twostoned

That's an epic and terrible story. I'm sorry and horrified you had to experience that :$

I agree with this. I am wondering if boat is an abstract class and ship is an implementation.

LOL Lars is that you?

This is amazing. When I was younger I used to write bands that I love. I'd contact them with praise, or asking with help on chord progressions, and never received anything back.

One day I mailed an indie band from Canada and told them how much I loved their record and how incredible it was. I received an email back saying thanks that was signed with a name that I didn't recognize. I looked at their website and it was their drummer. I loved it. One of the very happy moments in my musical journey.

I need to block attention hacking features also, have been thinking about this recently. Stupid youtube.

I love that your mom is a VIM users. That caught me off guard and I lol'd. My mom: not a vim user (or emacs for that matter)

Wow, great post. This is all very interesting, I love music history. Do you have any recommendations of good books on the subject of evolution of music, notation, compositions etc?

I'm on your side mate. Everyone seems to think people like us are nuts. Only time will tell what side of history we were on. Be the change you want to see in the world and all that. Big faceless corporations make me uncomfortable in general; having their tentacles in my home, with my family, makes me even more uncomfortable. Don't pitch me any nonsense about trying to provide me with a service because that's absurd: you literally have to use technology to be a part of modern society. There's no option. I don't care if people think I'm a wacko for being privacy conscious, I think they're wacko for the opposite. Even if there is no future horrible implications of the surveillance state, which is hard to imagine, I think just trying to exist without having every micro detail of my life profiled by what seems like every mega international on the planet is a worthwhile ambition.

I got carried away and rambling but I mean, come on. Mouse movements? Really? I suppose you have to give them credit they are creative in a very perverted sense.

Based on the discussion in this thread doing such a thing seems relatively easy.

Obligatory Orwell:

“The most gifted of [the Proletariate], who might possibly become a nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated.”

I don't think you're being too harsh. There's a weird sort of subtle trolling that goes on on online discussions to the point that I don't much engage in online communities. I don't think it's trolling in the sense that people don't consciously do it; they're just negative: "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE!!"

Internet discussion has become very toxic (well, perhaps it always has been). The other day I was on IRC and asked a question about Eclipse which was doing some quirky things that I didn't know how to disable and one of the people in the chat (not a huge open freenode chat but the chat of a smaller, private community) responded "Java is horrible" or something along those lines. I hadn't even mentioned that I was writing Java! What's funny is that I can't imagine anyone responding in this way were it an in-person conversation. You get much more "I don't care much for Java" or even "What are you using Eclipse for?"

I guess because if you're a nasty person AFK people will avoid you and you do face the risk of some social ostracization. However, with the internet, it's harder to prune these people from your social circle.

It was me. I made a fortune.

Yes. The debate is gone. Young people have a much different view of 'ownership' (I struggled for a better word) than older people. For example, I remember the copyright, file sharing, music piracy arguments and debates from the 90s (Metallica, Napster! Hah) and 00s. But when I talk about this stuff now with people in their early 20s there seems to be less awareness. DRM & 'Stream everything' are the way it is, as if its some kind of inevitability. The concept of actually owning, or possessing, something (even if its a byte stream on a physical hard drive in your house) seems to be disappearing. It's interesting to watch.

I think the most interesting part is the lack of discussion.

Yes and working on cars is a heck of a lot of fun as a result. Car modding and tinkering is a huge hobby and from what I can tell only supports these brands and the OEM sales. You need a Chevy in the first place to outfit it with 3rd party high perf parts. Something will break as a result and you'll be back buying more parts and investing even more in the GM/Chevy ecosystem. It's the opposite of how record labels try to attack music 'pirates' who also tend to spend more on music too. (Perhaps their love of music is what correlates high piracy and high purchasing? Hmm)

It adds to the romanticism and involvement. The original GT40 Le Mans car from the 60s that originally beat Ferrari was built from parts that you could go to your local Ford dealer and order. Maybe I'm wrong but I think that if you had enough money at the time you could actually buy all of the parts to build the same .427 they were using in the professional races. Pretty cool.

Nice timing. I just found this website the other day and love it. I've just recently been getting into data visualization and have fallen in love with d3.js. Another good resources is http://alignedleft.com/work/d3-book/. Maybe a bit introductory for some of the smartypants on HN but I've been away from front end dev for a while and so find blasting through the chapters pretty helpful. Hilarious tone, also. Combined with d3indepth.com's examples and the API docs I've been able to get a good grasp of d3.js.

Best summary that I've seen thus far.

