Lifebot

I've flagged more articles on HN about the NSA.

From the article:

> Out of curiosity (and for fun!) we’ve recently used Alexa - a web traffic reporting platform - to discover the top ten sites built using Ruby on Rails framework.

It clearly defines "top sites" as those listed from Alexa. In which case, it is correct.

While I personally don't agree with some of those who were grayed-out, I agree with this sentiment.

Thing is, I sometimes want to know how many people disagree with a comment. I almost wish there were thumbs up/down icons to signify how many people agree with a comment, separate from the downvote/up system that indicates if a comment is off-topic or has no content.

PG should just buy the design from this guy (or hire him): http://hn.premii.com/

Previously discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178534

Unrelated but out of curiosity, what language is most air traffic control software written? (or what language would you be writing in do you think?)

Because it was upvoted there by users.

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

(It doesn't matter if your question is rhetorical or not, stop asking this people of HN)

In an ideal world services would give you YOUR data, instead of locking you in, allowing you to easily export all your data -- ideally in an open format -- that could be imported to other services.

Yea, that's one of the big problems I've pondered too.

Which brings up another thought: Does a party tip less if they do the ordering themselves?

I've thought about the idea Butter Systems does countless times while eating out. Very cool if it works out. If flexible WIFI-enabled electronic-paper ever comes to fruition, you could make authentic paper-like menus that are interactive. I think that's still 10-20 years out there.

That's what confuses me. AJAX loaders are ubiquitous on the web. They're small, easy to use, and a great visual cue. I'm not sure why you would want a percent-based loading bar unless you actually knew how long something would take to load. (e.g. see loading bars for downloads)

Using these super thin bars as a "dumb" loader seems like it would only confuse your users. It's like using an icon other than the floppy disk to convey saving.

Question for people using these progress bars: Are you actually doing the computation to accurately estimate the time it takes to complete the action indicated by the progress bar, or are you simply showing a progress bar as a visual cue to any loading in the same way people have been using spinning AJAX loaders?