Hacker News Reader

_pion The future of movie downloads is ultraviolet

Movies/Music/TV are more portable than games, steam doesn't have to deal with portability (multiple different devices, not explicit PC's that run the games) (yet) which is why it's a good system for what it is.

Essentially a Steam for everything would never be able to have DRM otherwise certain devices would get locked out, which returns us to the original problem of DRM. Steam just locked onto a niche market and realized their potential.

_pion How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

I understand your predicament, I myself don't have kids but I understand what it would feel like to take your children away. But I also understand that you have time and a lawyer who already knew about the case. I'd ask him if there's a statute of limitations on this sort of thing. You may have a chance to fight back, and at least help sort out this unjust system.

_pion How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

First off, I am so sorry for your experience that sounds completely terrible.

Second, was there nothing your lawyer could do, such as file an injunction against the DCF? Is there any way you can be compensated (in any way) for your experience? If there was would you take it?

_pion [dead]

Not enough people are flagging these links to reddit submissions....

_pion Reddit needs help

I think the rise of humanistic interest sub-reddits with a low knowledge entry barrier killed it.

_pion Reddit needs help

To be honest Reddit isn't that techie anymore, reddit's demographics have shifted to teenage and young adult males and girls who are "geeks". Not only that but the default reddits are becoming a cesspool like Digg. Essentially the community had so much Digg hate in the beginning but at least Kevin Rose kept his site running while the demographics shifted.

_pion Finally: Gmail Introduces Rich Text Signatures

Actually this a problem with most mail clients. They are terribly slow, even web based ones, for people who have multiple accounts, have a high email volume, and have to archive all their mail and have it easily accessible. Essentially the problem is most email clients suck, many terminal apps have been optimized for speed and thus many people with a ton of email use them, the culmination of all my mailboxes is about 22Gb of email! Outlook sucks at handling mailboxes over 5Gb same with most other clients, Gmail is ok at it but searching is a bit slow, and organization and control isn't that great. Gmail is also slow in usability compared to most clients like mutt or sup.

Not only that but HTML emails INCREASE mailbox size dramatically! Especially HTML signatures, because they generally use several different sizes/faces of font, contain images and may introduce "email backgrounds". In many cases the HTML markup of an email may be LARGER than the content of the email.

_pion Are night owls generally more intelligent than other people?

Anecdotal evidence: I swap between the two, it just takes a creative sleep pattern, I had a strange schedule last year due to the layout of my courses, so some days I'd stay up till 4 sleep till 2, and other's I'd sleep at 11 and wake at 7:30. I guess my IQ last year was sinusoidal.

_pion Microsoft reveals source to Russian Secret Service

I think this is a very interesting move on Microsoft's part. It comes from Russia's dismissal of blackbox vendor software citing security and privacy fears. As well as Russia's push for it's own open Linux distro, ALT Linux. It seems that Microsoft wants to regain some traction within the Russian government.

_pion IPhone vs. Android Re-sale Values

Market forces. This just proves people are more willing to pay of an iPhone for whatever reason, compared to a Droid phone. Arguing the reason is X (quality or it being the better phone) is pretty useless based on this data.

_pion How To Hire An Intern

Here you go [1].

It doesn't matter if the work is voluntary, I voluntarily buy a product but if the company knows it's faulty and sells it to me anyway that's wrong. If the company knows that the job is unfair, and is using it as free labor that is wrong.

The point is what's morally wrong and in some cases... illegal to the point the feds have to get involved [2].

[1] http://wbztv.com/local/Adult.internship.experience.2.1763471...

[2] http://www.cartoonbrew.com/student/most-unpaid-internships-a...

_pion How To Hire An Intern

"Wow! You're telling me that if I send out a job posting for interns, not only am I supporting a "systematic evil in the job market" but they have "no choice"? Really? First, what systematic evil are you referring to? Second, nobody is holding a gun to their heads. They have a choice. Do you want to give up some of your time for a chance to learn something? Yes or no. There's no duping involved. It's laid out. Also, at the end of the post, I clearly state that anybody offering an internship program SHOULD offer some sort of fiscal or other reward if the intern performs well."

