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Comment by shmageggy | Hacker News Reader

I have a few qualms with this app:

1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by streaming from /dev/urandom, mapping to cardinal directions and simulating a random walk on the keyboard.

2. It doesn't actually replace an email autoresponder. Most people I know will put things like their return date in the auto-response.

3. It does not seem very "scalable" or income-generating. I know this is premature at this point, but it seems that down the road this may require a lot of horses.

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Made me chuckle.

For those who don’t understand the reference this is satire coming from the comment on the Dropbox Launch post on HN in 2007 [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Thanks for explaining. I read the GP and thought "this person's way too serious".. but with the context I see the GP is actually a subtle treasure.

I'm amazed that you remembered that.

It might be the most famous Hacker News comment in existence.

Up there with slashdot's impression of the first iPods:

> No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

(https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i...)

The first iPods were pretty crappy from a functional standpoint. There were other mp3 players which were more full-featured, and the early iPods crashed a lot.

It's their aesthetic design which sold people on them. That's what Slashdot did not understand.

I actually preferred MiniDisc through the portable music player era. I didn’t stop using my MiniDisc player until iPhone 4, as my phone storage was suddenly sufficient to carry a good portion of my library.

either that or the Putnam comment of cperciva's. [0]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35083

Jeez, that guy was full of himself though. Looks like 14 years later he isn't the roaring startup success story he predicted.

How do you know that? Success can be measured in many ways, many of them not public.

You think he has a secret successful startup? Lol

I've looked through some of those comments, and I don't understand what is going on. Can you help, please?

Someone was trying to knock cperciva down a peg or two as he was boasting about something higher up in the thread. The comment being something to the effect of, “have you won a Putnam? If not, stop talking.” The Putnam is an undergraduate mathematics competition. It’s prestigious to win.

Colin was a Putnam fellow (top 5 scorers) in 1999.

All in all, it was a pretty funny exchange at the time and quickly stopped the argument. Don’t assume that the person you’re talking with here is an idiot. It really demonstrates how HN users are varied with significant expertise in many areas.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lowell_Putnam_Mathem...

News to me. TIL.

Thanks! My Poe’s Law-ometer was as a entangled as that famous cat for a moment.

The scalability depends on the typing speed of the horse, which of course is limited by how much they are carrying.

An unladen horse can clearly type faster than one weighed down with for example coconuts, and we must not forget the span between the shift key and the number row. This is a very large keyboard for native Icelandic horses, and while the European breed might make the span, the African variety can easily get those awkward two hoof symbols.

All in all it is clear that the Icelandic government must give immigration privileges to unladen African horses immediately to prevent this startup industry going under.

Write your Althing member now !

And this is a reference to Monty Python and the Holy Grail:)

I believe the appropriate response would have been "a hØrse once bit my sister..."

Your solution sounds good, but at which point do I integrate it with my FTP account? I have it mounted locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem

Use SCCS it's way more fun!

The poster seems to be trying to draw a parallel between his comment and an infamous post that he made nearly 15 years ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224), or maybe just to make him feel bad. I personally don’t think the tones of the two posts are comparable at all. His post has been quoted out of context for the last decade or so, though, so it’s not surprising to me. (Ask yourself, what did “app” mean in his comment?)

Several people seem to expect that he would be embarrassed by my comment or regret making it, but it honestly doesn’t bother him at all. I, HN, and even the world have changed a lot in 15 years.

Anyway, he's pretty satisfied with where life has taken him. He's certainly not going to sweat someone combing through his post history in a vague attempt to dunk on him.

I am profoundly confused by the pronouns in this comment. You, gp and the author of the dropbox comment are all different people, aren't you?

Anyway, it's just a joke. I don't think anyone's trying to make anyone feel bad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29465505

Oh my gosh. There are SOOOO many meta references in this thread. I'm clearly an outsider to the HN world.

Aaaaaah

Neighsayer.

Actual LOL. This deserves All The Upvotes.

Ah miserable downvoterz

>it seems that down the road this may require a lot of horses.

And you apparently need to train every horse to actually write emails, so it also requires humans to train the horses. How many horses can an Icelandic horse trainer train in a month?

And do we know if all horses can even learn to write emails? What if it requires very smart horses? How many horses are there in Iceland and how many of them are email-grade horses?

> And do we know if all horses can even learn to write emails? What if it requires very smart horses? How many horses are there in Iceland and how many of them are email-grade horses?

Well...

A horse is a horse - of course, of course - and no one can talk to a horse of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.

Unless you can train a horse to become a horse trainer.

The singularity

Almost 60 million horses ought to be enough for anybody.

It's almost like this was put together as a joke.

For linux user they should put penguins typing.

I can't tell if you're kidding, maybe trying to emulate the "dropbox comment".

I choose to think you are.

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