Hacker News Reader

dgesangon Free Software Foundation issues statement on new iPhone models from Apple

... or maybe it's time for the people should stop voting with their wallets and start listing. Then maybe their message would be heard and more people would start to care about what they are saying and realize that they ARE actually right.

dgesangon Free Software Foundation issues statement on new iPhone models from Apple

Don't judge a book by its cover.

dgesangon Visualizations that make no sense

visualization rule #1: read the labels

dgesangon Showing stored passwords – Tim Berners-Lee

You will not, because that domain is blocked in every OSI layer possible in my local setup. ;)

But seriously: Yes, of course you would. They have to be pasted in clear text. There is no other way to do this.

But that's not the point. The point is that you do not get to use CTRL+ENTER in the first place! Unless, of course, you type in the master password, which Opera will forget after x minutes (zero if you want it to be forgotten instantly). So you have a windows of x minutes after I've used the password manager for the last time to do your "DOM hack".

dgesangon Showing stored passwords – Tim Berners-Lee

wtf

dgesangon Showing stored passwords – Tim Berners-Lee

This! The assumption that some uber-1337-hax0r is accessing the system who will install a rootkit just by looking at it is just not close to reality. It is on the other hand a very real situation that some weird friends, family members or co-workers have access to your system while you're not looking.

dgesangon Showing stored passwords – Tim Berners-Lee

    If you mean an extra password, the answer is that most people don't want to type in a password when they open their browser. Think it through and try to see the issue.

I don't see your "issue", as using a master password does not "defeat the whole purpose of password saving" at all. Many people have different login credentials for different websites (not only passwords, also login name or email) which are hard to remember which one you used where. Having access to them with a single master password is convenience.

I like the way this is handled in Opera, where your passwords can never be accessed/viewed in plain text at any time. Once your login data are stored, you can simply use them via CTRL+ENTER on the login form and the data is pasted into it. If you want to you can use a master password to restrict access to that data. And you can even set a time after which the the browser will forget that password and then asks for it again after e.g. 15 minutes.

dgesangon Showing stored passwords – Tim Berners-Lee

    The passwords are stored in an easily obtainable format.

So, why not change THAT and store them encrypted with a master key?

    If you are leaving your laptop around untrusted people, you're going to have problems.

True. But why make it even easier for someone unauthorized to retrieve your passwords?

Why is it only the browser developers who come up with that arguement? I've never read such a statement from any other team. And why aren't other software systems do it that way if it is so insecure and "falce-security" so encrypt user passwords in a local db? Couldn't even an OS use that argument and say "hey, you got physical access to the system, here are all the passwords in plain text, have fun!".

dgesangon I will not do a tech interview

> relatively low-stress interview

Is there such thing? I doubt it, unless you're interviewed by someone you already know well.

dgesangon Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

A user cannot connect to the internet even after trying various software settings. It turns out the hardware wireless toggle is off. Either the hardware or OS itself didn't inform the user of what was going on, this is a massive design fail.

What if the hardware or OS did do it actually, but the user failed to recognize it as for what it is or meant?

dgesangon We have an employee whose last name is Null. He kills our employee lookup (2012)

Also AS3 has strong static typing, a huge advantage, as we've just heard once again yesterday:

[...] the value of types is super super important. [...] Everything that is syntacticly legal, that the compiler will accept, will eventually wind up in your code base and that's why I think that static typing is so valuable because it cuts down on what can kinda make it pass down there. I'm only getting stronger in my stands on static typing, static analysis.[...] - John Carmack, qcon keynote 2013

dgesangon Victory Lap for Ask Patents

Two quick thoughts:

1. Swap the burden of proof: couldn't much of these issues with software(!) patents be avoided just by forcing the "inventors" to check for prior arts themselves and prove (somehow) that they actually did do that?