Actually because of the economic situation in the United States people who don't have senior level experience in the job market take unpaid internships at companies because they think that they would be better selected for a position in that company.These people have to eat somehow. It's not morally right to send out internships and get these kinds of people, and then hire them. Or try to create a job market such as that while maximizing your own profits off of these people. It's almost equivocal to outsourcing, only outsourcing. I'm sure you haven't had these kinds of people ask you for a job, but keep in mind that does happen. Not only that but many internships even GSoC are an outright insult for free labor.

For instance the projects for Facebook in GSoC this year were ridiculous, they wanted college kids to build entire SMTP servers for their platforms, or drop in a replacement for libcurl, or at least code one, in one summer. Honestly if you ask me those tasks seem way over the level of students because they are broad projects requiring a team of developers to test for rigor in the system. They aren't the only company who pulls stunts like this, there are worse companies who want this done for free.

"As for the line you quote: in context, it's written from the perspective of the intern - not the employer. I'll concede that it wasn't entirely obvious, though. :)"

This also emphasizes my point about the person's view of themselves. No on wants to be a slave, doing "grunt work", just for a glittering hint of networking.

_pion How To Hire An Intern

Labor laws in the US clearly state that if the person is working unpaid the company cannot receive any immediate benefits for his or her position. This means that you can't have the person "hands on learning" while working on your product or working at a client site. That is purely illegal unless they're doing it for course credit. Again if you take on a college student but they cannot get course credit, however even if their university offers it and you derive immediate benefit from their employment it's illegal.

I understand if someone cold cases you for an internship and you cannot pay them but they want to learn and have some position in your company it's a bit more acceptable. But essentially if you send out job postings for interns you support a systematic evil in the job market of the US. These people have no choice but to work for you if they want to work in their field, and obviously no choice but to do so for free. You essentially try to write it off by saying it gives them value or experience but you as an employer are more interested in the free labor rather than what they derive out of it. There is no way around that. You aren't hiring them for their sake, you're hiring them because you get free labor that they are excited to do, and that's the best deal for you because you get the profit from it.

This hurts what people value their career at a critical juncture when they enter the job market. They see that everyone has to take unpaid internships meaning that companies aren't willing to value their work, this gets them thinking that their work is valueless. Which in turn is worse for any employer because the performance of the employee would suffer because of this diffusion of responsibility.

In short posted unpaid internships hurt the job market, hurt companies and most importantly hurt workers in their most critical time. Not only that but you seem to relish the opportunity of a person who is super excited to work on something for you for free, which is disrespectful of anyone you hire. I'm not against all unpaid internships, but most people see it as free labor, not altruistically training new employees for the job market. Even this article is prefaced with "Yay free labor in the summer!" which is what triggered my response, specifically this line: "I’m talking about internships - free, grunt work labor in the hopes of making connections and gaining a little bit of experience along the way."

_pion [dead]

Hopefully you're just trying to emphasize that you know about your bandwidth, but honestly any time I see someone claim to get a certain speed in Mbps but write it as "mbps" red flags go off....

1 Mb = 1000 b = 1000,000 mb. So you just said the network's max speed is 1.5 bps

_pion Google Encrypted Search Moved to New Hostname to Address Concerns from Schools

Meet the new CISCO MITM 5505, trust CISCO for all your net appliance needs.

_pion How To Hire An Intern

It still disgusts me how people think it's perfectly okay to flaunt labor laws with internships. This attitude of it being "free labor" is absolutely absurd. Do your other entry level positions that may need some training also not get paid? Just because the person doesn't have the degree or doesn't qualify for the job otherwise doesn't mean he should do it for free if you train him to do it. I mean really lets be clear here, there is no job that an intern can hold for which you would spend more money than they would earn at that job in training them.

