Hacker News Reader

dsmithnon First Nokia, Now RIM: The Mighty Are Falling

I can't disagree with the first two paragraphs, but for the last, what about shutting down entire divisions? If a company invested in a failed product that requires a number of specialized employees, does it imply they were spending money like drunken sailors when they have to let them go?

dsmithnon Airbnb Raises $112 Million Funding Round

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2801332

dsmithnon Reality Check: Google Plus Is No Facebook Or Twitter Killer

Not to take away from the article content, but it is posted on "The Unofficial Facebook Resource".

I mean, just compare the time spent on what Google got right, verse what they didn't. And yet the conclusion implies that it doesn't even matter, because people won't bother with three social networks at once.

dsmithnon Accidental Genius: How To Think

I believe his comment is justified for this particular article because the author specifically says, "The results are almost always incredible...And it works for everyone. Even if you hated school writing assignments, you will love Freewriting."

dsmithnon Facebook’s Secret iPad App Exposed [Pictures]

Middle click (open in new tab). At least it's not flash or something where you can't do that. Definitely annoying though.

dsmithnon A mirror flips left and right, but not up and down

That doesn't answer the question, though. You have to explain why that means my right hand appears to be on my left side.

dsmithnon F.lux makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day

From the FAQ: "Q. This changes too fast, it always shocks me. A. The f.lux transition can be CPU intensive, so f.lux tries to be polite about it. To make it slow, you can use the special 1-hour slow transition option under settings instead."

That's a nice option to turn on.

dsmithnon F.lux makes the color of your computer’s display adapt to the time of day

Can't recommend this enough.

However, I forget it's on at night. When editing images and colors for webpages, I always go insane the next day when I forgot to turn f.lux off and all the colors are completely off.

edit: also, direct link - http://stereopsis.com/flux/

dsmithnon WebPutty: CSS editing goes "boink"

They specifically say there are two annoying issues this solves: 1. having to"CTRL-S–ALT-TAB–CTRL-SHIFT-R–JOY!", and 2. editing in Firebug "then trying to extract those tweaks back out of Firebug and into your website’s CSS files".

As far as working on teams, they're "thinking about how to expose your CSS in a versioned way so that you can keep it in Mercurial (with Kiln!), or Git, or whatever other version control software you might be using". Perhaps you're right, it's better to wait until that is implemented if you have that kind of setup.

EDIT: I've started testing it, and you can add other admins and editor users for sites, very nice.

dsmithnon WebPutty: CSS editing goes "boink"

"Of course, we also let you play with a preview version of your website’s CSS without inflicting any half-baked designs upon your website’s visitors. That’s the version you edit in the WebPutty editor."

"You can always export a pretty-printed version of your website’s CSS at any time (both the preview and published versions)."

See my other post, I believe you have not understood their product very well.

dsmithnon WebPutty: CSS editing goes "boink"

From my understanding, the point of the project is to allow developers to edit css and see the results realtime, without having to save, switch windows from their CSS editor to their web browser and refresh the window. Or without having to edit the css in realtime by using Firebug, then edit those changes back into your actual file.

They also give you the option of hosting your CSS file on their servers, which is why you'd need the link to that CSS file.

It's all explained on their website which you might not have read/understood, or maybe I am missing something.

As a web developer working on quite a few projects, this tool seems great, although I can't have them hosting CSS for internal projects.

dsmithnon You are not running out of time

Existence precedes essence

I came to similar conclusions of this author after reading Camus' The Stranger (and many other Existential books thereafter) in high school.

There's no meaning to life other than what you make of it. This author finds meaning in building things, seeing things grow. Other people find meaning to their lives by shining shoes and are just as happy. Or at least they find contentment in what they do, which in many ways is better.

dsmithnon You are not running out of time

I think you missed the point of the essay. You're comparing success to other people, just like Julius Caesar comparing himself to Alexander the Great. You're playing the game.

