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emzo

98 karma · joined April 7, 2009

Web designer/developer based in North Wales, UK.

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/emzo; my proof: https://keybase.io/emzo/sigs/phGtK61QEiWQbHbNhVf2dI7SMIH3NFmDcGe5_ft-X3A ]

submissionscomments
emzo··on A heap overflow and SSO misconfiguration to compromise OpenAI internal repos
The game has increased in scope.
emzo··on How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
Google felt a little more special. "Don't be evil" and all that. Those were the days.
emzo··on Show HN: Geo Racers – Race from London to Tokyo on a single bus pass
In BBC's "Race across the world" you aren't allowed a mobile phone to check timetables, so I guess this is in the spirit of that game.
emzo··on Show HN: isometric.nyc – giant isometric pixel art map of NYC
I'm on holiday in NY now - this is so cool
emzo··on Uncrossy
Yes it's annoying, but that's part of the puzzle right?
emzo··on Everything as code: How we manage our company in one monorepo
Opening Claude from the parent directory is what I do, and it seems to work pretty well, but I do like this monorepo idea so that a single commit can change things in the front end and back end together, since this is a use case that's quite common
emzo··on Django: what’s new in 6.0
I love how Django just keeps slowly improving at every release. 6.0 is especially cool, including lots of really useful new features. Who said dependable tech was dull - this is the way is should be done. Well done all who contribute.
emzo··on Google AI Ultra
This would be great for open source projects
emzo··on Show HN: AutoEditor – Edit your video in just a few clicks
Totally agree, this annoys me to. The gaps between sentences make speech easier to listen to and digest.
emzo··on CarSized: A way to visualise car dimensions
This is really well done. I'd love to see some more info about the process of photographing the cars.
emzo··on Best Font for Online Reading: No Single Answer
This died when the web became mostly a marketing tool for businesses. It's a shame, but inevitable.
emzo··on Joe Armstrong has died
Are you willing to share his reply?
emzo··on Generating More of My Favorite Aphex Twin Track
Here's the article you're referring to - https://www.sitepoint.com/the-cicada-principle-and-why-it-ma...
emzo··on Man designs bionic arm for his son using Xbox Kinect and 3D printer
Ben Ryan (designer of the prosthetic arm) has an Indiegogo campaign to raise funds to explore the technology further through his startup Ambionics.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/helping-the-youngest-infa...

emzo··on Linux user records phone conversation with attempted PC hijack scammer
Scammer should have asked earlier what OS he was using! Skip to 6.30 if you get bored. In the last 30 seconds, the scammer gives up and says "you are not a journalist, you are a bastard son of Charles Babbage I think so."
emzo··on Show HN: SiteSupport.com - Remote Desktop For Webbased Applications
Nice product well excecuted. I personally thought the demo was just fine - didn't seem to take too long to understand what was going on. A nice additional feature would be to allow people to type in a question while being shown through a guided tour.
emzo··on The Hacker's Path
I know this is a very difficult question, but if you could choose only one book to convey the main ideas in each of those four areas you mention (software architecture, system design, algorithms, data structures), what would they be? I ask because I'm looking to buy some good books on the subjects.
emzo··on Image hosting that doesn't suck - just drag and drop
This is really nice and clean. Personally, I think it's a bad name though. Minus? I appreciate it does "emphasize simplicity and minimalism", but it's got nothing at all to do with images. Also, it would be even better if you could include some form of federated login so I don't have to sign up.
emzo··on Hacked kinect Brings Futuristic User Interface
Personally, I'd rather tell my media centre PC to change channel with a voice command than wave my hand at it. Seems more natural to me. I'm sure flicking through channels would be easy enough with some kind of motion commands, but navigating to specific channels, how would you do that? I guess you could have a specific gesture for each individual channel, but even then, it would me much easier to just say the name of a chennel. Another idea would be a specific gesture to go to the list of channels, which you could then scroll through and select, but this is still more work then voice commands. I'm not saying this technology sucks, I think it's fantastic, but it doesn't solve every UI problem.
emzo··on Zed Shaw is teaching two four-week Python classes (online)
Mark Pilgrim's http://diveintopython.org/ is a good continuation to this book if you're interested in learning Python. It's also free, and there's a more recent version for Python 3 at http://diveintopython3.org/
emzo··on I Hate Captcha- Come beta test my alternative
Another idea along these lines would be to present a scene and ask the user how many objects are in the scene. It's a very difficult problem for computers to descern individual objects in a scene, especially if they overlap.
emzo··on I Hate Captcha- Come beta test my alternative
It's also not so good for the visually impaired because you can't really provide an audio version of the challenge, whereas identifying the letters in a random string is easier to present as audio.
emzo··on Ray Kurzweil Responds to "Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain"
There is strong evidence that the neocortex works on a common algorithm; vision, hearing, touch, language, behavior, and most everything else the neocortex does are manifestations of a single algorithm applied to different modalities of sensory input.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchical_temporal_memory http://onintelligence.org/ http://www.numenta.com/Numenta_HTM_Concepts.pdf

emzo··on Pics from 8th graders successful 100k foot high flight, $200 ballon
http://sciencetoymaker.org/ has some great projects.
emzo··on Pics from 8th graders successful 100k foot high flight, $200 ballon
Someone should keep a list of exciting projects like this that schools could undertake - somewhere teachers could go to for inspiration.
emzo··on Business schools redefine hacking to “stuff that a 7-year-old could do” (2005)
I have to agree. Even though I don't like to admit it, maybe my time in higher education would have been better spent studying a business related subject. If you're passionate enough about CS/hacking, there's so much info available online these days, you'll learn just as much by immersing yourself in the hacker communities in your own time as you would have studying for a degree.
emzo··on Ask HN: Most Useful Undergraduate CS Courses
I too was annoyed with Squid. After looking around for something better, I found Varnish - http://varnish.projects.linpro.no/
emzo··on EBay Losing Traffic To Amazon After Strategy Shift
Even though I criticized them in another comment on this very thred, hell, maybe this stretagy is working better for them? Of course we as intelligent free-thinking HN readers might not agree with their curret strategy, but if it's making you megabucks, would you actually care?
emzo··on EBay Losing Traffic To Amazon After Strategy Shift
So true! I'm no Apple fanboy, but just to drive the point home, 99% of the time I can buy a brand new Apple product _cheaper_ from the online Apple store than I can from eBay! Where's the fun in that?