Hacker News Reader

planetjoneson Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

Where's your source for this? The enhanced surveillance can only be used if authorised by a court, the defence ministry and cabinet.

planetjoneson Swiss endorse new surveillance powers

I also live and work in Zurich in a 'techie' job and almost everyone is happy with the new surveillance laws and powers. They are sensible, needed and have the correct number of safeguards. Why do you think they go too far?

planetjoneson Spectacles by Snap Inc

Stuck in a loop on iOS too. Pretty embarrassing for any website, nevermind one from a technology company.

planetjoneson Oracle’s Cloudy Future

Are any new companies choosing Oracle products? Or are they really only relying on banks,insurance companies and other blue chips to take up their 'cloud' offerings?

planetjoneson Microsoft to shut London Skype office putting 220 jobs at risk

Exactly it's like someone said let's turn Lync into Skype. Rather than building something useful they added the Skype name and kept the same dodgy implementation. Pat on the backs all round...

planetjoneson Microsoft to shut London Skype office putting 220 jobs at risk

I wish Skype for business was a decent product but it's not. Strange UI quirks. Limits on the length of messages for no good reason. Emoticons which only appear once the message is sent - SQL statements are rendered to nonsense. All images are converted to thumbnails which need to be opened. Audio quality issues galore too. A lot of companies have moved to Skype for business for IM and VoIP. Not an enterprise level product.

planetjoneson Sorry, Apple: The iPhone 7 camera is not better than Samsung's Galaxy S7

I really didn't know about the drag up and down thing to adjust exposure. Thanks!

planetjoneson Sorry, Apple: The iPhone 7 camera is not better than Samsung's Galaxy S7

It certainly looks better at portraits and when zooming in.

Though that's disappointing it seems to blow the highlights. I have seen this with previous iPhones - the HDR isn't as effective as it should be and I often end up with a white sky on a sunny day.

planetjoneson A truly decentralised P2P Insurance

I looked into this before. I just don't get it. There is definitely a trusted 3rd party in play which to me breaks the consensus model of having something decentralised. Maybe you can have many trusted 3rd parties and they all agree I don't know. But then insurance is a lot trickier than just paying out automatically when your flight is delayed. How do you even know the person took the flight. Maybe that doesn't matter. But lots of other questions probably do e.g. If we have a major event which delays worldwide flights would that bankrupt the insurance scheme. What capital must the decentralised insurance hold to be liquid. Who can recapitalise it if there's a black swan event. I am not against these decentralised models I just know there are a multitude of very difficult questions which insurance companies have already answered. P2P, decentralised and smart contracts can't be the answer alone?

planetjoneson Facebook deletes Norway PM's post as 'napalm girl' row escalates

Was the Norwegian Prime Minister's post removed because she posted the image again in that post ? This is a crucial question and not clear from the article. If Facebook censored only words then this is a much larger issue. If they censored the whole post (including photo) then while debatable this is Facebook's policy i.e. a blanket ban on such imagery, irrespective of history.

Edit: I don't find it clear journalism, but the fact is there:

Solberg was one of a string of Norwegian politicians who shared the iconic image after Facebook deleted a post from Tom Egeland

So the post was removed because it had the image, not because she had dared to criticize FB.

planetjoneson 16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese people name their babies

Do you have some context about when a Chinese person uses their English name ? e.g. do their friends call it them, is it only for when they interact with Western websites, etc.

planetjoneson 16-year-old British girl earns £48,000 helping Chinese people name their babies

Ok so her dad is Paul Jessup:

who owns the Great British Teddy Bear Company and Big Red Bus English, offering language tuition to children in China.

so not quite a rags to riches story, but she's still got a website that fills a need and is able to monetise. A lot more successful than many silicon valley start-ups :)

planetjoneson Show HN: Intro.js v2.3.0 – Step-by-step guide and feature introduction

I was evaluating using this library recently. At the time I wasn't sure if they forced you to take a commercial license or not. On their website it says:

if you are using the library for your business you can subscribe to one of commercial licenses plus support, code review and support by Intro.js team.

However, then on their github it says:

If you want to use Intro.js for a commercial application, theme or plugin the commercial license is the appropriate license.

which does not sound so optional.

The page says you can "subscribe" to their commercial plans, but it doesn't specify if the payment is a one-off or recurring.

Too much hassle.

In the end I opted for http://bootstraptour.com

planetjoneson Rclone: rsync for cloud storage

Looks really good. I am pleased more projects are adding Google Cloud Drive support now. What I really want to do is:

- create documents on my Mac which autosync to Cloud Drive in encrypted format (this should tick that box)

- be able to access said documents on any device including iOS, which transparently handles the encryption

The use case is I now scan all my documents into PDF format, but keeping them secure and accessing them on iOS seem to be almost mutually exclusive.

I looked at some other solutions for this which had their own iOS app and security mechanism (Boxcryptor mainly) and I didn't like it - I just didn't feel in control. And I got nervous about what happens if Boxcryptor goes under; I don't want to rely on them keeping their app up-to-date to read my documents.

