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null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Living in a Fool’s Paradise

Who are these people? Probably in their 20s, high paying job out of school, don't give a hoot about saving money and just live it up while the going's good. I can't imagine anyone else going for $4000/mo apartments.

Or, multiple people sharing a place.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Breaking Spotify DRM with PANDA

You can see the remedy attempts already

* push for cloud storage over local storage

* push for locked down devices over general purpose computers

* push for DRM on the open web

* big ISP companies fighting against net neutrality

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Tech is moving too fast for me: I'm out.

You seem to be at the whim of fickle web APIs, that's no way to go if you're in it for the long haul. Web tech moves very fast because it's just so easy to iterate and deliver the latest version to your users - and why waste time being backwards compatible when people put up with you regardless?

You have to decide whether you want to pursue these ever-changing trends and be a middleman between API services and users, or take charge of your fate and develop your own meaningful technology (that others in turn will use).

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Best of Vim Tips

If you click on "Tips Home" it gets even weirder. Like the url for "Technical tips" being "make-money-online-tips/", and check the Blogroll.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Yahoo Wants You to Linger (on the Ads, Too)

What a bore. Why would I want to read mill-produced articles weaved with sponsored posts? There's an overwhelming amount of meaningful content coming from thousands of different sources, made by writers and artists who have something to say to the world beyond optimizing for page views and ad clicks.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Steady.js – No more scroll jank

How about no more scroll jank by just delivering plain useful content without the anti-usability bells and whistles? Even the cheapest hardware out there today is able to provide a nice user experience, and in answer to that we invent new ways to make everything bloated and choppy.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: How LEDs are Made

I don't envy the eyesight of the worker that has to look through a microscope their entire shift, this was sad to read.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Restoring a 14-year-old website

Terrific! There's something so raw and human about these old geeky websites. Random people from all over making comprehensive, quality content about the things they love and showing it to the world how they want, through their eyes. Information is cleaner and better organized now, but less personal and less fun for sure.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: School spyware in coursebooks

> I think outrage at this is a little unjustified. The whole schooling system is built around monitoring student progress. > I think the best way to help our kids develop these skills is going to be through lots of monitoring. It's certainly good to question the effectiveness of monitoring, and what it's encouraging, so I respect that sentiment of the other posters, but really? Outrage?

I don't think you realize the damage all this pervasive monitoring will do to warp and stress people's minds, being subjected to it 24/7 from early childhood. It will take away all awareness that they are the directors of their own life. It will condition them to constantly act for the benefit of an unseen observer instead of living their life for themselves and being unafraid to walk off the beaten path. And yes that includes being able to cram for a 5th grade history test the night before, it's not like they're handing in their Master's Thesis.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

That sounds like an awful waste of 20 years' worth of skills and experience. I never saw this "check out at 35-40 and do something else" advice given in other specialized and relevant professions, but I can see how it may fit in the context of a jobs bubble where the industry can't sustain all the gold-rushers for their entire working life.

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Famo.us open to everyone

All these overbearing JavaScript frameworks solve problems nobody has. Web design is trivial, all you're doing is bloating it and making it less accessible by replacing native GUI elements (like scrollbars) with our own confusing, low-performance solutions. I see more and more bad habits from 15 years ago come back to hunt the web, how did it come to this?

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Inside the US government’s war on tech support scammers

Phone systems really do seem needlessly outdated, they're the paid service with the crappiest user experience today.

Why is it possible for some creep to call me from ostentatiously fake numbers like "1111111111" or "111 222 333" at 3am only to spout gibberish, try to scam me, or just stay silent on the other end?

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Clib: Package manager for C

I like this! Is it a sort of staging ground for libraries to eventually graduate to various distributions' official repositories, or is it just random bite-sized utilities for quick weekend projects?

null_ptr | 11 years ago | on: Are coders worth it? (2013)

Only small software projects can be compared to woodworking or painting, anything complex requires careful advance planning, rigorous testing, and peer review, just as you would expect from any engineering project.
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