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jonny_noogon The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

I suspect that as with any large enough organisation there is a spectrum of competence across their workers, raging from high to low. I obviously have no proof that there isn't some big conspiracy afoot, but given the choice to bet on conspiracy or incompetence as the primary factor for the issues we're seeing, I know what I'd put my money on.

jonny_noogon The Facebook API: A Case Study in Not Caring About Developers

Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by incompetence.

jonny_noogon Chrome vs IE9

I hear you. I just think that people (particularly if those people are also developers) would appreciate it if they actually heard from the IE developers a bit more. It doesn't have to be to degree where it's interfering with your actual job. You guys should stay in control of how much you interact etc. For me I would find it encouraging to know that the IE developers are just around in places like HN and are listening. I'd know that if they say something occasionally. How much you interact or how much feedback you gather would not really be the relevant issue to me.

Just a thought anyways. :)

jonny_noogon Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

That would be right assuming passwords were always encrypted - and we know that unfortunately even some of the biggest sites have been bitten by not encrypting passwords in their database[1] - but that's not actually the case I was thinking of when I said "brute forced".

Here's one possible scenario: let's say that I happened to be a member of a website that unfortunately allows an attacker to hit their login form as many times as they like and as fast as they like with various username/password combinations, and by brute forcing this login page in this way, they manage to determine what my username/password actually is. Now the attacker does know my username/password for one website I belong to and - if they're smart and determined - it may occur to them that now they know one of my usernames/passwords they might use these details as a starting point in trying to brute force other accounts that I may have on other websites.

I used to run these kinds of brute force attacks against websites back in the day when I had nothing better to do and before I had to work for a living. Often I was quite successful, but I wasn't targeting specific users and even back then I could tell that websites were getting more savvy in terms of detecting and defeating such attacks. So no doubt it would be harder to pull this kind of thing off now and it would probably depend a lot on which website(s) you targeted. But surely it wouldn't be impossible.

[1] http://blog.moertel.com/articles/2006/12/15/never-store-pass...

jonny_noogon Start ups, please don't force me to log in with Facebook

I use pretty much the exact same system that you do and have done so for many years as well. Recently though, I'm starting to think I might try out the password management software route. I've haven't yet had a problem with any of my accounts being brute forced and I guess there's something to be said for "if it 'aint broke...", but reviewing the passwords I use, even the more secure ones, I have this nagging feeling that they are more similar to each other than they should be. If a resourceful and determined attacker was to somehow figure out one of my secure passwords, then that would be a good ways towards figuring out all of my secure passwords and I don't like that possibility, however remote it may actually be.

jonny_noogon Chrome vs IE9

The value of what you're doing right here with your post shouldn't be overlooked. Just to know that you guys were around, listening and taking suggestions would have made a difference to my satisfaction with IE... were I still primarily a windows user. :)

Keep doing what you're doing, get more of the IE Team to do the same.

jonny_noogon Some things I love about Hacker News (and a few I don’t)

no 'target=' user preference so that external links could show up in another tab/window if so desired

I have always seen a default option to open links in the same window as a small but definite signal that a site is more geared towards technical people who know how to open a new tab/window if and when they want one.

I'm so used to mouse gesturing a line up across a link to open it in a new window, I often confuse myself when I'm using a browser without this capability.

jonny_noogon Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster With Top Aligned Labels

I just went to add the same link without realising it was already here, d'oh. It was also the first material I remember reading on form label placement and I found it to be a bit more enlightening (and better written) than the subject post of this thread.

jonny_noogon Review My App: An iPhone game about "Knowledge and Enlightenment" (Upcoming)

Looks cool. Will await its release with interest.

There's no privacy information on your preview page. While I personally have faith that most people posting here on HN asking for feedback would not sell my email address to Russian gangsters, it might be an idea to address such issues explicitly.

jonny_noogon Inception explained in one infographic

I saw Moon and thought it was good too. I liked how it seemed to intentionally and quite successfully avoid every cliched direction the story could have taken.

The only confusing bit is whether he was actually ever in the real world at all, or it was all a dream. This is almost the main concept of the film, and not answered when we see the spinning top still spinning at the end.

Yeah, though I didn't really see this as confusing, simply an unknown left open to interpretation.

I was half waiting for some kind of twist like say, it turns out that Cobb was dreaming the whole time and is in reality the heir to the company and is the target of the Incpetion... or something. I didn't really think that one through too deeply though and I'm not sure that a twist like this would have made the movie better in any case. I guess it just comes back again to that expectation that was built up in me of it being a full on "mind fuck" movie. In some ways I was kind of happy walking out of the cinema that my mind had not been fucked, just well entertained.

jonny_noogon Inception explained in one infographic

I completely agree. I watched the movie thinking to myself every now and again "OK when's the full on mind fuck coming?" but it never really came, not for me anyway. Afterwards when I heard or read people talking about how confusing or hard to follow the movie was, I began to wonder if perhaps there was some huge extra layer of complexity to Inception that just went totally over my head. A bit more time has passed now and I don't think there was.

I still very much liked the movie though.

jonny_noogon Wired's bullshit "The web is dead" graph

Perhaps your original intent would have been more immediately obvious if you had chosen a different animal that's also almost extinct, but not synonomous in people's minds with large size more so than the fact of their near extinction? Or was that also part of the original intent?

jonny_noogon A cure for Hacker News overload

@newsyc20 includes links to the story itself and the Hacker News comment page for that story.

