conanite

501 karma · joined January 24, 2009

conandalton.net

conaniteon Scientists Discover The Oldest, Largest Body Of Water In Existence--In Space

  The water is out in space, a place we used to think of as
  desolate and desert dry, but it's turning out to be pretty
  lush.

Why did "we" (who?) think this? Hydrogen is everywhere, oxygen is common, they bind easily, there must be quite a lot of water out there. Although 28 galaxies' worth of water all in one place is still impressive.

conaniteon On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

Either businessweek.com needs a new proof-reader, or I'd like to order a pair of "increasingly large security breeches", they sound hilariously comfortable. Although I might not be allowed on an airplane wearing them.

</nitpick>

conaniteon Erik Naggum's XML Rant from 2002: Disturbingly prescient

It is usual to correlate technology preferences with entrepriseyness - BigCo developers, in general, prefer java or c#, whereas startuppy devs, in general, prefer ruby or python, and nobody likes php except the millions of devs who use it.

Is there a similar correlation between technology preferences and political leaning, or religion? If I said I was Christian, or opposed abortion, or approved of gun ownership or of invading Iraq, would you assume, bayesianly, that I probably prefer XML to JSON?

Does a preference for lisp, for example, indicate a predisposition to atheism? What kinds of political or religious leanings might be inferred from one's position on the RDBMS-NoSQL spectrum?

conaniteon The Top Of My Todo List

That might be the wrong dream. Find a dream that balances your other needs, and follow that one.

conaniteon [dead]

I, for one, was hoping "show detailed technical info" would show me some detailed technical info, you know, to keep me going while gmail gets some defibrillation.

But all it says is "Numeric Code: 93". What's that? lmgtfy doesn't help - partly because google groups/forums are also down, and that appears to be where the answers are.

conaniteon What comes next: π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, π/2, ...?

This reminds me of another "surprise" series:

  0, 1, 2, 720!, ...

conaniteon Slavery's last stronghold

You said "No, don't believe this," as if you wanted to say everything in the article is wrong.

conaniteon A new target for tech patent trolls: cash-strapped American cities

So, how about we set up a patent-trolling company specifically to target and annoy people in a position to reform patent law?

conaniteon Ask HN: What's the best company to buy SSL certificates from?

Side question: what's the best company for SSL certificates where you're hosting multiple distinct domains for various clients on the same server? I've read about SAN certs, but I haven't found any documentation ...

conaniteon IBM smashes Moore's Law, cuts bit size to 12 atoms

"The ultimate end of Moore's Law is a single atom."

That's a bit depressing. Why a single atom, and not some smaller particle?

conaniteon Download.com Response to Nmap Offer Bundling

This response doesn't respond to the claim that download.com is bundling other software as well (the original nmap post referred specifically to VLC). This response claims that wrapping nmap was a "mistake", should we conclude that wrapping other software was therefore deliberate?

conaniteon HAML: the unforgivable sin

Conciseness is the major benefit of haml. As a given template in haml is shorter than its equivalent in html or erb, then naturally each line requires more attention to read, there's more information in it.

So perhaps html is "easier" to "read", but in html you're mostly reading noise.

conaniteon The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network

I'd love to have a wimax router, but aren't they expensive? And require a license to operate?

conaniteon The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network

Overlaying on existing infrastructure is a faster way to get up and running, but ultimately a darknet that depends on another network is vulnerable to that network's centralized 'off' button.

conaniteon The Darknet Project: netroots activists dream of global mesh network

"The US State Department seems to view decentralized darknets as an important area of research for empowering free expression abroad."

(my emphasis). Depressing!

conaniteon Why God Hates German Words

You might be thinking of George Orwell, "politics and the english language" (a bit after the victorian era)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_and_the_English_Langua...

Rule 5 states: Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

conaniteon The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

> Suppose I spend a year writing a novel.

In a world without copyright, why would you even do that? The very concept of "#1 bestseller" would disappear, probably with interesting ramifications for cultural diversity.

conaniteon The 'intellectual property' oxymoron

Granting exclusive access to exploit a resource avoids the tragedy of the commons - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

The argument for ownership of land is solid and clear; the argument for intellectual property, less so.

conaniteon Stop looking for nontechnical founders, go get an MBA. It's easy

Selling is hard, and I certainly don't want to be the dude selling code written by the business guy :)

conaniteon Cracking the code

I tried signing up, only to be told

  Could not complete registration: The captcha was not correct.

Only one problem: there was no captcha. Maybe adblock is working too hard ...

conaniteon Firesheep: Easy HTTP session hijacking from within Firefox

  ssh -ND 8887 -p 22 rufus@12.120.186.8

just hangs and doesn't look like it's doing anything ... if you want to see stuff happening, so you know it's working, use verbose mode:

  ssh -vND 8887 -p 22 rufus@12.120.186.8

and you'll see delightful ssl debug information scroll by every time you hit a page in your browser.

conaniteon Russian Spies Hid Secret Codes in Online Photos

I'm curious - if you encrypt the message before embedding it in the image, it should be impossible to prove that a message exists (unless prosecution has its hands on the original), because changing only the lowest-order bit of each byte of image data probably has less impact than the noise from the camera itself, especially if it's an old camera. Alternatively, given any image and any message small enough, you could prove the message is hidden in the image.

conaniteon Stop complaining and pay programmers more

hmmm ... organ transplants? I suppose that's cut-and-paste though.

conaniteon Orwell - Improve your speed reading

Cool how sample text comes from the opening pages of 1984 that cover Winston's absolute lack of privacy, describing how the Thought Police can "plug in your wire whenever they wanted to". A topical choice. If only there had been a big social website that would allow him organise a privacy protest group.

+1 for right-aligned text.

conaniteon The Pirate Bay goes down after legal pressure

http://www.eztakes.com/

I haven't tried it yet. 5000 titles. Decidedly non-mainstream.

conaniteon Web Browsers Leave 'Fingerprints' Behind as You Surf the Net

Time for some http://modifyheaders.mozdev.org/

edit: panopticlick gets plugin and font list via javascript; modifyheaders can't do anything about that ...

conaniteon There’s a Dirty Unix Joke in the New York Times’ Facebook Backlash Story

Another way to enjoy unix commands is to observe their witty output:

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/unix.errors.html

conaniteon Paypal and Authorize.net: Help End the Credit Card Hostage Situation

At some point, your customer's card expires, and you need to ask them to re-enter their details. New details -> new provider. It might take two years to migrate most of your clients - even if it isn't ideal, it's not like you're locked in forever.

conaniteon /r/startups - a Reddit for startups

Strange, there were no posts complaining how reddit is turning into HN. What would be reddit's equivalent of erlang articles?

conaniteon Adobe May Gift Entire Workforce with Flash-Friendly Android Phones

The phone "may very well run on pure spite, in lieu of the traditional battery."

No matter how badly flash sucks, Adobe at least gets to play the underdog card now.