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You can only build so many businesses within a given period of time; and when the business leaders have more money than is required to do so is when they donate to charity.

Donations like the one outlined in this article give me faith in humanity. It's nice to see us looking out for one another.

As for me, I strive to build business(es) so I can do the same, whether the most effective way to raise the standard of living for everyone is donating, building, or most likely both.

The point the GP was making is that regardless of kids being kids, resources are now available to give the kid first-hand experience that non-conformity and believing in oneself doesn't mean he will go through life alone in his efforts. Had he not experienced this first-hand, there would be a greater chance that he would submit to conformity and possibly mediocrity.

Very good point. Sadly more people don't have the same outlook, so this invasion of privacy will probably continue for as long as it's allowed. I think talking about it like we're doing now is the best thing we can do - bring awareness to the issue. We'll reach a point where employers no longer snoop into our personal business (at least not so blatantly) when the vast majority say, "Nope, sorry."

I guess as new technologies develop that allow easier access to more and more information about our personal lives, it will take some time for the privacy issues and standards to smooth out.

I put my facebook account on hold awhile back; but if I decide to reactivate it and if I'm ever job hunting again during that time, I'll probably either just make a fake facebook account or I'll have two separate accounts: one for inappropriate shenanigans/goofing off with friends... and another for serious business, completely devoid of anything that could possibly be deemed inappropriate.

Although, I kind of doubt it would ever get to that point as I prefer to be my own boss, but I'm curious as to what those of you on HN might have to say about this hack(;))/idea. I'm sure it isn't new.

I realize this is off topic, so please forgive the following rant. I'm not sure if it's out of principle or just stubbornness, but it's gotten to the point where every time I read an article that is paginated (most likely only because whoever runs the website wants more page views), I refuse to continue to the next page and end up reading only a fraction of the article.

My attitude towards pagination wasn't always this way. Over time, however, it's just annoyed me more and more. When I get to the bottom of a page as I'm reading an article and see that I'm going to have to click on these tiny numbers multiple times, wait for a new page to load each time, all while interrupting my train of thought, I get so annoyed that I immediately say "NOPE!" and hit the back button, no matter how good the article is.

And out of principle, I'm not installing any 3rd party software (like readability, etc.) to handle this for me. I shouldn't have to. Site owners who run articles need to find better ways to get page views, ways that aren't inconveniencing everyone using their site. Some might say "well that's just how it is!"... and I say only if you allow it to be.

So as a bit of a followup to this rant, if you submit articles like this to HN and there's a printer friendly version (or even a "view all" version), please submit that URL instead.

My startup uses node to handle all database operations and essentially only serves JSON via AJAX, while the most HTML it sends is basically <script src="script.js"></script>. The entire app itself along with user-generated content depends on a few large (highly variable) objects sent as JSON where the DOM is manipulated based on this minified data.

As a bit of a backup measure (mainly to prevent XSS), the client-side javascript sanitizes (which is what I believe you partly mean by data validation) all objects sent to the client when as they receive it. So anyone using the intended client-side script should never be susceptible to XSS.

But if by "data validation" you were referring to concepts like whether or not a user has permission to access/modify some part of the database, of course that is checked server-side.

As much as I despise all of the negativity in the news, the optimistic part of me sees it as a way to shine light on the many things wrong with the world at present. While the news may be a bit of a downer, I believe the lasting effects of it are for the best.

When I learn of something terrible or even of a minor crime or injustice, the first thing that comes to my mind is along these lines: "There is obviously some ideal we're working towards, but the current system is inherently flawed; so what can I do to hack this system and make it better?"

Maybe someday we'll have the kinks worked out and will have managed to minimize the "bad" things happening throughout the world. And I believe the news will have ultimately played some role such improvements. The day we see more good news than bad will be a great day.

I'm willing to bet porn and piracy go hand in hand.

Have you tried clicking on your (default) username to change it? That worked for me.

I'm glad to see this discussion on HN, because I've always wondered if there was something I was really missing regarding OO programming and whether or not coding in that style exclusively would make me a better programmer. Obviously it's all subjective and somewhat dependent on the task at hand, but my concern is probably more with whether that "style" of thinking is beneficial.

Then, fairly recently, I dabbled in some OO programming when I was making a mod for Unreal Tournament (I've also coded in C++ in the past, but not extensively); and I realized that I had already been using the same line of thinking with my functional programming in the way I was using structs, tuples, etc. When you really get down to it, it's really all just syntax and semantics.

For whatever reason, my brain has always naturally leaned towards the functional style; and it's just my opinion (of which gruseom seems to agree) and my opinion is probably only the result of how my brain works, but something about OO programming always seemed unnecessary for me. It seems to me like it's just another way for people with different thought processes than my own to represent their program logic. To me it seems a little too verbose and entirely too repetitive, and I always felt like the overhead required to "classify" everything wasn't worth it; but it's all in how you look at it, how your brain works or what you're used to. So what seems unnecessary to me (and makes it harder for me personally to trace the program's logic) might be perfectly comprehensible code for someone else; and some of the relatively minimalistic code I attempt to write might seem perfect to me, while an OO-minded programmer might feel like it's scattered about and hard to understand.