I know Apple will never allow it but wouldn't it be nice to be able to mount your own network drive which all apps could access.

planetjoneson Thousands of Delta passengers delayed by computer outage

You look at it from a narrow consumer perspective. If a bank's IT systems fail for a period then the systemic importance clause kicks in, as the wider economy may be affected. Regulation already exists e.g. You can't fix interest rates, you have to be fair to consumers, etc. In today's modern world I want regulation on how some of these enterprises are managing the technology which underpins their operations.

planetjoneson Thousands of Delta passengers delayed by computer outage

I did not say that Delta being down was of "systemic importance". However a bank being unable to send or receive payments for a week is of systemic importance; hence why I would like a regulator to decide what is of systemic importance e.g. banking, utilities, telecoms. We are getting more and more where broadband is out, banking is out, etc. and the root cause is never transparent.

planetjoneson Thousands of Delta passengers delayed by computer outage

One of the main reasons that you don't get a good post mortem is that it's often directly related to human error or a severe defect brought about by a decision to cut costs. There have been several huge outages in UK banking over the past few years and management have a convenient excuse in blaming "legacy systems". While I respect private enterprise, for systems of systemic importance I would like to see some legislation to implement a mandatory and detailed post mortem like you propose.

planetjoneson Thousands of Delta passengers delayed by computer outage

I would add Resourcing to the list. Have Delta airlines joined the mob of traditional big businesses who decide technology is expensive and send it to the cheapest possible?

Alternatively it could just be an catastrophic infrastructure failure.

planetjoneson 50 Things I Pretend to Know Now That I Am Nearing 50

23) War is never justified.

I had to stop there.

planetjoneson Couchdrop – Secure cloud upload server

Apple don't exactly have a strong mechanism for feedback. And the rules of the game are out there already. So players have to fit the rule book. That's why people building web pages test on multi devices.

planetjoneson Couchdrop – Secure cloud upload server

Website not usable on iOS. For any company or organisation, never mind a technology focused operation, this really should not be the case.

planetjoneson The Brexit hangover has left UK startups drained – Are the brains next?

Completely agree. A full brexit could actually be beneficial for Britain as we could get tech talent from anywhere i.e. a level playing field for the whole world, not preference to those countries geographically nearby. I do not think it will happen though.

planetjoneson The Brexit hangover has left UK startups drained – Are the brains next?

it's that it's the only place where you can get salaries which are even remotely close to what you get in the US

not sure developers in Switzerland, especially those at Googles European hub in Zurich would agree.

planetjoneson The Brexit hangover has left UK startups drained – Are the brains next?

I fail to see what the panic is about. Britain will not want to lose access to the single market, so it is inevitable that nothing will materially change regarding immigration. Look at Switzerland whose citizens voted to control EU immigration and are now being told it is impossible. Even implementing a policy which says Switzerland can limit immigration to job sectors where the unemployment level is high is meeting resistance. And why is immigration such a worry anyhow. It is not like Britain would never have immigration. Last time I looked the USA startup scene does not seem to struggle even though they do not have an open borders policy with nearby countries.

planetjoneson Announcing Google Research, Europe

A good sign of commitment by Google to their Zurich office - recently the Swiss papers had stories of Google looking towards building their London office, due to limitations in acquiring work permits for staff in Switzerand. This news somewhat contradicts it; Zurich really is an attractive location for talent to flock toward.

planetjoneson The email Zenefits CEO David Sacks sent employees as it lays off 9%

My favourite part was 'we have reset our relationships with our key stakeholders'. This kind of implies there is a button he can press and everything is ok. Personally I wouldn't send mails with such unsubstantiated nonsense, but there you go.

planetjoneson Email Address Disclosures, Preliminary Report

The Hyatt hotel in Switzerland did a similar thing a few weeks ago. They sent a mail shot to everyone using the CC function not BCC. I complained and their response was that they'd recalled the mail so 'that was that'. Of course a recall means nothing to the hordes of gmail addresses,etc. that the mail shot was sent to. It's a common problem and a big incentive to use throw away addresses.

planetjoneson World's longest and deepest rail tunnel to open in Switzerland

I don't get this. Zurich is in Switzerland. I don't think even with this tunnel opening we will be getting from Zurich to Milan in under 2 hours... Are your numbers wrong?

Edit: we will be looking at journey times of about 170 minutes from Zurich to Milan AFTER the tunnel opens.

planetjoneson Why Most Unit Testing is Waste (2014) [pdf]

Throw away tests that haven't failed in a year. That just a ridiculous point IMO. Written properly tests act as perfect docimentation for the system. So just because a screen or a process hasn't changed in a year, so therefore the tests have been consistently passing does not mean you throw the tests away! You never know when someone will need to maintain that piece of the system.

planetjoneson Call for a Temporary Moratorium on “The DAO”

Thank you - this paper is the clearest introduction to what the DAO is and what it is trying to achieve that I have read. I found the official website for the DAO confusing and information light.