Hacker News Reader

nik_0_0on School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3667166

4 Days ago and 0 comments. I'd say this 'repost' is warranted, was an interesting read for many people it seems.

nik_0_0on Visualizing Reddit with my graph drawing library

Hopefully this isn't on my side, but clicking on "The dark side of RATP (Paris metro) tickets" from /r/ReverseEngineering gives link address http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en... which resolves to a blank translate page.

The url from Reddit direct is: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&js...

Looks like the handling of & on your side? Looks very cool though :)

nik_0_0on "White hat" Facebook hacker gets 8 months in jail

I found myself wondering if perhaps the 'white-hat' reference is a blunder in the headline. This article woefully lacks any actual details regarding what he did or how he approached communication with Facebook, only stating that he was a white-hat hacker for Yahoo once (which obviously proves nothing).

nik_0_0on Clear: doing for To Do lists what Dropbox did for file syncing

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll grab that application. Seems silly to me that the Dropbox app doesn't contain that feature as standard.

nik_0_0on Show HN: Review my startup: AtticTV, MusicTV (MTV) for the Youtube Generation

Very cool site, I really like the idea of the 'channel' and therefore syncing around the world, its neat! I agree with some of the comments, the option to skip and 'unsync' would be quite cool.

Is there a way to hide video? I understand its a music video site, but the way it solves the 'irritating experience' of playlists on youtube (which I fully agree with), it great even to use it just for audio.

nik_0_0on Clear: doing for To Do lists what Dropbox did for file syncing

For some reason my iOS device can't edit a .txt file from Dropbox... silly :( Evernote for me.

nik_0_0on Pinterest is not a Virtual Pinboard

I agree with this, and perhaps that is why there are no affiliate links yet, from that list (and my brief, over-the-shoulder viewing of Pinterest) I only know of some "nails" postings that either contain in the picture or in the text/comments, the name of the product used in this case.

Users are not pinning the direct BestBuy link to their new headphones, but they are pinning "My new pair of Grado xxxxx are awesome!". Thats where Pinterest has the data, and could go to work to provide easy access to those products.

nik_0_0on Why, oh why, do those nutheads use vi?

Interesting article, I have always been interesting in moving to Vim, and this article all but sealed the deal for me. The only problem being I don't really see how useful this would be for general notepad usage. I understand the author of this article is selling his plugin for Visual Studio, and this is a marvellous way to do it. Is there any other way to integrate vim with Visual Studio 2008 without purchasing his ViEmu? I would love to start learning vim but I doubt a trial would be enough, and I don't see most of the other attributes he covered ('.' for example) being very useful in daily notetaking.

nik_0_0on Ask HN: Is there a good list of usernames to block such as 'about' and 'legal'

Yeah, but the indicator makes the URL a little unseemly. In Facebook's example, some companies have stopped putting their URL in commercials altogether, instead relying on "www.facebook.com/doritos" (arbitrary example), simple and clean. "www.facebook.com/corporatepage/doritos" would not have the same cleanliness nor usefulness. This is probably a huge point in Facebook's favour.

nik_0_0on Show HN: Craigslist Car Search

Agreed! If you are using the RSS feeds, there should be an easy way to include us Canadians :)

nik_0_0on "If we can use your details to legally make a profit, we probably will."

The fact that the domain is "mozilla.org" means nothing. Should we remove every google.com post because it doesn't come from a Google employee but a Google+ page? Nothing is misleading here.

nik_0_0on Udacity and the future of online universities

That looks very useful, thank you! I've signed up for a bunch of these courses, but no emails have come in yet and even the websites themselves aren't very connected, let alone the ones on different frameworks.

nik_0_0on SOPA SEO: Googlebot to crawl at slower rate today

I see your point, but I think it is mainly because they don't want Wikipedia/etc to be de-indexed and not be #1 hit for EVERYTHING anymore. This protest is exactly that, a protest, a mere emulation of what could happen.

It's not about pretending the web is normal, its about ensuring that everything is back to normal tomorrow.

nik_0_0on Hacker News: Our Tiny Charity Desperately Needs Your Help

Heh, the 58 minutes ago on the text melds quite nicely with your name. Even though I realized the above poster's mistake, I quickly thought that someone had made a corin_58 to post this =p

nik_0_0on New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

True, they aren't exactly fair comparisons, but I find them relevant. I recall just a few days ago, there was a discussion how "everyone" should be able to program, and a lot of the value comes from applying that programming to another, personally interesting field. I remember a quote "in 10 years not being able to program will be like not being able to...". No matter what that last word is, I agree with the above statements, a school so focused on one thing needs to give the students a chance to probe their other interests, ones they can use their software engineering prowess to excel at.