Good code is good code, regardless of the paradigm.

I've actually considered doing the same just to get out to SV for the benefit of my startup. I'm in my early 20's with student loans to pay off, not a ton of free time (due to the startup) to freelance enough to pay for rent, and grew up in a pretty poor family as my parents screwed up and had my sister and I before my father was even out of high school. So renting a place wouldn't be easy, and I would prefer to bootstrap as long as I can; I feel like I'd learn the most that way.

I was born and raised in NC, so moving out west would be pretty exciting regardless of my living situation. For the past 20 months or so I've been bumming it under my dad's roof, and I feel like the stagnation has really slowed my startup's development to a crawl; so when I get back in good shape (man, I've really let myself go!), I'm going to jump at the first opportunity to get out on my own again, even if that means living out of my car. I actually bought the car I have now because I expected to live out of it for a bit when I moved to SV.

Luckily(?), doing this actually won't be new to me. Back when I toured with my old band, we practically lived out of our 15 passenger van - bunk beds and all - so I picked up a few tricks that help out when living on the road.

The only damper on the situation would be that I have a dog, originally my father's but I've ended up taking care of him. Not sure what I'd do without the little guy by my side all this time. ;)

Should I end up moving out west at some point, living out of my car or not, if anyone has any suggestions for good dog-friendly places for me to work out of (and network!)... I'd love to hear them!

Sometimes I'll forget what year it is too, or maybe that was just a typo. But my OCD just isn't letting me let this slide...

*2012

Where's the option for "We thoroughly and immediately test every change (and all affected processes) ourselves to also ensure UX is top notch"?

I've seen a few emulators implemented for HTML5 but I have yet to actually get one to work. For this particular emulator, I've tried the SMB3 rom available in Dartendo's repo at http://code.google.com/p/super-dartendo/source/browse/trunk/..., but I must be doing something wrong because nothing happens when I "load" the rom. Anyone know what the deal is? I'm using Chrome 17 on Windows 7.

There are some logical flaws with the sociopath label, but there is certainly some truth to it, at least from my own experience. I'll provide a single example.

One of my childhood bullies - let's call him Tom - is most definitely a sociopath, and he joined the marines, along with his two brothers who are not unlike him. All three of these guys have been violent for as long as I've known them. During middle school and high school (and the couple years after where he happened to live in the same city as my university), he would pick fights with anyone and everyone for the dumbest reasons. I think he did it just to do it. Oddly enough, despite all the bullying and "shittalk" towards me over the years, he never fought me - although we did come close a couple of times but I just laughed at his stupidity and that was that. One of the last "conversations" I had with Tom was shortly before he went off to boot camp (or whatever you want to call it) and I asked him why he was going; he explained that he had nothing else better to do so he might as well go kill some people. He said those exact words, and he was dead serious.

If you're wondering why I didn't avoid the guy like the plague, it's because he and I had a lot of the same friends and he would always throw parties as his house to which my friends would invite me. Despite Tom's overly violent behavior, he was always very popular with the ladies, and most people really liked him. This is the same guy who posts pictures of himself on facebook cutting off the heads of goats in his marine gear. My theory is that because of his aggressive behavior (and using it to "dominate" others), people perceived him as an alpha male. Can I get a second opinion on this? Because so many people liking such a violent sociopath has always bothered and confused me.

Back on topic though... while Tom and his brothers are an example of some confirmation of the article's statements, as far as marines (or army, navy, etc.) go, for every Tom I've known, I've also known at least a few very easy-going men. So the author is partially right but his argument is flawed. Violent sociopaths without education probably do gravitate towards the military and war, but the statistics have got to be way off - not nearly 80% - but that's just from the small sample set of my experiences.

It really bothers me that a number of commenters on a TC article are still misinformed as to what the term "hacker" actually means. Thank you, mainstream media, for all of your misinformation and FUD. Regardless, I will still go about my days explaining to people that I'm a hacker for a living, and that it isn't a bad thing. I'll keep explaining that the term was derived from MIT's model railroad club and if possible, refer them to http://tmrc.mit.edu/hackers-ref.html or tell them to google it; then maybe someday along with the help of awesome programs like CoderDojo, the general population will be a little less misinformed.

I'm not sure I would call it cheating. When I think of cheating, I think of a restricted action that gives an unfair advantage over competitors, of which is incredibly difficult for competitors to duplicate. But implementing the same hack, in this case, is easy, fairly common, and it isn't stepping outside of any real boundaries so it's not like the playing field is uneven. It also works and works well to provide users (customers) with a better experience.

What about not keeping enough fresh oil? I believe keeping a minimum charge on an EV is analogous to the common knowledge of maintaining a gas-powered vehicle's oil. The problem is that people don't have experience with EVs.

I'm sure in the early days of gas-powered vehicles, plenty of engines seized up because people were unaware they had to change the oil and keep it at a certain level. And it certainly still happens on occasion.

