Finding a good Hacker News Android app

I read YCombinator’s Hacker News religiously—despite grave worries about latent technophilia, Libertarianism, and apolitical attitudes. I tend to do most of my pleasure reading on my Nexus 7 tablet, so I have recently been on the hunt to find a good Hacker News client. In the Google Play store there are many—nearly all free—but they have confusingly similar names and icons. Below, I have attempted to review all credible clients, and offer a quick summary and analysis for each.

My criteria is simple: works well at 7” tablet size, well designed and attractive, permits commenting and upvoting, and bonus points for integration with Instapaper or a mobilizer service.

Hacker News Top Stories (Soju Studios)

Ad-supported (bottom tray), adjusts to 7” screen but is not optimized for it (makes for small finger targets), poor webpage rendering (ugly and glitchy loading, and automatically mobilizes without option to turn off), commenting and voting does not appear to work. Settings button broken/does nothing. Verdict: very poor.

Hacker News Full (Chad Etzel)

This used to be my go-to app for Hacker News, and I used it for over a month—and enjoyed it. It was the best I used after an initial quick tour of the clients, and had all the features I needed (Instapaper integration, Night Mode), and was decent looking (seemingly designed for the 7” tablet screen). However, as of a week ago it stopped showing the stories, and no amount of restarting or uninstalling seems to fix it. Verdict: was good, now broken, may be fixed in future.

HNews

This promising-looking client has API errors that prevent it from displaying any comments (at version 1.3.4). Clicking on the story title send you to your web browser, which does the best job of display, is a bit annoying. Verdict: broken, but may be worth a look again later.

Hacker News Beta (Airlock Software)

Renders well on 7” screen, no ads, keeps the top navigation bar on which permits quick access to comments and upvoting. There are a few ugly UI bits (boxes on numbers), but overal this is a decent client. Verdict: check back later to see if I find more problems, but until then, this is a good one!

HN - Hacker News Reader (Manuel Maly)

Good looking client, that has lots of well positioned whitespace and big finger targets for a 7” screen. Settings button is broken/does not work, and there is no way to comment or upvote. Like Hacker News Beta it keeps a navigation bar on the top, but is even better designed. Verdict: damn shame it doesn’t support voting or commenting, because this is a beautiful client.

Hacker News Android (Ricky Laishram)

Attractive design, with a few UI hitches (the target area for the story is only the words, not the entire box), but fully featured. Like others, keeps a navigation bar on the top, which permits opening in external browser (also has a setting to enable opening in external browser automatically), and lets you flip between the story and the comments. Upvoting and commenting supported. Implements non-standard app-sharing view, but still functional. Verdict: looks good, works good—gives Hacker News Beta a run for its money.

Hacker News - Tiny Reader (Vladimir Carrer)

Really just an excuse for advertising. Does not enable in-app comments and voting (kicks you out to your browser). Slow, and not particularly well designed. Verdict: avoid.

Hacker News Reader (Cory Trager)

Ads on top bar, ugly design, and no voting or commenting features. Scales decently to 7”, but is clearly not deisgned for larger screens (small button targets). Integrates with Instapaper, which is a nice feature. Verdict: not the worst app out there, but not full featured and quite ugly. No need to download this one.

Hacker News Droid (Gleb Popov)

Despite being without voting and commenting features, this client is attractively designed and has a bunch of other nice features built in (text mobilizer, Instapaper and Read it Later integration, Night Mode). Annoyingly uses long-presses for primary functions. Verdict: lack of commenting and voting is a non-starter for me.

Summary

Now that Hacker News Full is no longer functional, I’m left with two capable replacements: Hacker News Android and Hacker News Beta. Neither are particularly better than Hacker News Full, but both work and do so with some elegance. Both have some minor UI issues, and neither support Instapaper or Night Mode views, but these are small quibbles (since they both include share menus, I can send the links to the Instapaper client).