I think this is a great idea, but hope that in 10 years the kids who only have experience in software engineering do not become a commodity.

nik_0_0on The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

That makes far more sense :) Thanks for the clarification, I didn't read the data closely enough.

nik_0_0on The demographics of social gamers are closer to gambling than gaming

Interesting, I always saw the uprise of social games as quite confusing, since myself as a gamer saw no need for these games. It makes sense that these Farmville/Social City/Zynga games then be targeted towards this new, untapped group. I find the Zynga numbers to be interesting, but the correlation confuses me. Is it completely out of left field to follow the 81% gambling figure to correlate that that number of women are visiting casinos/e-casinos and gambling? That seems like a HUGE number.

nik_0_0on Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

Thanks for the links, I will check them out.

nik_0_0on Foxconn workers threatened mass suicide for their working conditions

I'm the first to admit I'm quite ignorant of my own history, let alone the economic history of Korea and Japan, but surely you aren't suggesting that if we keep buying stuff from China they will turn into a rich country and magically increase the working conditions?

nik_0_0on Survival Guide:IRC

I've used specific IRC channels in the past, for downloads or manga, what are some good 'technical IRC channels'?

nik_0_0on Don't write on the whiteboard

I'm sorry, but where does the OP reference anything about practising interviewing? In fact, his point seems to focus more on fundamentals than anything.

My takeaway was along the lines of removing the junky presentation layer (whiteboard, etc.), and making sure that you SHOW your fundamentals. Working on Project Euler helps build those fundamentals, writing code comfortably during your interview helps show your fundamentals. In terms of presentation, I didn't feel like he was doing 'window dressing', you definitely want to show your interests, projects and your opinions, these are part of the fundamentals.

No matter what, there is always a base line of presentation that you must meet in an interview to show your fundamentals. I feel like this post is encouraging you to meet that base line, as well as increase your fundamentals.

nik_0_0on Why 37signals Doesn't Hire Programmers Based on Brainteasers

Every time I read this it frightens me, I don't have an active github account, therefore I am a failure? I'm currently working a 16 month internship before graduating with a Computer Engineering degree. My code from this work will not be available anywhere of course.

Not through any fault of that though, I realize that having a github account with projects and such that you work on is a great help, and I accept that myself not having one yet is a great disadvantage. What do you recommend to get started out on github? Is helping out open source programs still viable? Or now it seems either writing self-run projects, or forking others projects and helping them with those. Is there any clear starting point for githubbing? (and how do you squeeze it in after a 10 hour work day!)

Just questions from someone worried about my empty github profile :)

nik_0_0on Here is Godaddy’s statement in support of SOPA

"Parsons enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. He was assigned to the 26th Marine Regiment which was attached to and operated as part of the 1st Marine Division. In 1969 he served as a rifleman in the Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, during a tour of duty in Vietnam, in the Quảng Nam Province."

Looks like the owner of GoDaddy fought for your freedom as well.

nik_0_0on Hungry Academy - get paid to learn Ruby

In reply to you and smountcastle, here is the text verbatim: If you survive the five-month program, you’ll be offered a position on LivingSocial’s elite engineering team (18-month commitment required).

I read this as, if you TAKE the position on the elite engineering team after the five-month period, the contract is for 18-months. I don't think it is necessarily tied to the 5-month learning period.

nik_0_0on Dropping a Magnet Through a Copper Pipe

Not available in my area :( (I presume that would be true for anyone non-uk)

nik_0_0on Sony sued over PSN "can't sue us" clause

Maybe I'm incorrect, but I recall reading (when Sony first implemented this clause) that Sony was only doing so because there was another company that provided a similar case in court, and won, and therefore they had precedent, etc. In that case it also explains why Microsoft also is able to introduce it, that being when something like this happens, they are able to refer to the original court case. I'm interested to see how this turns out.

nik_0_0on In case SOPA passes: IP addresses of popular websites

Sorry, what?

What is preventing any 'cracker' from a list of IP addresses of webservers? You can VERY easily find out the IP address of anything you please...

nik_0_0on The Humble Indie Bundle #4 (pay what you want and help charity)

Avg currently 4.70 (was 4.64 about 1 minute ago! climbing fast, damn HN!)

nik_0_0on The Humble Indie Bundle #4 (pay what you want and help charity)

Agreed, Super Meat Boy alone is worth whatever you may pay, in my opinion :)

nik_0_0on A single line to 3 cashiers is ~3x faster than a separate line for each cashier

Do you have a source for that Coinstar playing jangly coin sounds?? I would love to read more about that.