Hacker News Reader

notjackmaon Google to close engineering office in Russia

Why discriminate against a Russian company over something that may or may not happen?

Russia has elections and they have laws which affect businesses based there - pretty much like every other country out there.

As the article states, Google is moving its engineers but the sales team is staying, so this reorganization is less to do with politics and more to do with Google centralizing its engineers in Zurich - just like MountainView.

notjackmaon Google News to shut down in Spain

Try reading what I wrote again.

Google employs lots of people who work on things which do not directly generate revenue themselves, but which do contribute to the company's overall profit and loss. Such as HR.

However, based on Google's bitchy blog post, were they to treat all such projects and departments equally like Google News, thousands of people would be pink-slipped tomorrow. Get it now?

notjackmaon Google News to shut down in Spain

Yet they're already spending money on Google News: programmers, servers, electricity. So obviously they're getting something out of it, right? There is a purpose to Google News, whether it's tracking cookies or something else; they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

notjackmaon Google News to shut down in Spain

"As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable. "

Rubbish!

Google's Human Resources department doesn't make any money either, yet it exists, along with other loss-making divisions.

Google as a whole is a very profitable company, and it could easily pay publishers over the long run. It just doesn't want to.

notjackmaon Ed Lee scolds Ron Conway for supporting CIA torture

Would any start-up founder refuse investment from Ron Conway because of his personal beliefs? Ultimately, do you care about the source of funds?

For those who are more discerning, can you recommend any investors? How many Michael Dearings are there?

http://www.harrisonmetal.com/nsa-corrosion-of-silicon-valley...

notjackmaon At Apple’s request, we removed the ability to “Send” files to other services

It's simple. Cabel is being diplomatic and doesn't want to burn any bridges. It's a reflection of how much power Apple has that developers are fearful of upsetting the mothership. I know a few former indie Mac and iOS developet who now work for Apple which explained why they were always shy to voice their true opinion publicly - they had a dream to work for Apple and didnt want to shoot themselves in the foot. Self censorship at its finest.

notjackmaon Uber banned from operating in Indian capital after rape accusation

An underlying issue like the Bhopal Disaster?

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/06/photos-bhopal...

notjackmaon Become an Official Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter

I would donate but only if 100% of the money goes toward the projects and not social causes such as teaching x/y/z to code or an outreach program for demographic a/b/c (looking at Gnome Foundation and Mozilla here).

notjackmaon Tax crackdown on banks and multinationals 'to raise £5bn'

Exactly. In the case of Apple:

The Irish company licenses intellectual property from an Apple registered company in the Cayman Islands, and of course the Royalties are so high that the Irish company makes no profit.

So all this money accumulates offshore and can't come back to the US unless some taxes are paid, which is why Tim Cook meets with Congress to try and lobby for a tax repatriation holiday.

Which is also why Tim Cook is raising money in the debt markets to pay shareholders dividends - it's cheaper to pay a tiny bit of interest than pay tax. Absurd that such a rich company is doing this.

Ironically, the money is already back in US - the Caymans entity invests the money in the US stock market via Braeburn Capital, a hedge fund based in Nevada and owned by Apple Inc!

notjackmaon Boxer who lost fight to actor Mickey Rourke is a homeless man from California

Tabloid news... but reminds me of Leo the homeless coder.

Does anybody know what happened to him and Patrick McConlogue?

notjackmaon Dart 1.8: library improvements and experimental support for enums

1.8 already? Wow. Yet enums are only now being added (the proposal was from 2013)

This puts me off Dart - for now - for two reasons.

Firstly, the language appears to have been rushed. Yes, great tooling, but was the language rushed out the door by corporate Google? Will they ditch Dart just as quickly if it doesn't gain traction? Lots of risk in learning Dart.

Second, if it wasn't rushed out the door, then the language designers made a mistake. It's nice they can admit that but it also shows a lack of conviction and belief in the language they have created. So what makes Dart unique? If I want Java, I use Java. Contrast with Golang and the reasons the team give for not having generics.

notjackmaon Show HN: Black Friday deals for developers

I expected more, nothing really interesting on that list. Just the usual suspects, the same old Mac software that's (1) always on sale or (2) bundled up every few months.

notjackmaon [dead]

> This is something which HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TECH.

THIS. You get my upvote.

This is what is wrong with Mozilla and it was exposed for all to see when they forced Brendan Eich out over a political donation he made years ago.

