Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | villageidiot's comments login

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.


Even knowing how people would compare their level of self-awareness at 40 to what it was when they were 20 would be interesting.

There are probably quite a few people here that are 40+ years old.


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."


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.


No, nothing like that I'm afraid. I'm approaching it from the content producer's POV, so it won't be viable for videos that already exist, although with a little work they could be brought into it..


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


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?


Seems the contest will be announced in the Fall... so this is the announcement that there will be an announcement (don't you just love politics).


Ah. Thanks for clarifying. I missed that part.


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?


Put the text from a heredoc in a comment with special tags. Have a special method that lets you retrieve the text in the same source file. This puts zero syntactic load on the language, but has much the same effect. You can even have embedded methods, source debugging, regexes. But there's no additional syntax.


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

Care to let us in on any of your secrets?


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.


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.


I have. Signing up is easier than on StackOverflow ;)

Edit: Just checked the link: "Site access is now limited to Premium Service Members."

So, no more free accounts.


You probably already know this but I wanted to point out that users can participate in a limited way without registering on StackOverfow.


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.


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.


->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.


The US media looks better than my local Swedish one.

In a small country, the interests are more aligned, for good and bad.

For instance, the US media have different opinions on lots of subjects! Here, you get at most two opinions.

But mainly, the US media seems to find lots of real scandals in your president administrations. That doesn't happen much with the local government and media...

Maybe there aren't any scandals here to find? (And if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell, if you want to make a good deal?)

That said, there are lots of crappy media in the US. But obviously, some of the world's best ones, too.


Are you kidding, how many ministers did the current government go through in the first couple of weeks in power because of scandals? I know I lost count.

Then there's the whole case with the tsunami tapes going missing.

The case with bodströms possibly advocating direct control of the police to raid TPBs hosting company.

I remember a whole array of ministers getting kicked out head first because of various visits to strip clubs in the 90's.

Then you've got Mona Sahlin cheating on her taxes as well as a wide array of scandals with Gudrun Schyman and alcohol.

That's just the things I can remember on the top of my head and I have just about barely payed attention to local news for the last couple of years until recently.

I think that we might be less sensationalist and have a shorter memory but we do have plenty of scandals. You have to realize though that we are only made up of 9 million people, their scandals should be both greater size and of greater numbers.

As for the two opinions thing, Americans are much more extrovert than Sweeds are. They like to yell at things, it's their thing. We like to sit and whine about things, that's our thing. I do think however that our politicians don't blatantly lie as much, our minister of finance isn't standing there telling us everything is great when it's obvious we hurting and going down deeper.

Now I happened to find Swedish media pretty boring, but that's another thing entirely.


You have a point about individual ministers' personal lives. :-)

The press do seem to have different standards for different politicians.

(I didn't follow the dance around foreign minister Bildt, but remember a journalist complaining that it was a democracy problem that Bildt had his own blog so he could get his own version out...)

That is hardly the same as leaking embarrassing internal papers (which have showed up quite often in Washington Post/NY Times).

Leaking of papers did happen with the Muslim Brotherhood guys that were sent back (and tortured) in Egypt. But how many more times?

The press has for decades gotten direct subsidies from the state here -- and I've seen notes that acknowledge influences, but note exactly how much...


You have numerous political parties due to your proportionally representative parliamentary government, but you only get two opinions in the press?

Even in the internet age, when the cost of publishing is approaching zero?

That's odd.


It's not like you've got six democratic or republican parties in government in a giant pit fighting each other it's more like you've got two blocks with an internal cease fire that yell at the other group and occasionally slip and complain about a block partys politics.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: