ColdHawaiian

I've been contributing a lot of answers to Stack Overflow lately myself[1], and I agree that, after a while, I'm tired of trivial questions popping up all the time, because frankly, they aren't interesting to solve. Not only that, but if you have too many of those on the site (which I think is currently the case on SO), then it makes it harder for contributors to actually find good, interesting problems to help solve.

Not only that, but badly written questions that have to be edited to improve quality, or where you constantly have to ask the original poster for more information in order for the question to be solvable, are a huge time and energy suck. At times, I don't feel like participating in SO because of that.

However, those are not reasons to be rude, and if you're a newbie and someone is being rude to you, I think you might have the option of flagging a comment and bringing moderator attention to it (though I'm not sure if that's peer moderation, or moderation from one of the official moderators).

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake

Hi, I'm a Stack Overflow user with close privileges[1]. I've answered a lot of questions. I've also closed a fair number of questions. If you write a good question, it won't be closed.

A lot of questions that I end up closing are questions that don't have enough information to be answered, or that already have answers (i.e. are duplicates). Also, closed questions can be improved by the original poster by editing them, and then they can be re-opened.

Edit:

Regarding migrating questions, I've also wondered why it's not possible to migrate them to the appropriate Stack Exchange site. When you flag a question as being more appropriate for a different site, you're only given a few possible sites to migrate it to (I think it's currently only like 3 or 5 of the other SE sites). It's kind of annoying when you know that a question would be perfect for a different SE site, but you can't migrate it to there through the currently available tools.

I do know, however, that some questions won't be migrated because their quality is not high enough, even on the SE site where they would be a better fit.

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/users/456814/cupcake

From the Hacker News Guidelines[1]:

> Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.

[1]: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> eat food for food in foods when food isn't 'chocolate'

> from the CoffeeScript tutorial...Furthermore, until you finish reading the line it isn’t clear which foods will be eaten.

The thing with typing the filter at the end is, that format has its basis in mathematical notation, particularly in set theory. Using an even terser mathematical syntax/notation, you could write the same expression this way:

    { eat(food) : ∀ food ∈ { foods } ^ food ≠ "chocolate" }

You read that as "the set of eat(food) where for all food in the set of foods, the food isn't chocolate". The notation will be quite familiar to mathematicians, and thus if you have a strong mathematical background, especially in set theory, discrete math, and combinatorics, the CoffeeScript array comprehension feels natural.

See the Wikipedia article on Set-nuilder Notation/Set comprehension, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_comprehension.

Here's another example from the Wikipedia article:

    { x | x ∈ R ^ x = x^2 }

This reads as "the set of all x, where x is a real number and x = x^2", which evaluates to the set { 0, 1 }.

On a side note, when I visited the blog, it triggered a Web of Trust warning because it got flagged as spam: https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/websanova.com.

It looks like a legit programmer's blog to me, so I gave it a full positive review.

You get redirected to different sites, I think it's based on cookies and query parameters.

I don't understand the architects response, was he being sarcastic?

The Ungit[1] gui can also help you to visualize git operations like merging and rebasing commits. Here's the youtube demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkBVAi3oKvo.

[1]: https://github.com/FredrikNoren/ungit

May I ask what it is about git concepts that you find un-intuitive? To me personally, git makes a lot of sense conceptually, although the use cases of some commands can be a little confusing at first (e.g. `git checkout` for both switching branches and undoing changes to a dirty working copy).

Here's the story from CBS News if you getting pay-walled at the New York Times article: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-crisis-shots-fired-at-uk....

Obi-Wan Kenobi calls a blaster "so uncivilized" as he throws one away, after using it to kill General Grievous in Episode III: Revenge of the Sith[1] (see time mark 6:17).

[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oGf-a1Dqlc&t=6m17s

This story was also submitted to HN here[1] and here[2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7352175

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7351374

It's cool that this new storage system is 1/3 the cost of current battery technology, but I wonder what the environmental impact of "liquid metal" batteries would be. The article says one of their prototypes used antimony, which is toxic, with effects "that are similar to arsenic poisoning"[1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony#Precautions

Lithium-ion batteries, at least, "contain no toxic metals"[2].

