aptsurdist

A couple little images that are hopefully a show of support: http://aptsurdist.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/a-story-by-waxy-o...

Thanks for the info - I'm really surprised I never noticed one of these before. I wonder if it would make sense to just include a link saying something like "what's this?" or "promotion" that linked to a page explaining. I don't mind the promotion for the in-house teams though. Good luck Listia.

Google translate is certainly a good start to help with this problem. Thanks google. http://translate.google.com/#zh-CN|en|http%3A%2F%2Fbaike.bai...

[@PG and the hacker news team: I think it's pretty important to see some indication of supporting votes on these comments. Please keep considering if you want to bring back that feature in some form. Thanks!]

This is horrifying and I don't even know where to start examining the problem. Firstly, how do we trust any news source on a case like this when the press is controlled by the accuser? Second, even if the sentence is 'legally correct,' when does the threat of a human rights violation become too important to ignore - should countries be pressured to abolish death sentences (at least) for non-violent crimes? Even if the death penalty is the 'official' punishment to fit the crime, certainly it's a big problem if the actual delivery of that sentence is relegated to a minority of cases in which the government is motivated to prosecute. Of course selective prosecution is a problem with any legal system, but when the sentence is death it is all the more important to monitor cases through a transparent system. It doesn't seem that this kind of transparency is in place. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/23/business/main67982... see: "...the judicial system is overly secretive in deciding on death penalty cases." http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2014070,00.htm... see: "...opaqueness of its legal system."

The thesis being true or not is beside the point - yes, America eats too much sugar. Probably. But the problem about articles like this, and other campaigns to curb "bad eating habits" (like New York City's vendetta against salt and soda) is that it promotes a negative attitude towards food and eating, which feeds the cycle of abuse towards food and towards self esteem, instead of going deeper into the root of the problem itself. Any recovering food addict will tell you that the first thing you learn in rehab is to relearn your attitude towards food. What if, on the subway, people read signs that said "Eat well! Eat what you want! Thumbs Up!" instead of "You're going to die of diabetes if you don't stop eating sugar in toxic amounts"? Of course, that's an over reductive analogy - but my point is that it's not the American Diet that needs change, it is the American Attitude Towards Food that is desperately dysfunctional.

I took one java class in college, but that was about it when I started learning javascript 3 years ago (along with html, and css). I carried around the OReilly javascript book for the summer - read it on the bus, on the beach, wherever.

For the last couple years, I have worked as a freelance web designer and front-end developer. Now I'm pleased to have just gotten a job with the title webmaster (for a section of a major news organization.)

I wouldn't call myself a JS ninja, but I'd say I can make a browser do some cool stuff with some pretty clean code. And I'm getting paid pretty well for it. And 3 years ago, I didn't know HTML. So, for anyone who wants to learn to code from scratch, Go for it! Go to your library's programming section, checkout something that looks 'elegant, yet friendly', and take it to the beach. Or if you want something right now, this should probably do nicely: http://jqfundamentals.com/book/index.html

Along the way: Listened to a couple podcast lectures, read a couple books, read hacker news every day (thank you!), fell in love with jQuery, picked up a little python, real a little about lisp, and found some start-up partners in New York to start hacking on some fun stuff.

I worry that this will just encourage employees to wear fake smiles when they're having a rough day, and to conceal any skepticism about the direction of their program out of fear of what their co-workers might tell the psychiatrist. This sounds like a disturbingly unhealthy and counterproductive work environment.

exactly - I think that lifting your fingers is the 'normal' way to type on a traditional keyboard with raised keys. But, I love that when I type on my low-profile keyboard I feel like my fingers are always in contact with the keyboard and just kind of slide over the tops of the keys to hit their target. On the occasion when I have to use a raised key keyboard, I have to re-remember how to lift my fingers to type. It takes me a minute to adjust before my fingers stop getting caught on all the key corners. Then again, it could just be personal style - anyways, while I am a pretty fast typist, I wouldn't say that I have the most pristine home row technique, so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Cool, that's starting to make a little more sense. By gaps I don't just mean the distance between keys, I mean that your fingers actually feel like they get caught in the deep spaces as you slide over them. But maybe that only pertains to the PC keyboards that I have experience with - the ones with with wiggly keys.(Maybe none of them were mechanical keyboards.)

