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tlb

You also get different loans if you walk into a bank wearing a suit vs. a hoodie.

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So which browser is the equivalent of a tuxedo? A suit? A hoodie?

I'm not so sure browser choice is an accurate signal of a person's worth (In this sense, worth could mean anything).

Safari is a hoodie

If anything Safari is the only browser that _could_ be _at all_ indicative of one's financial bracket...

s/_/ *

[replace _ with * ]

What is the world coming to, that you have to explain vi commands on HN?

That's technically just a regular expression (perl syntax). The vi equivalent would be

    :%s/_/*/g

Which is, replace all occurrences on all lines of '_' with ' *'

EDIT: Talk about formatting fail...

Isn't that actually ed/sed syntax?

What is the world coming to when a correction has to get 3 levels deep before it's actually correct on HN?

(And you have less points than either of the ones above you? Seriously?)

Indeed, quick memory recall failure on my part. It's ed syntax which bled into everything else via POSIX basic. However, given the limited number of symbols present, identification can be considered ambiguous :).

I actually couldn't get the asterisk to appear without adding text below it, and I didn't have anything else to add. So I just added an explanation.

Don't worry! I didn't feel like I needed to explain. But the formatting on HN is odd, and the rule on how to use asterisks is obscure and bizarre.

  s|s/_/*|  s/_/*|

And since I haven't debugged that regex even if it was legible, add two spaces to the beginning of a line to reproduce text verbatim. (Even if it's on one line.)

I wasn't aware HN actually had formatting, I was just trying to use plaintext for emphasis... Or does it?

Text between asterisks will be in italics.

Most browsers send the OS as part of the user agent though, which I'd assume would be a more reliable metric.

It runs on windows too, so it wouldn't be a very good indicator (assuming that you're saying the people who buy macs are more affluent than those who buy pcs).

Still checks out, Safari sends the OS in the UA string;

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Safari/533.18.5

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_5; en-US) AppleWebKit/533.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Safari/533.18.5

Which isn't the same as the browser being indicative of it, eh? Especially as other browsers send the OS as well.

IE6 from a non-government email address and/or not during normal corporate business hours = dirty overalls + straw hat

or grandma

I'm not sure either, but wouldn't it be interesting to see the data. Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing articles about conversion rates, customer value, etc based on browser. Could be interesting.

I'd say Safari = black turtleneck.... firefox = hoodie....

actually the chrome figure makes sorta sense. chrome is super early adopters, so likely wealthier purchasers of high-end electronics... dunno completely pulling this outta my A$$ :-)

You can say ass here. We're all adults.

That's an artifact from a past era. Likely from BBSes, gaming or IRC. I think it should come off as the equivalent to a dialect that just provides some insight to the poster. I know when I use it it's usually unintentional and subconscious. And, of course, there is the implication that if you don't like swear words then read it as such and don't be offended.

I remember it being used often in moderated fidonet[1] though that may have been limited to local and regional forums. Also to avoid the swear word filters on BBS chat in the 80s and very early 90s. And in some MMORPGs for the same reason circa 2000 to present.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet

Good to know. Didn't want to get down voted purely for saying ass.

Internet Explorer: Commoners.

Firefox: Geeks, Biological relatives of geeks, IT people.

Chrome: Programmers, basement dwellers, hipsters.

Can you tell if an iPhone is locked or not from the UA string? Because I'd expect that locked iPhones are exactly the customer you want most: has money and signs long term contracts (whereas an unlocked or jailbroken product might indicate that they'll do extra work to save money -- exactly the customer you don't usually want).

Well.. you could but you would need the IP address also.

You just need to check if the request is coming from a T-Mobile IP, or any other GSM carrier in the USA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_wireless_...).

This wouldn't work outside the USA (unless you want to research the carriers) and most people would be connected to wifi.

So, this wouldn't really work. It would be much easier with a BlackBerry as they transmit the vendorID (a type of carrierID) in the UA. You could easily check this with the IP.

Even if it's not "reliable", it could still be a usable heuristic. If there data shows a correlation between Chrome use and dependable loan repayment, who to say they should ignore it?

i can certainly attest to this. thanks for the laugh, best comment i've seen in days.

Unless your name is Mark Zuckerberg, in which case the APR is 0 and the payment plan is in Facebook stock, every single time!

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