Hacker News Reader

jgranbyon EU's Tusk Says May Expects to Start Brexit Talks by February

A nice thought, but I think that, in reality, those counties' leaders' overriding loyalty will be to staying in the EU. Look at David Cameron's stance throughout the run-up to the Brexit--he'd never have undermined the EU project to secure an advantage for Britain post-exit.

jgranbyon The Well-Trodden Art of the Manhole Cover in New York City

Some pictures of London coal plates here: https://twitter.com/hashtag/opercula?src=hash

They gained some brief national attention in Britain (at least among those who follow politics) when Jeremy Corbyn was revealed to be a fan. See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11867...

jgranbyon The Lost Sign Language of Sawmill Workers

The other one I'm reminded of is Tic-tac, the bookmakers' sign language that John McCririck helped to bring to popular attention on Channel 4 Racing in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac

jgranbyon PureDarwin – An Informal Successor to OpenDarwin

Exactly -- the latest major release is Darwin 15 (corresponding to OS X El Capitan / 10.11). I'd love to see this (or a similar) project succeed and remain relevant, but it just seems to be falling further and further behind the official releases.

(To be clear, I know there are good reasons for this, and I'm not trying to imply that a lot of work hasn't gone into what has been released ... but I can't help but wonder if there's no longer any hope of it catching up with (semi-closed) Darwin.)

jgranbyon Genetics outweighs teaching, Gove adviser tells his boss

Not quite. Comprehensive (non-selective) schools are the norm and have been for many years. Grammar schools only remain in very few areas, where the local authority has chosen to keep them. For the majority of the country, there isn't a local grammar school.

jgranbyon “What’s a Browser?” – Remembering the Non-Tech-Savvy User

'Remembering' as in 'bearing in mind' rather than 'looking back nostalgically' (i.e. as in 'remember to look both ways before you cross the road'). My first instinct on seeing the title was the same as yours.

jgranbyon How to Brew Coffee Without a Coffee Maker

Serious options: Aeropress or Hario V60 drip filter (or similar -- Chemex, &c.), and a good hand-grinder. I use Hario's skeleton/skerton.

Does anyone know of any services similar to Tonx that will ship to England?

jgranbyon From idea to AppStore in 2 weeks

Congratulations. From an idea to an App Store app in 2 weeks is very impressive, but it's 10x more impressive given that you were learning along the way.

Simple question, though: what's the story behind the Metro article? Your story is interesting enough that it makes for good reading anyway, but I was wondering (and absolutely no offense intended -- there's nothing wrong with it imo) if you had a contact/friend/similar who helped you get the article? Again, congratulations, I hope your app continues to sell well.

jgranbyon Power surges in Britain caused by millions of people making tea [video]

Here's a sound guide: http://www.booksatoz.com/witsend/tea/orwell.htm

jgranbyon Windows 8 Pro Upgrade to cost $39.99

The analogy went some way to showing how the argument based on there being "no direct competition" is a fallacy.

I find it very hard to believe that MS hasn't had a good look at Apple's OS X pricing strategy before making this move. It mightn't be that they feel pressured into lowering the price so much as they've just seen what Apple has done and think it's a good idea to get as many people to upgrade as possible.

jgranbyon The future Firefox UI

The whole app feels like an imitation of a Mac app. Most obviously on 10.7, the window chrome is wrong. Other small things like incorrect and wrongly sized fonts inside controls, or the whole menu bar disappearing when you use an extension in its own window. When you add everything together, it just feels wrong, like wearing clothes that don't fit.

The way they've been updating the UI so far has seen some improvements, for sure, but it's as if they've been patching it bit by bit. I just wondered whether this signalled a change of approach.

jgranbyon The future Firefox UI

I wonder whether this latest proposed redesign will finally have Firefox behaving like, y'know, a native OS X app, or whether it'll be just as shallow as all previous efforts.

jgranbyon Ask HN: What documentaries are worth watching?

+1 Herzog. His latest 'documentary', Cave of Forgotten Dreams, is wonderful.

jgranbyon Kind of Screwed

In this case, Australia is a common law country. Its legal heritage is English, not civil/Roman.

jgranbyon EU: "Making hacking tools should be illegal"

Pretty easy, and superficially appealing, but I find that there must surely be exceptions to a rule such as this. Nuclear weapons (and similarly, some chemical weapons) are the obvious special case.