If you want to climb the corporate ladder, you better enjoy every day working late nights, striving for great reviews, etc. Your title means only as much as you want it to. Life doesn't have to be a race to the top. Your Startup doesn't have to have a billion dollar IPO for you to be happy. Enjoy refining your product, providing great service to people, the struggles and stress of acquiring funding, the ups and downs.

dsmithnon Why doesn't every company buy developers the best hardware?

Sounds like a good idea, but I would not want to risk getting stuck paying $3,000 for a machine I don't need anymore.

dsmithnon Warren Buffett: I could end the deficit in 5 minutes.

Definitely. He keeps going back to the point that the debt was at 120% and nothing terrible happened, but now we have these politicians threatening to figuratively play Russian Roulette with our debt rating just to get the results they want.

The point is they shouldn't be threatening us - we should be threatening them for not getting it done.

dsmithnon Live coverage of the last Shuttle launch (STS-135, Atlantis)

Congratulations to NASA for the successful launch.

Time to focus on our next space endeavors.

dsmithnon Hipmunk now indicates which flights have Wi-Fi

I think giving consumers the ability to view flight information other than price and schedule will encourage airlines to provide better services and features.

I'd love to quickly be able to compare the costs of checking luggage, cancellation insurance costs, etc.

dsmithnon Who killed the netbook?

It's not even just used laptops anymore. I sold computers for four years at Office Depot and saw the rise of Netbooks. It wasn't long after that that low end traditional laptops started hitting the sub $400 price range during sales and clearance and customers had a lot harder time justifying the smaller size and lower specs.

dsmithnon Who killed the netbook?

I used a netbook for about a year, got a macbook air and haven't used the netbook since. I agree they aren't directly comparable due to the cost and specs difference, but I wouldn't go back to a traditional netbook again so it definately "killed the netbook" for me.

dsmithnon LulzSec Leaks 62,000 Email/Passwords of writerspace.com

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/i16hm/lulzsec_j...

dsmithnon Which Apps are threatened by iOS 5

Most of these are moot for me because my laptop is a Mac and my desktop is Windows 7.

Chrome with sync set up, plus Dropbox, and I've covered basically everything on the list.

dsmithnon College is a waste of time

In my case he perfectly describes most of my lower division courses. Memorization, no group work, theory. The problem is he's making assumptions about an entire degree based on at most a year of education. At a liberal arts college.

Once you get past the prerequisites and basic classwork, it's a world of difference. I feel bad for the people who will be missing out on some truly great educational experiences because this kid couldn't stick it out for more than a few semesters. Few people will have his success rate right out of high school.

dsmithnon Tennessee Makes it Illegal To Share Your Netflix Password

You can stream on up to four devices at a time, depending on your plan.

I guess they assume it will be in the same household or family, but it certainly doesn't have to be the same IP.

dsmithnon [dead]

Yes, some of these "best of" lists come of as a little too scientific, but I always add ", IMO" to end of the heading and don't think much about it.

dsmithnon [dead]

Well Pink Floyd is not on Grooveshark, and some of the albums are incomplete but I put something together.

http://grooveshark.com/playlist/Dr+Bunsen+s+Coding+Playlist/...

dsmithnon Let's just use Emacs

I've spent the last month or so head first learning VIM - I forgot about org-mode before deciding on VIM. There are a number of clones but nothing seems complete. Any recommendations?

dsmithnon Let's just use Emacs

I can't speak for HN, but I appreciate them. It's nice to see what other people get out of the articles. Usually the discussions here are more interesting than the article so it also allows me to understand what everyone is talking about without having to read sometimes lengthy articles.

dsmithnon Why is America the 'no-vacation nation'?

I've managed to get the best of both worlds, working for a German company in America. 28 paid days off, plus 7 holidays.

dsmithnon Is Microsoft trying to end the reign of mobile carriers?

Nobody wants to give away their handset's limited battery life. Imagine when you have one handset within range of the AP, and a number of handsets trying to connect through it. It's bandwidth and battery will be zapped up.

dsmithnon World's Most Admired Companies

Yeah, I'd love to see a list of companies rated by "computer people".