Hacker News Reader

gabaixon The fifty shades of Latin

Growing up in the French side of the Pyrenees, I concur with the article. Traveling on the other side of the border was barely special. The road signs would have a dialect very similar to our own Gascon, and there was no need to switch to Spanish.

One thing not mentioned in this article is how much these dialects have been losing ground over the past 50 years. My grand-mother spoke almost exclusively in her local dialect (Bearnais), my mom spoke it with my dad when they didn't want me to understand, and I barely know a few words. There are schools and local initiatives to revive the old languages. The reality is that less and less people speak the dialects. Most people stick to Spanish, French, and are now expected to know English well.

gabaixon Remove United from your flight results

I was once in a small crash flying United. There was no major injury, but a lot of scare and a day of travel lost. United took good care of us, then I receive a 'sorry, here's $50 in credit' mail. I was stunned by how small the amount was.

A few weeks later a passenger created a Facebook group, and we all started to share our experience. United caught wind of it, and sent us $500 credit almost right away, with bigger apologies for the incident.

gabaixon Scale of the Universe

"What is a man in the infinite? But to show him another prodigy no less astonishing, let him examine the most delicate things he knows. Let him take a mite which in its minute body presents him with parts incomparably more minute; limbs with their joints, veins in the limbs, blood in the veins, humours in the blood, drops in the humours, vapours in the drops; let him, again dividing these last, exhaust his power of thought; let the last point at which he arrives be that of which we speak, and he will perhaps think that here is the extremest diminutive in nature. Then I will open before him therein a new abyss. I will paint for him not only the the visible universe, but all that he can conceive of nature’s immensity in the enclosure of this diminished atom. Let him therein see an infinity of universes of which each has its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportion as in the visible world; in each earth animals, and at the last the mites, in which he will come upon all that was in the first, and still find in these others the same without end and without cessation; let him lose himself in wonders as astonishing in their minuteness as the others in their immensity; for who will not be amazed at seeing that our body, which before was imperceptible in the universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, is now a colossus, a world, a whole, in regard to the nothingness to which we cannot attain."

-Blaise Pascal, 1669

gabaixon PayPal CEO writes personal response

disclaimer: I work for eBay Inc.

David Marcus was CEO of Zong, a small mobile payment startup who got bought by PayPal last year. When buying the company, the CEO of eBay Inc. asked him to change quiet a few things in the company culture. This email is one of the first step to improve customer service. Will he succeed I don't know, but you gotta give him the credit of trying.

gabaixon Hacker holds alleged Romney tax returns ransom for $1M in Bitcoins

At the end of this Reddit comment is a link to an alleged screenshot of Romney tax filing page 1.

gabaixon Plivo makes it to 50 countries in 30 days, outstrips competition

Why does this article feel like a YC ad?

"Plivo makes it to 50 countries in 30 days". and "In many countries, setting up a phone solution is challenging and involves negotiations with carriers, hardware, and network configuration." Wouldn't that mean the startup has been working for some time to reach that scale? no offense for the startup, but the article sounds biased. I do not trust an article overly emphatic with few details.

gabaixon Google removed 1m DMCA links last month, 540,000 at the behest of Microsoft

Google now makes it easier to find illegal content. The link http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/copyright/... is a one stop shop.

I am wondering if that is annoying DMCA even more?

gabaixon NASDAQ:FB

I got 50 shares from e-Trade. Never used eTrade before. It was one of the few platforms that were open for retailers. eTrade mentions that if I flip those shares in less than a month, I might not be able to get access to future IPO shares.

gabaixon NameCheap Overtakes Go Daddy In Google

"name" is also in the URL of namecheap. It is very hard to counter legit sites with the exact keyword match in their URL, even if you have many more quality links going to you.

Try "hosting" and you'll see what I am talking about.

gabaixon Make Your Email Hacker Proof

What happens when you travel abroad and your phone does not work?

I am wondering if Gmail could implement security questions to avoid cases where the 2-step verification works against the user

gabaixon Anonymous hacks Panda Security in response to LulzSec arrests

On his Twitter account, CTO Luis Corrons continues taunting Anonymous after the facts.

I don't understand why Panda lets one of his employee behave like this. He looks emotionally involved. He's making those hacker's efforts more visible.

gabaixon Criticism is a Two Way Street - Things you should know before criticising

Good point. This is where it gets tricky: in large groups with big decisions, people rely almost exclusively on data.

A bad design decision can propagate to an entire organization because there's data to support it.

gabaixon Criticism is a Two Way Street - Things you should know before criticising

I often find it hard to settle design arguments when:

  - we lack data
  - business is at risk
  - there's some organization quarrel going on

Unfortunately that's too often the case. I am still unsure how criticizing your own work help solve those problems.

gabaixon The Problem with Facebook Connect

Every time I Facebook Connect to an app, I check my profile that nothing was posted. Even if Facebook does say if the app will post on my wall or not, I am just confused on what is going to happen next.

