nopassrecover

"If we find an alien bug via a meteorite, then that bug was one of the reigning champions in terms of ability to survive and subdue its opponents."

That doesn't mean it's some kind of super-bug. The dodo survived long enough and I'd hardly call it a reigning champion. In the bacterial sense, there are plenty of harmless bacteria as well.

Yeah that's the point I'm trying to make I think - I get programming when others don't (even without practice, the practice just made me a lot better). And as much practice as I give it I don't get much further with guitar.

The thing is, there has to be some genetic/early developmental disposition. I "got" programming the first time I tried. 5 years on I'm still fumbling my way through beginner guitar.

It does say "before it is published". Presumably you would want to vet a paper with trusted colleagues before releasing it even semi-publicly.

The aging and infirmity will come a lot quicker if you don't look out for your health. Being healthy might mean you live say 30 years longer, but that isn't just 30 more years of being infirm, it's say 20 more years of good hack-healthy years and 10 more infirm.

Besides, the energy benefits right now and the impact that has on how much you can hack is far more easily noticed than the potential lifespan differences.

Is this sarcasm that hackers don't like being healthy or a kind of pun about AI algorithms?

Unfortunately while low pay will rule out great programmers, great pay doesn't necessarily lead to great programmers, just people who can convince others they are great programmers.

I was looking forward to this article based on the title, but I found it short on substance. It boiled down to "Communicate" which is the generic advice for any management-style role.

The headline and tone of the article encourages blatant ageism. If we said "Best bet is to go for men" or "Best bet is to go for Caucasians" there would be an appropriately strong uproar. People should be judged on their capability, not the inevitable aspects of their identity.

Pretty sure I saw this recently on HN, perhaps in a comment. It's similar to Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo .. (infinity). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo

"As gift card companies vie for consumer dollars, Plastic Jungle, Cardpool have been consistently innovating around the gift card model." - Am I the only that had to re-read that sentence multiple times to work out they meant "Plastic Jungle AND Cardpool"?

After all that, they don't mention Plastic Jungle again in the article at all, so I'm not sure why it's even slipped in there.

Also, are TC taking the Demand Media approach now, and just doing as many articles as it takes until one popular one hits? There's a near identical article posted a couple of weeks ago. (http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/cardpool-wants-to-buy-and-s...)

There were also two articles about Cardpool's "reveal the online code before sending physical card" feature (http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/07/gift-card-marketplace-cardp...) (http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/20/cardpool-speeds-up-gift-car...).

It seems if anything, they're making a special effort to make sure Cardpool and Plastic Jungle are mentioned together as much as possible (including the SEO-style URL "gift-card-marketplace-cardpool-plasticjungle" instead of their usual article-relevant URLs).

Firefox has been release streaming for as long as I recall. The only exception was major releases (as in to new rendering models). I'm not even sure Chrome has been old enough to run into this?

I get the impression Japan has a high rate of early adopters, which is something for tech people. Having said that, Facebook has trouble in Japan.

Lambdas and generics are essential to writing modern C# code - that language everyone seems to deride as dumbed down for your average programmer. jQuery likewise uses a lot of anonymous functions, and even front-end devs without heavy code experience manage to use this.

The same could be said originally for generics and lambdas which have become increasingly common elements of programming. Complex ideas can yield powerfully simple and useful implementations.

If only there were some way to post an event invitation to all your friends in a medium they check regularly :P

Floated currencies are NOT based on national GDP and that sort of thing. They are based on the price that someone is willing to pay and someone is willing to sell. I.e. if someone will spend 1 AUD to buy 1 USD, and someone is willing to sell 1 USD for 1 AUD then the price of 1 USD is 1 AUD. This is completely unrelated to GDP (although GDP might be used as a marker of confidence that indicates security of currency investment).

Greeting cards have needed fixing for a long time, but the traditional card brands have tended to pay for fitting/fixtures etc. to have a monopoly in stores (at least here in Aus). Always good to see more competition in this space.

Definitely and it would have been hilarious + turned a "have they gone evil?!?!" set of internet comments into a hilarious "ah that makes sense aren't they funny!" pat on the back.

Then again, they probably did their research, realised they didn't want to make a big deal about this, that the people who noticed probably aren't their biggest customer base, that they don't want to bring this to the attention of Match.com and that they don't want their customers freaking out about upcoming payments.

Telling someone they should lock their door, and that you could do it for them (but not necessarily that noone else could, I mean what kind of developer can't fix a SQL injection attack in a couple of hours max?) doesn't seem like extortion to me. Now, if the claims about a stolen data dump held as collateral and threatening media reports are true, it borders on extortion.

It is mind boggling that you contact Chris Russo, get his version of the events, publish it receiving page views and ad revenue and then immediately claim he "does not make any sense with his crazy requests and compulsive lies" without any demonstration of these claims. Now, you might be right, he might be a compulsive liar, but if he is why are you publishing his version of the events on your site then quietly labeling him crazy on HN without some measure of proof? You do realise such claims are libelous right?

[2008]

There is some to be less proud of too - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_during_World_War_II. However, it should be strongly noted that culpability for the use of the systems has not been established.

Are digital electricity meters (which I gather Wattvision requires) common in the US? Most homes I know in Australia still use an analog/physical device counter.

"some services allow to downgrade from SSL gracefully" - Is this true? Does this ability not defeat the point of SSL? Why would this technology be built in?

"Traditional wiretapping of phone networks was combined with GSM location services: thousands of people are now getting subpoenas and are dragged to police stations for being on streets in the vicinity of protests." - Phone towers keep location logs?

You mean like pushing for other countries to not use land mines and cluster bombs but still using them itself?

Agreed, I was saying $30 is low for fulltime workers. For a freelancer, given that they can only bill so many hours as you say besides other expenses and risk that employees do not have it is simply reckless.

No idea why the parent got downvoted twice (i upvoted to counter one of them). If (and I sincerely doubt it to be the actual case, but the story suggests it is) the researcher is doing paid research and not backing it up at all, those involved in process design (or the researcher themself if there was adequate and clear process guidelines) should be held responsible for some kind of recklessness bordering on fraud. After all, they cannot prove that they have actually done any research right now and someone could similarly take millions and just "lose a laptop". It is comparable to not keeping proper financial records which is typically criminal.

Assumes equivalence is referential equivalence, and not overwritten. Of note, in some languages where there are immutable strings (e.g. java I believe) there is only "one true string" for each string (of course this isn't directly relevant to the example code given above). This means "var a = "test"; var b ="test"; assert(a==b);" holds true for referential equality.

Wait you can barcode books into an Amazon cart!?