I'm confused. Why do all of these "elite" keyboards still have oversized dome keys that wiggle around, have a lot of travel, and have big gaps in between them. I'm sorry if this just makes me seem like a mac snob, but how could these compare to a slim, minimal-movement keyboard like this one? http://www.apple.com/keyboard/ [edit: I am not normally an obnoxious snob about keyboards, but considering the subject at hand is keyboard connoisseurship, I have to admit my strong appreciation for the slim-key style which didn't seem well represented in the discussion. (Not about mac vs. pc - just about the key-style.)] Maybe I'm missing something as I've never even heard the term "mechanical keyboard" before - some of the nuances might be lost on me.. but I know what I like and I'm pretty sure I would never go back to a large dome key keyboard like the ones shown. ...Oh wait, there is one keyboard shown that has minimalist keys, but it's $2,400! This is ridiculous, maybe I should go into the PC keyboard making business.

(Yes, I know that mac keyboards only work on the mac, but if people care so much about these things, then that's not really an excuse for leaving it out of the discussion. Anyone else feel the same way about the slim-key keyboards being so much better?) edit: correction -I guess they do work on PCs http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1095349

vote: I don't think it's a worth it to add keyboard shortcuts to hacker news

vote: I think keyboard shortcuts would be a nice addition to the hacker news site.

It's great that Google has contributed to this project. I think it's really important for every community to set aside a little space to recognize this issue and send a clear message of support from gay and straight members alike. It's not just a gay issue, it's a matter of civil liberties, and the health of young adults in our communities. When a kid needs support that isn't available in their immediate network, at least they can know that there are many real communities all around the world where things are better. It's inspiring that a huge company like Google can offer that dream of a tangible welcoming community that a kid can aspire to be a part of someday.

You might be interested in checking out the page - http://news.ycombinator.com/best Sounds a lot like what you're doing.. I'm not sure if others know about it already - I think I stumbled upon it by accident.

thanks for the tips - I've been meaning to check out 'The Selfish Gene'. I checked out the lesswrong.com article - I'm not sure that my argument is the same as what they are trying to disprove - it sounds like their models are based on individuals that collude or act altruistically in order to benefit collectively. I don't think that 'intention' is a good concept for understanding evolution in the first place. Also, from checking out the Wikipedia article on group selection, it doesn't sound like there is scientific agreement that this concept is disproved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection

I'll go and read The selfish Gene before I write more, but one more pesky comment about the experiment in the lesswrong.com article: I am suspicious of their conclusion that their case study disproves group selection. This does not seem to respect the vast scope of evolutionary time scale. Maybe group selection is like quantum tunneling - with large clusters of individuals, the chances of it happening are infinitesimal - you won't see it in the laboratory. But on an evolutionary time scale, infinitesimal chances do happen occasionally - and if they yield advantageous results, they will shape life's future. Maybe our love for music came about from freak genetic mutations that in fact didn't serve much purpose for individual survival, but this collective activity caused individuals to synchronize their behavior. Maybe this synchronization helps low-advantage/individual traits 'tunnel' probabilistically and exist long afterward because the same traits are high-advantage/collective traits. (?)

In this interview they speculate about whether our attraction to music might be a by-product of the fact that we have evolved other specialized skills that aid our individual survival. For example, our survival is aided by our rhythm analysis which helps us walk upright, and our speech analyzing mechanisms which help us in many obvious ways - the idea is that we enjoy music because we are obsessively attuned to these survival-aiding perceptions.

I've always enjoyed contemplating the inverse of this theory; what if we gained appreciation for music and other collective rituals because by acting out these rituals (as individuals), our collective tribe benefited. These rituals cause us individuals to 'tune' ourselves as a collective and as a result, the tribe has increased chances of survival.

If this were the case, it would be more appropriate to say that our collective tribes evolved music and rituals for the tribe's sake - it doesn't directly help an individual survive and the individual might not even understand their compulsion to participate. For example, a drum beat might compel a soldier into battle. A religious ritual might compel an individual to supersede their allegiance in order to serve a king. If you look at other species like bees and ants that function as a collective, you see that their 'dance' is not an individual's language but one that evolved because it enabled the collective to survive. Again, the individuals might not understand their dance - they just wanna dance!

So actually, I like the idea that maybe speech, language, and what we call intelligence are all byproducts of adaptations like music and rhythm that appear worthless to individual survival, but in fact are crucial to the survival of the collective. What do you all think?

oops - the title really should be "Ask HN: What's your favorite free web conferencing tool?" I thought HN would add the "Ask HN" part for me, and now it's too late to edit the title. Anyway, thanks for the replies so far.