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soundduston Ask HN: Reduce Load time 'appearance'

Take a look at travel sites and see how they do it. Personally, I prefer Kayak's approach: show whatever you do have as soon as it comes in.

soundduston Try my new hosted Linode memcached service (BETA)

Memcache will only make sense if it is hosted in the private LAN.

I think the point is that he's only offering it to Linode users in the Dallas data center, which is where his service is located. Therefore the latency will be in the sub 1ms range, comparable to a private LAN. There may be other issues with this approach, but latency isn't one of them, at least in this implementation.

soundduston Researchers Map The Sexual Network Of An Entire High School

(2004)

soundduston Vacuum Burglars: sucking 500,000 euros straight out of a supermarket

I guess, but what are they going to do? It's not exactly easy to replace a system of pneumatic tubes for transferring money within a building; a suitable replacement is going to take forever to conceive and implement. And they've only lost €600,000 in 4 years = €150,000/year. If they chose to hire a security guard at every Monoprix, 7 days a week, they would have to spend at least several million Euros per year.

soundduston Blockbuster files for bankruptcy

Buying a DVD (especially used) is barely more expensive than renting, and there are all kinds of benefits to owning it, including the ability to watch it over a long period of time, lending it to friends, watching a really good movie multiple times or a second time with friends, etc. Plus you can buy any movie; you're not limited to the crappy mainstream selection of the video store/kiosk. Plus they have value (some of my films are worth more than when I purchased them) so that has to be factored in as well.

Note: I live in an area which doesn't have Netflix, so I'm comparing to renting from a store/kiosk.

soundduston Ask HN: Offer of Employment retracted

I have a friend who is a lawyer, and his stance is that when it comes to employment, there are too many variables involved to make a good judgment on where you stand without contacting an attorney who practices in the relevant jurisdiction. Most people who lose their job think they're doomed because of at-will, but it's not that simple.

I'd recommend calling an employment lawyer. What will likely happen is that he/she will return your call, ask you a bunch of questions, and give you some very good free advice on where you stand and what your options are. If they can't do anything for you, they will tell you that without you having to pay anything.

soundduston 6,953 reasons why I still let Google host jQuery for me

I've thought to myself, "I wish there was a timeout attribute on the <script> tag," about once every few months for the past 10 years. Is there any good reason you can't manually specify how long you want the browser to wait for an external file to load?

soundduston You asked for it, HN: Hipmunk adds Multi-City Searching and more

Agreed. Even if you can't include certain low-cost carriers, any information that you could provide about these flights would be better than any other site has attempted, and would make your search results that much more useful. If I understand correctly, the actual flights don't change too often, so if you could simply put somewhere in the sidebar that Southwest (or RyanAir or whoever) provides a flight for the same route, it would be fantastic.

soundduston Polyglot extension for Chrome - Learn a new language

Good point, but I'd recommend watching out for mistranslations, otherwise when speaking/writing German, the wrong word is going to come up, and you're going to have to be corrected several times before you are able to naturally find the correct word. In my experience, it's much harder to unlearn a mistake than to learn correctly the first time.

For learning without having to do something else, I'd recommend:

* Turning on subtitles in the target language for all films you watch.

* Listening to web radio when you're walking/commuting (if you have a smartphone/dataplan). Depending on the language, there are even programs in which the reporters speak slowly and provide a transcript (example: RFI français facile for French, Klartext for Swedish).

* Buying bilingual books (where the English is on the left and the other language is on the right).

soundduston Polyglot extension for Chrome - Learn a new language

Sorry, I don't; I'd appreciate any recommendations as well!

I used to read business and tech news in French, but it was frustrating because most of the articles were rehashed from things I read hours (or days) before in English, and I try to keep the S/N ratio of my feed reader as high as possible. The feeds I read in French are mostly related to local news, European politics, music, art, cinema, local events, etc.

soundduston Polyglot extension for Chrome - Learn a new language

I just tried it with French (a language I already know).. and I don't think that it's a good tool. In my opinion, you should always avoid seeing incorrect usage of language when learning. This extension does not properly translate the words in context, it does not provide the proper forms of words that correspond with the subjects/objects (such as masculine/feminine/plural), and sometimes it's completely wrong. If you learned using this tool, you'd have to unlearn almost as much material as you learned.

