bjhoops1

1.5 million is a comically low estimate. Where did you get your figure? Over 3 million died in the Ukrainian collectivization political famine alone.

>Stalin has always been under-rated in the United States. Truth was, he was a hero who helped to defeat the Nazis and Imperial Japan.

That anyone in the 21st century would ever attribute heroism to a man who murdered 20 million people (that's a low estimate btw) is beyond comprehensible.

Was Stalin the "lesser of two evils" in the fight with ole Adolf? Perhaps. But anyone who holds Stalin in anything but contempt is either utterly ignorant of a huge swath of 20th century history or has a profoundly twisted sense of morality.

I suggest you take a brief spin on Uncle Joe's wikipedia page or read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin to get a feel for just what sort of hero Stalin was.

That's why the author lists a number of examples from roughly the same time period (or earlier e.g. Lincoln/McClellan) as a means of comparison. It's anecdotal, to be sure, but then again this is history, not science.

I had this exact same surgery 7 years ago after tearing ACL/meniscus playing basketball. Patellar tendon graft FTW! (I joke that real men donate their own tissues)

For me, the ACL has been perfect ever since. Wish I could say the same for my meniscus and cartilage - I subsequently tore my meniscus 2 more times (each time in a non-vascular area so they just sanded it down, no sutures like you had), and then 5 years later I tore a chunk out of my articular cartilage that had probably been weakened years before when I did my ACL.

That led to an OATS procedure where they took bone plugs from a non-weight bearing part of the knee and transplanted them in holes bored where the lesion was. That last procedure was pretty fun as it entailed 6 weeks on crutches, non-weight bearing, during which period my wife and I had our first kid (yay for timing!).

Anyway, that just to say hang in there (I imagine your rehab is pretty much over by this point, but it probably still aches?), and I hope your ACL graft (good call with the patellar) holds up as well as mine and your meniscus better. Oh and enjoy the achiness that comes with changing weather. I was rather amused that that apparently is a real thing. :)

Ah, yes - Instant Search... I thought about that as I typed this. I typically find myself naively hoping that Google treats Instant Search differently than (Actual? Real? Not sure what non-instant would be called) Regular Search, and does not store my fingers' wanderings.

A visual cue such as Instant Search makes it much clearer that the server is reacting to your input, I suppose. Absent that, it is rather worrisome.

I hope to god this does not become widespread. I type all sorts of crazy shit in text boxes. Everyone's basic assumption is that no information is sent until you hit 'enter'. Deploying this in the wild would seem like a huge invasion of privacy. Akin to turning on a user's webcam and a screen capture to turn your users into unwitting usability testers. In other words, please use this responsibly.

Also, if you're using a tool that was built more than a year ago, you risk ridicule. Definitely a lot more work figuring out what the hottest new tools are than in traditional or backend development.

All good engineers know the only appropriate footwear for slacks is a pair of New Balance sneakers.

For what it's worth, sending a confirmation email is a great way to stop bots as well, skirting the whole Captcha thing.

> because some tester opens a ticket saying you can enter an invalid email in the email field?

This is the source of 80% of all "bugs" I've fixed over the years.

Another personal favorite: If you enter WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW W WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW for name, it messes up the layout on the display screen.

I read this article while throwing back some Oikos. So meta.

> But they're all billionaires, so issues that don't affect billionaires personally... just don't get included in the debate.

I recently came across this fascinating statistical study[1] of U.S. Senators responsiveness to the political positions of their constituents, which found that both Republicans and (to a slightly lesser extent) Democrats were overwhelmingly responsive to the positions of the wealthiest 1/3 of their constituents, and entirely unresponsive to the positions of the lowest 1/3. Well worth a read.

[1] http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/economic.pdf

I could not agree more.

One factor that I think contributes to the Asshole Ethos common among programmers is this idea that great men of genius cannot be held to the same moral standards as mere mortals. This idea, combined with an inflated sense of self-worth, makes for a host of Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds wannabes, convinced that their special nature absolves them from social norms and responsibility.

