skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Your criterion for distinguishing an ad hominem argument is not at all valid.

...

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument toward the person" or "argument against the person") is an argument which links the validity of a premise to an irrelevant characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

There is a difference between saying "cannibalistic child-molesting morons agree with that" and saying "thus it is false." That's why we have the term ad hominem: to distinguish between valid statements (i.e. "child molesters believe that the sky is blue and that encryption technology should be legal,") and invalid statements ("Thus, the sky is red and PGP should be banned.").

You are complaining about something legitimate, but what you're complaining about is not ad hominem. The closest term is probably "rhetoric."
Celestial navigation stuff. Books, including Nautical Almanac and some "layman" items, sextant, watch synched to radio time signal; all cool stuff!
He is a homophobe:

“I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one."

http://www.nationalreview.com/derbyshire/derbyshire200405140...
This is not real or funny.
The Little Schemer! You've got a lot of fun ahead of you :)
WTF? Could people at least give a reason why they're downvoting this. The info about the dangers of sunscreen is true.

"Vitamin D deficiency is an unrecognized epidemic among both children and adults in the United States"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15585788
Sometimes clones work. I really enjoy some Super Mario World romhacks, for example, because they took a winning formula and did it well. Here's my favorite one:

http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/48/

(To get it working, you need an emulator and a SMW ROM, which I won't link to here.)
Lack of array bounds checking is not a problem with C.

It is a problem with our hardware.

Introducing bounds checking without introducing a penalty on array access time is impossible on our "C machines".

C/C++ are often thought of as "close to the metal" - but they are close to particular varieties of metal - those designed to run C/C++. We arrived at them through historical accident. There are many other ways to build a computer - and it is not entirely obvious that a "C architecture" is necessarily the simplest or most efficient:

http://www.loper-os.org/?p=46

That a language which is "close to the metal" is braindead is solely a consequence of braindead metal.

The "C architecture" is a universal standard, to the extent that it has become the definition of a computer to nearly everyone. This is why you will never find the phrase "C architecture" in a computer architecture textbook. And yet it is a set of specific design choices and obsolete compromises, to which there are alternatives.
I'm not sure about the legality of Grooveshark (it's run by a legitimate company, and they comply with any takedown notices- so, it's like linking to YouTube), however here it is:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Everybody+S+Free+To+Wea...
"If you like low taxes and the death penalty, try Texas. For good public schools and subsidised cycle paths, try Portland, Oregon. Even within states, the rules vary widely. Bath County, Kentucky is dry. Next-door Bourbon County, as the name implies, is not."

I like dope and I don't like going to jail, so thanks but no thanks.
Tell HN: un-design of everyday thing
On a recent business trip, I was booked at the W Hotel in SF. Nice decor, but they overdid it to the point that "usability" suffers. Now I used to travel every week, so I know business hotels. Just like in s/w or web design, when a designer tries too hard to be cute or fancy, he/she ended up irritating. Here are some examples from that trip.

I could not find the light switches for the desk area for the first hour, because they were all located in an out-of-the-way side. And the switches are small.

For a hotel that recommends the guest to be green by recycling, their water lever in the bath / shower did such a poor job that when you set it to shower, half the water actually went down to the bath, instead of to the shower head. Wasted water.

The water faucets at the wash basin: one turn clockwise and the other turn counter-clockwise to open the water. Go figure.

I can mention a couple more, but the point here is not to rant - I like Starwood hotel chain. The point is to hear your experiences of "un-design" similar to mine.

And Merry Christmas, by the way!
ditto....I tried hotspot shield and it didn't work. It's a shame..I found some really decent songs.
Uh,

If you read the definition you posted, you'll notice it says "linking". The link can be explicit or implicit. The original article certainly established an implicit link between the beliefs of the left and the belief in global warming.
1) Rhapsody (yeah, I know hackers are supposed to hate DRM, Windows, and Real Networks, but I really like being able to pay $10 a month and listen to any song, ever made, instantly).

3) news.ycombinator.com The comment section is almost invariably better than 95% of articles in the NYTimes.

