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jaredandrewson A Russian scientist who was struck by a particle accelerator beam

So I tried to find a more recent picture after reading the article. I stumbled upon this Gizmodo article which indicates that the left side of his face hasn't wrinkled since the accident, due to the paralysis caused by the beam. You wouldn't guess that he was struck by a proton beam based on the picture in the article...

http://gizmodo.com/what-happens-when-you-stick-your-head-int...

jaredandrewson Count to ten when a plane goes down

The author has actually responded to this on his blog: http://johncbeck.tumblr.com/post/92502108047/so-what-did-you....

    So what did you do after you got fired from the embassy?

    What I didn’t say is that it was the last day of my summer internship. The next summer they invited me back again. Everyone understood it was a mistake, but by officially firing me, someone had been punished … :)

So I guess it wasn't a big deal after all.

jaredandrewson LG G Watch

Fellow I/O attendees, do you plan on choosing the LG G or the Samsung Galaxy Gear as your take home device? I already use an S4 for my phone so I'm inclined to go with the Galaxy Gear. But I think the LG G is a little more aesthetically pleasing. Thoughts/opinions?

jaredandrewson Google I/O 2014

Tell me about it. I was outside waiting in line and listening to the keynote on my phone. I couldn't believe they were announcing that and when I pulled out my phone to look at the video.... well it was just a 3D frame on a phone. Still cool but you know..

jaredandrewson PGP released its source code as a book to get around US export law

Very interesting. But the link to the actual tattoo on that page appears to be broken. Here it is: http://imgur.com/xKupqeG

jaredandrewson Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards

I went to Thailand a few years ago to do a research project for school. One of the requirements before leaving was taking a two month intro to Thai course. I used Anki to make flashcards, and they worked pretty well. Apparently I was the only person to realize that digital flashcards existed and when I sent them out to the rest of the class everyone loved me after that, haha. Didn't end out learning that much Thai but the cards served their purpose in helping me pass the class. I especially liked the feature that let you play a sound clip for both the question and answer. Given the tonal nature of Thai it was great to have sounds accompanying each card.

jaredandrewson We lost a customer. This is how we found out

Interesting comment on the bottom of the article:

  This random user is a prick.

  1. Why didn’t he scroll to the bottom of the page? I noticed an “about us” link in the footer.

  2. When I’m curious about companies, I look at their blogs. Sometimes they use a blog CMS system. Why didn’t this guy check the links in the header, like the link to your blog?

  3. This guy has a baby babbling in the background. Maybe he was distracted?

We do a lot of user testing at work and it has really opened my eyes. This sort of attitude really bums me out though. You can sit around all day and complain about customer incompetence. Meanwhile they are out using a different app/product and you still aren't making any money/conversions.

jaredandrewson Show HN: Codewars

FYI none of the buttons seem to be working on the homepage in Firefox OS X. On Safari the formatting on the homepage is all off. Pretty cool nonetheless, I plan on trying this out more later today!

jaredandrewson Quick start projects

I have tried this setup but I found it particularly problematic that there isn't a separate 'dock' per desktop so I end out accidentally switching desktops for common apps such as a browser and shell. Have you found a work around for this issue?

jaredandrewson Where to begin when learning C? Start by making lots of errors

This is the sort of thing I was looking for when I started wanting to understand the 'big picture' of computer programming. Would be great if you posted it!

jaredandrewson Firefox 25 is released

My favorite bug report. The reporter of the bug runs quite a few over the top early 2000s looking religious websites. I won't post them here because they give me a ton of security warnings on FF but the more adventurous reader may want to take a look. Lack of -moz-opacity:0.7 should really be at the bottom of the reporters problems.

jaredandrewson Rap Stats: Breaking Down The Words in Rap Lyrics Over Time

Is there a way to see what song the word is used in? I'm interested in knowing what hip hop artist was rapping about eBay[0] all the way back in '94.

