Hacker News Reader

varmaison The Best Encrypted Messaging Apps You Can (and Should) Use Today

They should include the amount of meta data collected also in the report. For example WhatsApp collects and stores data about when and who did you chat with, but for example Signal only has knowledge of the day user was last seen using the app.

varmaison A Complete Guide to Rails Caching

> Developers, by our nature, are very different from end-users. We're used to the idea that when you interact with a computer, it takes a little while for the computer to come back with an answer.

I don't agree. End users are used to shitty systems which take some time to load, but we developers should know better. We should be able to recognise performance bottlenecks during the architecture design and development, also we should be able to measure the layers where optimisation is necessary and useful. And when developing web app, caching should always be in mind as one tool to improve system performance in one way or another.

Otherwise fantastic piece of information.

varmaison Spotify raises $526M at a $8.5B valuation

I pay Spotify for usability and UX. Google Music might be couple of euros cheaper but the UI is worse (especially on mobile). Piracy and saving files to different devices takes time and effort, streaming is easy. Hunting down good quality uploads and creating playlists based on albums on Youtube? No way.

varmaison Flappy 2048 in HTML5 Canvas

Any reason why that webpage is flagged as harmful by F-secure?

varmaison Google has lowered the price of the Nexus 4 by $100

I never stop wondering how those prices are possible. I had a 2e/month plan on my mobile, unlimited everything. Adding to that 0,07 e per sms/minute. Lucky me company now pays my bills so I save whopping 5e/month.

varmaison UK Porn Filter Will Censor Other Content Too, ISPs Reveal

There was a debate in Finland when the child porn filter was introduced a few years back. One guy had a website where he kept database of sites which were blocked but did not contain any child porn. Aftermath was that the site was added to list and that raised even more questions about the whole censorship idea. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapsiporno.info)

Unlike in Britain, the consumers did not have an option to opt out from the filter although it seems that majority of ISPs don't use it. Later on ISPs were forced to block piratebay.org and there have been discussions about blocking online poker sites etc, because Veikkaus enjoys monopoly in gambling and betting business in Finland.