lisp_padawan

Looks like it, there's mention of drupal in a javascript call near the bottom of the source. Nice clean html too from a quick glance - wonder if this is the same team as did Obama's election site, similar visual style. Good stuff.

I see your argument re: the 'importance' of stories - the 'above the fold' placement in print papers is the same idea - but I think, at least in terms of my own reading, that I can judge for myself what the important stories are.

Thinking about it this is one of the top selling points to me of this design. I don't CARE what the editors think is an important story, show me the article summaries and I'LL decide what I want to read about. This system is great because I can quickly scan the stories for those topics I'm interested in (Science, Tech, Business, Politics) and never have to look at sport or fashion or Britney's new tongue piercing etc

But either way, as you say, nice that they're trying out new ideas

I for one like it, I think it does a good job of providing an 'at-a-glance' overview of stories, it fits a good number of stories on one screen (20) and it is suitably uncluttered for my aesthetic tastes. The only thing I would change is have the animation effects a little faster, say 25%, just to increase the 'snappiness' factor a little. A good job well done IMHO.

ah yes, I see what you mean, didn't fully think it through did I? - I was kind of hoping that all those suddenly free programmer hours would be funnelled into creative programming and start-up ventures, boosting the economy sans government spending...

this is getting beyond belief, so I'm going to have to support the flaky weird rendering quirks of IE6 (since so many people still use it), IE7, IE7 Compatibility Mode (which seemingly isn't actually compaitible) AND IE8!? And that's hoping that IE8 'standards' mode is reliable enough to lump in with all the real browsers (mozilla,webkit,opera,etc).

Here's a fucking idea to help booster the economy - how about MAKING people upgrade from IE6. BOOM! Hundreds of thousands of web developer (wo)man-hours saved, increasing efficiency across the whole web-based IT sector.

Kierkegaard had some interesting views on this very subject, that a belief system such as Christianity requires a greater life involvement than the common 'Sunday Christianity' of 30 years ago. I think now we find a larger number of 'genuine believers' whereas 30 or more years ago people went to Church because that was the thing you do. Now, as people have a greater freedom to NOT go, so the remaining attendees probably become more devoted. A kind of evolutionary process, where the selection method is self-selection of attendance based upon initial belief.

As a rationalist/atheist/whateverlabel of course I'm not sure I'm altogether comfortable with the rapid increase in religious adherence in recent years but that's a different discussion.

Very interesting essay PG!

That's rather unfair I feel since being good at technical creation doesn't necessarily mean good at communication. How many novelists are going to write you a version of VOIP in 1987?? Come on, there's genuine discussion to be had here but it doesn't revolve around his rather flaky prose style - it's not as though we couldn't UNDERSTAND him!

as a PHP and ruby programmer (these are my two primary languages) I have to say I agree completely with your comments, you express perfectly a nagging thought that's been, well, nagging for quite some time now. I am very interested to know which you think are better languages that a young programmer might learn next that avoids these pitfalls whilst still retaining the 'practicality' of PHP & ruby for 'getting things done'

many thanks in advance

an interesting read but one thing I didn't understand, how is one meant to save the plaintext username & password client side (so as to be able to send them with each request) without putting them in a cookie or requiring that the user's browser is set to 'remember this password' - anyone got any ideas?

that's because 'm' is used for marquee, which allows both rectangular and elliptical as well as single pixel column (vertical and horizontal) selections.

'v' is used because 'm' is already taken and 'v' does make sense for the moVe command, especially if you stress the second syllable

There is a method to the madness!

indeed, corporations are in legal terms considered with legal equivalence to an individual, and a public traded company is legally bound to maximise shareholder profit, we have basically created a legal psychopath, they're (the board, ceo etc) legally bound to do anything within the law to generate profit/growth. As you say, hardly surprising that companies with mottos like 'do no evil' end up censoring bloggers in the PR of China.

very impressed, tried a variety of search terms and got not only what I was expecting but also other hits that were keyword equivalent. ok fair enough it's a little less responsive than google ;o) but I'm guessing you don't have a spare $50 billion to play with! (jk - the speed is fine btw). The thing that needs most attention (imho) is the design, whilst there are good things (the layout of the search results, especially of 'wide' keywords like 'ruby' or 'augustus') I'm less of a fan of the use of red - in design terms red is an emotive, passionate colour, I would recommend perhaps a blue which usually represents safety, security and trust (look at bank colour schemes). You might alos consider green or grey. The red sets me on edge. Love the use of larger fonts sizes, excellent - should be popular with the age > 25 crowd.

All in all very impressed, I wish you the very best of luck and have bookmarked and will continue to use. (Remember to keep Hacker News updated with any new developments!).

fantastic work! many thanks