pushingbits

Instead of a posting a glib response, a reasonable thing to do would be to read the wikipedia article on civil disobedience and realize that a single person randomly disobeying a law in public is not how it works.

Aside from that: I wonder what would happen if all the people in the country who are using marijuana at least semi-regularly were to go to some very public place at the same time and light up a joint.

Series of tubes...

"Nowadays almost everybody knows that it's dangerous to reveal your credit card number, or to have that full number on a printed document that somebody might find in the trash. Soon people will learn that it is equally dangerous to reveal the numbers that are printed in plain sight on every check. Forget signatures; banks have no time to verify them. The once venerable system of checking accounts is irretrievably broken. Before long, companies will find it impossible to give out paychecks without exposing themselves to unacceptable risk.

One consequence of this debacle is, alas, that I can no longer write checks to reward the people who discover errors in my books. The system that I've been using has worked well for almost forty years; but recently I have had to close three checking accounts, and the criminal attacks on those accounts have caused significant grief to my bankers. (Certainly I do not believe that anybody who received one of my checks has been in any way a culprit. But all such recipients are entitled to bragging rights; therefore the numbers printed on those checks inevitably become known to random members of the public.) I cannot in good conscience continue to traumatize the people at my bank, who obviously have plenty of other things to worry about."

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html

This is actually a positive externality (well, depending on how you look at it) of providing some sort of social security net. You get to live in a society where people are less incentivized to stab each other in the back. Of course, they are also less incentivized to work themselves out of being-close-to-the-cliff.

On the other hand, in societies where, if you don't have any money, you are starving on the street as well as ostracized, you can hardly ever trust anyone not to carve you up if there is anything to be gained by it.

I once heard of a doctor working for an NGO in a major Indian city (I think it was Calcutta), who talked about how it was virtually impossible for a white person to make a friend there, because everyone he met was just trying to use him to gain status/money in some fashion.

Third result is: http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html

6th result is: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4426663/how-do-i-remove-t...

Neither one of those contains "popleft".

I tried bing a couple of times, but the results are even worse.

Maybe Google verbatim mode will fix the problem? I've set up a quick search recently, but have yet to start using it.

HN thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3633985

For example, you could ask how to switch two variable's values in C++ with the aim of finding out whether they know about the swap function (and you can then go on to ask about template specialization for extra credit).

This would be a better question than the ones in the OP because it's not just trivia and it's not something that your IDE will do for you.

Many people will claim to know a programming language on their CV because they spent a week trying it out 3 years ago, figuring that they can just pick it up quickly if they get the job (this might be somewhat true for the 5th or 6th language, but probably not for the 2nd). And these are the same people who will then program in that language for years without ever producing any quality code because they don't realize that there is room for improvement after you know all the keywords.

Blog post about it: http://www.pushingbits.net/posts/google-date-range-address-b...

Anyway, you may very well disagree. I was just trying to explain why some people who think differently might be more than a little sad about it. And that just because he was a stranger doesn't limit the amount of sadness people may legitimately feel.

When was this decided? And by who? Did I miss a memo?

I've never owned an Apple product in my life, but the computers I have used, the smartphone I own, the tablet I will eventually get, the world I will live in 20 years from now, probably would not exist if it wasn't for Steve Jobs.

The world has lost an exceptional human being, and along with him, we have lost a chunk of the future he would have created if he'd lived longer.

So who's deciding how we are to legitimately feel about that?

It certainly seems like the divide between computer consumers and computer developers is getting ever wider. One side has their computer experience made ever simpler, whereas the other has to deal with ever more complexity (cf. Ryan Dahl rant).

The ultimate revolution might be to simplify programming to the point where anyone can do it.

After the relaunch it looks like they are trying to position themselves to compete with pinterest et al, but they still have a lot of catching up to do in terms of UI and they are still soooo slow.

Anyway, using delicious as a private bookmark manager (which is what I was doing) doesn't seem to be a use case they have in mind for the future. Time to give pinboard a try, I guess. Maybe I'll learn to live with the tag cloud.

I rather enjoyed it, so I figured I'd give it another stab.

One-page is here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6471/the_valve_way_gab...

Favorite part: "Premature monetization is the root of all evil."

Also, on a related note, there's Peto's Paradox about why cancer rates are similar across species despite vastly different sizes (mice, humans, whales).

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2011/02/28/the-mere-e...

Paper behind paywall: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711...

Probably worth linking to here.

While I enjoy pg's writing and I think the essays convey a good message in spirit, I do think there's quite a substantial populist aspect to some of them.

I'm glad I read all of them, but if I had to choose, I'd probably get On Lisp in deadtree format first.

The real news here (as far as I am concerned) is that the judge has suggested settlement talks, which to me, in my legal ignorance, sounds like he thinks the case has some merit?

1. Last time I tried that, it didn't sync extensions, extension settings, or bookmarklet buttons (or other settings). Unless they started doing that now (and judging by https://services.mozilla.com/ it seems like they don't), it'd still be much more of a hassle to set up a new FF install to be equivalent.

