Hacker News Reader

gloobon Japan's Strict Building Codes Saved Lives

Perhaps I'm misreading you, but you seem to be fishing for a specific answer. Is that the case? If so, why?

A computer without a filesystem that predated personal computers can be called a pre-PC device if you like ;-)

I was pretty sure this was going to be part of the answer, but I laughed out loud when I saw it anyway. Thanks for clarifying your ideas. :)

gloobon What's a Post-PC device?

In order to clarify, I assume when you say "no filesystem", you mean "no user-visible filesystem, but is still muggle-usable (and might well have a filesystem under the hood)", yes? Because we've had computers without filesystems for about as long as we've had computers. Computers with filesystems are a significantly more recent innovation.

gloobon Adobe releases Flash to HTML5 converter

I'm actually a big fan of compilers, but maybe I'm just old.

gloobon Microsoft made their own IE6-countdown site.

There are a few possible reasons for Microsoft to put IE9 on Windows XP that I can imagine. The first ones that come to mind (all hypothetical, incidentally): (1) it would, somehow, earn them money, (2) they have contractual obligations to do it, or (3) they get their giggles from updating a decade-old operating system.

1 seems unlikely. 2 also seems unlikely, since if they had a legal obligation to put IE9 on XP, they would probably be putting IE9 on XP. 3 seems deeply implausible.

I suggest that the largest group of people who care about this is not users or companies but web developers. If this is true, then Microsoft has no motive to put IE9 on Windows XP, and plenty of motives not to.

gloobon Microsoft made their own IE6-countdown site.

Microsoft producing new software for Windows XP is like Apple doing the same for OS9.

gloobon Disney acquires gaming engine startup to build HTML5 games outside of App stores

Facebook has something like 500 million active accounts, right? If we assume that the overwhelming majority of those have a 1:1 mapping with real-world people, then somewhere between 15% and 25% of Internet users have a Facebook account.

So, the lowest-friction way to authenticate users still cuts out 75-85% of people on the Internet.

Edit: Not to mention everyone under thirteen.

gloobon You won't find FSF on Facebook

I expect that by "communism" the poster means "a belief system I don't agree with"[0]. (In fairness, given that there are probably dozens of mutually-incompatible Marxist/socialist/communist philosophies, combined with the poster's use of the prefix "pseudo", means that pretty much any belief can, with sufficient effort, be described as "pseudo-communist".)

[0] (My understanding (I'm Canadian) is that this use of the word is a rather quaint Americanism, and has, fortunately, mostly failed to propagate into other dialects of English.)

gloobon You won't find FSF on Facebook

I don't entirely understand why you would spend your time trying to imply something about the FSF that is completely unrelated to what the FSF cares about. Could you fill me in, perhaps?

gloobon Why APL Programmers Don’t Use Libraries

Everything is unreadable to an illiterate person.

gloobon The Node Ahead: JavaScript leaps from browser into future

C is not a language optimized for stability. The possibility for segfaults, buffer overflows, etc. and the lack of a sensible mechanism for handling them other than "write the program correctly" demonstrate this. It is, essentially, a language optimized for writing Unix.

Shell is not a language optimized for stability. It is optimized for interactive use, above all else - it's not even a very good scripting language, even though it's historically been used that way an awful lot.

Python is not a language optimized for stability - it's not even mentioned in the Zen of Python: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/

The primary focus of Java (at the time of it's creation) was "write once, run anywhere". The primary focus of Java (now) is "languages that compile to JVM bytecode are nifty - plus, we have C-like syntax but are a high-level language".

The primary focus of Erlang, before and above anything else, is program stability. OTP exists to increase stability. "Let it crash" exists to increase stability. Parallelism and message passing are in the language not because they're neat, but because (if they are used at all sensibly) they will increase stability.

gloobon The Node Ahead: JavaScript leaps from browser into future

Could you list what you consider to be Erlang's advantages? Most of the ones that I can think of off the top of my head fall into the range of "possible to clone, but would take a huge amount of engineering effort" (e.g. OTP), or alternatively "a culture issue" (e.g. "let it crash", and the language's completely obsessive focus on application stability, both of which are pretty much diametrically opposed to the common language philosophies today).

gloobon Facebook launches overhauled comment system

SEO.

gloobon Republicans: No compromise possible on net neutrality

"Negative liberty" and "positive liberty" are at least as much a matter of phrasing as they are anything real.