4) Google Apps

5) Salesforce

6) HelpSpot?

7) An app that could automatically convert a web site created in Dreamweaver or some custom solution into a wordpress blog.

13) wikipedia

20) google search, site:news.ycombinator.com best laptop (etc)

22) DabbleDB
http://reviews.ebay.com/Leopard-ocelot-seal-otter-Endangered...
The shop light was a good choice. I'm a little confused about the grease gun. I've worked on cars since I was really young, and honestly cannot remember pulling one out, except on farm equipment.

I'd recommend a set of wrenches, sockets, socket adapters (get EVERY combo you can here), and 2 really good socket wrenches. Don't skimp on the socket wrenches. Money well spent. Also, a hammer, (rubber mallet, and metallic kind). Last but not least, some sort of ginormous pry bar and a 2-3' section of 1/4" steel pipe, that fits snugly around your socket wrench. Trust me, you will understand why very soon.

Get those items, which shouldn't break the bank, and you are ready to tackle damn near everything, aside from a crankshaft replacement.
I think his intended audience are right-wing people who use incidents like Climategate to justify their beliefs in ideas such as creationism. I don't think many people here are part of that audience.
You should read Norman's "The Design of Everday Things." I bet you'd really enjoy the bit where he discusses hotel doors.

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...

It's a really great book, and something I would consider a must-read for serious UI designers/developers. While the book was written in the 80s, and talks about things like ring slide projectors, VisiCalc, the original Macs, the ideas about what constitutes good and bad design are salient to this day.
That quite obviously doesn’t matter when he is talking about climate change.
How's the mouse?
Repair manual and performance handbook for my 1993 Mazda MX-5.
A Panasonic DMC-LX3 camera was my big present.
Something fascinating to me, having grown up on Swedish media, is how similar in craziness the right wing US media is to Swedish mainstream media -- but opposite.

If you follow Swedish media you miss lots of information on Israel/Palestine -- Pallywood has never been mentioned, torture between different Palestinian fractions are similarly censored. Etc, etc.

I was never so stupid that I believed media about big advertisers, but the general level of spin was a shock to me when I found out.

(I'm not a pro/anti hater re the Mid East, so no flame wars please. It is a good check on my local media, since it is well covered in international press. The reason seems to be that Swedish journalism was actively infiltrated by left wing extremists after 1968.)

Anyway, my point is that this article looks more like extremist Swedish media than mainstream media... I can't really know enough to argue about many internal US conditions, but some of the points look a bit fishy.

Number 3, Somali pirates -- not news to me. A fast Google shows this have been discussed in at least NY Times.

Number 4 cites Counterpunch... not exactly Washington Post.

Number 5, lead in lipstick -- I frankly don't believe that levels entering humans in USA are close to high enough to have biological effect. That must be a conspiracy theory (comments on the article noted that, too).

Number 9, white phosphor in Gaza is afaik not shown to be planned to reach the ground (air explosions for smoke effect are probably legal)?

Etc.

Is this article really HN-quality?

The US media needs criticism, like all media, and some advertisers are certain to have a large enough budget to avoid too much of analysis. But there must be better media criticism around, which doesn't smell so bad from idealist agendas?
I tend to agree with the straw man accusation leveled against Watts. His research seems to be an extension of theories of influence, not so much contradictory. But if he didn't pitch it as a war, he wouldn't get media coverage such as this article itself.

Watts' main problem is that the Influence lobby sees one type of influential people when there are degrees of influential people. Complete farce: the Influence lobby itself is not one big bubble; it has lots of different theories, many of which talk about degrees and levels of social influence.
While we're talking about science-based medicine:

1. Lithium is a serious medication, but for many people it's their only chance to live life on their terms rather than at the whim of their illness. Some, but not all, experience emotional blunting.

2. Some, but not all, get kidney or thyroid problems. The number increases over time, but it's far from a guarantee.

I sometimes prescribe lithium for my patients. I wish there was something unambiguously better out there, but every alternative has issues. It's not the best choice for everyone, but it is the most evidenced-based choice, and the only choice consistently shown to reduce suicide.

