ryanf

It's interesting that in 2002 he wasn't using any revision control at all. Was that common for open source projects at the time?

I think that's Zed's assumption, but it also seems to be completely unwarranted. The HackerNewsTips guy was making (funny, accurate) jokes that are in keeping with the tone of the rest of the feed.

Two typos, actually. Wow.

That article is by the author of the linked post. He discusses it in the "My Pyramid" section.

It's amazing that someone could write something with this title and forget to include any actual reasons why sessions are bad. He probably should have just called it "Sessions Are Bad."

I think he means a monopoly over the output of any given artist, under the traditional system where artists sign restrictive multi-album contracts.

It's interesting how reminiscent that design is of Google Wave's much-criticized scrollbars: the position indicator following the thumb, the page-up/page-down buttons, and the minimalist appearance when not in use. I wonder if Wave's design was just ahead of its time.

'Have' is standard in most places other than the US.

1) CSS is great the way it is

2) CSS makes "a simple variable height multi-column design with a header and footer" require so many contortions to achieve that it's considered a "holy grail" and not "a basic layout"

?????

OK, so that covers the first sentence, except maybe "because of entitlements." (Although you'll note that without TARP we'd be just about breaking even in that scenario.)

It doesn't cover the second half, which claims that taxing "the rich" at 100% wouldn't cover the deficit even though the total income of the richest 1% of Americans is almost as much as the entire federal budget. (23.9% of income, GDP is 14.27T, 14.27 * 0.239 = 3.41T)

> Cut all discretionary and defense spending to 0, and we would still be running a deficit due to entitlements. Tax "the rich" at 100%, and we would still be running a deficit. Tax corporations at 100%, and we would still be running a deficit.

Do you have some numbers for this?

"Stretchy", not "sketchy". I'm not sure what that means either though.

Yeah, also "died out more than 5,000 years prior." Not to mention describing the dimensions of a "working" wooly mammoth.

When did you say that neither group is superior? You said that "hackers" don't have to be more skilled, but every other part of your post implies that you think they're superior as human beings.

> This is why I like the word "hacker" outside of it's more "modern" meaning. A programmer can be nearly anyone with some basic skills, but a hacker is a fundamentally different animal from the rest of the general population. The hacker doesn't even necessarily have to be better than the bulk of his non-hacker, regular programmer, peers (though I imagine you'll often find that to be the case) because it's not about skill, it's about mindset.

Not sure if you realize it, but this ties in perfectly with apl's original point about self-aggrandizement. What better way of congratulating yourself for being a different, superior kind of person than using a term which (by your definition) puts you into an exclusive club without even requiring you to be smarter?

There's a big difference between the MBP and the Air/iPhone/iPad/iPod though -- solid-state drives. The sleep indicator tells you when it's safe to pick your computer up.

The problem isn't the page width. Just add 10px of left padding to your container div for people who don't keep their browser maximized all the time.

"the word Github is a link, but there is no visual way of distinguishing it from the rest of the text"

The links are purple instead of black. It's not much of a contrast though.

Obviously there are some cases where you should use parentheses. The reference operator just seems like a strange place to draw the line. I mean, to me it seems like the least confusing part of the quoted line.

I was actually originally going to say -3 * 5 = -(3 * 5), as a joke. But from what I could find online, it looks like unary minus traditionally falls below exponentiation in the order of operations for math. See http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/53194.html and Wikipedia: "In written or printed mathematics, the expression −3^2 is interpreted to mean −(3^2) = −9."

There are plenty of confusing order-of-operation things in C, especially around pointers, but is "&x + 1" really one of them? I basically know nothing about this subject and it's still pretty clear that the & would take precedence. Would you balk at that expression if x were an int pointer?

-3^5 = -(3^5)

Not to defend that guy or anything.

Because it looks cool. Why else?

Based on the quote in the article, I'm not sure why Cringely would leap to the conclusion that Google is planning on entering the loan business. It would make much more sense for them to set up some kind of competitive marketplace to connect lenders and borrowers, which would meet their stated objectives of "[righting] inefficiencies, [providing] better transparency, and [allying] with consumer protection agencies."

This is in the man page for bash on Snow Leopard, but it doesn't seem to actually work. Does anyone know why?

Running OS X, actually, since he was talking about working on Hex Fiend. I imagine that would offend you even more?

A version of Graphing Calculator (as Grapher) still ships with every Mac today, so it seems about as available as ever.

It's still showing up with the error for me.

It's a "Getting Things Done" thing, I think.

http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/08/getting-started-with-get...

The relevant idea is that you take the stuff coming into your inbox (which represents obligations that you need to take care of, in theory) and then immediately convert it into something like a to-do list.