_pion Russian Spy’s Connections to Silicon Valley

They most definitely are, or it's just a media circus. My parents and I emigrated from Ukraine and we have similar qualities in terms of lifestyle and connections as these people, we've certainly never known that we were actually spies for Russia but apparently we are. IMO this is a complete media scandal, rather than an actual case in which spies get caught. If they were real spies they'd at least have tried to change handlers, (what they know about Russia is as valuable to the US as what they know about the US to Russia) as I'm sure this kind of stuff tends to happen, or they'd be you know, dead.

_pion Russian Spies Hid Secret Codes in Online Photos

Heavens no, a federal law enforcement agency at risk of perjury!

_pion AT&T Learns Exactly the Wrong Lesson About Data Usage

I see lots of geeks rooting their Droids and installing ntop or similar utilities when this sad day comes.

_pion Eric S. Raymond - The Curse of the Gifted (2000)

I'd argue that Git greatly changed (maybe more so enhanced then changed) the model of the kernel and it seems that Linus did consider ESR's advice ultimately, and maybe that's what drove him to create git.

_pion List of fallacies

I'd err to caution you about this kind of thinking, namely because people who spend careful time memorizing the names of fallacies rather than spending that time, explaining to other people with whom they're debating where they were mislead, tend to be assholes whose arguments boil down to spouting ad homenim, no true scotsman, Loki's wager, etc. Which is a more pretentious way of saying 'u r wrong' and being generally allienating the people with whom you're trying to converse. And yes this is from personal experience.

Also something of interest is: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

_pion Apple iPad

Because some of us, actually want a computer with more power than the iPad, or because the App store is a bad idea for end users and developers, or because some of us use netbooks and smaller laptops as our mobile coding machines when this thing doesn't even have a keyboard.

_pion A new approach to China

Also if a "glastnost" comes to China it probably won't do anything, same as in the USSR.

_pion Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money

It's fairly easy to find barebones bodies with mobo, cpu, etc. However finding graphics chips, sound chips, etc. is quite a pain.

_pion Model forces Google to reveal blogger's identity

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-livecdent/...

Lies that's not a man in a mariachi costume! I demand to see the real picture!

_pion Why I hate programming competitions

I've been to several highschool/college level competitions they generally fall into two types, writing scenario code the fastest with no concern for real-world problems, or a test in reading obfuscated code (GE/Fairfield University you're seriously incompetent in your inability to provide actual computers.). In my experience the later is worse, much worse, more-so because its frustrating as hell.

_pion Stanford, Duke, Rice, … and Gates?

Except not a trade school. Olin is bit heavy on entrepreneurial ventures though.

_pion Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?

If the police cannot just grab records and look at them why can they be notified without warrant if records are updated, it seems that that behavior is counter-intuitive to what the law says about privacy, ie the government doesn't have a right without warrant to know what I use my account for but they do have a right to know if I use my account at all without warrant. This is a contradiction to what existing privacy laws already say.

As for witness testimony, it's vastly different because they aren't solid records. I don't have the ability to be private out in public, obviously. Plus people have different definitions of privacy, I would mind if my friends or family members alerted the police to where I was for any reason even if I had nothing to hide, because this kind of behavior will just repeat and against other suspects. Suspicion doesn't imply conviction.

_pion Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?

How legal is it for Amazon or Airlines to give out this information?

How legal is it for schools/companies/etc to give out information about contacts to the Police? Why is it illegal to give out the record but legal to say that there was activity?

It seems that these tactics are quite shady in terms of legalities. Why should I get a warrant for X if I can just ask his vendors?

Why would someone have to subpoena your bank records but have Amazon up for grabs so to speak?

_pion X Could Learn a Lot from Vista, Windows 7

It certainly does both, but doesn't work as well enough as it should. Some of the corruption and image problems I've had on VNC also are on RDP.