2. This only addresses a quarter of the point I was making and even for that... I don't like semantic search because you have to scan the suggested result to check that the first search result is in fact whatever you expected it to be. When I type "hn" and press enter, I don't have to wait for semantic search to do its thing, I don't have to make sure that some other site that starts with "h" or has an "h" in the name took the top result spot (and what if you have multiple pages you visit often that start with "h"?), I KNOW it will take me directly where I want to go. I can do Ctrl + T -> hn -> Enter in a fraction of a fraction of a second, while reading something else on another monitor.

3. Hah, I did actually try it out in FF before writing that part of the comment. Of course, you first have to enable it in preferences (and it was disabled in my preferences for some reason, though judging by the documentation that's not the default). Anyway, thanks for pointing this out. :)

Anyway, it's the combination and integration of little things that makes a big difference, not the little things themselves that might be replicated in some way in the other browsers minus the synergy. I know this is probably not obvious until you have really tried it yourself and the reflex reaction is to squint a lot and go: "My browser can do something very much like that, too!" or "It don't need THAT! It wouldn't make a difference."

Give it a try. It does.

After watching some non-technical people browse the web, I think all modern browsers are pretty much equivalent (as far as the user is concerned). Normal users don't install extensions, they don't care about easy bookmark access or browser speed (as long as the difference isn't in the order of magnitudes) or really any of the things that browsers might do differently. It's just slightly different window dressing around websites. So I think cleaning up the Opera user interface as the article mentions, while nice, won't make a difference to user numbers.

When products are effectively the same, marketing is the ONLY thing that matters (bundling aside).

Now having said all that, there is of course a big difference amongst web browser when it comes to power users and as a long time Opera user, I find that it enables me to browse the web in ways that are not possible in Firefox and Chrome.

1. Good defaults (in terms of functionality and settings). I can install Opera on a new computer, connect to Opera Link to import bookmarks / searches, change three settings and I have my complete web browsing experience set up on another computer. I don't have to install ANY extensions, widgets or what have you.

2. The reason that I don't need extension is partially because some functionality is already included in the browser, and partially because the address bar in conjunction with bookmark aliases replaces a ton of extensions I might need to have and acts in many ways like a command line to the web. Bookmark aliases let you specify some "command" that you type in in the address bar that invokes a bookmark. So I can type "hn" into the address bar, hit enter and it will take me to hacker news. In addition to that, the address bar consumes javascript. That means that you can set aliases for bookmarklets and for multi argument quick searches. So if I type "bm" (for bookmark) into the address bar, it will open the window to bookmark something on delicious. The same thing that would happen if you click on a delicious bookmarklet button... only you don't have to click on a button. And it will get synced when you set up Opera Link on a new install. And you can hook up any old snippet of javascript you can think of to such a command.

3. Find on page acts as an element selector. If you see a link on a page that you want to click on, you can do "Ctrl + F -> type in part of link name -> enter" to "click" on the link. I know that FF has extensions (vimperator?) to do something similar, but again... that's one less extension you need.

In short, with a very small combination of extra features, Opera will save you a million mouse clicks with zero setup / configuration hassle.

(I once wrote a blog post about multi argument address bar searches: http://www.pushingbits.net/posts/google-date-range-address-b...)

Haha.

That would have been very well played if it had been intentional, but I somehow doubt that that's the case.

I remember you saying somewhere that you're into optimizing businesses and money is a great way to keep score, and in light of that, this comment even makes sense, but please keep in mind that for some people becoming a better programmer is not about maximizing ROI.

I don't use it that much (mostly because there are no shortcuts and command line interface for adding to a stack or expand / collapse), but it is nice sometimes. I might do some research for a blog post, end up with 5 sites that I know I will need to consult when I write it, and just put them in a stack and have it sit there (collapsed, so it doesn't take up much space) until I do write it.

Having said that, I rarely get over 50 (usually in the morning after clearing out my feeds, or when programming against some API / library, when I open lots of documentation pages).

Once I get to the point where I can't see the favicons anymore, I start looking for something to close.

In fact, they might just do it by accident.

I recently applied, but didn't get past AClip and I'm of course very curious why. I understand you don't give feedback, but if you have some idea, from HN reader to HN reader, I'd appreciate it a lot. Email in profile.

(Note: absolutely not trying to start an argument or anything like that. Just curious.)

Too much thought and words spent on intermediate situations.

It's almost certain that not all details are known and of the ones that are known, some will probably turn out to be incorrect. And now every time a little tidbit of information turns up, everyone starts interpreting the new situation (with the added tidbit of information). New conjecture, new advice, new commentary. Then when the next bit of information comes in, it invalidates half the predictions that have been made, and the whole process starts again. Over and over. Round and round.

A couple of weeks from now when all the details are out and established, all this intermediate commentary will just be noise. A tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear. That's not to say that you shouldn't do it... hell, if you feel like it... But you might ask yourself if there isn't something else you'd rather be doing. Something useful. Something fun. I don't know.

Anyway, I'll write myself a reminder to check up on how the whole thing turned out in a month or so and ignore these threads from now on.

http://www.pushingbits.net/posts/google-im-feeling-lucky-add...

Very useful.