Thanks very much. I don't think it's really HN's features or lack of them is the attraction for most users though, but the quality of the submissions and comments. So thank you guys.

Ironically I've been thinking of adding some variant of following as a way to deal with the increasing volume of comments. I just haven't had time to yet.

I did recently (about 3 weeks ago) tweak the algorithm for ranking comments, and that has had a noticeable effect. Previously it was the same as the one for ranking frontpage stories. Now it also considers among other things the average comment score of the submitter. With any luck this will keep HN poised in its usual position mid-way over the shark for another 6 months.

Here is my FTC complaint. You too can file one!

https://www.FTCComplaintAssistant.gov/FTC_Wizard.aspx?Lang=e...

Apple computer advertised 2 different models of the iPad: one at $500 with wifi only Internet capability, and one with wifi and 3G coverage for $14.95 for 250 MB of data per month, or $30 a month for unlimited data (provided by AT&T)

This 3G was a no contract plan, requiring no longterm committment from consumers and was a Major buying factor for a large number of buyers, myself included. The fact one could upgrade to a reasonably priced unlimited plan at any time for a single month enticed us to purchase the more expensive unit.

Now AT&T, 32 days after the huge initial rush of iPad with 3G models were sold, and 1-5 days after they became ineligible for returns to Apple, AT&T announces effective June 7, 2010, they are completely changing the two iPad data plans to:

200 mb a month for $15 with $10 for every 200 MB thereafter Or 2 GB a month for $25 with $10 for every GB after

I view this rate hike and significant change to the costs of ownership of the iPad 3G to be a material change to the functionality of the device. While AT&T is offering to grandfather subscribers to the unlimited data plan , I purchased a device I was supposed to only have to pay for 3G coverage in the months I needed it. As it is, I will have to either give up the unlimited plan, or pay $360 a year to maintain it or lose it forever, effectively placing me under contract

Either Apple Computer should be forced to refund the difference or portion thereof of the iPad vs iPad 3G difference, or AT&T should be forced to offer continued a la cart per month unlimited plans for all people who purchased the iPad 3G before their announced price change, for at least 365 days from the American release of the device April 30, 2010, Or apple computer should be forced to accept returns of all iPad 3G models purchased before the AT&t plan change announcement for an additional 90 days with no restocking fee and no requirement the consumer also returns the box.

No cellular provider in the US is an alternative to AT&T coverage in the US market.

If you want to crowdsource, obtain all your lab results that have ever been done, scan them, and post them. Those medical records belong to you. Black out your name if it worries you. (Edit on afterthought: if you're considering doing more tests and if your insurance situation is poor and if you're American, look at personalabs.com, who will order your labs from LabCorp nearly anywhere in America at just a little above cost - the difference is almost certainly going to be huge, and if the doctor isn't helping you, it's good to know you're not locked into getting the doctor to order labs for you.)

That said, it's pretty clear there's something funky immune going on - the IgA thing, the initial response to Vitamin D (and I second or third the recommendation to get sunlight - go for a walk every day; it'll do you general good anyway). You've got some weird digestive stuff going on, and so my personal red flag goes up, which is intestinal flora.

(Note also: tracking this stuff down is going to be a personal struggle, it'll take years, and there is a truly immense amount of bullshit in the world, so take nothing I say, or anybody else, without a large helping of skepticism.)

My daughter has Crohn's Disease and my son has minimal change disease (a kidney inflammation). After my daughter was hospitalized, we did a lot of research and found out what amazingly bad things can happen as a result of poorly managed intestinal ecology, and after making changes to our diet - some of them pretty profound - she's been symptom-free for three years, our son is improving, and I've lost weight as well.

So here's what I recommend: go to your pharmacy and purchase some sachets of "VSL #3", a probiotic mix. Don't follow the instructions on it; use it as yogurt starter. Yogurt is dead easy to make; get one half-gallon of organic whole milk, one quart of organic half-and-half creamer, mix a cup of plain Dannon yogurt and one sachet of VSL #3 into them as a starter, put it into a gallon glass jar (available from Walmart) and put the whole thing onto a candle warmer for 24 hours wrapped in a towel.