Edit: reminded reading a comment below that child pr0n is another one that the general moral consensus has problems with (I refer to the 'consensus' not because I think it is always correct but simply as it provides cases worth thinking about), and also handling stolen goods (although this can be justified through property rights).

jgranbyon Wilhelm von Hackensplat: 'First Past the Post' isn't.

If you want to be pernickety, 'alternative vote' is also a misnomer: the word 'alternative' comes from the Latin 'alter', which means 'the other of two [options]'. There are more than two voting systems, so AV is incorrect as a name, at least to traditionalists.

But this really doesn't have any bearing on which, if any, someone in Britain ought to vote for. That the name doesn't really fit doesn't say much at all about the merits of the system itself.

jgranbyon Rackspace Shuts Down Koran-Burning Web Site

The "constitutional" aspect (if there is one) isn't the issue, though. The issue is whether I, you, or anyone else, wants a web host that takes down web sites it disapproves of. A web host can take down websites for misusing apostrophes, if it is entitled to by contract (if there's a broadly drafted term in the contract, this might even be possible in the real world, not just hypothetically). But would you want to do business with them?

jgranbyon Ask HN: All startup websites look the same

Indeed, and this trend also seems to prefer large-ish font sizes.

jgranbyon Ask HN: All startup websites look the same

Don't make him self-conscious.

jgranbyon Safari 5

Sparkle (the update framework) uses WebKit, so everything that uses Sparkle links against it.

jgranbyon Gorgeous Blonde (Who's Not DHH) Takes Over Official Rails Sites

It seems to be. He has more photos of her on his blog, too: http://stellerphoto.com/blog/archives/207

And revenues of $200 million for the company who puts the pages up! http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/16/business/fi-demand16

jgranbyon Gorgeous Blonde (Who's Not DHH) Takes Over Official Rails Sites

The most interesting part for me was the link to the stock photo of the girl on all the expired domains. I wonder if she knows that her photo is everywhere.

jgranbyon After 19 years, http:// prefix is getting ditched (in Google Chrome)

http://daringfireball.net/2008/11/treating_url_protocol_sche...

jgranbyon The HTML5 test – How well does your browser support HTML5?

OmniWeb 5.10.2 sneaky peek (v622.11 r128512): 113 (not in the rakaz.nl list)

jgranbyon How Education is Ruining Your Life

Not necessarily. The idea that higher education should be organised with all the best professors &c. in one place, and students come from all around to a centralised place of learning, isn't crazy at all. And, as gfodor pointed out, those 4 years are character-building.

I think the article raises some issues but in far too aggressive a way. There are problems with the way students are forced to pick a career path so early, but the assertion that "any system that asks you to devalue a relationship with place or with extended family is evil" doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. He doesn't consider any of the benefits of spending time away from home, and doesn't really back up his claim with anything at all.

jgranbyon [dead]

Whereas the BBC displays no bias whatsoever with respect to AGW. Do you seriously think that the article you linked to doesn't have its own (pretty obvious) agenda?

jgranbyon Thunderbird 3 released

I quite like the iPhone's compromise: it stores and indexes the most recent 50 or so messages, and when searching provides a "Continue search on server" button. Thunderbird (or others) could have a larger store of recent messages, but this would avoid downloading thousands of mailing list emails.

jgranbyon [dead]

A couple rely on hypothetical hardware features and so really belong on an iPhone feature wish-list. Nevertheless, I thought there were some good ideas.

jgranbyon Teenager invents solar panel made from human hair

So, you wouldn't buy a copy and yet you claim others have never read it?

My parents buy it, so I've read it fairly often at their house, but, no, I wouldn't buy it myself. So yes, I have read it on many occasions, while most of those who bash it do so without having ever read a copy.

To put the guardian and the daily mail in the same column is doing serious injustice to the guardian.

I didn't put them in the same column: as I said, the Mail is a tabloid. All I said is that both are heavily biased, which is true. Each writes with its own audience in mind: Guardian readers won't like what's written in the Mail, and vice-versa. Accusations beyond this, such as yours of "wildly inaccurate journalism", are more exaggerated and sensational than any Mail headline.

jgranbyon Teenager invents solar panel made from human hair

"Attention grabbing"? It's a tabloid paper. That's what tabloid papers are for. As for "wildly inaccurate", it simply has quite a strong bias, but so do lots of papers. The Guardian is no less partisan.

I wouldn't buy a copy of the Mail, but I'm tired of reading fatuous name-calling of this sort from people who've never read the paper.