badger7

There's a world of difference between self-reflection and self-congratulation, seldom noticed by those practising the latter.

No, no, no - down-vote away, be my guest. I was LOLing at the irony of it. Much as I'm doing now about this one, in fact.

The first time you do it, sure :)

Indeed, but the first one was a serious point, presented tongue-in-cheek. People seeing it as just a one-liner are missing something, however slight.

(The second was just a instantly-typed reaction which should have been an edit. Much grovellings to all for replying by mistake.)

"Just because someone is wrong, it doesn't mean they aren't smart"

Indeed, just as being right doesn't mean they are smart - but the point I'm making is that HN users cover a range of cleverness, and that self-estimation is pointless (Dunning-Kroger syndrome). Saying "only joke if you're clever" is all but identical to saying "anyone can joke".

Limited tolerance is the key. Zero tolerance would be equally as bad as complete tolerance, IMHO.

"The people here are smart"

The people here believe they are smart. Some are correct, others are not.

Some people enjoy jokes regardless of topic. Please tolerate.

LOL at the down-votes :)

Thinking something and saying it are two different things. Explaining this fact necessitates saying it, but we're in a different context to the original. I see no insincerity in that.

"I never should should have said it, whether I still believe it to be true or not" might have been better, but I think it's presumptive to assign it to insincerity.

You could say the same for "smacks of x" being proceeded by the word "respectfully" - why say "smacks of" with its derisory connotations, when you could say "seems"?

The trouble with humour on HN is that HN is full of other people.

I believe :O is the appropriate response.

How is a 'thanks' worthy of down-votes? Because I dared to present it implicitly? Can't you muppets extrapolate anything?

Bindun', I'm afraid: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=609893

I like to read more than just the title before I decide whether or not to vote. When I get back, the left is easier because I don't have to read the title again.

Indeed, I commented it myself a few days ago.

'Distraction from distraction' is my take - don't worry about everything else in your head, just open notepad and start making notes on whatever it is you're trying to put off. You'll forget the rest soon enough :)

That's different. They still want the cigarette itself, they just don't want to be someone who wants cigarettes, if you see what I mean. The 'really caring' about stopping applies to a wider scope than the single cigarette you'd have to decline in order to start quitting.

This is an oversimplification. I have a project that I care about immensely and still procrastinate on. It's because I want to get it right first time, and spend my time mulling it over instead of just doing it. I'm working on shaking that approach :)

The site's absence from the time the content was deleted until the time it would have taken to restore a backup is the fault of the dirty, stinking crackers. From that point onwards, it is the fault of the person who decided on the backup scheme as, evidently, it was insufficient.

If I don't wear a seatbelt and am thrown from the car in a crash, that is my fault. The crash itself and injuries I would have sustained anyway might be someone else's fault, but anything resulting from the difference between wearing a seatbelt and not wearing a seatbelt is my fault. I'm negligent from the instant I put myself in a position where I could conceivably have a crash without having put a seatbelt in place.

I hate that!!!!!! It's one of my myriad pet peeves!!!!!!! Along wif spellen like ur a morun, wevver it's on perpose or not!!!!! It makes you look like a drama queen!!!!!!! Which, to me at least, is a huge insult!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And it's some inane piece of misspelled, new-age bullshit far too often!!!!!!! Shock!!! Horror!!!!!!! Shock!!!!! Horror!!!!!!!! <slap>

Sorry. Has anyone built the total perspective vortex yet?

Ditto, funnily enough, but the defensiveness portrayed differentiates my experience from that of the OA.

Books? You have time to read books? (I jest - 'tis nearing the top of a very long list...)

Exactly!

Ha! I've not come across that before. Guess I'll have to stick to something made-up but memorable from now on :(

They'll get an earfull when they ask me for it though, futile or not :)

Whenever forced to use one of these authentications, I just wail on the keyboard to provide an answer. My mother's maiden name? Why, it's "sfdgh,jsdzl.kg hjsldghs,hb".

The following talk is required viewing before any discussion on happiness can take place. It's absolutely and completely vital to understand the points demonstrated in this talk to have an informed opinion on the subject.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_...

Long story short: Choice makes us unhappy, yet we believe that it's what will make us happy and so we strive for it. We actively seek out that which will make us unhappy in the search for happiness.

I would appear to have missed those traps too. From my reading, he appears to have avoided many traps of assumption, traps that the interviewer blundered into without even noticing. IE, there is no average corpus, language is dynamic, hash functions aren't all equal, etc.

Perhaps you could enlighten me?

One definition of arrogance is "making undue claims in an overbearing manner". You know, like turning "never having heard of" into "not having instant recall of every single CS algorithm".

No? I guess I'll take that as concession :)

Play directed by the child, ie, the child sees a book next to a soft toy and chooses to look at the book, rather than being directed by a video saying "let's read a story now".