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aaronsw

1,609 karma · joined October 10, 2006

http://www.aaronsw.com/ http://twitter.com/aaronsw
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aaronsw··on Why I am tired of writing pull requests
https://github.com/Aaronius/Stupid-Table-Plugin/commit/fbf3d... people.
aaronsw··on Jonah Lehrer Resigns From The New Yorker After Making Up Quotes
The details are here:

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/107779/jon...

aaronsw··on Heroku Postmortem of June 29th Incident
The "What we are doing" section seems pretty weak. The only substantive thing they say is "we have produced new tools which enable us to more expediently relocate database services from a failed availability zone."

How exactly are they planning to deal with the larger Cedar difficulties? Are they going to eliminate their dependence on ELBs? Go multi-region? Developers need to know this to decide whether to continue with Heroku or build their own platform.

aaronsw··on How Google handle leap seconds
The real solution is not to use broken NTP: http://cr.yp.to/proto/utctai.html
aaronsw··on Taking on Amazon, Google launches EC2 rival Compute Engine
Hmm, looks like they're competing directly on price:

1 virtual core, 1.7GB RAM, 160GB disk for $.055/hr (Google)

1 virtual core, 1.7GB RAM, 160GB disk for $.08/hr (Amazon)

Amazon is still much cheaper if you use reserved instances or spot pricing, though. And for these sorts of compute jobs, I'm not sure why you wouldn't use spot pricing.

aaronsw··on Letter to the FSF
Shorter johnw: I heart Ayn Rand.

In particular, I'm pretty sure Stallman (like most Americans) is in favor of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, so trying to persuade him that free software is a bad idea because it's like that seems pretty clueless.

aaronsw··on Yelp accused of burying good customer reviews
This is a pretty crummy article. If you read it carefully, you see:

- a woman owns a shady company

- she tries to get her friends to write five star reviews of her on Yelp

- Yelp intentionally tries to filter out these reviews so the site isn't filled with spam opinions

- the woman is upset

The real question is why there's a news story taking her side in this.

aaronsw··on Fish: Finally, a command line shell for the 90s
Presumably because fish hasn't been updated since 2009 and they expect their fork to become the new standard version.

http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/beta.html

"Welcome to our fork of the fish shell, a command line shell like bash. Its working name is fishfish, but I hope eventually it will just be fish!"

aaronsw··on Assange loses extradition appeal
Actually, Polanski was arrested and released in Switzerland, not Sweden.
aaronsw··on Assange loses extradition appeal
"Swedish law requires a person to be physically present before charges can be laid, so this can only happen once Mr Assange is on Swedish territory."

http://www.fairtrials.net/documents/Sweden_QA.pdf

aaronsw··on Mark Zuckerberg married
Did they also hack this to autopost to Facebook?
aaronsw··on Apple to crush carriers, become direct service provider
And where are they supposed to get all the towers? That's a multi-year construction project and, if they try it, they'll alienate their existing carrier partners.

Now maybe Apple thinks they can afford to do that, but it seems risky.

aaronsw··on Netflix creates super-PAC
This is much more likely to be about the VPPA, a law which Netflix believes makes it illegal to provide social features in the US:

http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2012/01/netflix-to-testify-tue...

aaronsw··on Google Scholar Metrics for Publications
Is there any reason to believe this h-index method of ranking is a good idea? Why not use PageRank?
aaronsw··on Google maps 8bit quest mode. A setup for 4/1 perhaps?
Google offices are apparently marked with surprisingly-unpixelated propellerheads. There's also some custom art for SF landmarks.
aaronsw··on Fact based, data-oriented news
Can we see this in real dollars? Hard to understand the actual trends the industry is facing in nominal dollars.
aaronsw··on From the IE Team: Google Bypassing User Privacy Settings
The dishonesty of this statement is stunning. IE is designed to only accept the cookie if Google promises not to use it for tracking. Google wants to use the cookie for tracking so they provide a dishonesty promise and then explain they're lying because IE didn't have them in mind -- when this is exactly what IE had in mind.
aaronsw··on Rand Paul promises to filibuster PIPA
And Rand has promised this before. But we need 41 to actually prevent a vote, since the Senate has already filed to override the filibuster.
aaronsw··on Congress Pushes Bills To Promote Cybersecurity
The actual audio piece doesn't mention SOPA/PIPA or pirates, best I could tell. It was about a cybersecurity data sharing bill and even gave the Tor Project the last word.
aaronsw··on Google search results for "askew"
Is anyone making a list of these?

http://www.quora.com/What-other-easter-eggs-does-Google-sear...

aaronsw··on Git is exploding
I think it's partly an artifact: due to a naming conflict, the git package in Debian used to be named "git-core" and was renamed "git" around then.
aaronsw··on Richard Hamming: You and Your Research
I just discovered recently that Richard Hamming also has a book on this topic:

http://www.amazon.com/D/dp/B000P2XFPA%3FSubscriptionId%3D14G...

aaronsw··on On cryptography and dogmas
This is moronic. Cryptography is very hard and one tiny mistake can ruin everything. In that kind of situation, do you want to do something clever and new that you just thought up or do you want to go with what's been tried and tested by many?

Anyone can invent a cryptosystem that they themselves can't break. That's why you need a community, over a long period of time, searching for flaws. Going with the herd is exactly the right thing to do here.

aaronsw··on Stephen Wolfram on Steve Jobs: A Few Memories
The original (one-page) version of this is here: http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-a-few-memo...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3079799

aaronsw··on Law suit shuts down Olson TZ database servers.
No, you can't -- the Supreme Court in 1991 ruled that even wholesale copying of a telephone book was legal, because you can't copyright facts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural

aaronsw··on Google Threw A Punch, Microsoft Fires Back With A Missile
One interesting possibility: Google planned to only use the patents defensively but the joint bid would have required them participating in offensive action, which they refuse to do.
aaronsw··on Foxconn to replace workers with 1 million robots in 3 years
"I suppose some part of me assumed that by 2020+ machines would be making most of what I use, but when I look at the scale of jobless people as a result of it, it really makes me scratch my head to figure out where we fit in the future."

This is a common economic misconception. If, by some lucky twist of fate, machines can make everything we may ever want, it'd be great! We can just all lie around and enjoy utopia.

aaronsw··on Poll: What should be done about the endless repetition of stories?
That story originally carried a title like "AirBnB scandal makes front page of the Financial Times". I thought it was interesting from the perspective of "How does bad press about a startup spread and what are the effects of various ways of responding?" rather than "Let's keep piling on AirBnB." This is the first big YC crisis management story I can recall; it's not surprising other founders would want to learn from it.
aaronsw··on Paul Buchheit at Startup School 08. This talk continues to inspire me
Anyone know what the slides were?
aaronsw··on [dead]
The reason Branson keeps deferring is that he isn't the CEO; he "founded" the company but he hasn't really been involved with it for decades.
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