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villageidioton Ask HN: What happens to your consciousness/self-awareness as you age?

What is it like to be 80 years old?

When is the last time you talked to an 80 year old? Would you even consider asking this question to an 80 year old in real life? Why try to research this question on HN where the average age is close to 25? What do 25 year old hackers know about aging? Oh sure, I have no doubt they assume they know something about everything but I really think you're barking up the wrong tree and need to go outside and, you know, talk to people.

villageidioton RubyTu.be, a community driven Ruby video & screencast index

Good luck. I'll keep my eye on the usual Ruby channels then.

villageidioton For Tech Companies, Downturn Serves as Cause for Common Ground

Referring to Bing, Eric Schmidt said "We benefit from Microsoft’s continual re-entering into this market. We encourage them to continue with this strategy."

villageidioton RubyTu.be, a community driven Ruby video & screencast index

That sounds like a big project. I've never encountered anything related to video that is solved with a simple technical solution. Unless you're talking about something like Google's Video Sitemaps.

villageidioton NYC Big Apps - Cash prizes for apps using data sets from NYC.gov

Thanks for posting this link. Good to know about. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an indication of the value of those hypothetical cash prizes. Or did I miss it?

villageidioton Ask HN: The importance of heredoc

I've never had a problem with heredoc. I'm curious what you mean when you say "I can picture a number of ways to get almost the same effect . . . without complicating the syntax". Would you care to illustrate your point with an example so we can make the discussion a little bit more concrete?

villageidioton The Self-Employed Depression

->"I've also put together a decent network of sites earning money through advertising".

Care to let us in on any of your secrets?

villageidioton Ask HN: Is Twitter lost on me?

I don't think the OP was trolling. Maybe s/he is just not as familiar with HN or Twitter as you are? Regardless, I think your response is disproportionately hostile and fosters an ungenerous environment. I find it discouraging that such an unforgiving response would receive so many upvotes.

villageidioton ServerFault launches - it's StackOverflow for sysadmins

Start a new brower session or delete your cookies. You get that message if they recognize you from an existing account. I get that message in Firefox (after signing up from Firefox) but not in Chrome or IE.

villageidioton ServerFault launches - it's StackOverflow for sysadmins

There's also a free signup option that they don't publicize:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/registerFree2.jsp

Although I can't think of any reason to use it.

villageidioton Coding Horror: How to Motivate Programmers

A former boss of mine thought it would be a good motivational strategy to try to create a little "friendly competition", as Dave Thomas puts it, by putting me and my coworker at odds with each other with various petty, fabricated psychodramas in the hopes that we would both try to compete for Daddy's favor. It didn't take long before both of us quit. This might work with sheep and race horses but simplistic algorithms like these have a tendency to not be very reliable when dealing with human beings. There are too many variables, such as, in the case of me and my coworker, going for a drink after work and realizing the design behind the conflicting narratives our boss was telling each of us in the absence of the other. It's probably quite a common strategy for managers but the dishonesty and apparent disrespect of it didn't sit too well with us at the time.

villageidioton Everybody's Lying to You

->Hell, perhaps even more so given the press's traditional role of watchdog and investigator.

I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic here. Alternatively, perhaps you're not from the United States.

villageidioton Djng - a Django powered microframework

Wonder if this would work on App Engine.

villageidioton Everybody's Lying to You

-> it'll probably be a decade before we reach pre-bust levels.

How do you know?

The same people who didn't see it coming are all of a sudden experts on when it's going to end.

villageidioton Career damaging self description

I disagree. He has two points. The first - Dont call yourself a "Java programmer" (for example) because your job most likely will use more than Java and the self-description may contrain your career options. Instead use more general self-descriptions like "Database Expert" or "Web Developer". The second - Learn multiple languages to give yourself a flexible mental framework with which to solve problems.

I don't think it's too late for anyone to hear this advice. I thought it was quite helpful.

villageidioton Ask HN: Please review my new social learning site

Same here - FF/Vista

villageidioton Ask HN: Anyone know what to do with a failed external hard drive?

That's an important possibility to know about. I assumed that if I was willing to spend enough, that there might be a solution. So it's good to know that that is not necessarily true. Much appreciated.

villageidioton Ask HN: Anyone know what to do with a failed external hard drive?

Yeah, I didn't think that was a good sign. Thanks. I'll make a note of Techfusion. Looks like it may come to that.

villageidioton Ask HN: Anyone know what to do with a failed external hard drive?

Thanks for the tips. Yes, it does show up in the BIOS scan. Maybe there's hope for the software option. I'll save your hardware-related tips for later since I'm more or less incompetent when it comes to the non-virtual.

villageidioton Ask HN: Anyone know what to do with a failed external hard drive?

Thanks. Yes I agree I need to start doing this.

villageidioton Ask HN: Anyone know what to do with a failed external hard drive?

Oh, I really hope not.

villageidioton Ask HN: Anyone know what to do with a failed external hard drive?

To be honest, I don't know if it spins up or not. I'll tell you what it sounds like though. It sounds like a helicopter when the pilot turns on the engine and it starts revving up - for maybe half a second - then a loud Click! like a camera shutter - and then it starts to wind up again for another half second followed another Click!

Don't know if that's a good description really but it's the best I can do. I'm really not a hardware guy. My guess is that this description indicates it does not spin up but hopefully you can tell me?

You're probably right about it being an expensive business. Another reason I don't want to hand over my drive is: Who are these people? And how do I really know what they are going to do with my private data?

Did you say "recent backups"? Ha. That's funny.

villageidioton Ask HN: Anyone know what to do with a failed external hard drive?

Thanks for the tip. I tried a piece of software last week - can't remember the name - but I just heard the disk clicking repeatedly while the software was trying to access the disk - it didn't get anywhere, so I didn't think a pure software solution would work. But I will take a look at Spinrite - I hadn't heard of it. Maybe it works better than the one I tried already, although I'm skeptical. I have a hunch that what I really need is some kind of hardware solution along the lines of whatever they use at these commercial services for copying a failed disk. But I'm expecting such a device to cost an arm and a leg.

villageidioton The saviour of newspapers has arrived

That's an interesting talk but high design takes time - that seems to be at odds with the workflow of newspapers.

villageidioton Rails3: Stepping off of the golden path

I clicked through about 20 slides without seeing more than a few words of text!

villageidioton Ask Freelancers: How much do you charge?

Ask what you would get paid for the same work as an in-house employee. Now double that.

villageidioton How to Land a Six-Figure Software Developer Job

I signed up with GlassDoor.com to see what the Java interview questions were like. I only found three (nationwide) and they are not exactly illuminating:

"Create a small table driven site to display items from a database table."

"What do you think of Jakarta software?"

"How many people use the websites you've worked on?"

villageidioton SASS: The Better, More Powerful CSS

I imagine many of the same arguments for and against Haml would apply to Sass. I'm thinking of James Britt's critique:

http://www.jamesbritt.com/2009/4/30/thoughts-on-haml

Would be curious to hear what people think of Sass. I'm considering using Haml/Sass as my templating engine.

villageidioton Ask HN: Any tips for living cheaply in SF?

No, you're not crazy. Give it a shot. What do you have to lose really? Whether you will actually be able to find work is a question mark but as long as you have enough money so you won't be sleeping on a park bench, why not? Ah, to be 18 . . . worst year of my life . . . hope you make a better time of it than I did.