jcd writes:
"I'm rather excited to get going with Soylent and to watch it grow. Nay, help it grow. I have lurked in /. for more than a decade (note: I'm not the same username over there, I know, how sneaky), and always wished I could have been involved with the beginning. So this is a great opportunity, and I joined as soon as I saw what Soylent was doing. Not to mention the fact that I felt right at home with the old style. It's very comfortable.
So here's a question for everyone. Are we going to be the same as slashdot? A clone that focuses as entirely as possible on tech related news? Or will we branch out to other topics? I'm interested to see either way. I posted a comment to this effect in one of our two existing polls, and it may be a community-wide assumption, but I do think it merits a discussion."
(Score: 1) by Techwolf on Thursday February 20 2014, @06:58PM
What is this thing with the "host file"? I've seen on it /. and it gets to +5 and have no clue as to why it got modded up.
(Score: 3, Informative) by lothmordor on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:34PM
Yeah, this is off-topic, but....
Modifying the hosts file is one method for blocking ads, malware servers or any other website by remapping the DNS lookup to the localhost address. Doesn't work for adservers that don't use DNS (you would need to block those with a firewall), and very large hosts files can cause some latency in the lookup process. I think most users just install AdBlock now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file) [wikipedia.org]
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm [mvps.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @07:39PM
APK isn't wrong, his attitude and writing style just pisses everyone off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @03:12AM
(Score: 1) by crutchy on Friday February 21 2014, @06:59AM
don't forget the infamous troll-reversal script... with python indentation bug on line 5 :-P
(Score: 1) by Techwolf on Friday February 21 2014, @01:27AM
The technical part I knew about, but there seem to be a missing joke there somewhere that started on /. I guess I didn't make myself clear. My bad.
(Score: 1) by lothmordor on Friday February 21 2014, @05:15AM
No worries. I suspected that might be the case, but I wasn't sure. Perhaps someone lurking found it useful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday February 21 2014, @05:48AM
APK is someone who has mental health problems and is one of the most persistent Internet trolls[1]. He wrote some little Windows programs in the '90s, including one for managing very large hosts files for filtering ads and known-malware sites. One of the more prominent examples of his over-the-top behaviour was when he threatened someone with legal action because their program detected his software as malware. He didn't provide any information that would let them check it and flag it as a false positive, just went into full crazy mode straight away.
I had him post the same reply (usually 5 or so times) to all of my Slashdot posts for a couple of weeks. Apparently he took issue with a comment where I mentioned that I'd written a few books (people who pay attention on Slashdot have worked out who I am - at least one person did and posted my name and address in response to one of my comments about anonymity - and so can easily confirm this, but I generally try not to make explicit links because I quite like a little bit of deniability). He then posts pretending to be someone else gloating that APK 'won' the conversation because the person he was trolling didn't respond.
[1] I don't think he meets the technical definition, because he's honestly writing what he believes, he's just a bit unstuck from reality.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by crutchy on Friday February 21 2014, @07:02AM
he gets one kudo cos he likes delphi
he loses it cos he also likes python