In the future, I'd like to suggest that all regulars post their vacation schedules and travel times to news.YC so that we can make sure you're ok. Please also post your mom's phone number so that we can call her and tell you're doing alright and that the weather is great in Whogivesashitistan.
I don't see how his sarcasm detector is broken, wheels suggested we relax and don't jump to conclusions when someone is missing for a few days, and jdavid came in and acknowledged that we shouldn't be too worried but it's still nice to see that some people are.
That's sarcasm. I'm sure Nick is a beautiful human. But ... like ... this ... is a tech news site. I'd be worried if people didn't drop off for a week or so every once in a while.
I met a guy at Startup School that was planning to build a universal address book that would insure people and businesses knew where to send your bills, tax forms, and how to call you, etc. He intended it to be a tool for handling permanent moves, but I think there's the same set of problems. Making it worth anything requires huge uptake and getting huge uptake without value is impossible.
Personally, I like that every time I move, my junk mail drops off for many months (the "occupant" garbage still shows up, but it's easier to toss without thinking about it). I think that's the only thing I like about moving, actually. Having a system that allowed junkmailers to know my new address automatically would be a negative value, and I think the same is true of a site that allows constant contact with folks on vacation--I like being out of reach when on vacation.
I'm afraid I'm just not willing to invest that much time in costing them money--because the amount of money it costs the sender is significantly lower than the value I put on my time. Sure, if enough people do it, they will eventually find it unprofitable to send their junk...but the human resources wasted in getting to that point is overwhelming. Maybe I should hire a neighborhood kid to come by weekly, for envelope stuffing. $5 per week might be worth it.
i would like my "address" to move to the location of a massive scanner than can scan and email me all data. then my spam filter can catch, the snail mail spam, and all of my mail gets shredded and recycled.
All regulars: before deciding to take a vacation please create a poll and make sure you get a majority approval from the community. An army of satellites, airplanes and robots will be dispatched to locate any missing person and if found guilty of violating the aforementioned rule you will be responsible for covering the costs of the search and rescue operation.
You should also probably post your social security number in case you don't post your schedules and we really need to find you to tell you that missing startup school is not ok.
Whoa... I come back and the top story is about me. Thanks guys... I really appreciate it!
I was away for a week. I had some personal stuff to take care off and once that was done, I realized I needed to take few days to just reflect on some stuff and just do nothing. Haven't had a real vacation in quite some time so I used few days to unwind. No worries, I'll be back to regular posting soon!
I think that both sides in this thread are behaving in a way that is inappropriate for desired tone of this forum. All snarky responses are uncalled for, though the merit of the posing of the question is debatable
Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw nickb pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.
(Since this is getting downmodded into oblivion, that was a Spaceballs reference. That's a line from the same scene with "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate.")
So you decided to quote a line from a classic 1980s movie because said line occurs in said movie shortly before a line which sounds somewhat like the line from another classic 1980s movie which was (quite relevantly and in context) quoted by the parent post?
Maybe a reddit-like "hide" feature would be better -- doesn't affect anyone else, just let's you skip stuff you'd personally not see. I'm sure someone has the GreaseMonkey-Fu to do this without troubling the site programmers.
Kind of, although more like reddit's "hide" feature. There's also a GM script to do like the extension you link, but it has menus so there's no need to edit an array. No time to find link but it will be on userscripts.org somewhere.
> I mostly did it because it was a fun exercise in javascript
Me too :) Although I'd recommend using jQuery if you have time to learn that as well. Makes DOM-related stuff easy so you only need to roll code for the things which are unique to your app.
I'm actually taking the opposite approach... I started using jQuery to do all my DOM related stuff, but now learning actual javascript for the fun of it. It really is a surprisingly flexible language.
My criticism is valid. nickb is one of two things: A non-existent person, or a person who has real-life contacts who can submit a missing-persons report if required.
after reading all the comments, i start wondering: is this a community, or is it a bunch of kids with nothing better to do that truly don't get what hacker news is all about?
