smspence

So you've never purchased anything from the internet before, ever? Honest question, not trying to sound snarky. I'm just wondering how else you could pay for something online. Paying directly with a checking account, by entering your routing/account numbers, etc.? There are also pre-paid debit cards out there.... but it sounds like you're opposed to that too.

lol, thanks for the math lesson.

When I said "in this situation", I wasn't referring to your hypothetical situation where the alternative is to tear up sidewalk and run new power lines to the trash cans. I was talking about the article, which had nothing to do with that.

Maybe I misunderstood what the parent commenter was asking when they were asking about cost savings coming from solar power. Doesn't matter, moving on.

In this situation, why would solar power alone account for ANY cost savings? They just replaced traditional garbage cans (that require no electricity/power at all) with compactors that run on solar power and send out an electronic message when they are full.

It's not like the previous garbage cans ran off of electricity from the local power grid, or required gasoline or something to run, and now the new solar-powered units yield a cost savings because they are off-grid. They were just regular old trash cans that sat there and did nothing but hold trash, no electricity required.

The article makes it pretty clear.

Third paragraph:

"...communications systems for real-time reporting on a bin’s capacity. By allowing municipalities to service the BigBellys only when they are full, they are saving hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel annually across all BigBelly units."

Fourth paragraph:

"...information gained from each compactor allows waste managers to optimize collection schedules and routes. Before BigBelly, trash collectors had to clear out each can three times a day. Now they do so three times a week."

Seriously, most people you know change their email address more than once per year? Honestly, MOST of the people you know do that? I highly doubt that.

You work at Valve? That's cool, and this may sound kind of dumb but oh well: you guys are my heroes. I am an engineer who does a lot of computer graphics programming and I have always looked up to you guys.

I bet he wants $5,000,000 after taxes. Knowing that Uncle Sam will take half of whatever he sells for, he asks for $10,000,000.

Wow, what website am I on right now? I can't believe these pedantic crap comments are on Hacker News.

"I'd feel like I have to constantly jump between computers in case I missed an important email or some relevant news broke."

Sounds like you really need to try this then. Seriously, don't let your "fear of missing out" cripple you.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/04/14/fomo-addict...

I was wondering the same thing.... I was also wondering how he could NOT just get another iPhone for less than $1000? Seriously, if my iPhone died tomorrow, and I had no insurance, I could still easily buy one on ebay for like $300 or $400.

Put your phone on silent mode, and work until you don't feel like working anymore. Then check your phone whenever you feel like it.

Your phone calls don't need to control you. You can just check your phone later and see if you have missed calls / voicemails.

Working on something, but it's not super important and you don't mind being interrupted for a little bit? Take phone back off of silent mode. Easy.

Well, easy for me at least. Judging my all the comments here, this is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE for everyone else on Hacker News.

"If I plan on waking at a time, and I KNOW there is no clock to wake me, I nearly always wake on time."

This makes no sense.

Yes, around the holidays if you don't have to go to work, it's fine to just wake up whenever your body decides to wake up in the morning. But if I consciously think "ok, body, you need to wake up at 7:30 am tomorrow" it's probably not going to happen without an alarm clock.

I think that's what he was getting at with saying "best you". Being the "best you" that you can be would presumably mean reaching beyond the "you" that you currently are.

That's not what I am saying at all. Maybe I am just doing a poor job of articulating my point. All I am asking is for someone to explain to my WHY this is worth getting upset over?

Here is one of my other responses on the matter, copy-pasted so hopefully you can explain to me why this is a big deal:

[ start copy-paste ]

I still do not understand the outrage over this. How would the new TOS actually negatively affect the users? What would ACTUALLY happen to them that is so horrible?

Here is a hypothetical:

1. I post a photo of a dinner table at a restaurant that shows some fizzy drinks in glasses.

2. SodaStream wants to post an ad on Instagram, and my photo gets selected kinda like a stock-photo would be selected because it is drink/food related, and it gets shown somewhere on Instagram's website.

Result: my life is not negatively impacted by this in any way, and the world continues turning.

My reaction: If ever saw this happening, my reaction would be "Whoa cool, that's a picture I took! And now tons of people are seeing it, instead of just the 5 or 6 people that normally see my Instagram photos. I'm internet famous, haha!"

The blogo-sphere's reaction: "RAAAAAAAGGGGGGEEE!!!!!!!!!" I ask: "Seriously, what is the big deal here?" They respond: "Just shut up, and RAAAAAAAAGGGGEEEEE!!!!"

[ end copy-paste ]

I still do not understand the outrage over this. How would the new TOS actually negatively affect the users? What would ACTUALLY happen to them that is so horrible?