Bill Gates' Moonwalking

Bill Gates recently reviewed a popular book called Moonwalking with Einstein. As he notes, its really just a re-hash of very ancient memory techniques, which when practiced give you seemingly photographic memory, or, in ancient Greece, just regular ‘ol memory. Here’s some historical context (x-posted from Hacker News):

If anyone is interested in the historical development of these practices (as Gates mentioned), they are known (in Latin) as ars memoria. They were extremely common in ancient Greece, but (ostensibly) came under attack the the development of writing (Plato complained bitterly about it). They were revivified in the Renaissance, and were connected to a whole host of linguistic studies, including the development of “universal” or “artificial” languages, and, interestingly, cryptography.

Sunday driving facts

From Tom Vanderbilt's excellent Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do: "One study that looked at twenty-four intersections that had been converted from signals and stop signs to roundabouts found that total crashes dropped nearly 40 percent, while injury crashes dropped 76 percent and fatal crashes by about 90 percent." In part because average vehicle speed is about half that of conventional intersections (making them much safer for pedestrians), and the number of "conflict points" is reduced from 54 to 16. Yet, roundabouts are actually more efficient in terms of throughput. All the while, to demonstrate the severity of the situation, 50 percent of all road crashes occur at conventional intersections. And, of course, statistically, vehicular accidents are about the only way a young adult can die.

Successful Doctoral SSHRC Program of Study

Following with the tradition of helpful transparency, I am posting my recent successful PhD SSHRC Program of Study, awarding in 2012 at the University of Toronto. While there is no one right way to write a SSHRC proposal, this may just help you understand how it has worked in the past. And of course, just because you say you’ll do some course of study, doesn’t mean you will end up doing it.

NB: If you need assistance (and who doesn’t?), I would highly recommend the University Application Institute.

Program of Study

SOFTWARE production and control: history and evaluation of computer assisted software production in corporate environments 

Until the 1970s software programmers were an assorted bunch—one popular account describes “a successful team of computer specialists [which] included an ex-farmer, a former tabulating machine operator, an ex-key punch operator, a girl who had done secretarial work, a musician and a graduate in mathematics.” In the 1950s and ‘60s human resources and operations management struggled to control software production, plagued by a “software crisis”. By the late 1970s software production had become consistent and controlled, and the field of software engineering brought a range of analytical methods and tools to meet the demands of managers.

Research Questions

What techniques of control brought about this shift to efficient modes of production? As mechanisms for controlling production and labour, what are effective Computer Assisted Software Engineering (CASE) tools and management strategies? What are the negative impacts of these forms of control?

During the tenure of this award I will research:

a) the history of control within software engineering, and

b) the contemporary use of CASE tools and management techniques as applied to the labour required for the production of software.

Methodology

This research builds on data collected during my yearlong case study at a Canadian software company (sponsored by Enhanced MITACS Accelerate PhD Fellowship). The case study used ethnographic methods to understand how software programmers interact with their tools, and how management seeks to increase productivity. Expanding on this case study, I will widen participant recruitment and add historical research. I have selected a mixed–method of ethnography and history because software production, like most socio–technical activities, draws path–dependent historical traces. Subjectification and resistance, additionally, are vividly portrayed through ethnographic study.

During the tenure of this award I will include participants from outside enterprise settings, but for reasons of scope limiting, only within work settings (i.e., excluding hobbyist production, but including small companies). Recent scholarship has complicated the dichotomy of work and play, which is especially true in software production, but I accept the need for a (perhaps fuzzy) boundary to ensure participant recruitment is practical and adheres to my approved Office of Research Ethics proposal (2011–2014). I will use exponential discriminative snowball sampling for participant recruitment (Goodman, 1961). I will continue to use ethnographic methods (e.g., Spradley, 1979, 1980), building on hundreds of hours of experience with semi–structured interviews and job shadowing. Ethnographic methods are chosen to re–vision and re–evaluate the power relationship between researcher and participant, and question deep–seated notions about scholarly privilege and the control of knowledge production.

