astrocat

18 ms·

121.
by astrocat 12y ago
Their point is entirely valid though, and it all boils down to: there is no such thing as a secure backdoor.
122.
by astrocat 12y ago
The fact that this is at the top of HN and has been for hours is phenomenal. Despite the often insular nature of the HN crowd, it's things like this that reveal ta deep respect for the hacker in everyone. Imagine being so badass that
123.
by astrocat 12y ago
Completely agree that VCs and others should not be pushing for this to be the norm. Not only because it's unhealthy but also because it discourages a talented and mature group of people from attempting to create great things. I kind o
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by astrocat 12y ago
All this is true, and very understandable. But the question remains, why is it NOW more common to stay put rather than relocate? What is it about the modern environment that makes people so much more reluctant to pick up and move? With a
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by astrocat 12y ago
Many may interpret this as victim blaming but I think it's a valid question: why have we as a country/culture become so much more resistant to moving? I know I've read more comprehensive literature on this before a but a qui
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by astrocat 12y ago
It's unclear to me why paying individuals with very rare blood types for the blood they provide to the medical industry would in any way alter the landscape of general blood donations. I understand why it's a bad idea to attempt
127.
by astrocat 12y ago
I do exactly this as well. Some things need the user to spend time organizing them because search can't operate on it well (i.e. photos), but email is not one of those things. 99.99% of the time email search gets me what I'm loo
128.
by astrocat 12y ago
dug into this following https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8430412 what I find fascinating here is that this query appears to show a "knowledge box" result based purely on the content of some site (the answer is
129.
How much is a quarter cup of butter?(google.com)
1 points by astrocat 12y ago|1 comments
130.
by astrocat 12y ago
ok... so kids in the first world have mobile broadband and can sit on a bench in central park and photoshop away on their fancy chromebook pixel. Meanwhile, kids in Egypt who don't have mobile broadband sit at a desk in an internet caf
131.
by astrocat 12y ago
I dunno... all of this sounds like fearmongering and some of these things are perfectly analogous to the way stuff already works. For example: "Want to continue using SuperAwesomeApp? Too bad..." Want to continue using TwitPic?
132.
by astrocat 12y ago
The power/electricity analogy here is what's really key - there will come a time when the ubiquity of being "online" will be the same as the ubiquity of "the power is on." It's so prevalent in modern soci
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by astrocat 12y ago
I guess YMMV... I also had to get my screen replaced because it was one of the small number of screens that had severe burn-in issues.
134.
by astrocat 12y ago
Actually no. Or maybe: yes, but... My first MPB was one of the "high resolution" ones that ran at 1680x1050 and I loved it. So when I first got my 15" retina MBP was miffed that now it felt like I was running a 1440x900
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by astrocat 12y ago
This. Most people don't understand the difference between the two. You can have all the bandwidth in the world, but if your latency is high, browsing around the interwebs will still feel pokey.
136.
by astrocat 12y ago
> The best way to do that is to advocate against ad-supported websites and services, and to advocate (and invent if missing) honest ways to get necessary revenue I like this. I mean, not gonna lie I love free stuff as much as the next gu
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by astrocat 12y ago
Monopoly situations certainly make abuse easier but the monopoly isn't inherently problematic. Government and law enforcement are essentially monopolies in their own right and we see the results when those powers are abused. But ins
138.
by astrocat 12y ago
> the question is: do you trust google? This is too myopic of a question. Do you trust Apple? Do you trust Microsoft? Do you trust ____? There are arbitrarily many of these questions to ask. What really needs to be asked is: how can
139.
by astrocat 12y ago
> your interests, preferences, and proclivities are being used to make others richer. Your logic here villainizes a behavior simply because it benefits someone else. Let's say that every day you stop at Starbucks and order a cappucc
140.
by astrocat 12y ago
It's true - the standard results on-point, but the top of the page is filled with images of food and links to recipes. This is, ultimately, a nuanced point. It's a bit difficult to contrive a situation where the discrepancies are
141.
by astrocat 12y ago
> "Like most people, I don't like to be tracked. I also am the founder of the search engine that doesn't track you, DuckDuckGo." It pains me to hear intelligent people talk about being "tracked" as somethi
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by astrocat 12y ago
Nothing, not even the risk of municipal-infrastructure-shennigans-leading-to-disaster, should stand in the way of more competition entering the ISP market. Google Fiber is awesome and all but they're pretty much the only company big en
143.
by astrocat 12y ago
err... "Another obvious idea is to simply land the craft, drop the package, and then take off again. To test the premise, they brought in some of Google’s user experience researchers who queried people about how they might react to su
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by astrocat 12y ago
>"Some experts are bothered by Google’s refusal to provide that sort of safety-related information... the public 'has a right to be concerned' about Google’s reticence: 'This is a very early-stage technology, which ma
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by astrocat 12y ago
Yo. From EARTHQUAKE. [edit] tough crowd...
146.
by astrocat 12y ago
Ironically, for all their efforts to make government decisions inclusive, they're choosing to marginalize those who don't meet their tech standards - and being kind of dickish about it. "Sorry Grandma, but you don't use
147.
by astrocat 12y ago
Pure speculation: this is carmax for housing. Moving is like trading in your car for a new one. They'll start with a focus on buying from the public to build inventory then begin facilitating the end-to-end of sell-to-buy. Imagine th
148.
by astrocat 12y ago
>As it stands, what this app fails to do is establish a channel of communication. This might be the allure. Its a message without baggage. There's no guilt for failing to say "hey, how are you man?" No shame in saying &