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My bad. I hadn't considered that for some, it was an emotional experience. My relationship with HN is purely informational: I go here daily to find some interesting technical stuff and read interesting discussion. But the names behind the submissions and comments are purely words.

There have been internet communities that I've been a part of that I have been emotionally bonded to. You get to know some people well and suddenly it's more a social experience than intellectual. That's a completely different story, and you'd need more than self-control to stop going there if it was becoming a time-suck.

In a sense, yes, it does work that way. There's no way to say "Please block all popcorn from entering my vicinity." You can keep it out of your house, but you're still going to have to consciously not reach for it in the grocery aisle or the movie theater lobby (or fair ground booth, etc.)

Do people really have such little self-control that they need to block a particular internet site via a tool like this? Just don't type news.ycombinator.com or click your bookmark for it. Simple as that.

"Basically, if some HTML/CSS works on Safari, the chances are very high it will work on Firefox 2 and higher, and on IE 6 and higher (with minor tweaks)."

I don't get it. A lot of the hardship that comes with web development is that stuff that works great in modern standards-based browsers like Safari doesn't work when you try to view it in IE. I can't count the number of times I've taken a webpage that I developed to work in Safari (or Firefox) and seen it break completely in IE. And it often takes more than "minor tweaks" to fix it.

But they're both true, aren't they? With open source software, it's all there for you to see and use, in all its awesomeness. No pure-marketing limitations. Yet despite that advantage, it doesn't always rise over paid competitors because it's often such a pain to use.

The two opinions are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Or would have no chance of passing without him.

Since it's an open-book exam, it's likely going to take a lot of thoughtful work.

I stopped using Firefox as my main browser when I got a mac a little under 4 years ago, and started using Safari. I was using adblock prior to that switch, and while I don't have any ad blocking now, except for the fact that pop-ups are blocked, I am barely ever bothered by an ad. I'm fairly convinced that ad obtrusiveness has gone down in general over the past few years. There are some exceptions (I'm looking at you, weather.com), but in general people seem to have realized that they had to tone down the ads if they wanted people to see them at all.

The character separating the date and username (♒ if it shows up here) looks a lot like equals to me, and confused me for a while. Just a small weirdness.

I'm currently taking a web design course, and we're supposed to be using XHTML. Strict. We lose points if we don't have all our pages validate as XHTML Strict. :) So yes, some people are still using XHTML, and thinking it's better.

Congratulations on getting Cornell -- I'm graduating from there this May. Though I'm clearly biased, I'd recommend Cornell all the way. Definitely speak with the financial aid office to see what they can do for you; they're trying to get better about offering students everything they can. If you have to take some private loans not through the school, that's okay too -- just more work for you is all.

Cornell Engineering really is good, and I have nothing but good things to say about the CS department here (okay, I can criticize them on using SML/NJ for CS 312/3110, but meh. It's still a functional language). Every one of the students I've worked with has been great. Another thing is that engineering here isn't looked down upon. It's sort of looked at as one of the hard colleges to be in here. If people want a group of students to make fun of here, there's plenty of Hotelies. :)

The CS education you'll get here is great. If you can find the money to come here, it's worth it. I know someone graduating with something like $80,000 in loans, but from the opportunities Cornell has given her, it's worth it.

About the rejections from those good schools, I've heard it's possible to reject some really good students because they're literally too good. If a school thinks that you're likely to apply to a bunch of really good schools and get into some of them, they may reject you so that they don't end up extending an offer and getting turned down.

Programming is extremely interesting to me, and a lot of fun to do. In the same way, grammar is interesting to me as well. What do you think linguists study?

I think there's a certain kind of mind that would rather figure out how to do something than come up with that something in the first place. If you're interested in both, then all the better, but if you're only one, there's nothing wrong with that.

You're definitely right. I'm not so familiar with Canvas at all, so I assumed that since it didn't render, it wasn't supported. My main point was about the graceful degradation.

It took me a while to realize that my default browser, Safari 3.2.1, doesn't support HTML 5 Canvas. I'm seeing a bowl and a logo. Graceful degradation, not so much.

One opinion on which of these to read: Number 3 is funny when read directly after reading number 2, but not so much otherwise. Number 9 actually made me laugh, so I recommend reading that one. Skip the rest if you're on a time budget. Note that story 1 starts after the first horizontal rule, 2 after the next, etc.

Android is a worthy competitor that's ahead of the iPhone OS in many ways (behind in others). A comparison between the two is not a bad thing.

