Hacker News Reader

adamdecafon How You Can Be Creative – A Lesson from Pablo Picasso

I've strongly believed that formal education should involve "reinventing the wheel" with some knowledge before hand, but to push creativity, inspiration, and adaptation when further knowledge is gained. It's how I've taught myself so much, and I think it can work for a lot of kids/people.

adamdecafon Why I will never pursue cheating again

Hopefully this is a similar view to other students here, but I would drop the class/change professors (even if that meant going into a larger class). Being in an environment where cheating is allowed is not somewhere that I want to be, much less learn in. I would feel like my honest work was just seen as equal to the cheaters'.

adamdecafon A Google slide presentation that explains some of the thinking behind G+

It's already happening. In the future we'll know thing like who out of our friends has bought this bad, who has bought this brand, who bought competitor brands, what do people think of this brand, and we'll have ways to communicate with them to find out more. Understanding sociability will become a core requirement for designing online. Almost all of us will need to become skilled in social web design. (Slide 33)

I don't want that. I don't want random sources or websites knowing who I am, who my friends are, and who bought their products and who didn't. I want to remain anonymous and protect my data. Of course, I won't be someone who visits these websites, I prefer markets and anonymity.

adamdecafon Why yo momma won’t use Google+ (and why that thrills me to no end)

To bold text you surround that text with asterisks. Like this* GEEKY ALERT! Italicize? Put underscores around the text. Strikeout? Put hyphens around it.*

Really? The most trivial markdown syntax is for the Geeks only? I don't want to live in that world; that sounds like a nightmare of truly incompetent users.

adamdecafon On LulzSec, Censorship & CloudFlare

There are tens of thousands of websites currently using CloudFlare's network. Some of them contain information I find troubling. Such is the nature of a free and open network and, as an organization that aims to make the whole Internet faster and safer, such inherently will be our ongoing struggle. While we will respect the laws of the jurisdictions in which we operate, we do not believe it is our decision to determine what content may and may not be published. That is a slippery slope down which we will not tread.

Thank you Sir, thank you.

adamdecafon Why Nerds Succeed‎

Many of the traits that correlate with “outsider” status among high school students — originality, self-awareness, courage, resilience, integrity and passion — reveal themselves as assets later in life.

Those are also useful, for well, anyone who is successful...

adamdecafon Darpa: US Geek Shortage Is National Security Risk

Question: Who wants to work for a government that locks up its citizens for using TrueCrypt or exploring around, as the hackers they have now grew up? It seems to me that they have cut off their "user base" from the very thing it requires to exist.

adamdecafon TrueCrypt User Held in Contempt of Court

What if you forget the password?

adamdecafon You don't understand something until you think it's obvious.

This reminds me of a story from Feynman where he was with a math friend and they were trying to multi-task. Yet, they ended up going about the two things (counting for a minute while reading or speaking) in completely different ways. (Different enough that one could only count and talk while the other could only count and read.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y&feature=playe...

adamdecafon DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

http://duckduckgo.com/?q=!github+sphela

adamdecafon DuckDuckGo: Escape your search engine filter bubble

DDG won't build a profile about you; it only returns the most relevant links to the keywords entered. The original Google search, only on today's web.

adamdecafon India's $35 tablet ready to ship

In the video they mentioned "2gb" of ram.

adamdecafon LulzSec: Why we do what we do

> "suggests...our actions are causing clowns with pens to write new rules for you. But what if we just hadn't released anything? What if we were silent? That would mean we would be secretly inside FBI affiliates right now, inside PBS, inside Sony... watching... abusing..."

Isn't that happening right now and by the people with pens?

adamdecafon StackOverflow Data Illustrates Why I Prefer Hiring Experienced Developers

Also, I think it's unfair to generalize that young developers ask more questions. Perhaps the young developers have worked on something else for five years, thus they may be "old" in that domain, but new elsewhere. If you bring in someone who has coded for thirty years into a new domain they will ask questions, period.

adamdecafon The changing face of Computer Science education

This is similar to something I experienced in trying to start a computer club at my university. I was the president of the club last year and I was trying to involve people with what, I guess, is classified as "hard CS". I wanted to get some students together to build some complex but formidable piece of software.

However, most of the feedback I received was that "it would be boring" or "too much work", even when I gave them the chance to pick the project. Instead of making something they would rather host LAN parties and such.

I however, wanted to dabble and give students of all experiences real exposure to CS. Not have an official gathering of video games, but maybe, to create a game and show what CS is like.

adamdecafon Why Facebook isn't the best home for your public events

I'm not trying to imply that. Yes, I do think it's reasonable to require a Facebook account for college students. We also publicize the events in local papers, flyers, word of mouth, and even our blog. Facebook is the best way to get >85-90% of students who come to come.

adamdecafon Why Facebook isn't the best home for your public events

(I'm involved with several student groups on campus.)

Facebook is an amazing tool for getting people out to your events. It doesn't matter if the event is really "public" because the only people who could make it (or that will come) will already be on campus and be invited to the event. (They will see it in news feeds)

So, is it bad that the event data is locked in Facebook? Yes. But, does it matter? No.

adamdecafon Newegg stores your password in plaintext

Why the down votes everyone?

adamdecafon Newegg stores your password in plaintext

I totally agree with you. I started to come here a little over two years ago (one-ish with an account) and I've noticed the definite slide towards less "hackerish" statements. This site really exposed me to the raw hacker mindset (other than the distant likes of RMS and ESR) and it's becoming less interesting to read all of the comments on any random story.

adamdecafon Annoying.js: How to be an asshole

"I decided to copy the JavaScript and create a library"

Anyone else worried about using this now? Let alone owning it? (Until I see a license on the original.)

adamdecafon [dead]

Also, is distracted from school work by outside projects.

If you add that then you have me right now. I don't care enough to crank out a 4.0; I'd rather work on my projects that interest and push me further than assignments ever will.

adamdecafon Would the smoothness of your pen affect your creativity?

Hence why I use markers a lot.

adamdecafon Dropbox Lied to Users about Data Security, Complaint to FTC Alleges

Item 37 has an error, it reads "In their April 21, 2001" which should be "In their April 21, 2011". Nothing big, just important for correctness.

adamdecafon Google's CDN hosted jQuery 1.5 is down (Fixed after 40 min)

It would be really cool to see how many websites failed because of this. Mashing up the amount of caching that actually goes on would be a cool metric to further improve CDN's with, anyone agree?

adamdecafon AOL Asks Us If We Can Tone It Down

(Note: I didn't finish this article, I skimmed it.)

Whenever I read something like the following:

> "Apparently, the post was not enough of a blowjob for Summit,"

The level of reporting drops to the floor. How is this professional at all? That phrase made me close the tab; TechCrunch has had its fair share of childness, but this is an all time low. Really guys? Really?

adamdecafon Poll: Where do you work?

Why isn't there an option for students?

adamdecafon XSS Prevention Cheat Sheet

I'm saying the same thing; a site dedicated to web security, and an article about protecting yourself from JS attacks, doesn't work without JS...

adamdecafon OAuth Will Murder Your Children

Why the hell does he have 43 connected apps? Is this the norm?

I have three: GoogleTV, Mobile, Iphone. (I used to have TweetDeck and a couple others, so 6 total.)

adamdecafon DHTML5

Are you comparing the official multipage version? Also, the official one has a lot of extra JS features like side-boxes, inline comments, commit messages, etc...

adamdecafon There are seven online business models

Yep, and one of them is to apparently make your site load, then disappear when JavaScript is disabled. Classy way to throw away business...