Sold! Not having links to the comments when following @newsycombinator always perturbed me.

jonny_noogon There will be blood: why Apple and Intel are destined to clash

I only got my first Mac about 12 months ago and I am really liking it. I too would be really sad if they leave OS X and it's traditionally associated hardware to languish.

Oh well, I guess I could always go back to Linux or BSD for my primary workstation.

jonny_noogon Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

Cool. Thanks for the answer!

jonny_noogon Ask HN: Does reading HN ever make you feel like shit?

Please come to the video game industry :) There is always need of someone that knows MySQL, LAMP, etc.

That's actually news to me... interesting. So there's still a lot of demand for web sites/apps created in support of games, or are these technologies being used in less obvious and more embedded ways?

jonny_noogon The Top Idea in Your Mind

My father was fond of doing cryptic cross word puzzles. He told me that sometimes there'd be a particular clue that he just couldn't wrap his head around, but if he slept on it, the answer would often pop into his mind the next morning.

jonny_noogon Ask HN: Music while coding

Thanks, will do.

jonny_noogon Ask HN: Music while coding

Yeah, you're not the only one, but we seem pretty few and far between.

jonny_noogon Ask HN: Music while coding

I'm often preferring silence these days, but when I do feel like tunes, I like stuff that's doesn't tear my attention away from what I'm doing.

The Aphex Twin:

  Analogue Bubble Bath
  Analogue Bubble Bath 2
  Analogue Bubble Bath 3
  Analogue Bubble Bath 3.1
  Analogue Bubble Bath 4
  Analogue Bubble Bath 5
  Selected Ambient Works

Also, Trace Nico and Speedy J.

jonny_noogon How Supermodels Are Like Toxic Assets

I can't claim to be an expert either, but for what it's worth I think you're pretty spot on there. In the realms of high fashion - along side the artistic considerations you describe - you're dealing primarily with the ideal of female beauty as it is seen from the perspective of certain kinds of women and gay men, as most fashion designers, commentators and other such interested parties are women or gay men. As opposed to the stereotypical, heterosexual male ideal that one might see on display in Maxim et al.

jonny_noogon Ubuntu command line fu - How not to spell "ls"

Hypothesis: the typo "sl" is only common among left-handers.

I shall have to add my vioce to the small left-handed chorus here and say that I too have never had an issue with the "sl" typo. In fact I cannot remember a single occasion where I have made this mistake.

I've intentionally left a typo that I did just make in the above paragraph to illustrate my own tangentially related observation: The typos that tend to occur within my own typing often seem to be the kind produced by one hand not two. By which I mean the typo "vioce" rather than "voice" happened because the fingers of my right hand hit the keyboard in the wrong sequence. Where as typos involving a finger from one hand then a finger from the other (as would need to be the case with "sl" rather than "ls") tend to be less common... for me anyway.

jonny_noogon .NET Culture Shock: Why .NET Adoption Lags Among Startups

That said I'd almost, almost, switched to using python/django and then I had a look at MVC and it did everything I needed.

I had almost convinced one of my ASP.Net developer friends who was well fed up with web forms to jump ship to Ruby and Rails with me when .Net MVC came out. After that, there wasn't a whole lot of a compelling reasons for him to start on a whole new language and framework anymore. If only they'd waited a few more weeks! Curse you Microsoft!

jonny_noogon A Neuroscientist Uncovers A Dark Secret

Now consider politics. Suppose you've got a bunch of people with different kinds of opinions. It might be the case that, over time, the objective truth (when there is one) influences their opinions.

Good analysis. How do your observations apply in the case you mention in passing, i.e. the case of much (dare I say most) human conflict (be it political or otherwise) which has little or nothing to do with any objective truth?

You use "answer" and "truth" interchangeably, are they the same in all cases?

jonny_noogon Antenna designer writes about the iPhone 4

Usually at home, I see the little wifi symbol as it's hooking on to my router, but if I turn off wifi, your suspicion appears to be correct, I can see that it's on 2G at home. So yeah, that probably has a lot to do with the issue, thanks for the info. My carrier doesn't have the greatest 3G coverage in all areas, but they're currently IMO, the best of a not so great bunch of options in my country.

jonny_noogon Antenna designer writes about the iPhone 4

It's probably time I upgrade my speakers, I've had them for some time now. It's a Klipsch 2.1 set from about 3 years ago. I was under the impression that Klipsch was a reasonably good quality brand, but I guess they're missing these ferrite beads you speak of. Something to keep in mind for when I do upgrade, thanks.

jonny_noogon Antenna designer writes about the iPhone 4

I have a 3GS and I find that I need to place it about a metre from my computer's speakers to avoid audible interference. All my previous phones have done this as well (last before the 3GS was a Sony Ericsson w800i), but they didn't need to be placed as far away from the speakers before the interference could no longer he heard.

jonny_noogon Ask PG+HN: Why is there no Search feature on HN?

I always assumed it was because WebMynd appears to fulfill this function and WebMynd - being YC funded - understandably gets preference over some other way that a similar function could be provided.

I don't know any of this sure sure though, just my own assumptions.

jonny_noogon Why Microsoft turned Office into a Game.

Thanks. I try to use Power Point as little as possible, but I've noticed some font issues between Win and Mac versions of Word too. Not surprising I guess, but none the less annoying.

jonny_noogon Why Microsoft turned Office into a Game.

Can you elaborate a little on the subtle compatibility issues you've found?