See my other post in this submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3630466

You can neglect and ignore maintenance of gas-powered engines too. Stop getting oil changes and never check/refill it and see what happens to your engine.

It will eventually be "bricked".

Just like gas-powered vehicles need to be maintained, so do electric ones. EVs actually happen to require less maintenance. Simpler too. I would say that the EV equivalent of oil changes is to keep it charged above some minimum.

So are you saying that because of the overhead involved with "talking" to redis, the fastest datastore would actually be an implementation of my own version (or a readily available version like node-lru-cache) of an LRU cache in my node app script - the datastore would essentially be a simple JSON object embedded directly in the script with methods specific to LRU data sets, gets, and backup?

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I was under the impression Redis is one of the fastest data stores out there. What do you mean it would blow the latency budget? I'm curious because I've switched my startup's backend to node+redis.

Thanks in advance!

Site appears to be down (assuming HN effect) so here's the text-only cached version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jamiefo...

When I need to learn about a wheel, I usually attempt to re-invent it. But in practice (production), I tend to choose a wheel that someone else has already spent years making perfectly round.

What is learned from re-inventing definitely provides unique insight into how the better wheels are actually spinning and ultimately helps us make better use of it.

Is that really a good thing though, at least in the particular case of a todo list app? I love that they are pushing boundaries and trying to pave the way for other gesture-only apps (where practical), but for something as simple as navigating/editing a basic data tree, I would much rather use a single finger to tap buttons/text in less than 20 ms with instant load as opposed to taking half a second or more to perform some gesture(s) with sometimes 2+ fingers and wait for an animation.

I posted this on the blog but I'll copy it here as well. Please forgive the shameless plug.

I think the OP is right in that wanting to automate repetitive tasks is inherent to humans. And the problems discussed in this post are exactly the kind my startup http://loggur.com aims to address. The goal is to let non-programmers automate and also to let programmers automate certain tasks (mainly data manipulation, analysis, triggers, and reports/notifications) in a fraction of the time it would take to otherwise hand-code it.

I should also mention that I am fully aware that what Loggur attempts to do is far from new, but I have yet to see an implementation that isn't a pain to work with. And it's designed with the current (and predicted future) state of things in mind and to be flexible enough to adapt to whatever the needs of the future may be.

Pardon me for taking the bait, but what are you so mad at pg for? Clearly you've taken some kind of interaction with YC and/or pg personally.

To us and other technologically-informed people, he failed. But to the general public who already associates the term "hacker" with a destructive force, the author probably further reinforced the negative connotations. People hear (read) what they want to hear, especially if it already agrees with their current understandings.

And it's a shame really. I wonder if some day, with the help of hackers, technology, and the resultant spread of information, the general public won't be so ignorant.

That is assuming we use facebook. I don't use facebook.

That said, this is somewhat interesting to me for 2 closely related reasons:

1) I like to know how the "big boys" think and it's entertaining to see the moves they make competitively.

2) Since the "big boys" are so influential, the moves they make could in turn affect my business decisions in the near future.

I truly think that at some point (far) in the future, robots will put everyone out of "real" work. They'll do everything for us. Money and economics will become irrelevant. Humans will be left to do what we enjoy at will, whether it's spending time with friends and family, exercising, playing music, painting, building things, or all of the above, of course. Some might even take it upon themselves to improve whatever systems are in place, if that's what they enjoy doing. The main obstacle we face, however, is getting everyone on the same page and making the transition from an economy dependent on cash flow to one that is automated where no one has any real responsibilities. I know it's hard to imagine right now, and we can presently think of a million ways why it will never happen; but it's just my opinion: where there's a will there's a way, and for something like this we have to really think outside the box.

Awesome post. It definitely addresses the core issues of the "problems" with the downward trend of current job availability and the economy. I think you hit it spot on.

I'd like to mention that I've kind of been on the receiving end of some angst towards generally tech-savvy people, and I have a feeling I'm not the only one. I'm a computer engineer, and I've noticed that when the topic of what I do for a living comes up and the person I'm talking to isn't good with computers or isn't an expert in another field, their general attitude towards me changes for the worse. I feel like those outside of the tech industry really resent us programmers, as they likely (and rightly) see us as one of the main causes of present job loss in some industries; but I wish there was a good way to help them see the bigger picture, where technology has always been shifting job availability from industry to industry, and that it really only improves overall quality of life in the long term.

For instance, just last Thanksgiving my aunt and I were talking about how much things have changed in the past few decades, and she said something along the lines of "people used to work with their hands, not program computers all day." She said it very negatively; and in the context of the conversation, it was very clear she's actually against the trend of ever-increasing use of computers. There wasn't much I could think of to say at the time that didn't seem rude or disrespectful. But now when I'm on the receiving end of angst towards programmers, I point out that the shifting of jobs throughout industries has always occurred as technology progresses and try to provide examples throughout history. Although it can sometimes be difficult to do this without seeming pompous.