If it is entirely out of the blue and you have nothing in particular to discuss, it might come across a bit weird or creepy. Expanding your social circle is probably a great start though.
I enjoyed reading the article, and I wouldn't have found it if it wasn't here on HN. If it shouldn't be here (according to the HN community) it wouldn't be sitting at the top of the news page.
The headline "The Age of Music Piracy Is Officially Over" really bothers me for some reason. It should be "The Age of Music Piracy Is Over According to Some Columnist".
To be fair, we can't verify that either way. If a company treated me as the reviewers claim, I wouldn't give them more than one star either. As was mentioned in other comments, there needs to be some validation of reviewers built into yelp.
I don't agree with Eil's comment at all, but that is no reason to vote his comment down. Comment voting is to make interesting comments more prominent and to remove noise, not to banish unpopular opinions. I don't interpret Eil's comment as a trolling attempt that warrents down-voting either.
I've only spent about a week in India (Delhi, Agra and Jaipur). It was a good trip, but not necessarily 'fun'.
If there is one thing I learnt (as a caucasian), it is that anyone who talks to you on the street (who doesn't have an obvious reason to be there like a shop keeper with merchandise) is probably trying to scam you. Trying to buy a train ticket to Agra from Delhi was a nightmare; we ended up organising a taxi through our hotel. It was hard going from being used to trusting directions and advice from strangers at home, but I got over that pretty quick.
Also, carry plenty of small change; anyone who does absolutely anything at all for you will expect a tip.
I've never heard of Hunch before, but just yesterday I was actually thinking that it'd be nice if a tool just like it existed. However, the first thing I thought when I saw their website was "this looks like too much work" (bearing in mind that I'm a little short on sleep today, which is probably why I'm writing this rather than code right now).
I don't want to sign up to stuff and I don't want to answer 20 (unknown) questions to build something (a "taste profile") that I don't understand. After I've seen (and used) some benefits then certainly, but not as soon as I hit their page. I guess this is because every website on the web seems to want me to sign up and invest time and effort in them. I wonder if there is something they can do to lower this initial barrier a little.
I think plenty of people said the same thing about the Wii. It is fun so long as games use the interaction as a constructive part of the game. There are plenty of fun multiplayer games on the Wii that just wouldn't work with traditional controllers.
I've tried a number of methods (mostly for work-related todos) and nothing really worked perfectly. I find that I go through phases of needing a list versus doing what is on my mind. Each phase can last a week or a month.
My solution is to use a spreadsheet like Excel (or your choice of GoogleDocs, OpenOffice or other equivalent). I put a cross next to items as I complete them. When I lose interest in my list it tends to atrophy, but at least my tasks and accomplishments are still recorded.
If I come back to my spreadsheet after an extended break and it has atrophied substantially (as in I've completed many tasks without marking them off, priorities have moved away from uncompleted tasks to new unrecorded tasks etc), I simply create a new page and copy across old tasks that I still need to do.
It seems to work quite well for me; it keeps a record of what I've been up to and what I need to do (when I need it to), and works somewhat like agile development iterations without me worrying too much about whether I'm doing it 'correctly'.
Intellectual disagreements are usually more interesting than agreements, particularly when the original article is well written and doesn't require commentators to fill in the gaps.
Sounds like reverse auctions. Rather than people competing to buy an item on sale, sellers would be bidding to sell a wanted item. Does anyone do this? Would it actually work?
StackOverflow is my first port of call when I run into a programming problem that I can't solve. I've started mucking around with Unity 3d (a game engine) and was quite relieved when I found a solid StackExchange forum for the engine.
The main complaint I have about StackOverflow is how the reputation system negatively affects peoples' behaviour. Although the net effect of the system is very positive, I find that people rush to answer easy questions to get some up-votes. If they take too long to craft a detailed answer, they miss out. Answers to difficult questions take longer and get less views and up-votes, so people don't bother trying.
Many of the questions that show up on StackOverflow can be answered with a quick google. They only serve to dilute the quality questions and answers, and cheapen the reputation system. I also get the impression that people who couldn't be bothered to google a question first also couldn't be bothered responding to the comments and answers that they get.
Having said that, StackOverflow is still the best programming forum for languages that I use and I don't see it failing any time soon.