It is one of those things that prevent me from signing up at all.

gabaixon How to Square numbers made up of repeating ‘3’ mentally in 2 seconds

square(333) is the addition of 999 + 9990 + 99900 = (1000 - 1) + (10000 - 10) + (100000 - 100) = 111000 - 111

The more '3' you add, the more '1' and '0' you get. square(333) = 11110000 - 1111

It is actually a very binary computing.

gabaixon Facebook is losing E-Commerce

It's worth repeating: Facebook have only a very limited aspect of our social experience. Weaker social connections - reading someone's review, tweet, repin, commenting on YC - are a magnitude more numerous than our limited circle of acquaintances.

Facebook does not own the long tail of social.

gabaixon I would rather drink piss like Bear Grylls than log in with Facebook

mmm... never thought this way. You're actually right.

gabaixon I would rather drink piss like Bear Grylls than log in with Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg's perceived public figure does not inspire confidence either. His first actions with Facebook and the story around The Social Network have tainted Facebook for good.

Note this might be far from his real personality. People I know at Facebook love him.

gabaixon Microsoft’s Biggest Miss

I sometimes make the joke with my business friends "What type of Office suite are you?". Because all their jobs basically come down to Excel, Word and PowerPoint, or a combination of all three.

Those tools are still used big time in the business world (which is magnificently bigger than this community).

gabaixon Jotform domain seized by US due to user generated content

wow - didn't know you had to find a designated agent to register. It must be simpler than it actually looks. Definitely very hidden. Thanks for pointing out this.

gabaixon Jotform domain seized by US due to user generated content

This can happen to any web site that allows user generated content.

How come we don't see Youtube, Yahoo, Facebook suspended? Do they have procedure in place? Does that mean that you're much weaker if you're small? What are the legal safeguards for UGC startups?

There should be equal rights for all companies. Right now it seems the US government is picking those it can easily bully.

gabaixon Anonymous plans to take down the 13 root DNS servers that power the Internet?

wow thanks for the list. So mostly US organizations.

Could the design be better if we had to rewrite it today? Any plans to include other countries (China etc.)?

gabaixon Anonymous plans to take down the 13 root DNS servers that power the Internet?

Where could we find more information about those 13 servers? Why are there only 13 of them?

gabaixon MITx Opens First Course for Enrollment

Big news for me is: MITx certificate.

Last Fall Stanford took the initiative to organize live online classes. I took "Introduction of DB" and got a certificate from the professor. Some students complained that Stanford name was not on the certificate. Stanford apparently did not agree to distribute free certificates to online students. When you have a few CS students paying a high price to receive education, it's hard to give an official document for free. coursera.com was created by Stanford teachers who thought they would be better in a startup mode.

What makes MIT initiative unique is that its certificates will be MIT branded ("MITx"). This is a winning strategy, as more people will turn to those classes. Some may continue by applying to MIT itself. It will also help MIT brand reach. Note those certificates will only be free for this pilot course.

You can argue that having a certificate is something that matters or not vs actually learn something. I think a lot of people around the world will feel very proud to receive an official document that proved they know those skills.

gabaixon Inbound.org: Community-curated Marketing News

inbound.org is a reference to Inbound Marketing, which Hubspot coined entirely.

HubSpot snapped the term "Inbound Marketing" (which really means "permission marketing") so they could differentiate more easily from other marketing software competitors.

The strategy is really smart. If you look for "inbound marketing" on Google, Hubspot has completely pushed down the older term by flooding the page with results they more or less created: conferences, groups, books, even a Wikipedia page defined by the company.

For old time marketers, "Inbound Marketing" meant "marketing research", as opposed to "Outbound Marketing" which meant "reaching out to users".

In a sense, it shows those guys are great at what they are doing, marketing.

gabaixon Stripe raises $18 million from Sequoia

I am used to it. It is a terminology shortcut to qualify people's actions. You'll find that from a lot people coming from universities. They tend to compare themselves a lot and use statistical horizontal comparisons. If not from HR, it is mostly to imply they are part of the A group.

gabaixon We are sorry

Path should come up with a Privacy Protection Program that commit them not to repeat their mistake. It's too easy to do something and ask for forgiveness later on. That would distinguish themselves from Facebook's way of doing things.

gabaixon Path uploads your entire iPhone address book to its servers

This is clearly of lost opportunity to position Path as the "trusted network" against Facebook.

gabaixon Etsy: Announcing Direct Checkout. (No longer just PayPal.)

Yes. Also you need big sales volumes to justify the investment in time / money.

gabaixon Honeywell Files Patent Lawsuit Against Smart Thermostat Developer Nest

Will the America Invents Act change anything to this problem? Or should it require another reform?