For instance, do I have the positive liberty to compel others not to point loaded firearms at me? Do government officials have the negative liberty to not be compelled to hold elections if they don't want to?

gloobon Teachers unions are not the reason many schools suck

It's generally accepted that the singular of "anecdote" is "proof".

gloobon Automated Monopoly hasn't figured out that people just don't like Monopoly

As an aside, if negative interactions concern you, it's probably a good idea to keep away from Diplomacy. There have been fist fights in my group of friends over that game.

gloobon Apple to Unveil IPad 2 on March 2 in San Francisco

If there was an iPhone available for every carrier and it cost $20, then nobody would be using Android except the hard-core Linux hackers (like myself).

That might well be true, but it ignores the reality of the facts that there isn't an iPhone available for every carrier for $20, and that Android devices are presently outselling it.

Cheap crap = sales, but you don't get to pretend that those sales don't count just because they involve cheap crap.

gloobon Apple to Unveil IPad 2 on March 2 in San Francisco

Presumably there are at least a few people who don't buy the absolute cheapest iPad out there, right? My understanding is that there are a few different iPads with different amounts of storage and whatnot, with prices that vary by a few hundred dollars. (Correct me if I'm totally off-base here.)

Someone looking to buy a $500 iPad might well be put off by a $600 price tag on another tablet. On the other hand, someone looking to buy a $700 iPad (or even a $500 iPad plus a $30 case for it) probably won't be, I wouldn't think.

gloobon The obsession with next

Establishing the groundwork for this discussion:

What do you mean by "societal progress"? Do you mean things like reduction of poverty, or production of arts, or decrease in the frequency of mass murder, or some combination of all of the above and more? Or do you mean something else entirely?

What constitutes "technological progress"? Does the progression from a dozen websites to ten million constitute meaningful technological progress - is pushing ten thousand cars off an assembly line twice as progressive as a mere five thousand? Or do you mean actual innovation? In the case of the latter, how would you measure the rate of innovation today with that of earlier periods? (In principle, the number of patents granted per year should give you a rough idea of this, but (1) patents have only been around for a fairly short period of time, and (2) their actual value in measuring innovation is highly disputed).

Finally, you seem to imply in your last paragraph that the "greatness" of an era is a function of its social and technological progress, and no other factors. Is this reading correct? Or is the door open to other measures as well?

gloobon The Arab uprisings of 2011 are like the European revolutions of 1848

In Europe, the Soviets stopped backing the local princelings before the 89/90 revolutions happened. This time around, the relevant powers seem more to be backing whoever wins and congratulating themselves after the fact for supporting freedom/stability (as appropriate).

gloobon A rare look into North Korea's famed Propaganda School

I don't think anyone in this thread is claiming they're the same - just that America has plenty of its own propaganda as well.

gloobon Twitter Suspends UberTwitter And Twidroyd For Violating Policies

Because, contrary to the posturing that happens on the site, people still prefer to read a gossip rag instead of actually see what's happened?

gloobon Nissan Leaf

> http://www.youtube.com/html5

So what you're saying is that without Flash, YouTube wouldn't have existed until 2009 or 2010?

gloobon Nissan Leaf

As soon as the masses decide that HTML5 = "Flash, but better", everything that is bad about Flash will rapidly become everything that's bad about HTML5.

Changing the underlying technology will not change the people who use it.

gloobon Mozilla's "modern browser" attack on IE overlooks Firefox shortcomings

In my (admittedly limited) experience, when web developers say they wish browser vendors would follow standards, what they really mean is that they wish everyone used WebKit.

gloobon Are Silicon Valley’s Engineers Underpaid?

Out of curiosity, where do you find jobs with the title "history major"? Or are you using that phrase as a stand-in for something else?

gloobon Jeopardy Champion Ken Jennings Q&A about IBM Watson

And if the challenge IBM set for itself was "can we build a machine that travels faster than a person", that would be perfectly legitimate too.

gloobon Watson crushes the competition in second round of 'Jeopardy'

Speech recognition is speech recognition. Different problem entirely.

gloobon Watson crushes the competition in second round of 'Jeopardy'

Your implicit assertion that natural language processing is something "a machine is good at" really calls the rest of your post into question for me. In particular, your demand that the researchers solve half-a-dozen Hard Problems instead of only one seems mildly mean-spirited.

gloobon Watson crushes the competition in second round of 'Jeopardy'

That would give a more precise idea of just how many of the questions Watson was able to answer correctly, but at that point the discussion starts to feel like people proposing changes to the rules of chess in order to screw Deep Blue.