Hacker News Reader

zerohmon Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

Azure Mobile has been a sponsor. I guess at that point it becomes difficult to even extrapolate the impact of the sponsorship...

zerohmon How J.K. Rowling Plotted Harry Potter with a Hand-Drawn Spreadsheet

"Anyone who accuses someone of over plotting is a crappy no-name writer."

I LOL'd.

zerohmon Pulling the Curtain on Airport Security [pdf]

zerohmon Bizarro World: World Record Tetris (2007)

I kept thinking, if Day thinks this girl is good, he probably hasn't seen this... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwC544Z37qo

Be sure to watch the credits.

zerohmon SecureDrop

There's always McDonald's, except, you are probably on camera.

zerohmon Penny Arcade – Surface Pro 3 update

Microsoft knows the days of strong arm tactics and PC dominance are gone. They know they aren't the king of the hill anymore. You can see it in the way they are handling Surface and Azure, or mishandling in the way of Xbox.

zerohmon Apple Said to Be in Talks to Buy Beats for $3.2 Billion

Beats certainly has one thing going for it in brand recognition: they are the preferred headphone of the professional athlete.

zerohmon Euthanasia Coaster

+1 for sending me down a Mr. Show youtube hole.

zerohmon Rappers, Sorted by Size of Vocabulary

Yeah, I'd like to see where The Clash rank.

zerohmon The Deadliest Animal in the World

So, you are arguing that DDT is being banned simply as a means of population control?

"WHO actively promoted indoor residual spraying for malaria control until the early 1980s when increased health and environmental concerns surrounding DDT caused the organization to stop promoting its use and to focus instead on other means of prevention."

By your quote there, it sounds like the World Health Organization stopped promoting the use of DDT 30 in homes years ago due to health and environmental concerns. Is that part of the conspiracy too?

zerohmon The Deadliest Animal in the World

Why trade a public health disaster for an environment disaster that will likely lead to a different public health disaster? Current restrictions seem reasonable.

"The Stockholm Convention, which took effect in 2004, outlawed several persistent organic pollutants, and restricted DDT use to vector control. The Convention has been ratified by more than 170 countries and is endorsed by most environmental groups. Recognizing that total elimination in many malaria-prone countries is currently unfeasible because there are few affordable or effective alternatives, public health use is exempt from the ban pending acceptable alternatives."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ddt#Restrictions_on_usage

zerohmon Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher Asking for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

Tolkien: "Let's get one thing clear, I'm the smartest guy in the room".

zerohmon Tolkien Snubs a German Publisher Asking for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

Somewhat related, my favorite letter from Kurt Vonnegut:

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html

zerohmon How Americans Die

Yeah, agreed. The graphs looked great, but it was difficult to cull important comparisons.

zerohmon Navy tests rail gun

So how is the accuracy?

How many shots will it take you to hit a missile 50 miles away? 100 miles? Parallel vs perpendicular path?

zerohmon What Dreams May Come

After he's gone, will his wife regret not having a slightly smaller mortgage or will she regret not having memories of Disneyworld.

Yes, I'm all about financial responsibility, but experiences can't be bought later, a little debt can be paid later.

zerohmon Comcast Acquiring Time Warner Cable In All Stock Deal Worth $45.2 Billion

In the past 5 years, I've had Comcast, Insight, TWC, and FIOS. (TWC bought out my previous ISP, Insight, less than a year ago)

By far Comcast was the worst of my experiences.

zerohmon NBC Story about Hacking at Sochi is 100% Fraudulent

There's no time to explain! Just open the box!

zerohmon Microsoft, Past and Future

This is rather naive. In certain circles yes but by far the majority of people use just their search.

So you are saying a vast majority of people don't use gmail, google maps, or youtube. I'd venture to guess a vast majority of people use at least one of those things on a regular basis.

zerohmon Eve Online wages largest war in its 10 year history

I've had this thought as well. The good news is that there are millions of creative minds, improving the world, making a dent in the universe. The sad news is that there are billions of people just trying to get by, looking for comfort, looking for distraction. Gaming is just one of many ways people pacify themselves. (not a criticism of gaming, I'm a gamer as well)

zerohmon 1% rule (Internet culture)

I also look at it the other way: 1% of people have the required atributes (talent, motivation) to produce something that 99% of the population want to consume.

It's probably lower in other endevours, e.g., less than 1% of people can play basketball at a level that the average person would actively choose to watch on a regular basis.

zerohmon Steam Machine Teardown

If Valve really wants to compete with consoles, they need a wireless controller. I go back and play the old PS1/2 and Gamecube occasionally, and the toughest adjustment is going back to a wired controller.

zerohmon Winamp shutting down on December 20th, 2013

My progression over the last 15 years has gone Winamp, Foobar, MediaMonkey, itunes, Spotify. I keep itunes around just for CD ripping and ipod syncing, but I'd like to abandon it altogether.

zerohmon How Kentucky Built the Country's Best Obamacare Website

Where are you getting these numbers? I get...

Manhattan commuters = 1.6M Kentucky population = 4.38M

[1] http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/more-people-com...

[2] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/21000.html

zerohmon The Two Cultures

I wish every high school made it mandatory for children to learn how to balance a checkbook and the implications of dept (time value of money).

zerohmon SteamOS

Yep. Windows 8 isn't very popular amongst gamers. Also, remember Steam in 2003? It wasn't great, but Valve stuck with it and kept making it iterativly better. Also, nowadays most people can get their day to day functionality out of web apps if need be.

zerohmon A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

There are lots of little clever details like this. You might have also noticed that in Ornstein and Smough's chamber there are two elevators: a large one (for Smough) and a small one (for Ornstein).

zerohmon A Close Look at Dark Souls’ Ingenious Difficulty

there seems to be a lot of misplaced praise out there for the trial-and-error, but this part of the game really just sloppiness.

I have to disagree. I thought the "here is the whole map, figure it out" aspect was brutal but brilliant. Dark Souls is the modern equivalent of Zelda for NES. You immediately have access to paths you have no business entering at the start of the game. But that makes it all the more gratifying when you come back later and concquer that path.

With ever advancing quest logs, way points, and real time navigation arrows, it's nice to see game designers go with the opposite approach.

zerohmon Estimated Cost to Store All US Phone Calls Made in a Year

For comparison, one modern fighter jet (F-22) runs about $357M.

zerohmon What is Microsoft smoking?

The worst thing that could happen to Microsoft in the next 10 years is that they become the next IBM. MS is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the consumer electronics space, but they are deeply entrenched in enterprise IT, where they can make lots of money for years to come.

I don't think the Xbox One is that bad. No one has figured out the formula of owning the living room yet (or taking it away from cable providers) and MS is giving it a shot. I applaud them for that.

Microsoft's strategy is to own the living room.

Sony's strategy is to take the enthusiast gamers back from MS.

Nintendo's strategy is to...well frankly I don't know what the hell Nintendo is trying to do.