Here is a hypothetical:

1. I post a photo of a dinner table at a restaurant that shows some fizzy drinks in glasses.

2. SodaStream wants to post an ad on Instagram, and my photo gets selected kinda like a stock-photo would be selected because it is drink/food related, and it gets shown somewhere on Instagram's website.

Result: my life is not negatively impacted by this in any way, and the world continues turning.

My reaction: If ever saw this happening, my reaction would be "Whoa cool, that's a picture I took! And now tons of people are seeing it, instead of just the 5 or 6 people that normally see my Instagram photos. I'm internet famous, haha!"

The blogo-sphere's reaction: "RAAAAAAAGGGGGGEEE!!!!!!!!!" I ask: "Seriously, what is the big deal here?" They respond: "Just shut up, and RAAAAAAAAGGGGEEEEE!!!!"

And... ? Can this person no longer post photos to Instagram now? What has Instagram done to this person that is so terrible?

"...he's going to let strangers pay to wear our clothes..."

How does this match up with Instagram's TOS in any way? I still do not understand what Instagram is doing that is getting everyone so riled up.

The "creations" that people are posting are low-res cellphone pics of food and random scenery with a faux-retro filter added. Why so serious?

But the comments here are just the exact same opinions/comments that you see/hear everywhere else from people who are arguing about gun control. Nothing valuable or new here at all.

I love stories like this, because it shows what can be accomplished when you focus on something and just get shit done.

He didn't mess around, he just said "I want to build a website", so he started building a website. When he came across a problem, he searched for a solution until it worked. Sounds simple, but there are so many people who won't/can't do this.

Instead of hemming and hawing, and posting on forums asking "what is the best programming language to start with", or "is WordPress the best blah blah blah", or "what is the best tool for this", and pulling his hair out while people argue over Vim vs. Emacs, Ruby vs. Python, etc. He just picked some tools and got shit done. Brilliant. Keep up the good work!!!

Reminds me of what Sam Soffes said on his blog here: http://soff.es/how-to-learn

The problem for me is that it NEVER just becomes background noise that I can ignore. It is just constant, never-ending distraction that significantly reduces my productivity.

I would LOVE to work in an office like that. Mine is so noisy, it drives me insane and I cannot concentrate on my work.

If you're wondering what personal and private information is in "iTunes Music Library.xml", couldn't you open it up and look for yourself?

"What happens if a bunch of users have information in that file that they have pirated songs and the service gets a subpoena to disclose all xml files?"

Whoa, with absolutely zero knowledge of the .xml file, you just jumped 100 steps ahead to some hypothetical situation where this website will incriminate its users. Loosen up your tinfoil hat a little bit...

You're asking a ton of questions about a service that is obviously just starting out, and is probably not feature complete yet. Did you actually use the site, and can you provide any comments on how well the site actually does what it advertises? If not, your comment just seems like a lot of bikeshedding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_Law_of_Triviality

http://pink.bikeshed.com/

But then what would all the blogs complain about?

"1 and 3 - that's their ages rather than their names"

Maybe it's still too early in the morning for me, but I laughed at that way harder than I should have. Haha, thanks for that.

I am using Firefox 15 on Windows XP. I had no problems whatsoever.

I opened up windows task manager, and watched the mem usage for firefox.exe. Before navigating to that webpage, it was using 150 MB of memory. I went to the webpage and scrolled down as expected, and saw the mem usage peak at around 430 MB when the page first loaded, then as I scrolled down and sat at the bottom of the page, it stabilized at around 300 MB.

After closing the tab and going back to leave this comment, firefox is back to about 150 MB of mem usage. I think there is a problem with your particular installation (or add-ons or drivers), not a general problem with Firefox itself.

...who cares?

Do you have any thoughts or comments about the actual topic of the post?

This is an article written by one of the most innovative, influential, and successful software developers in the world, giving a lot of interesting insights and thoughts on his craft.

...and you're concerned about the HTML/JS of some shitty wordpress template? We get it, you probably work in web development. Yes, poorly-coded websites exist. That's not what the content of the post is actually about.

This is part of the decline in quality of Hacker News. When an article is posted, let's talk about the article, instead of pedantic off-topic garbage.

"the extra screen real estate will have a widget bar, showing things like the weather or stock price"

I highly doubt it. That would be very un-Apple. I think there are a lot of legacy apps that will scale automatically to utilize the extra height, or there will just be a little black bar above/below the legacy app, so the app takes up the same amount of vertical pixels that it used to.

Since when does eBay scrape and serve up Craigslist ads? Has there been some news that eBay is going to start doing this?

"...if she lists that couch on ebay as well she is technically in breach of craigslist's terms of service."

No, I do not think that has anything to do with the new craiglist terms of service. The new terms of service just prevents other people from copying the content of the craigslist ad.

So, no the hypothetical woman selling the couch would not be affected by the new terms in any way.