thunk

Briefly amuse yourself by clicking "Show HN: A different interface for reading Hacker News" in each nested frame.

Accidental upvote

I actually started from the viewpoint that I hate all the hating that goes on around here sometimes, and worked backward from there. I don't feel strongly about fight clubs one way or the other.

> Exposing yourself to unnecessary risk when you have safe alternatives isn't manly, it's stupid.

Sometimes it's OK to just be stupid, and uneducatedly kick the shit out of each other, as long as cries of "Uncle" are respected. The lack of framework and authority is important for some types of catharsis.

> Repressing gay feelings and letting them out through violence on the other hand isn't so great IMO.

My point is that whenever guys roughhouse, some chronic non-participant will always call it homoeroticism, and since that sounds like a good, intellectual reason to justify their nonparticipation, other bystanders will smugly agree. It's a cheap jab.

Technique? Adult supervision? Fitness? Safety? Proper size matching? You've misunderstood the point.

Sure, they sound melodramatic, cheesy and sentimental talking about their fight club. But at least they're out there doing it, venting, and participating in some mostly rules-free shenanigans.

And "sexually charged" is the condescending weenie's way of simultaneously saying the participants are closeted homosexuals, and that being gay is a bad thing.

Naysayers manage to anger me and tire me out, all at the same time.

I recently coined (afaik):

    enbug - v. to program; the opposite of debug

No, they're not. Google isn't just buying Groupon; they're buying dominance in assurance contracts -- a Very Big Idea Indeed.

Say, hypothetically, you discover a long, well-written, insightful and generally intellectual-curiosity-gratifying essay on the craft of programming, titled "10 Ways to Grow Your Penis". Would it be reasonable to editorialize?

Sometimes I wonder, though, if methods like Lean Startup aren't solidifications of this very illusion: that just building something awesome and slightly gonzo is too much fun to be trusted. Lean Startups tend to miss things people don't know they want, or that yield negative results when market-tested with crappy prototypes. It's like "Design by Focus Group". It's probably safer. The success rate is probably higher. But I think you pay for it in loss of craziness. At any rate, startups either don't need to hear this, or shouldn't listen to it.

> The most dangerous traps now are new behaviors that bypass our alarms about self-indulgence by mimicking more virtuous types.

The flip-side is true, too: Many of us enjoy coding so much that it feels self-indulgent, tripping the alarm incorrectly. I've often guilted myself out of coding -- out of getting real work done -- because I enjoy it so much. So while we need to watch out for pseudo-work masquerading as real work, we also need to watch out for real work seeming like too much fun.

Just to play devil's advocate (and examine it rationally rather than legally), what exactly is the problem here? Libraries allow multiple people to read the same book. I'm sure you've loaned books to friends. Is it that it's OK for more than one person to read a purchased book, as long as it doesn't happen simultaneously? What if two people read a library book at the same time? Is that stealing? What if this site implemented some DRM that only allowed a book to be read by one person at a time?

This site isn't doing something wrong, merely something illegal.

You may be afraid to ship, and the excuses are running out.

> I'm not sure I'd want to work for someone who didn't understand the difference between computer science and programming.

It's not a misunderstanding. You just can't get a degree in programming. 90% [1] of students in CS departments are there to be industry coders.

[1] True bogus fact.

I frequently hear that, at the very least, a degree shows that you can finish something. If it's true that smart hackers can give themselves a better-than-university education for the price of the books alone, and they discover this fact early in their college careers, wouldn't finishing actually be a negative indication -- a susceptibility to sunk costs? I know the case can be made that college's real education is social, but it seems like you could get that part cheaper by hanging out around other hackers.

Title is a reference to NIN's Hurt, (beautifully) covered by Johnny Cash:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go&feature=relat...

It was a great price, but only available for one day.

Right, "Let this be a lesson to you, kids: Unless you're Pacman, you're probably cool."

Not unless you back it up with evidence.

Hehehe. No, I think your name is great. I say more unintentional headline poetry!

My, these headlines can get difficult to parse. "What is an 'interactive raise'? And what does it mean for one to seed?"

I hear you -- bottom-up as applied to functional, modular JS web apps.

Rereading what I said, I don't want to detract from the fact that what you built is _fucking awesome_.

right.

Jeezuz, HN. Just because a sport isn't American doesn't mean it's "intellectually gratifying".

Edit: Oh FFS, bring it on. I'm gonna post Terrible Towel videos and watch how fast they get killed.

It's so easy to anthropomorphize spacecraft like Voyager 2. I get choked up thinking about her bravely leaving the solar system, transmitting data until ~2025, alone in empty space.

Moving the close paren to enclose each app's upstream app arguments would ease this lisper's eyes. It seems like it might get difficult to debug arity count errors if you accidentally indented wrong somewhere in a larger app.

Just to be clear, the styles we're comparing are buzz vs. long (pony-tailable) hair, right? Because the lengths in between are the real attention-sappers -- scheduled retail hair-cuts and at least some sort of daily styling, which requires (sometimes a lot of) attention.

You make good points. And we've successfully moved from the mundane to the philosophical. But as far as maintaining a clear mind, I can weather a head-buzzing every few weeks without suffering any serious thought-train derailment. I even find it rather meditative. There's something purifying and exhilarating about shaving one's head -- it's like throwing away a lot of useless shit you've been accumulating, or putting one's mental baggage astern. My head feels lighter -- and it is!

I've never understood that argument. Whatever time you may save on monthly upkeep is lost many times over on daily (or at least, hopefully, weekly) washing and brushing and pony tailing, etc. I rebuzz my head about once every two or three weeks and that is literally it.

Given that we tend to prefer low-to-no maintenance grooming choices, I'm surprised more hackers don't shave (or closely buzz) their heads:

1) You can do it yourself. Never pay for another hair cut.

2) You don't need shampoo or conditioner. Just use whatever you're already using on the rest of you.

3) Nothing needs to be done to make it presentable.

4) It's never itchy or hot or in the way or anything.

5) Works great if you're balding -- confident, like you've accepted the inevitable.

6) You look more like a Buddhist monk.

I found this little slide deck while trying to figure out what semantic microblogging is: http://www.slideshare.net/bengee/semantic-microblogging-pres...

> It's also acknowledging that our thinking is partly shaped by our terms.

Good point, but sounds like Sapir-Whorf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity