Hacker News Reader

brinion Schwab password policies and two factor authentication

I've also bemoaned Schwab's password policy. I reacted by changing my login ID to something nonsensical which would be difficult to guess or to associate with anyone's identity, let alone mine.

brinion Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles

Ha! Fair enough. No, I didn't intend to troll. I've found RCS useful for ad hoc versioning of configuration files on systems without git or other version control systems. Wondering whether anyone still finds it useful. I reckon not!

brinion Using GNU Stow to manage your dotfiles

Does anyone else use RCS [1] for this?

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/rcs/

brinion Sheldon Brown's Articles

He inspired me to start building my own wheels, to experiment more with 70s-era French steel frames, Raleigh 3-speeds, Raleigh 20s, flip-flop hubs, fixed 3-speed Sturmey-Archer hubs, and on and on. Wonderful man.

brinion OpenMediaVault: FreeNAS on Debian

Thanks. I posted this specifically to get such critiques of these various flavors of FreeNAS: FreeNAS, NAS4Free, OpenMediaVault.

brinion Don't be evil: Moving everything off of Google

Agreed that OsmAnd's interface leaves much room for improvement. Even though I have successfully used its navigation function for specific addresses, I have also run into all the problems you outline. It does seem to get better with each new release.

brinion Don't be evil: Moving everything off of Google

Have you looked into OsmAnd [1] for Android devices? You may find it not as slick as Google Maps, but it does have Points of Interest search.

[1] http://osmand.net/

brinion Soundlab: Lazy signal synthesis in Common Lisp

Thanks. I appreciate your candor and your work on this.

The comment struck me, because I often feel the same!

brinion Soundlab: Lazy signal synthesis in Common Lisp

What do you make of the following under ``SOUNDLAB.COMBINATORS'' on the API page:

``I have no idea what I am doing. I thought I knew but boy am I lost. Still, all this appears to be something good!''

brinion Archy

I like that he named Archy after Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel, the cockroach and alley cat duo. Archy the cockroach would spend hours throwing his body against the keys of a manual typewriter to convey his poetry about his muse Mehitabel, who in turn would throw herself repeatedly against the harsh world of alley-cat living with irrepressible gaiety. Two paragons of the struggle with interfaces!

brinion Zinc – Order products with a few lines of code

Front page needs an editorial review:

Zinc let's you build things... -> Zinc lets you build things...

(``let's'' = ``let us'')

brinion WikiHouse's DIY kits are the open-source way to build a house

I couldn't find many either; just the one from a cursory search:

http://www.wow-huh.com/be-lazy-like-a-fox/

brinion NixOS - Declarative configuration OS

Interesting critique by a Debian developer:

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2008/12/msg01027.html

brinion History of San Francisco Place Names

Thanks for this. I've heard that some of the alleys south of Market got their names from the proprietors of brothels in that area, such as Minna, Natoma, Tehama, Clementina. Can anyone debunk/confirm this?

brinion Free Must-Have “Security Engineering” Book

No, it has only 24 chapters. Version 2 has 27.

brinion You have secrets; we don’t. Why our data format is public

Did you delete your comment? It may have diverged a bit from the topic, but I found your method more compelling than using a password managing service.

brinion Deep Inside: A Study of 10,000 Pornstars and Their Careers

Text-only Google cache version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

brinion Systemic traffic jams caused by small groups of drivers, study says

"This has enormous potential," said study co-author Alex Bayen, a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer science. "These findings are going to come into practice in the near future. This is not just a scientific study."

``... not just a scientific study.'' Reinforce engineering v. science stereotypes much?

brinion Hoax article on India-Portugal clash fools Wikipedia for 5 years

Could ``Bicholim Conflict'' have been a potential Mountweazel for Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry

brinion Motivating posters for your startup

  > +-------------+
  > |   00110010  |
  > |   11001011  |
  > |   10010110  |
  > |   10001001  |
  > |   10010011  |
  > |   01011001  |
  > |   01011001  |
  > +-------------+

Hex: 32 cb 96 89 93 59 59

Decimal: 50 203 150 137 147 89 89

ASCII: 2 Ë [not defined]x3 Y Y

What am I missing?

brinion The origin of rubber boots

Inspiration for a project on Kickstarter:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1079536332/iguaneye-fres...

brinion My eBook build process and some PDF, EPUB and MOBI tips

The reason I asked was your comment about taking advantage of source control and the implied separation of content from formatting.

The only real advantage that I can see to going with publican[1] or asciidoc[2] is that they're free tools. The main disadvantage is that you'd have to define formatting via XSL.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocBook

[2] http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/

brinion My eBook build process and some PDF, EPUB and MOBI tips

I'm interested in whether you looked into using a DocBook tool chain via publican or asciidoc.

brinion Hacking my Vagina

Text only cached version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

brinion Parrot in captivity manufactures tools, something not seen in the wild

Or, more specifically in this case, captivity is the mother of invention. This reminds me of a video I saw recently about the inventions of prison inmates.

brinion Help find a bright object on Mars

I think this [1] is the one lifeisstillgood meant.

[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mcafee_are_droids_taking_our...

brinion Artist Takes Every Drug Known to Man, Draws Self Portraits After Each Use

Thanks for the link to the rules! I wasn't aware of those.

brinion Artist Takes Every Drug Known to Man, Draws Self Portraits After Each Use

If you find this sort of thing interesting, you might investigate Witkacy[1] if you haven't already.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Ignacy_Witkiewi...