Hacker News Reader

cranklinon Ways to Minimize Employee Retention

He already did.

cranklinon Introducing free voice calls from Hangouts

Now, when will they re-enable hangouts on google glass?

cranklinon Obama's Secret Terrorist-Tracking System, by the Numbers

UTF-8 art

cranklinon NoSQL Meets Bitcoin and Brings Down Two Exchanges

"They did what anyone would do after reading one too many astroturf articles on Hacker News. Sure, their system failed, but in a sense, the overall system failed them."

The technology didn't fail them. On the contrary, the technology did exactly what it was supposed to do. The devs could have (should have) considered these race condition scenarios.

cranklinon Why Most Unit Testing is Waste [pdf]

Unit tests may cost time initially, but saves more time later.

cranklinon How Silicon Valley CEOs conspired to drive down tech engineer wages

well, we can play that same game and form an engineers' union

cranklinon Network Solutions Auto-Enroll: $1,850

People still use network solutions? lol j/k

cranklinon Why did the AK-47 become so popular?

Wrong. Try again. I shoot rain or shine. 2 major competitive shoots a month and 1 small competitive shoot per week. I have to reload an average of 2 flats of ammo per week just to keep up with my shooting.

Let me be more clear. I own 2 AK variants (owned 3) and one M1A. The M1A runs circles around the AK's... and I'm not partial to American made firearms either.

Or, you can blindly trust your Hollywood action movies or clueless bloggers on their so-called knowledge of firearms.

cranklinon Why did the AK-47 become so popular?

Okay, I get that the AK is the most popular military rifle in the world, but there are many superior rifles that are just as reliable. I happen to own an AK and - the gun looks/feels flimsy, - muzzle flip results in a nasty cheek slap, - the receiver looks like folded sheet metal, - safety is hard to engage/disengage and leaves a nasty scratch on the receiver, - the magazine doesn't fit right in (must insert the lip first at an awkward angle), - field stripping is easy but reassembly is a pain in the a$$.

The M1A... now that's a solid reliable/accurate rifle.

cranklinon Google BBS Terminal

pretty cool, but I would imagine Google to use some better ANSI.

cranklinon Linux only needs one 'killer' game to explode, says Battlefield director

one killer game that isn't ported to Windows.

cranklinon How a 5'5" Basketball Player Trained Himself to Dunk

don't forget about Muggsy Bogues!

cranklinon The shittiest project I ever worked on

lol

cranklinon Tiny Inconspicuous Handcuff Key

County jail inmates uncuff themselves all the time (in a matter of seconds) with an industrial-sized staple.

cranklinon To my daughter's high school programming teacher

Was this letter really written with the intention of giving the high school teacher a message? Or was this just a way to showcase her daughter's (as well as her own) accomplishments?

What was the purpose of writing this as an "open letter".

cranklinon Blink tag removed from Firefox

Mozilla didn't want to be responsible for causing seizures

cranklinon Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crashes at SFO

why isn't it?

cranklinon The new php.net

isn't that the same problem with any language? C for example?

cranklinon The new php.net

typical of PHP haters to post a link to a blog written by somebody else and take it as gospel.

cranklinon Why HN was down

You are honest and I respect that. I'm sure many companies try to play off their downtime as something far more sophisticated when in fact, it was something too embarrassing to admit. I've certainly had my fair share of embarrassingly stupid mistakes that resulted in downtime.

cranklinon Do Not Type "File:///" in OS X

in other words, this would wreak a lot of havoc: window.location = "File:///"

cranklinon NY Congressman Introducing Ban On 3D-Printed High Capacity Gun Magazines

they called it the "glock 7"

cranklinon Ask HN: I just inherited 700K+ lines of bad PHP. Advice?

I have a similar story... only I inherited terribly written JSP. It was just as bad if not worse than you describe. I ended up re-writing everything from scratch; now, I am so glad I did.

cranklinon Hackers Hack Handcuffs

I've seen this being done by county jail inmates for many years. All one needs is an industrial size staple.

cranklinon Being a Software Architect

True. But regardless of the official title, somebody still plays the SA role.

cranklinon PHP is much better than what you think

agreed. Language is nothing but a tool. A good programmer will get the job done with any tool.

cranklinon Escapes.js – Retro ANSI art in JavaScript

Ahh memories. I remember ansi.sys was susceptible to ansi bombs. Keyboard remaps, dedicated print, etc.

cranklinon Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

Hollywood needs to shut up and evolve just like everybody else.

cranklinon Cryptocat: webchat with client-side encryption features

A third party can use a carefully crafted ettercap filter to force the user to download an alternate .js file

cranklinon Cryptocat: webchat with client-side encryption features

because... the server might send a broken .js therefore forcing your chat client into sending plain text.