[0] http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ebay

jaredandrewson Students Find Ways To Hack School-Issued iPads Within A Week

Haha I remember those days too. We quickly discovered that changing 'http' to 'https' seemed to circumvent my entire schools firewall. I hope they didn't pay too much for that!

jaredandrewson Giant Concrete Arrows Across the American Landscape

> since navigation charts of the day were fugazi...

OT but Fugazi is the name of one of my favorite bands. In interviews I had read that the word meant "a fucked up situation" but until now I had never seen it actually used that way. Interesting choice of words, interesting article too!

jaredandrewson 7373170279850

Can any one who is more familiar with mathematics explain to me the context of this paper? The authors describe some prior research into cubes and non-negative integers. But what was motivating this research? Is it just interesting in general while not necessarily solving a problem? What are the implications of this discovery if any?

jaredandrewson Ask HN: How much recurring income do you generate, and from what?

It sounds like you are living my dream. Care to share any details about how you got into that? I work (and enjoy working) at a big company right now but I feel like down the road I will want to do something like this.

jaredandrewson Is Your Unpaid Internship Illegal?

I haven't met any programmers with unpaid internships but I have met individuals in other fields who did them. If I recall correctly it was an internship for a television company (not public) and was just a part of the culture of their industry. A "paying dues" if you will. What exactly are you supposed to do in that situation?

jaredandrewson A Rally Against Mass Surveillance in Washington, DC

Thinking about going down from Boston too! I just moved here and the way to say "in force" makes me wonder if there is a local group or even subreddit I can look into to help with this cause. Slightly OT but I have also been curious about "meshnet" groups in Boston, have you heard of any?

jaredandrewson The Geeks on the Front Lines

I have personally been enjoying articles laid out in this way. They are a unique format that could not have worked in a pre-internet era. For years it has felt like the magazines/old media/etc were just trying to bring an old format to a new medium. Now some are starting to actually leverage the medium to expand their old format.

jaredandrewson Games That Teach Programming: A Brief Overview

Have been playing with this for a few minutes. It's been pretty enjoyable, I especially like the animated graphics. With things like this I always wonder what the experience is like for people who have never programmed. Do you have any idea? I am going to share with some of my non-technical friends but it's possible they won't ever get around to playing it.

jaredandrewson What Second Life got right, and no one else has since

I took a class a few years ago where we were required to play Second Life. At one point we had an entire class meeting in the Second Life world instead of the classroom. It was interesting. It was really just a regular lecture though, but instead of looking at my professor in real life I was looking at an avatar of him. There wasn't really any benefit provided by SL in this case but I could imagine some more stimulating situations.

jaredandrewson Show HN: Yoleo – A Beautiful RSS Reader

This looks pretty cool. Is there a example instance set up anywhere so I can see what it is like without signing up?

jaredandrewson The most useful thing in bash

M-x shell is one of the first things I just show people when I introduce them to Emacs. I had a databases class a few years ago where the CLI program we used to interact with the database was a basically an input loop where you entered commands. It had absolutely no concept of history though so if you messed up a query you had to retype it or use the clunky copy and paste feature of whatever terminal emulator you were using. Emacs changed everything though be cause I could just kill my last command and paste it into the new prompt. I have since done this with many other commands and I love it.

jaredandrewson Show HN: Anonymous Bitcoin Lottery

I noticed you have changed your fee. The example in how it works still reflects the old rate. Just letting you know. Nice project BTW I'll give it a shot next time I get some BTC.

jaredandrewson The Boston Marathon Bombing: Keep Calm and Carry On

Parent is probably referring to the fact that it is safer to fly than drive a car, statistically speaking.[0]

[0] - http://reason.com/archives/2006/08/11/dont-be-terrorized

jaredandrewson This Page Is Why The Internet Sucks

There are many terrible reviews of Geek Squad online mostly in the form of reddit threads and the like. Like most issues related to services like this I suspect the people who have had bad experiences with Geek Squad are very loud but they aren't large enough in number to represent the average case.