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery#Environment...

This isn't the first time this has been submitted to HN. The same story was submitted from another site 4 hours ago (and killed): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7351374.

Both of First Meta's sign-up and login forms are served over insecure HTTP instead of HTTPS: http://firstmetaexchange.com/home.

I wouldn't enter an email and password into any of those fields, especially since the site deals in money.

Strange, though, that their front-page is actually HTTPS: https://firstmeta.com/.

Why would using SSL makes a difference, if all we're doing is just reading an article? I don't understand.

I'm assuming that you're referring to "PHP: a fractal of bad design"[1]?

[1]: http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-de...

I never understood why recruiters aren't upfront about which company it is that they're trying to hire me for, and now I understand the reasons, so thanks.

I still don't like the practice though. My time and energy are valuable, and each correspondence with a recruiter uses a little of both. If recruiters are upfront about company name and details of a role in the first email they send to me, it saves me the time and energy of having to pull that information out of them through additional emails.

I can spend a few seconds (or a few minutes, if the company looks like it might be a good match) looking up the company website and blog, checking out if I like their product and team, etc. If I like what I see (or don't), I can follow up with the recruiter to let them know what I think.

I understand the point that candidates could just bypass the recruiter if they mention the company name, but unless the company is some kind of stealth startup, the candidate is going to have to find out the name of the company anyways, so what's to stop candidates from bypassing a recruiter anyways? (I've had recruiters give me the names of companies in their 2nd email, after I ask for more information, which I always have to do, since they never give enough in the first place :P )

Some candidates may indeed choose to use information like that to bypass the recruiter that reached out to them, but I'm sure that there are many more out there who have more honor than that and would not (me being one of them).

As it stands, I don't bother replying to recruiter emails that only give vague references to companies and roles, instead of explicitly naming them upfront in their initial email. I get these kind of emails all the time, and it's just not worth my time and energy to follow up on any of them. A lot of the time, the companies aren't a good fit anyways.

When looking around for positions at companies, I do so at Careers 2.0[1] and GitHub Jobs[2], and AngelList[3], because I can take my time to do all the research I want on a company and role, and it's far less a hassle than having to work with a recruiter, in my experience.

I get that recruiters have to make money and eat too, and that they've developed these secretive (and in my opinion, a little shady and dishonest) techniques to do so, but as I'm sure it's been stated many times before, those techniques and the recruitment system and culture as a whole are deeply flawed.

It's because of those flaws that web services like Hired[4] and WhiteTruffle[5] exist, to try to replace the jobs of recruiters.

[1]: http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ [2]: https://jobs.github.com/ [3]: https://angel.co/ [4]: https://hired.com/ [5]: https://www.whitetruffle.com

Is it actually ok to download the app without an invite though?

Is it okay to install it without an invitation?

> Jerry Coyne, author of the book and blog Why Evolution Is True, wrote ahead of the debate that "Nye's appearance will be giving money to organizations who try to subvert the mission Nye has had all his life: science education, particularly of kids."

(emphasis mine)

I grew up watching Bill Nye, and I credit his fantastic book [Bill Nye The Science Guy's Big Blast Of Science][1] with really helping me develop a deep appreciation for science at a young age, as well as helping me to kick ass in my middle school science classes ;)

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Nye-Science-Guys-Blast/dp/0201608...

It's sad that in his attempt to help discredit creationism in that debate, he ended up helping to publicize it instead, and bail out its floundering ark museum.

Here's the story from CBS News: [Ukraine puts armed forces on combat alert, warns of war][1].

[1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-puts-armed-forces-on-com...

Regarding Pandora, their login form is also served over HTTP instead of HTTPS (http://www.pandora.com/account/sign-in), which I find to be very disappointing, since it's less secure that way.