The history of software engineering will be explored through a practical application of Michel Foucault’s “genealogical” method, using documents located in Canadian and American archives and museums. The genealogical method employs traditional historical techniques but does not attempt to construct grand epochal schemes of progressive history. Instead, genealogy builds on archaeological methods set out in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969) that uncover unconscious formations of thought and knowledge which define conceptual possibilities and the boundaries of conduct for a given time. The genealogical method searches for “petty origins” and mundane, inglorious contingencies to construct an historical narrative.

As Foucault (2002) remarked at the close of The Order of Things, genealogy and ethnography fit together well as both are “anti–sciences” used to uncover unconscious social processes that make discourse significant, and give coherence and necessity to the rules and norms of life. I will focus on the Foucauldian concepts of subjectification and panopticism (e.g., Foucault 1969, 1979, 2001, 2008).

This research will commence September 2012, as my MITACS fellowship concludes. Through September to December 2012 I will conduct approximately twenty interviews across five software companies in Vancouver (2), Los Angeles (2), and New York. Thus, while my research will focus on Toronto and Canada, the results are internationally valid. Through January to May 2013 I will conduct historical research using online and physical archives in Toronto (University of Toronto), Cambridge MA (MIT), Somers NY (IBM), and Mountain View CA (Computer History Museum). Through June to December 2013 I will begin writing my dissertation. Through January to April 2014 I will complete my dissertation and begin revisions. Through May to August 2014 I will complete my revisions and defend my dissertation, concluding my PhD studies in August 2014.

Background

Although Foucault’s theories are now widely applied across the academy, research on the production of software instead tends towards functionalism. The dominant critical researchers of post–Fordist technology follow the Marxist tradition (e.g., Braverman 1974, Zuboff 1988, and Kraft 1977). While these authors bring historically informed, analytic research, their work is difficult to operationalize. Foucault’s conceptual axes of power-subjectification-resistance offer a rich framework for critically evaluating software production, and offer potential for operationalizing the results. The history of software is a small, but important and growing field; my research builds on this historical and sociological work (e.g., Mahoney 2011, 2008, 2005, 2004, 2002, 1990, 1988, 1980, Haigh 2010a, 2010b, 2010c, 2006, 2004a, 2004b, 2002, Aspray 2011, 2000, 1986, 1984, and Campbell–Kelly 2007, 2004, 1995). The broader themes of my research draw on the recent “empirical turn” in the philosophy of technology (e.g., Feenberg 1999), bringing historical and subjective traces into circuit with science and technology studies (STS). STS authors are fellow travellers—in terms of approach, theoretical presuppositions, and methodology (e.g., Mackenzie 2005, 1996 and Latour 1986, 1988, 1993).

Knowledge production

This research is intended to be practical and critical, and to speak simultaneously to the Canadian software industry and the academy. Like my current research, my previous experience as a Senior Information Specialist drew on my background in Philosophy (BA, MA) and Information Science (MLIS), where I was able to translate scholarly research into practical, actionable strategy for a global enterprise. Throughout 2012 I will further my industry–focused research skills by attending the MITACS Step program, ensuring that I am well prepared to conduct this research and cogently disseminate the results. As a deeply interdisciplinary research institution, the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto is well suited to bridging the traditional gap between business and academia. My advisor, Brian Cantwell Smith has considerable corporate research experience, having worked at XEROX Palo Alto Research Center and possesses a deep understanding of the relevant philosophical issues. My committee member, Yuri Takhteyev, is very experienced in the sociology of work and methodologies for conducting ethnographic studies of software production. I am seeking a third committee member with further technical experience and a science and technology studies background. All committee members, like myself, will be personally experienced with software production.

Agrippa has been cracked; website preserved in Bodleian Library

Cracking the Agrippa Code websiteThe mystery behind William Gibson’s electronic poem Agrippa is no more. The contest was a smash success and five seperate contestants managed to crack the crytography, and many other interesting things too (see my Technical Description for more information).

The website has been selected by the Bodleian Library as being “of lasting research value and worthy of permanent preservation” and will be entering the archives soon.

Update on Wednesday, August 1, 2012 at 10:56AM by Quinn

Update: Capture has occured. The website is now available in the archive.