the whole contact directory on iOS?

Revisoron Pricing: Why you're doing it wrong

This is a better article than it sounds from the title. It sums up the most important principles I read in pricing books (of which I recommend The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: http://www.amazon.com/The-Strategy-Tactics-Pricing-Edition/d... )

Just copying the pricing mistakes from the subheadings (parens are mine):

* You’re pricing based on costs (but costs change with volume which is dependent on price)

* You have no idea what your value is (so you guess based on their reactions and your gut feelings)

* You are trying to be cheaper, not better or different (and you lose the pricing war)

* You don’t believe in your own value (and you feel apologetic when giving a quote)

* You fear price objections

* You surprise your prospects with your price

* You have no plan for negotiation

* You think you need one price (you don't segment your customers and leave a lot of value on the table and/or outprice some potential low-effort customers)

* You’re too busy (by underpricing yourself)

Revisoron A Dad’s Plea To Developers Of iPad Apps For Children

Why do you even let the user send an empty email? Sounds like a programming error as much as a UI blunder.

Revisoron Microsoft shows off universal translator that preserves your voice

For example, Microsoft’s standard model of Spanish will have a default “S” (ess) sound, but the training process replaces it with your “S” sound. This is done for every individual sound (phoneme)

I don't think it can work as a phoneme for phoneme replacement; there must be a different heuristic at work.

Different languages have different phonemes and one of the most telling things of a non-expert non-native speaker is that they don't get the sounds right.

Eg "E" is pronounced differently in English, German and Czech. Japanese speakers don't differentiate between "L" and "R". Spanish "C" is in some contexts different to "C"s in other languages. Etc.

Obviously you can't pronounce a sound that you don't even know exists.

I would love to hear more examples.

Revisoron Android Market rule prohibits use of third-party in-app payment services

Is Google heading the dreaded Microsoft naming way?

Google Play Store. Windows Live Search, eh I mean Windows Live Search Center. Games For Windows? Surely you mean Games for Windows - Live. Or Xbox Marketplace?

Also Google Wallet is unavailable in many countries as others have noted.

Oh well, I was hoping that someone would give Apple a run for money.

Revisoron Valve working on 'Steam Box' gaming console with hardware partners

This sounds interesting and all, but who is going to be their customers? The 30 or so millions of their users obviously already HAVE their own hardware.

So is it going to target the current console owners? And persuade them how? "It's like your box, but you can install mods. It's like a PC but with less freedom."?

Anyway I'm looking forward to the development. The three big console manufacturers need a kick.

Edit: Also Steam doesn't have their own OS obviously. So is every box going to need a Win licence?

Revisoron PHP 5.4.0 released

Since you're not a beginner programmer, I recommend PHP Objects, Patterns and Practice

http://www.amazon.com/Objects-Patterns-Practice-Experts-Sour...

Revisoron A Classic Startup Horror Story

Can you give us some obvious smells apart from "too eager to close"?

Revisoron Nuclear Effects Calculator

How is this sobering? I find it fearmongering. Or is there any meaning behind this other than "The humankind has powerful weapons to destroy itself and you are not safe"?

Revisoron Jotform domain seized by US due to user generated content

More precisely Verisign is the registrY, GoDaddy the registrAR. Not that it changes anything in this case.

Revisoron MPAA Response to White House Position on Anti-Piracy Legislation

It's interesting that a domestic law should stop "foreign-based thieves". It's for the first time that I see it repeated so often - according to the MPAA the law is meant only to attack the pirates abroad and save domestic jobs.

This should be the last straw for all countries to wring the control over DNS and generic domains away from USA. The soon-to-be international copyright and patent troll is dangerous to hold the keys.

Revisoron Abolish the Department of Homeland Security

So the argument is that DHS is ineffective and wasteful? I thought the article would talk about how DHS is dangerous because it systematically dismantles your freedom in exchange for omnipresent surveillance and faux security.

Then again, I'm only watching it from the outside.

Revisoron Stack Overflow calculates entropy of a thread as a signifier of low quality.

As an admin of a largish forum I find these attempts to sort people and their output algorithmically very interesting.

Could low entropy of a string be reasonably substituted by a short length as a symptom of low quality?

What mathematical property of a text could signify high-quality posts?

Revisoron German City to Evacuate as 2-Ton Bomb Is Defused

Wow, Der Spiegel says there are about 5,500 bombs found in Germany every year, about 15 a day.

And it's estimated there are still about 100,000 more.

http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/0,1518,801397,00.html

Revisoron Find His Porn: Evil Website of the Week

Find my porn? Why, it's right there in the folder called Porn next to Movies and Music. And not only does my SO know, we talk about what appeals to us.

To be honest about it to each other and above all to myself belongs to a healthy and open sexuality.

Revisoron Nobody's Going to Help You, and That's Awesome

Your belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You won't change because you think it's not even worth trying.

And it works both ways - if you believe you can change in a meaningful way, you will.

See my post elsewhere in this discussion with two books on optimism and self-theories.

Revisoron Nobody's Going to Help You, and That's Awesome

It depends on what you understand under "self-help books".

The generic, feel-good ones, sure, those are trash that usually doesn't work (they still might work given the specific situation).

The well researched, written by scientists and psychologists - I found a few that I love. In fact I'm going to buy ten pieces of one book for this Christmas because I have found it crucial.

These are the three well researched books I've read in the past 18 months that turned my life around for the better and that I heartily recommend:

[1] The Promise of Sleep

[2] Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development

[3] Learned Optimism (that's the one I'm buying ten times for this year's Christmas)

The one recommended in the article, 59 Seconds, is waiting on a pile of books (not exclusively from the self-help category, with The Algorithm Design Manual, Street Smarts, Architecture of Open Source Applications, Learn You a Haskell etc.) to be read soon.

Let's read, think and become better people.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Promise-Sleep-Medicine-Connection-Happ...

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Self-theories-Motivation-Personality-D...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Learned-Optimism-Change-Your-Mind/dp/1...

Revisoron 90% Good parts of jQuery - at only 13% of the size

Use LabJS [1] or a similar library to load both CSS and JS in async, not blocking the loading of other assets.

Edit: Sorry, I misread that you're talking about parsing time. LabJS helps only with the loading time. Does it really take so long to parse? That's not negligible.

[1] http://labjs.com/

Revisoron Back to the Future Photo Project (NSFW)

Being labeled as NSFW on HN is for me the more interesting part of the link.

Don't you dare visit the page. There is at least one underage girl in underwear and a pair of developed female breasts.

Also a naked toddler!

Is it SFW if you know the girl in underwear is from Amsterdam?

Revisoron GoodData threatens our student startup with lawsuit

Disregarding the strange EULA, why are they calling themselves a student startup, when the founders got their master's degrees 20 years ago and it's nearer to a corporate purchase guide than a startup (as in groundbreaking, repeatable, scalable)?