2. Make them pay: What about a (huge) fine when the patent does not get approved eventually or when prior art was found during the approval process?

dgesangon The Forbidden Island

Why? Because the Earth is only 6000 years old?

dgesangon The Forbidden Island

Ofc stop using innocent children for your arguments.

dgesangon The Forbidden Island

Please look up "Sarcasm".

dgesangon Linus on "acting professionally"

What about "Fuck you, you piece of shit!" ;)

dgesangon Linus on "acting professionally"

Do you have any numbers of how many would-be contributers have been scared aways by him? How many, on the other hand, have been attracted by his person? And what about the 1-to-2 ratio, any proof for that? And how would all of this make the Linux kernel better? How is being nice and polite related to the quality of your code?

dgesangon Enough with the JavaScript already

also Haxe.

dgesangon Why We Can No Longer Trust Microsoft

Why bother with a phone manufacturer when you can have access to all communications directly at the network provider? Much more convenient.

dgesangon Why I don't touch crypto

You listed stuff that only affect yourself when you screw it up. But when you build systems for others (read: paying customers) you have to make sure you do your very best. And when it comes to cryptography 99% of developers are better of using well established technologies instead of brewing their own.

dgesangon Linux developer Seth Vidal killed in Hit and Run accident on his bike.

Sure it is, so what? But there is a HUGE difference between

    Riding a bike with speed and on terrain that outrun your riding skills

and

    Being hit by a car driven by someone not paying enough attention

Period.

dgesangon The vision behind Opera 15 and beyond

The NSA already knows anyway.

dgesangon Poll: What is your favorite programming font?

Ah, it's "What's your favorite X?" time again! +1 for Source Code Pro.

dgesangon PRISM fears give private search engine DuckDuckGo its best week ever

Here is a non-US-based alternative: https://startpage.com

dgesangon Encrypt your Google chats and make the NSA sad

Because people don't know about it.

dgesangon Bitbucket passes one million users

I'm wondering why so many people use bitbucket/github for their (commercial) projects instead of setting up their own repo management system (like RhodeCode). It's not hard to set up and you can have as much repositories as you want to.

dgesangon Derby v0.5.0 – The first OT-powered realtime web app framework

  There are far more software project starts than good names out there.

I doubt that. Define 'good name'. Also, for open source software it does not matter that much what it is named. Who would care if Python was named e.g. Snake or Juice or Foo? As long as it is somewhat unique and catchy it should be fine, shouldn't it?

  You don't know which category your project will end up in when you start it.

Exactly, you do not know it. If your product is successful you want it to be unique. Just imagine the number of wrong tags on SE. And if you product is not successful it is even worse to add unnecessary confusion.

  Because JS is popular

Surprisingly and unfortunately, yes. But other technologies have had their time as well, e.g. I can't remember any ambiguous naming in Java. Anyone?

  There are also a lot of half-baked libraries out there that will waste your time. So many developers end up making their own.

Ok, why not just name it jQuery then? Hardly an excuse for poor naming choice.

dgesangon Derby v0.5.0 – The first OT-powered realtime web app framework

Am I the only one who would look up a possible product name before using it? There already is a (well known) software from ASF named 'Derby': http://db.apache.org/derby

Why would you start such a confusion? Why would you want to fight with that software for page ranking? Why does this mostly happen to JS technologies?

dgesangon Opera 15 Preview for Windows and Mac with Chromium Engine Released

Extensions are much slower and annoying to manage. If Opera Next does not include all the features Opera users used to have (the bin is just one of them) then none of them will actually use it. If we wanted Chrome, we would use it.

dgesangon Opera 15 Preview for Windows and Mac with Chromium Engine Released

> I always thought the selling point was the e-mail /rss / irc etc

None of these are 'selling points'. There is better software available for Email, RSS and IRC. If you don't want many tools, ok, you might like Opera more, but they are no reason to choose Opera over any other browser.

The reasons I choose Opera for my daily work are:

  - awesome UI (yes, it actually *is* better than Chrome or FF)
  - feature-rich
  - fast
  - smart caching
  - best incognito mode integration
  - superior integrated download manager
  - pages actually do scroll smoothly
  - stable with dozens of tabs, see http://i.imgur.com/Z55rPDh.png

Also, Opera has always brought innovation with it, e.g. tab-sessions, Speeddial, Tabgroups, Opera Link, Opera Unite, reloading tabs on startup, etc ...

At the end of the day a browser is a tool and you have to pick the right one for your task. For browsing, Opera clearly wins - at least it does for me. See also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5176327

@Topic: Opera Next is currently just another Chrome skin. Lets hope they don't forget to implement what makes them special.