rationalbeaver

"Does anyone seriously think we will grow old and die 500 years from now?"

Absolutely. Here's a few reasons why I think that way:

A)Even if we somehow solve the problem of aging, some people (quite possibly many or even most) will still choose to live a "natural" life for any number of reasons.

B)History suggests that we will not continue our current rate of progress indefinitely. Who knows how long it may take to recover from the inevitable disruptions.

C)I suspect that, like cancer or practical flying cars, aging is a harder problem than we think it is. Just because we can envision the end result does not mean we can achieve it.

D)Based on current medical trends, any effective anti-aging treatment is likely to be so expensive that the vast majority of people will not be able to afford it.

E)In the end, entropy always wins.

My apologies for all the pessimism. :)

Fairly mind blowing to me at the time I heard it: Reno, NV is farther West than Los Angeles, CA.

That is also, quite possibly, the nerdiest coincidence in the history of mankind. My hat is off to you, sir.

Last I checked the value was on par with the Zimbabwe dollar.

No downvote from me, but I doubt drug dealers will like this much. This thing creates email receipts, tracks date, time, and location of transactions, and holds your money in an online account that is connected to your bank account. I'm pretty sure that people doing illegal stuff will stick with cash.

I think "very black hat" is pushing it a bit. That would be something like the worms and trojans people have used to take over accounts and spam everyone.

But paying people to push your page is definitely sketchy, especially since I'm sure there was no disclosure on the part of the pushers.

I'd call that mesh hat.

I lost. Thanks a lot.

Jerk.

I wonder how people would answer if the implications of the graphs were made more clear to them.

An unequal distribution of wealth, at least in America today, implies that great success is possible (in a system with less income mobility it might imply something else, but that is not the case here). Given the right combination of luck, brains, talent, hard work, or beauty, you too could become fabulously wealthy. Your startup could be the next Google, or Facebook. You could be the next Bill Gates. And if your plans for greatness don't pan out, well, even the bottom quintile has it pretty good compared to most places.

In the other graphs, the chance for relative comfort is increased (assuming a certain base standard of living), but the chance for huge rewards for great success is drastically reduced. In the Utopian version it is non-existent: No matter how hard you work, you will get the same result.

Maybe I am still young and idealistic, but frankly I prefer the first graph. I'll take freedom over security, and a chance for greatness over comfortable mediocrity.

I like where these cottage food laws are going. I'm just thinking out loud, but I'd be interested in seeing a system where smaller outfits would simply be required to post some kind of notification that they are unlicensed/uninspected. This might also be accompanied by a higher cap on claims resulting from food poisoning lawsuits or something similar.

Whenever I see that line I can't help feeling like it's super-pretentious. I have to remind myself that it's: A)Set by default, and B)Actually kind of useful as an explanation for bad spelling and short responses.

Anecdotal, but I have experienced an SMS message delivery delay of about 7 hours within the past week (on Verizon). I would agree that delays are less common, but they're by no means over with.

Enormous but mostly empty?

Observation: There is exactly 1 woman on that entire list. #52.

Judging submissions without clicking through and being astounded by this guy's incredible artistic hacking skills? What's happening to HN indeed.

There is a difference between stealing money to fuel your greed and stealing a loaf of bread because you're starving. Or speeding for the thrill vs. speeding to get your pregnant wife to the hospital. His assertion is that illegal immigration often follows a similar pattern.

Man, don't eat that stuff. Soylent green is people.

Good, article, but let's be honest here. We all know this is the real list:

1. Reddit/HN/Digg/etc.

2. Facebook (move to #1 if you play Farmville or are female)

3. Steam/xbox/playstation/WOW/Dwarf Fortress

4. Checking Email

5. Watching videos/movies/tv

6. Doing something pointless on your phone

7. Etc. Choose your own time-waster

All of the apps are for that.

Also, the food at the local lunch spot may be higher quality, but it is very likely to have tons of added salt, fat, oil, sugar and other deliciousness that is just as likely to land you in the hospital later in life.

His best advice is probably to avoid eating out in general.

My old Canon does the same thing. I select 'gray scale' in the print settings to force the printer to stick to the black ink only.

Don't forget your towel.

You'd be surprised at how often they do that. It happens with virtually every announcement.

Yeah, but you can't eat solar panels.

That's true, but making a sales tax progressive creates the same complication that exists in the current system, only with even more incentive for corporations to lobby for special exemptions, reclassifications, credits, etc., for the products that they produce.

I'm beginning to have some doubts:

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pinksoda

Which is more likely: Someone created a truly impressive and convincingly realistic fake iphone which they subsequently "lost" in the hopes that someone would find it and leak/sell it to the media.

OR

Mr. Sewell has a lot of oldish letterhead that he needs to use up?

What, your email isn't set to 'auto-print-then-delete-upon-open'?

I'm sure toolbar spam accounts for a lot of Ask's traffic, but we shouldn't see that here.

The graph shows the relative amounts of people who use Google to search for (i.e. navigate to) Ask, NYT, and CNN.

So, if toolbar spam is involved, it's Google's toolbar.

It's hard to address throughput that way when the Throughputers are in a union.

Google replies: http://blog.google.org/2010/03/gooey-googley-energy.html