I think it's much, much more effective to just read a newspaper in the language you want to learn and use a dictionary. It's not as easy, but you're not going to expose yourself to bad grammar that you'll automatically pick up and have to unlearn later.

soundduston Howfuckedismydatabase

He can't run adsense on his site without having everything revert to PSAs. Google automatically switches a page to PSAs if there are certain "trigger" words in the URL related to sex, violence, profanity, tragic events, etc. The fact that the word "fuck" is in the domain name makes 100% of his pages a target for this filter.

soundduston [dead]

I'm really surprised that you would be able to ask for customer support transcript logs and they'll just send them to you!

I've had the same experience with NewEgg. If you fill out everything perfectly, then your order will arrive perfectly and on-time. If there is any non-standard problem, it will be impossible to resolve quickly.

soundduston The bliss of an 18-month, paid, Swedish paternity leave.

Apparently not. Before the bureaucracy engaged in coercion

The democratically elected bureaucracy did what they were elected to do. It's not coercion. It reflects the society because society felt that something needed to be changed, and did the research to come to a conclusion on what to do.

Are women so much worse as parents than men?

The policy encourages fathers to share their leave with the mothers. I believe that a children being cared for by both parents will be better adjusted.

not being immunized creates a harmful externality

Again, we're drawing the line in a slightly different place. The lack of a benefit to society - especially those we once had and have since taken for granted - can also be viewed as a "harmful externality."

soundduston The bliss of an 18-month, paid, Swedish paternity leave.

I generally accept people's desires as they are

So does Sweden; they are drawing the line at a slightly different point than yourself. I'm assuming that you believe that society's needs trump the rights of individuals at some point, otherwise you wouldn't believe in society at all. Personally, I don't see a problem with encouraging fathers to spend more time with their children; it's likely those children will grow to be better adjusted as a result, and the overall impact on society (including economic factors such as productivity) will be worth it in the long run. To give a similar example: I think that it has been detrimental to the US that parents aren't required to immunize their children; it's obvious that if it continues it will be an overall detriment to the health of American children despite the parents' "desires."

I think that framing the issue as "enlightened bureaucrats considering others defective" is sensationalist and incorrect; The bureaucracy reflects the society, and Sweden is known for their investment and research on gender issues with the aim of resolving societal problems; this policy wasn't some random bureaucratic afterthought.

soundduston The bliss of an 18-month, paid, Swedish paternity leave.

As someone who has a lot of Swedish friends and has spent a lot of time there, I can't imagine that this could possibly be true.

First of all, every Swedish person I know seems to already have a higher standard of living than the American with an equivalent job in almost all aspects. Add to this the fact that the entirety of Sweden itself is maintained to a higher standard; consistently pure/clean water, well-maintained roads, clean parks, well-maintained public services, etc. I wonder how well the textbook definition of "standard of living" corresponds with real life. I think that einarvollset's point about actually having to spend time in Sweden to understand the quality of life is valid here.

Also, you're missing much of the point of the reasons that Swedish men choose not to initially take the leave. Your claim assumes that it's all economic, whereas the article cites that it is more likely a cultural aspect related to traditional thoughts about masculinity that discouraged them to take the leave. It's yet to be seen, but I'm pretty confident that if you gradually take away the bonus after 25 years, the numbers are likely to remain the same.

soundduston Beg the question

One of the meanings of the word "beg" has disappeared over time, and the meaning of "question" has evolved as well; as a result, the meaning of the phrase "beg the question" is evolving to more closely fit the currently understood definitions of those two words. It's amusing that none of the prescriptivists criticizing people for misusing this phrase seem to argue that we should be actively start using the second meaning of beg again, nor do they ever use it themselves.

For a much more comprehensive and interesting analysis of this topic, I'd recommend languagelog's article: (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290). I agree with his conclusion; it's futile to force people to understand the traditional meaning of this phrase, and it would be preferable for the phrase itself to evolve to use words that are currently in use and unambiguous ("assuming the conclusion" and "raising the question," for example)

soundduston Heavy drinkers outlive nondrinkers

Sorry to post this is off-topic, but am I the only one who is incredibly annoyed by the way Time slips in promotions for other content in the middle of their articles? It's quite jarring and makes it difficult to keep one's attention on the content. And the fact that it happens on almost every paragraph just makes me more and more frustrated until I have no desire to read the article anymore. Unfortunately, readability doesn't help here; anyone know of a user script or other way to easily fix this?

soundduston Start-Up Chile: $40k to Live There and Start a Company

Just curious, could you tell us what the following would cost in Santiago?

