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darren

102 karma · joined September 21, 2010

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darren··on Restoration of an IBM Thinkpad 701C Butterfly-keyboard laptop
At one point I had a portable keyboard for my palm pilot that used similar folding tech. The keyboard when folded was very small - about the size of an iPhone in a large case.

I'm surprised nobody has released a bluetooth version of this keyboard for the iPad, I know I would buy one.

darren··on The Inner Osborne Effect (2021)
Related evergreen post from Joel Spolksy: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
darren··on Developer's Guide to SaaS Compliance
Ouch, I had no idea it cost that much. What are the main cost areas?

What would you estimate compliance at a Moderate baseline would be?

darren··on Show HN: Bike – macOS Native Outliner
Nice! Do you have any plans on adding a "library" sidebar (like IA Writer) to allow quick jumping between multiple files?
darren··on Safari Technology Preview Release Notes
Looks like there's some good performance gains here as well. Safari has traditionally been faster on the benchmarks, but recently Chrome has overtaken it.

This Preview puts Safari in the lead again.

Speedometer 2.0 (https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/) on my M1 Air:

Safari 15.4: 258 runs/min Chrome 101.0.4951.64: 264 runs/min Safari Tech Preview 15.4 (release 145): 307 runs/min

darren··on Vantage has acquired ec2instances.info
Ooh, while we're requesting columns - it would be great to add Core count (different from vCPU). See here for data: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/physicalcores/
darren··on The SOC2 Starting Seven (2020)
We did a Type 1 audit with Tugboat last year. I came away quite impressed - the default templates are a great starting point, and the evidence tasks are basically a giant todo list to assign and grind through. It turned a complex project with lots of unknowns into a much more straightforward project.
darren··on Lunar – macOS utility to set brightness and volume on external monitors
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted but I really struggled with this application as well. Sync mode? location mode? There's help text, which I read it several times and I still have no idea what's going on.

The preferences screen is very difficult to use - it's a mix of labels and buttons with no indication that things are adjustable. You can adjust the brightness by hovering over the brightness amount and scrolling vertically. There are multiple preference panes, but they're only findable with horizontal scrolling. None of this is easily discoverable.

I use the software... but pretty much only the shortcut keys (^F2, ^F1). The other features which seem like they could be useful, would probably see a lot higher adoption if the application followed some UX best practices.

darren··on Ask HN: Examples of great ‘productized consulting’ landing pages?
Major Tom (https://www.majortom.com) launched a Shopify site for their services: https://tincan.shop
darren··on Ever-growing cars: why they keep on getting wider
As a parent with 2 young kids the massive size of car seats forced us into a larger vehicle.
darren··on Apple has shut down the Safari Extensions Gallery in favor of native apps
The new gallery in the app store: https://apps.apple.com/ca/story/id1377753262
darren··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2016)
Openroad Communications / ThoughtFarmer | Fulltime | Onsite - Vancouver, BC

ThoughtFarmer is making work better. We improve employee engagement and productivity by deploying powerful, intuitive social intranets that foster communication and collaboration. We’re seeking a Software Developer to help develop the next generation of employee communication and collaboration software.

We are looking for a smart, passionate software developer to join our team here at ThoughtFarmer who is enthusiastic about working the full application stack.

ThoughtFarmer is a responsive HTML5 SPA using React. The backend is a modern Microsoft web application stack, using .NET 4.5, ASP.NET MVC / WebApi and SQL Server. You should be comfortable using frontend build tools such as SASS, ESLint, Grunt etc.

You will be working with a dedicated team of developers, designers, user experience and product managers to build software that’s used around the world.

For more information see https://www.openroad.ca/about/careers/software-developer-c-j...

darren··on Wmail – Desktop client for Gmail and Google Inbox
I've used Mailplane for years - http://mailplaneapp.com

Yes, it is "just" a wrapper, but it's nice having Mail and Calendar in a separate dedicated app. I can restart my browser without impacting my mail, and the integration with the desktop (e.g. mailto: links just work, I can use quicklook on attachments, better drag and drop support, etc.) make it worthwhile.

darren··on New Chromecast 2015
Any word on whether it will have support for wifi behind captive portal? I've got a Chromecast v1 that I was excited to bring it on trips with me to watch Netflix from the hotel room, but I could never get it to connect to hotel networks which always have the stupid captive portal authentication scheme.
darren··on Inside the 'Notorious' Canadian Internet Company Targeted by the US Government
I've been on the internet long enough to remember that Tucows originally stood for "The Ultimate Collection of Windows Software"
darren··on Why Startups Like ZenPayroll Can Take On Giant Corporations like ADP And Win
We're an ADP customer and I'm shocked at the state of their technology.

Not only is their customer portal IE only, they mandate the use of an ActiveX control from 1997. Proof:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BiBRYxhCEAAWAg5.jpg

Brutal. If this is the state of ZenPayroll's competition they're in a good spot.

darren··on Site44 turns Dropbox folders into websites
https://harp.io/ is doing something similar as well.
darren··on Microsoft begs Web devs not to make WebKit the new IE6
Sure would be nice to get IE10 support into Zepto.js. IE support is one of the main reasons we continue to use Jquery Mobile, but Zepto would meet our needs (with a bit of re-work) at a much smaller download size.
darren··on Converting your website to Responsive Design
See also part 2 (http://goo.gl/Mrnpu), 3 (http://goo.gl/us70j) and 4: (http://goo.gl/DE661)
darren··on GM Puts IT Outsourcing in the Rearview Mirror
GM builds the automatic transmissions for many BMWs. Clearly some Germans think that GM knows what they're doing.
darren··on Command line tool for blocking sites to be more productive
Concentrate does this with a nice interface (non-free, although with a very long trial period): http://getconcentrating.com/

Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be well maintained.

darren··on Women in Tech: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is.
The Impact of Gender Composition on Team Performance and Decision-Making: Evidence from the Field

http://www.econ.upf.edu/~apesteguia/Gender_Teams.pdf

"Looking across the performance distribution, we find that for undergraduates, three women teams are outperformed throughout... For MBA students, at the top, the best performing group is two men and one woman."

http://hbr.org/2011/06/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-tea...

"The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show, the more women, the better."

http://www.20-first.com/968-0-lbs-study-shows-addition-of-wo...

"The optimal percentage for the gender balance of men and women on teams is 50:50. Neither men nor women flourish when in a minority on teams. When in a minority, women tend to network outside whereas men tend to become less motivated. Having a slight majority of women on teams (about 60%) improves the self-confidence of the team."

I think the evidence is pretty clear. Anecdotally, I've seen the best performance out of mixed teams. All men teams and all women teams generally don't work out so well.

darren··on R.I.P. Donald J. Sobol, Encyclopedia Brown Author, 1924-2012
Topless Robot did a good summary on how ridiculous some of the "mysteries" were:

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/07/the_10_most_ridiculously...

darren··on Poll: What CRM do you use at your startup?
We used to use Pipeline, but recently switched to Bantam Live. Better pricing model, better user interface, decent reporting, plus it has an iPhone version. Worth checking out.
darren··on Razorfish's site background is a low-res, live, web-cam feed
Cool effect, but I don't think it's live. I find it hard to believe that every single office has someone walking around in it 24x7 (which always seems to be the case).
darren··on Tumblr CTO Marco Arment Steps Down
Hopefully the new CTO knows to how to enable SSL on their login page and ecommerce pages.