The Raskolnikov-ian egoists ought to read Crime and Punishment...

I can fortunately say that in my experience, few programmers are assholes in person. Online forums are another matter. :)

I always make a point of reading comments that start with "Not to be a dick..." :P

Yeah, this is going to be a bit of a pain. Plus it looks like you also have to add .glyphicon? So instead of .icon-plus, you now have .glyphicon .glyphicon-plus. :(

I agree on "personalized" search. It can be handy (I search "Backbone" and get BackboneJS), but I worry that highly personalized search and content can lead to a feedback loop in which your pre-existing perceptions and biases are perpetually reaffirmed.

Imagine someone who takes Fox News and InfoWars seriously only being presented information from those sources. They could never escape!

Or take someone interested in mindless topics like celebrity gossip and whichever Kardashian has recently lost weight. A customized information feed will only enable them to fritter their life away in the pursuit of mindless, inane entertainment. They might come to think that these things actually constitute attention-worthy news!

Granted, these scenarios apply a bit more to customized news feeds like Yahoo homepages or Google News, but to some degree it applies to search as well. Sometimes I worry that I am already trapped in a closed information loop. Maybe the U.S. is an oppressive dictatorship and North Korea stands for freedom and innovation! I may never know.

As a Jones, I feel you. It is almost impossible to find a good username or email address that is not already taken. My wife was formerly a Kokernot, and is finding she can no longer command first.last@gmail.com.

Yeah, I felt smart until I read this. Now I know how all those "business people" feel in meetings with their devs.

That's what I was thinking. Or some sort of non-profit that individuals and tech companies could support with donations. That would be sweet.

I am struggling to find budget statistics that go back to earlier than 2010, but since that time the budget has been flat at $11.8 billion (1.5 billion less than Obama requested), and thanks to the sequester they are experiencing a $600 million cut this year. At the same time, they have been required to take on new duties and are struggling to maintain the employment they need. Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/25/us-usa-tax-irs-hea... and http://www.irs.gov/pub/newsroom/budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf

What's absurd is that estimates of ROI on IRS funding range from 7:1 to 10:1. So it's really not about the budget. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to speculate on what's really behind the underfunding of the IRS.

Hell, for $25,000 I'd let anyone take a look at my medical records!

On a serious note, it's been a bad week for the IRS, but that agency is seriously struggling right now with a slashed budget and increased responsibilities. As David Cay Johnston, puts it "The IRS is drowning." http://www.cjr.org/united_states_project/the_other_irs_scand...

I might add to this, the traditional handshake or the bro handshake. You know, this one: http://d3j5vwomefv46c.cloudfront.net/photos/large/621236127....

I'll never forget the time I accidentally gave my dentist a bro shake. You should have seen how excited he got. Poor lonely dentists...

Not every day you see a Salon article on the HN front page.

That's wild. Yeah, I read both of the Syrian Electronic Army articles, but it never occurred to me they had actually been targeted. That makes a "SEA has some fun before their inevitable deaths" a bit cruel perhaps. Since that could very well happen.

Wait, did did The Onion actually get hacked? I just assumed that was a joke. Now I'm confused...

I'd be curious to hear about your experiences in the Corps as an anti-authoritarian sort. I nearly joined the Marines myself out of college but decided that I was not well suited for it.

I'll get right on that and recommend that to my parents. :P It is interesting the recent research on psychotropics, though.

I might add to this that I very frequently finding myself using Amazon just for the reviews. You can learn a lot about a product by reading reviews, especially the 1 star ones. If a product has no Amazon reviews, I don't really trust it. I can't remember the last time I googled "Product X reviews."

EDIT: to clarify, by "these folks" I mean people who are both mentally ill and anti-authoritarian.

I can't say it's more rewarding on the whole, but I didn't want people to think that it is less rewarding.

However, there is also a bit of an effect where someone you care about is not particularly thoughtful, so when they do go out of their way to be kind or help you out, it feels especially good and shows that they really do care about you. If that makes sense..