  - A 50 sq m apartment in a central location on the 2nd or higher floor 
     (including electricity/water/garbage service)
  - An unlimited 1-month transportation pass
  - Groceries for 5 days for one person, assuming you're making breakfast/lunch/dinner
  - One beer in a bar. 
  - A pair of Levi's 501 jeans
  - A taxi across town
  - Dinner in a decent restaurant
  - 1 month of high-speed internet access

soundduston Hacker Uses XSS and Google Street View Data to Determine Physical Location

That doesn't necessarily solve the problem. The attack needs to login to some routers to extract the MAC address, but others provide it willingly without login (I believe DD-WRT does this on the default logged-out status page, for example, although I can't check at the moment).

soundduston What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

Even if they don't use it from their side to maximize the efficiency of displaying ads, they want you to use it to maximize your AdWords performance and/or AdSense revenue. They make it easy to link your account to your AdWords/AdSense account so that you can run tests and reports.

soundduston The Startup Diet: How I Lost 35 Pounds While Working Overtime

loads of soy protein

Or watercress, spinach, sprouts, seeds, nuts, brown rice, protein powders made with the above, and many other foods.

soundduston Google pulls plug on Nexus One

Do you not have any problems with dropped calls due to data being the lowest priority when the cell tower is processing heavy traffic? I have had this problem with data in general (when I go to a concert, for example, it's almost impossible to use data reliably, moderately difficult to use voice, and SMS works perfectly).

soundduston Ask HN: Down-voted comments

In my experience, if a good comment that is "not in-line with the majority crowd" gets downvoted, it will bounce back up quickly. On the other hand, poor-quality comments stay voted down over time.

soundduston Apple to give away free cases to iPhone 4 users

The reason that signal strength is measured in dB in the first place is because it corresponds linearly to actual performance based on distance. It is originally derived from the measurement of a signal needed to sustain an audible sound across X miles of telephone wire. Therefore, it's a bit disingenuous to base performance on the linear strength of the signal.

soundduston Apple drops Consumer Reports/iPhone 4 discussion threads

I guess they undeleted them, because I see both threads on their forums:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2503667...

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2503228...

soundduston Blizzard/Activision Removing Anonymity From Game Forums

For every Warcraft 3 player, a profile¹ is created (that you can't opt out of) which lists every game the player has ever played, including timestamps and game lengths. The forum posters are already linked to these pages, so presumably their RealId will be as well when the new system is implemented. This means that if you post in the forums once (even for a technical support issue), your real name will be associated with your game history.

[1] example: http://classic.battle.net/war3/ladder/w3xp-player-logged-gam...

soundduston There Are No Pictures of iPhone 4 on Google Image Search

I can't find any pictures of the World Cup matches, despite it having started on June 11. All I see is stock photography. In fact, I can't find pictures of any event that has occurred in the past month.

Seems like the index is in fact out of date and Matt Cutts is overestimating the indexing speed of Google Images. In the case of the Abu Ghraib photos, it took around 1 month for the images to appear.

soundduston There Are No Pictures of iPhone 4 on Google Image Search

Google Image search is unfortunately not real-time. This is not the first time someone has noticed. Google was accused of censoring the Abu-Ghraib images, because several weeks after the event, the photos could not be found on Google Images. Google replied:

In short, There is no censorship here. We are embarassed that our image index is not updated as frequently as it should be. Expect a refresh in the near future.

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=10747654&sid=128...

Then they were accused of censoring a picture of Egyptian striker Mohammad Aboutrika's goal celebration where he revealed a T-shirt with the message "Sympathize with Gaza". Matt Cutts had to write a blog entry debunking this claim.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/debunking-a-misconception-plus...

soundduston Poll: Where do you live?

Here's a previous "where are you from" poll: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=527681

(not that it's a bad idea to run another one, given that it's been over a year).