I think this is a concept that I find myself perplexed about. The defense of a lot of the use of acquired data is, "but you opted in!", which is of course true. However, when we give software access to things it's usually expected that the access is to conduct tasks pertaining to why we would want that software in the first place. For example when I use a web browser I give it internet access so that I can browse the web, or whatever. Not so that it can phone home and tell a company what websites I've been browsing. I feel like the defense, "yeah, but you opted in to allowing it access to the internet!" is a bit misleading.

Perhaps the personality quiz example that seems to be the cornerstone of this whole CA story is different: I'm not sure what your expectations would be allowing such an app access to your messages would be. However, there are quite a few examples of strange behaviour of software running on phones that it's pretty clear that isn't what you had in mind when you opted in. An example that comes to mind is Facebook apps activating your microphone to log conversations with people you have in person (I'm not sure there is any proof of this one yet but would anyone be surprised?): when you opt in to microphone use it's so that you can make calls on the app not to invite spying. "But you opted in!" Yeah, okay. "Sorry!" - Zuckerburg

Future proof :)

I agree with you about being very cautious about how this debate gets framed. Big corporations are boss at framing the debate in such a way that the results don't matter. Be very aware of this tendency.

This is an interesting comment. I don't disagree with the statement that there is 'asymmetric distribution of power and influence... in the world today' but am interested to hear more about why you think celebrities contribute to this.

My own world-view doesn't account for much celebrity contribution, apparently.

I noticed this too, it almost makes it seem redundant. 11.5 years from now we're going to improve something. Oh yeah? Imagine if someone told you they planned to quit smoking in 10 years? haha ok

I agree about the malware, I often make this analogy. I was in an exam today and people went to turn on their computers to write the test, we have two hours, and Windows decides to do an update. No asking, no options. These aren't power users; these people struggle with basic computing and are trying to get through school. So the administration worked with them so they could actually write the test but come on. You don't have control of your machine with Windows and I find that inappropriate.

lol, Apple products in general. ;)

lol nice try, Facebook.

Seriously though good points. I understand the hate and fear (if you would call it that) of old FB, however, and am among the group who is definitely Social Media averse. I'm not convinced Facebook actually holds old friendships together (anecdotal: I don't have FB and have lots of old friends. The same can be said for my parents and grandparents...). I also don't expect 100% of my waking hours to be spent productively (whee MUGEN and IRC, or whatever your drug is.)

However, with all that being considered, there is something very weird about the asymmetry of Facebook. They collect and store all this data, know a lot of intimate details and personal information about people, control the medium in which many people use exclusively for digital communication, and aren't really answerable to anyone except their Executives, Board of Directors and Shareholders (Wealthy people? I don't know anyone who owns a significant share of this big corporation). So yeah, weird. "Hi, please use your free time to tell me a lot of intimate and personal detail about yourself so that I can do whatever I want with this information and you have no say in how its used. Kthx"

Yeah, um, no.

Yup yup I learned this in Australia. Bloody hot but I found keeping the sun off your skin actually kept me cooler despite wearing more layers. That and the added benefit of reduced UV or whatever else smashes you in the sunshine (I love the outdoors but tend to burn quickly in direct sunlight).

I think drying is harder on textiles than washing. I hang dry my clothes and am baffled by how long they last vs. when I used to use a dryer. This could be personal experience.

I remember if you were lower than 100 in WC3 you were a noob.

I love this post, partly because of what you're saying, but also partly because of how excellently you captured the attitude using "proper chaps". I know nothing of the British Class system or the topic of which you speak but it brought a huge smile to my face.

I loved that one! He can take the form of other people but is hive-like or something so if you heat his blood the host goes nuts? Something like that anyway. Kurt Russel. The claymation was excellent: cult classic.

There's a really good George Carlin bit in one of his stand-ups about how the earth will be fine. Something along the lines of what you're saying; earthquakes, volcanoes, solar flares, etc. She's been around for a looong time folks. It's humanity that might be in for a bad day.

This is exactly what it is. Agreed.

I got a bit excited and should add more detail: we're in a time when taxes are being shifted more and more away from those who have (rich & corporations) to those who have not. A public/private partnership seems insane to people because it is. The private companies have all the resources and need to leverage further their wealth from the public sector. They can easily front this by themselves and still be printing money without a care in the world. Didn't the corporate tax rate in the USA just get reduced from 35% to 21%? Private top-tier income tax was something like 96% during WWII and now it's down to what, half of that? So not only do you blatantly and overtly go out of your way to avoid contributing to the public fund but then also get politicians to give you deals and project-specific loans out of that exact same reduced, exhausted public purse? OOkay. Then you tell us that we should be thanking you because you're providing jobs... what kind of jobs and to whom?

I'm always skeptical of these things to say the least. Then to claim that there's proof... umm.... are you referencing Atlas Shrugged?