Hacker News Reader

itmagon Drug Cartels Now Using UAVs

I would imagine it would be expensive and require mostly-unobtainable materials as well as a high level of chemistry experience?

itmagon Your startup is not a startup, it’s just a website.

Mind telling us more about your site? :)

itmagon Be More Productive. Take Time Off.

Fascinating, did not know this. Thanks!

itmagon Be More Productive. Take Time Off.

it gives time for fraud and cover-ups to surface

This is very interesting (and clever). Mind telling us more? :)

itmagon Things I do to be consistently happy

There are many ways to characterize or explain why people who can describe a clear path to a better life have trouble following it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia

itmagon How would you improve Hacker News?

I agree with this. Hating on HN is the new meme, but it still is an excellent community IMHO.

My main gripe with HN is the influx of snarky/obstinate people. I've come to expect a certain feeling of frustration/resignation after posting a comment. "Great, soon I will have to read 3 snarky comments nitpicking over my wording and enumerating every possible objection to my argument, no matter how far-fetched."

itmagon How would you improve Hacker News?

Have a private message system which mods can use to send warnings and such to obnoxious users.

itmagon A Proposal To Improve Hacker News

He goes by ColinWright these days.

Of exilelifestyle.com fame?

itmagon Show HN: YouFM - A new way to listen to music on Youtube

I want technical details on how it works behind the scenes, plz :)

itmagon Why time appears to speed up with age

Could you please email me? I was unable to find contact info on your web site. Thanks! :)

itmagon New Zealand: Wish you were here?

Tell us more? I'm sure I'm not the only considering NZ as a candidate for future residence. Getting inside info is invaluable.

itmagon Why time appears to speed up with age

Has anyone here managed to defeat this effect somehow? How did you do it? Meditation?

itmagon Sleepbox

Kickstarter? :)

itmagon Sleepbox

Do you have personal experience with those? :)

itmagon Sleepbox

I'm more interested in a portable version.

itmagon Garry Kasparov Arrested By Russian Police

In Sweden, we have the Hets mot folkgrupp ("agitation against a people") law which forbids disparaging/threatening comments against ethnic/sexual minorities, and allows jail time for up to 2 years.

itmagon Mobile app startups are failing like it’s 1999

How about people who are not using the App Store as a monetization vector at all? Ie I'm talking about people who sell apps to big corporations and the like. I would imagine that that is a completely different ballgame?

Is anyone here in that situation?

itmagon Is it a must for every programmer to learn regular expressions?

Learning about the nongreedy modifier is IMHO a must when it comes to regexps. It makes them much more convenient to write.

itmagon Is it a must for every programmer to learn regular expressions?

I could imagine a Jquery-like DSL where something like /^[A-Z]+[0-9]{2}$/ could be expressed like Match(str).BeginsWith().BigCaseAlpha().AtLeastOne().Numeric().FixedLength(2).EndsWith()

Of course, you would also have to be able to nest these for more advanced matching...

Is there something like this already in existence? :)

itmagon Airbnb Releases Infinity.js: A Javascript Library for Smoother Scrolling

The Danish dating site dating.dk uses a hybrid format with both page numbers and infinite scrolling (if I remember correctly). It's a site with a huge member base (considering the population of the country) so it seems to work well in the real world.

itmagon Perl/Linux, a Linux distribution where all programs are written in Perl

This made me think of something: it's my subjective experience that there is a relative dearth of Perl articles/discussion posted on HN. Is this correct? And if so, why is that the case? Hackers don't use Perl anymore? :)

Is anyone here using Perl in a significant way for their startup?

itmagon Scientists Discover How Brains Keep Clean

Please email me.

itmagon Rob Pike: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got.

Yes, I recognize this. A piece of code may be ugly (visual) but it may also be solid (kinesthetic). Or beautiful/brittle.

itmagon Rob Pike: The Best Programming Advice I Ever Got.

This is relevant: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=316

Also, I'm curious about something. Those of you who are good at building mentals models: are you also visual thinkers?

itmagon Scientists Discover How Brains Keep Clean

Do you have personal experience with nootropics? :)

itmagon R.I.P. Harry Harrison, creator of the Stainless Steel Rat

My favorite Slippery Jim quote:

We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days, of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the building now as well. Now that society is all ferrocrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps in the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment.

This, to me, describes the attitude of hustlers and hackers perfectly (albeit a bit metaphorically).

itmagon R.I.P. Harry Harrison, creator of the Stainless Steel Rat

Ah, I remember reading that one as a kid!

This one has a similar plot (or at least that's what I remember): http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/06/the-evils-of-advertising-fr...

itmagon How to Be a Better Procrastinator

Has anyone here had success with reducing procrastination using Neuro-Linguistic Programming?

itmagon Shit HN Says

Dropping down to node.js to get close to the metal?

It's actually not that strange of a remark, depending on context.

itmagon Erlang programmer’s view on Curiosity Rover software

Mind telling me more about the fault-tolerant abilities/properties of Erlang? I'm not really able to conceptualize it right now. Maybe an example? :) Thanks.