There have already been links here to the free html paper, but if you're more into PDFs, it's also available for free at http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf

This is what happens when your research leads you down one path instead of checking the obvious sources first. These people are on the list of suggested users: http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions Twitter is suggesting people follow these people.

They actually know about the use case: it's one of their 5 suggested use cases: http://etherpad.com/ep/about/product#uses5

But you're right, marketing specifically to software shops could be a good way to make a profit.

I had the chance to use EtherPad as part of a job interview while it was in private beta. It was supposed to use Skype and EtherPad to get the full effect. Skype broke, but EtherPad worked great. The ease of getting code to the interviewer, and (I imagine) the ability to see the way I wrote the code were really helpful.

If you're doing a phone screen interview in the future, I highly recommend using EtherPad.

It's up to the employers to pay their interns. Why? Because they are the ones who demand that their new hires have that internship experience. If you're not going to get hired unless you coughed up the bucks to get "industry experience," that is a horrible deal that sets a bad precedent for the future. This is one step away from unpaid entry-level jobs, where you don't get paid until you're making the company enough profit.

Here at Cornell, the general consensus among students is that it's really hard to get good grades, especially among some majors. Cornell started a few years ago releasing "Median Grade Reports" so that students would see what classes were easy and hard in terms of grading. The idea was that students would enroll in classes with low median grades so that they could challenge themselves. Instead, people took the reports and took as many classes as they could with high median grades, so they would have an easier time and a higher GPA.

Sure, people come here because it's known to be hard. But once they're here that goes out the window. You're trying for grades, not challenges.

For my last winter break, I'll be working on completely re-doing a web-based game I made. I'm thinking I might also work my way through a simple book on NLP (http://www.nltk.org/book).

It's possible that they'll just hold more Apple Town Hall type events, like the recent "The Spotlight Turns to Notebooks" and "Let's Rock" events. Those work just as well for the majority of the Apple fans who get their news via the press and I imagine they're far less expensive than a trade show.

I dunno about this. Of the books under "books most programmers have actually read," the only one I've read is the C programming language (K&R). But I think I'm probably more likely to read the GoF design patterns book or the rest of my college algorithms book ( http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Jon-Kleinberg/dp/0321... ) than Programming Pearls or Effective Java.

I'm inclined to just say WarGames. But the closest that I've seen in a more modern tone was Antitrust. None of my computer-inclined friends seemed to respect it though.

However, as would be the case with dating more than one girl, don't spread yourself too thin. If you start dating 10 people, and try to keep up a working relationship with all of them, you might find it hard to ever get any relationship to last very long. Feel free to pick up more than one, but make sure you give ample attention to each.

1. My view would be that I wouldn't mind being directed to a sign-in/up page upon clicking, as long as it was clear why I'd need to be signed in to do so. If I'm on yahoo.com, and I click on mail, it makes sense to ask me to sign in. But I certainly want to know that once I'm signed in, I'll be able to have mail.

2. Google, Yahoo, and Amazon use "sign in." Facebook and Myspace use "log in." I'd say it depends upon the use, but personally I'd go with sign in.

3. Since the functionality is somewhat limited before signing in, have sign-in functionality on the front page. That way the user gets to what they want with one less page. However, along with my previous comments of keeping the links there, they should lead to a separate sign-in page.

"The timing of the ‘Pirates of the Amazon‘ launch could not have been more (un)fortunate. At the busiest time of the year for on- and offline retailers, this Firefox browser add-on offers users a download link to pirated copies of products that can normally be found in the Amazon online store."

I don't think that this is really such a tragedy. People who are going to try and download an illegal copy for free aren't going to be deterred by a lack of convenient link, as they would have had to install this in the first place. Equally, people who wouldn't normally do so won't install the plugin in the first place.

I truly would believe that some companies like this one really don't fit in with the fake pushing of deadlines. They believe that they really are the company to work for, nay, not just a company, but a movement. If you don't want to give it all up for the idea, then they don't want you. That's the kind of thing to stay away from, unless you really do believe in the idea, whether its your own or someone else's.

Top N lists get submitted to digg and reddit all the time. The comments for those are always filled with people hating on top N lists, but they wouldn't get to the front page without people enjoying them. I think a site like this could go far in terms of popularity. But the lists I always found MOST interesting had a lot of text supporting each item. I'd make sure that this is possible for people to really get what they want out of a top N list, more than needing to click on an item to get a description.

Also, maybe something about the ordering of the lists. All the lists I've seen so far go 1,2,3,4,5, and then runners up. What about 5,4,3,2,1? Kind of builds up the suspense. :) I might just not have looked enough about this one, though.