Posts

A Proposal For A Better Online Voting System

Hacker News, Reddit and Stack Exchange all share a similar trait with one another: voting. You can either up-vote or down-vote depending on restrictions the site has in place. Social voting systems are inherently flawed and subject to manipulation. Just a little food for thought: Limit the number of up-votes a user has per day. If up-voting is more scarce, people will selectively be more careful with how they spend their votes. Limit the number of votes a user can perform in a 10 minute period. Imposing limits on the speed of voting means a user will be even more selective with how they up-vote content. If a particular piece of content makes it to the homepage (for example on Reddit or Hacker News) a user should be awarded X amount of up-votes to their quota which they can spend. This award value would be capped to prevent hoarding. Voting history is public. All votes a user has performed should be public: both up and down-votes. This will mean a users voting activity is public and thus will help reduce spam/gaming of the site. Possibly difficult: but a problem with a lot of voting systems, especially for social link sites is that people up and down-vote based on titles without clicking through to the content. Either checking if the user visited the link or imposing a timer before a user can vote would also help. Down-voting costs karma/points. Stackexchange already do this on all of their Q&A websites, other sites should adopt this approach. If you disagree with a submission, maybe leaving a comment is a better idea than down or up-voting it. The more selective a user is with votes, the weight their vote has. If a user has voted a lot, their votes should less weight than that of someone who votes more carefully.

How To Plan & Envision a Web Application From Start To Finish

You have your idea, you have the skills/means/money/time to build it: but where do you start? The first reaction of many will be to rush right into design and or development of your idea. But wait, you haven’t even scoped out your idea yet. Why are you rushing off to start building something that is only 1% of the way there? As a developer with limited design knowledge, I used to be the same. The excitement of potentially building something you think is the worlds greatest idea can sometimes get the better of you. I would rush right into the design and development phase without a care in the world and ultimately I would never complete the project because I never thought it through.

Switching From iPhone to Samsung Galaxy: One Year On

Almost a year ago I wrote about making the switch from iPhone to a Samsung Galaxy S4 phone. I thought I would write a follow-up article about how the switch went and other observations. I am still happy with the choice I made and cannot see myself ever switching back to an iPhone unless Apple all of a sudden make their phones less limited. The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a solid phone, but there have been caveats.

Client Website Killswitches = Bad Idea

Whilst looking on Designer News, after looking on Hacker News first (of course) I came across an interesting submission titled Kill Switch — A small bit of javascript to kill a website should the need arise I won’t deny I’ve toyed with a similar idea before, but abandoned any such endeavour in favour of a well-defined contract before starting any work. Essentially this code is a back door, albeit a mild one.

Oculus Owe You Nothing: So Stop Your Whinging

Unless you’ve just connected to the Internet for the first time (and if so, welcome) then you would have heard about Facebook purchasing Oculus VR for $2 billion dollars. You would also be aware of the massive amounts of backlash and criticism Oculus VR have copped as a result of the announcement. This isn’t an entirely new trend. Every time a users beloved service gets acquired, a small but rather vocal subset of users start shouting from the rooftops of their suburban rental homes.

MongoDB Isn't As Bad As You Think

I, too used to be a MongoDB naysayer and lets face it, in its early days and even up until recently MongoDB was a steaming pile of shit. Not only that, but completely forgoing things we take for granted in a traditional RDMS is something many have a hard time getting accustomed too (hello transactions). Yes, prior to version 2.0 of MongoDB there were a few issues, one of those issues namely being the global write lock blocking all queries problem. In version 2.0 they basically addressed the issue, in version 2.2 they removed global write locks altogether.

Open Source Database Schemas

The database is the most important part of a modern web application, regardless of whether or not you use a NoSQL solution or MySQL. Sometimes when building a new application and it comes time to architect the database, it can be too easy to build a database that doesn’t accurately encompass the goal of your product. The database building part is the part I find myself getting stuck on. What tables will I need? What field types should I use? Denormalise or normalise? Once you get further on up the road and your app is in full swing, it can sometimes be painful going back and changing fields, adding new ones and removing things (especially if you don’t use migrations).

Samsung Galaxy S4 Kit-Kat Non-responive Touch Screen Issue Fix

If you’re like lots of other Samsung Galaxy S4 owners, then you’ve probably updated to the latest and greatest version of Android dubbed Kit-Kat. Don’t be fooled, this latest inclination of Android OS is anything but sweet. An issue that seems to plague Samsung phones, the S4 in particular, but also most likely the Note series of phones (amongst others) is the touch screen has intermittent responsive issues. For me, the lower half of the phone buttons and touch screen would not respond to any touches (sporadically). The only way I got the phone to respond again was hitting the lock button and then pressing it again, the screen comes good again, but only temporarily.

Confirm or Deny Already: GTA V PC Situation Gets Dangerous

As you’re already aware of, Grand Theft Auto V launched for XBOX 360 and Playstation 3 a few months ago to much fanfare and success. Noticeably absent from the release was a PC version and next-gen versions for XBOX One or Playstation 4. Not long after the fake GTA V PC torrent started circulating torrent websites which infected users with malware, attackers are at it again this time in the form of a fake GTA V PC beta invite email that infects victims computers with malware.