After 24 hours, you'll have three quarts of the most electrically sour yogurt you've ever tasted. Eat that twice a day for a while. If you want to get serious about this cure, take a couple of weeks and don't eat any complex carbs (that's way harder than it sounds). If you've really got an intestinal flora imbalance (you're presumably American, so you do, trust me) and if that's your root cause, you'll feel better in a week. You'll probably feel somewhat better in a week anyway, but there might be more going on.

That's my two bits. I applaud your effort to take your health in your own hands, and if there's anything I can help with, get in touch (email's in my profile).

What an awesome way to advocate for code change. Very pretty.

Unfortunately, I also think it's faulty. First, it doesn't actually advocate anything concrete. There's some hand-waving to Sinatra and other Rails features, but nothing concrete. If you're going to make such a pretty proposal, it should come with a call to specific action that people can get behind.

This is double true when it comes to API design. It's all fine and good to general ideas and principles guiding you, but when the code hits the editor is when all the constraints and trade-offs are revealed. I could fill a book with all the premature ideas I had for API rewrites that turned out not work when applied to the tough reality of real code.

But I'm wearing too far into hand-waving territory too, so let me address a few of the points raised:

1) "Not specifying URLs directly leads to poor [URL] API design and other ills": There are only so many (reasonable) ways to specify a URL if you want to follow REST principles. You name your resource and you give it an identifier.

/products/1-some-perma-id became a pattern because it was both simple, repeatable across models, and extractable. Why spend time coming up with a unique URL structure for every model that you want to expose when they follow the same pattern of using the model name as the url identifier?

This is exactly what Rails does and always have done. Spot patterns currently done by hand, extract said pattern into a convention, allow people to move on from thinking about how to do X until they hit an exception. This, in my mind, is exactly what leads to great API design and simple solutions. You do the same as everyone else when the choice is less important than the consistency.

Now I welcome the praise for Sinatra. I think it's completely awesome. I'd use it for smaller projects myself. But that's exactly where conventions don't give you that much. If you're exposing, say, 20 urls to the public, you don't gain a bunch from having a convention that follows a set pattern. In fact, cutting out the middle man of an abstraction can make the code seem easier to read and more immediate.

That trade off flips when you have 100, 500, or (as is the case of Highrise) 2000 routes exposed to the public. When 95% of those follow the same pattern, there's big gain in the consistency of a convention. The last 5% are handled by outlet valves that allow you to declare whatever exceptions you need.

2) "The Seven Action Names Don't Help": I think the default constraint of 7 is the most important part of the positive effects you get from following REST in Rails for internal organization. Again, this isn't theory, but extracted experience from practice.

Rails used to require you to map everything by hand. Lots of people ended up with mega controllers that had 25 actions because there was no easy pushback. By the time the controller was too big it felt like too much of a hassle to break it up just to add "one more action". We still have GlobalController in Basecamp to remind us of what that was like.

Having the default conversion that turns /product/1 into show is also just pretty code. The two alternatives lined up are not very pretty. I'll take "def show" over "get(:member) do |id|" or "get "/api/v1/report/:id" do |id|" any day when it comes to a large, consistent URL surface.

3) "Assets are resources": I completely agree here. This will be addressed in Rails 3.1 when we get the asset pipeline going.

But as always, the proof is in the code. I'd love to see an even simpler routes system, but none of the arguments presented in the article gives any indication that the proposed ideas will lead to that. I've been both surprised and wrong before, though, so please do investigate.

Again, though, kudos for the presentation. I wish more people passionate about API design would take the time to do something as pretty. But with more concrete code examples, please ;)

I'm looking forward to when one of these laws gets challenged in court and finally thrown out for good. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy if you're a public employee, on duty, in a public place. It doesn't matter how much you try to torture the words "reasonable", "private", or "public"

If someone really is obstructing police work, then the current statutes against obstructing police work are applicable. Police should be limited to enforcing those and not try to criminalize photography.