hackaflocka

If there are any Googlers on here reading this, some free unsolicited advice from me to you:

GMail is awesome. It made email 10 times better and easier (for me anyways) to use.

Here's an idea: GText. Despite all the products that have come out, we still refer to texting as, well, texting. So, mail:GMail::text:GText.

Here's my problem with Apple's iMessages: they take up all this space on my phone. And when I change phones, more often than not, I end up losing all my old texts (because Apple hasn't figured out idiot-proof migration).

So, what I would LOVE is something like GMail for texting... i.e., GText.

- Almost unlimited storage in the cloud so I can keep all my old texts.

- Access to all my texts via a web browser.

- Search through all my old texts with powerful Google Search.

- Never lose old texts just because I changed my phone.

- All the cool GMail features such as Labels and Filters, and colors for labels.

Please use periods at the end of sentences. This is Hacker News for crying out loud.

Look up "app.net". It's been tried. It failed.

How big is it?

Very interesting proposition. I've only read the Abstract and the part about Testosterone, and would like HN's take on this.

Pmarca re-tweeted about this, that's how I found out about it, and was somewhat surprised to note that HN hadn't already had a go at it.

Buzz could have been a great idea IMHO if handled properly. What got them in trouble was the underhanded way in which they 'friended' people, exposing mistresses to wives.

"YouTube Community" is not 'verbable' (e.g. "Tweet it", or "inbox me").

"Hello green username."

On average? Of course not. It's a power-law! Averages mean nothing in power-law situations.

You don't contact them. They contact you.

Like the earlier poster said, you need a high profile career where you are able to signal intelligence, mental toughness, and your political and patriotic leanings.

Journalism leads to all sorts of amazing career opportunities (if you want to think of it that way). A lot of journalists are actually doing lobbying for some special interest or the other.

You do smell like it. You just don't know it.

Self knowledge is rare. I have it, you don't.

The idea of forcing owners to let people who are not compatible, stay with them, is ridiculous.

I'm Indian and smell of curry (probably... at least a few times a month). If someone hates the smell of curry, they should be allowed to blanket disallow Indians from staying.

Couldn't find anything to do with steam engines, internal combustion engines, or electric motors.

Couldn't find anything invented at IITs.

"Here, let me tell you about Indian inventions from 1000 B.C. !!!"

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. I really think we're losing something by not having this kind of knowledge more evenly spread out in the population. There was a time when my near-ancestors could all stitch up a wound or re-set a bone. Such first-aid was a necessary skill. That too is missing in the population today.

His motor used parts that were pre-built abroad. He himself admitted that there was nothing original about his design, that he used existing blueprints to build it.

You're probably one of those who also insists that India has the best teachers. Why I can't find any of their lectures on YouTube (but find a "shitton" of lectures from non-Indians) is interesting.

You also probably believe India has the most powerful supercomputer and the best space program (for its budget).

I'm more interested in the masses of Indians not having to shit on the street outside where they live, and having access to clean drinking water and refrigerators.

Also, could you name some Indian makers who can create a steam engine, or internal combustion engine, or electrical engine from scratch? Or any that have innovated in that sphere? OK, I'll make it easy for you. Can you name a single invention at any of the IITs in their entire history, an invention that is used by the rest of the world?

Also, you don't get to decide what I can post on here in which thread. HN has moderators for that purpose. And if they want, they can let me know.

Survivorship Bias (what Taleb calls Silent Evidence).

What's missing: all the children whose parents raised them the same way, and who ended up committing suicide, or are in mental institutions, or fill the ranks of the homeless today.

I was recently reading an article about James Watt, and his steam engine. It's a remarkable story.

I'm reasonably intelligent, but I'm pretty sure that even if I was given his tools and his blueprints, I would never be able to construct an actual working steam engine (input burning coal, output rotating shaft).

This got me thinking about how in India (I'm Indian), we don't have any of the older technology. We don't actually know how to construct a steam engine, or an internal combustion engine, or an electrical engine from scratch. All the key components are imported from Japan, or Germany or the U.S. As a child, my little toys with electrical or gas motors (RC airplanes) in them were all imported.

I think there's a lot of focus on software because it's actually easier to tinker with. All one needs is a PC and internet. I suspect there are lots of mechanically inclined Indians who would love to work on motors, engines, stuff that makes shafts rotate. But we simply don't have the basic tools and infrastructure to tinker with those.

I guess what I'm saying here is that while it's very good that there's more internet infrastructure being laid out in India. I wish someone like the Ambanis would lay out infrastructure that could allow for tinkering with older technology as well.

The greatness of Hardy is that some unknown person from across the world (Ramanujan) wrote him barely legible letters, and he read them, believed in the writer, and helped expose him to the world.

I was once in a position where lots of people wrote me letters seeking to tell me about their talents. All the letters went unread to my dustbin. True and sad.

Thank goodness for Europe.

When certain media outlets in the U.S. (Fox News, Ann Coulter, Clint Eastwood, etc.) represent people behind "heroic" feats in the past (space race, WWII battles, capture of Saddam Hussein, Yeshua the Christ, Egyptians in the Old Testament), 100% of the people doing the heroism are represented as white (as in Scandinavian white). This context and history explains why there is an effort to correct the imbalance of representation. It is indeed needed and necessary to correct the imbalance. IMHO.

I had one of those HP Elitebooks. The trackpad is really really bad.

If Milo weren't gay and Jewish, he'd have the EU human rights commission on his ass. In a bad way.

The author in 1885:

"People say that we should train people for factory jobs, but everyone I know is gainfully employed in agriculture, and we don't have any factories where I live."

As a college professor, let me assure the author that statistics and programming is not a standard part of an eighth graders program. In fact, the ones I teach have passed the 12th grade, and most are woefully unprepared in algebra, statistics, probability and programming.

For me, understanding slightly advanced math (the type discussed in Taleb's Fooled By Randomness) helped me realize that Financial academic math is complete B.S. (in its use of the Gaussian Dist. in non-Gaussian processes). Yes, that's how learning more math has benefited me: it helped me discover how math is used to support complete B.S.

Obama should do more outreach to industry to promote the idea of more competition in the insurance space.

According to Nassim Taleb, when all the lions were killed in the Middle East, the goats multiplied, and they apparently love tree roots, which led to the Middle East turning into desert (not sure if it's true, but he says it is and I'm inclined to believe it).

Does anyone know what could be some unintended negative consequences of exterminating all snakes?

It always amazes me that in North America, they exterminated Wolves from most of place, and so were able to create a safe working environment for farming. Although the deer population is a little out of control, it's not a as bad as goats turning the land into desert.

Can it be transmitted from heavy kissing?

Does oral sex transmit Gonorrhea?

Are there any sex acts that are immune to it?

Is there anything safe (sex-wise) that one can do to prevent it?

OP would be doing a service to society by taking it to the DA.

These guys are going to end up seriously scamming some innocent party in the future.

wrkriot.com is a current squarespace site.