Too many people at Mozilla are spending their time as social activists instead of working on technology. They are bringing their own personal beliefs to work and in the process ruining Mozilla.

Perhaps the first line of the employee handbook should read: "Open Web" != "Social Justice".

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

So you can get married without having to ask for anyone's permission.

Yet individuals who are 16 or 17 years old, need parental consent, before getting married.

How is this "equal"?

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

We're going to have to agree to disagree - I think 834 people is too small a sample size to draw any conclusions.

Btw, if the campaign for "marriage equality" were truly about equality, it would also include polygamous heterosexual families in Utah looking for recognition in law, as well as religions where marriage partners can be under 18. Thus the campaign for "marriage equality" has a narrow definition of equality and should be renamed the campaign for "same-sex marriage".

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

You're quoting a rather meaningless poll given the low sample size: "The latest Field Poll was completed February 5-17, 2013 among 834 registered voters in California."

Since we're quoting statistics, here are some from the CDC.

Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) represent approximately 2% of the United States population... In 2010, gay and bisexual men accounted for 63% of estimated new HIV infections in the United States and 78% of infections among all newly infected men.

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/gender/msm/facts/

In 2012, there were almost 9,000 cases of syphilis, and 84 percent of them were among gay and bisexual men

http://www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/news/20140509/syphili...

My friends (who are gay) tell me there is a growing complacency amongst their younger gay friends, that HIV is seen as a long-term chronic condition rather than a killer disease. The results can be seen above.

Why does the issue of marriage dominate media headlines but not a peep about health? How much funding has gone into the campaign to legalise gay marriage versus educating people on safer sex?

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

> It's wrong regardless of when it occurred.

The world is a big place with different cultures and different opinions.

You are making a giant assumption that your world-view is the correct one.

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

I can't believe that anybody would be so naive to believe that Brendan wasn't forced out.

Every single day, there is an employee going to work in a hostile environment, shunned by co-workers or left to sit in an empty room with no work to perform. Eventually they'll be forced to resign in order to save their own sanity.

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

Semantics. The fact is, of registered voters in California, more people voted against same-sex marriage than for it. Of course, that was 6 years ago... so why should Brendan Eich be ostracised in 2014 for donating money to a campaign which was quite popular back then?

At what point did Mozilla's mission for a free and open internet turn into one about social justice and identity politics?

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

> Tim Cook continued contracts with Foxconn with the sole goal of minimizing production costs by using underpaid overworked labor

I'm going to upvote you for this.

Just because Tim Cook is gay doesn't make him Mother Teresa. He seems quite happy in promoting brutal Victorian style work-houses because it's "over there". Out of sight, out of mind. He's quite the hypocrite.

He's also no better or worse then the operations guy at Dell, Samsung, Lenovo, etc. who are all churning out products from the same manufacturers and assembly lines in China and South-East Asia. I don't know why people keep promoting the myth that he is some amazing operations guy when everything is outsourced anyway, and recent products have suffered from manufacturing delays and raw material supply issues.

notjackmaon Tim Cook Speaks Up

52% of Californians voted in favor of Prop 8 (to ban same-sex marriage) so you could argue Brendan Eich holds a rather popular opinion.

notjackmaon World first as Hong Kong surgeons transplant single liver into second patient

Quite amazing to think that a single liver has helped three people.

"Hong Kong surgeons have performed a double world first with a transplant from one Hepatitis B sufferer to another of a liver that had already been transplanted once 11 years ago.

Bodybuilder Wong Wan-shing, 37, received the graft at Queen Mary Hospital from a 60-year-old donor identified only as Mr So, who died of a stroke on October 1.

...

A daughter of the donor, giving her name only as Miss So, said she hoped her father's donation would make people more aware of the need for organ transplants.

"My family benefited from an organ donation 11 years ago. I understand the feeling of having slight hope in the midst of desperation and of being reborn. It is not only a rebirth [for the patient] but also for a family."

notjackmaon Hong Kong protest: Why are pro-democracy supporters staging a sit-in?

Can you add this live stream to your comment so others can see it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4q8fs8gTIs

The live stream has been covering the whole protest and also shows recaps (picture in picture). Jimmy Lai, who has been seen protesting in a poncho and goggles, owns a media empire in Hong Kong, including the Apple Daily newspaper which runs this YouTube channel.

From a tech perspective, they've been running without interruption and they even used a drone, I think a helicopter, to take footage swooping over and around the protestors and police.