The best thing I can do for many of my patients is to make absolutely sure they have bipolar disorder (and have a need for one of these medications). The recent rate of growth of the diagnosis is concerning for over-diagnosis.
Rejection from a grad school and a call from a collecting agency!
It is obviously an irritating stab at humor. Here I was expecting a real update.

Edit: I propose that the sensationalist headline be changed to reflect the fact that this article is a fake.
Aye, the entire thing reads like a bad joke. iTrim? iDrive? yeah, no.
Madness! I guess my "idea" depends more on engineering advancements then. When I wrote the parent I'd just finished watching a series of the excellent Peep Show (filmed mostly via helmet cam), and I was thinking how I'd like to be able to jump into anyone's head and observe their life in that way.
That is a brilliant idea. I've wanted some dry-erase wallpaper http://www.walltalkers.com/ since I worked in an office that had it, but the dry-erase floor is now on my list.
Apple owns iSlate.com--the mystery deepens
I want a Winnebago.
28. Unblab (http://www.unblab.com)

They seem promising (I know one of the founders personally) but things are going slower than the impression I originally got. One of their products (Gtriage) is already out though. Basically they're doing data mining on people's inboxen.
Depends on the country it was shot in, and if the animal was wild or not.

Wild Leopard is a CITES Appendix I species, meaning that it's pretty much illegal to trade in or to move across borders. It's possible to do it legally, but in order for that to be the case your family would have needed a special export permit from where they hunted it, and they would have had to get a similar permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service to bring it back into the US - and this is quite difficult.

If they can prove that it was bred in captivity, then it only requires a FWS import permit (since captive Leopards are CITES Appendix II), which is reasonably easy to get.
Ask HN: Have you given up your dream for your dream job?
I had an interview a few hours ago. They basically offered me my dream job and a possible partnership after a year. And I was planning to quit my current job at the end of next year to start my own business.

Have you been in a similar situation? Did you choose your dream or your dream job? Do you have any regrets?
Yourgrounds.com is in beta right now, and should be a better way to use classifieds than craigslist.
Several nice sweaters, a suit, some decent stationary, a watch, and a plane ticket home to see my family.
Duplicate clicky: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006556
SCVNGR Raises A Lucky $4 Million From Google Ventures
That day-long cooking internship sounds awesome.

Unrelated, but what exactly does a "credit analyst" do for a company like Facebook?
Pick up a copy of the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, read it, and work on developing your "growth" mindset.
We have been awash in buffer overflows and other, similar errors (printf strings come to mind) that are actually impossible in a safer language for years. SQL injection can happen in a safer language but you can't take over the web server by doing them. There is nothing fundamental about system languages that requires unsafe array operations. This is a flaw, and it is a flaw of C specifically and a flaw inherited by many C-descended languages. This is not some ivory tower thing that was discovered after C was designed; it was apparent even at the time (although Pascal's fix was pretty bad, variable length arrays fix it neatly). There are compiler articles from the late 70s and early 80s pointing out how even a naïve compiler could easily optimize out bounds checking in most operations!
It's worth remembering that this is an issue even in the US, too! Until about a year ago my house in rural New York was stuck on dial-up. (We now thankfully have 10mbps DSL.)
That's pretty disgusting. Good on you that you are figuring out a noble way to get rid of it.
Molecules and synapses cement memories, say scientists
My present was my extended family agreeing to play Werewolf for the first time. I've been dying to play ever since I heard about it, but haven't had enough people to try it. (It requires at least nine; eight players and a moderator.) It was a huge hit and we're playing it again tonight with even more people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_%28party_game%29

I also got a kegerator.
Gift certificates are like being given a ToDo list.
If you had said "Sunscreen can be harmful" as opposed to "Sunscreen is harmful", your message might have been better received. Sunscreen is just a tool. It can do good things for you if you use it properly, and bad things if you don't.
While I agree that certain alternative therapy based funding agencies aren't exactly an optimized system (funding energy waves? ESP? etc.) Big Pharma has its own brand of brokenness.

I read this book, and found it quite eye opening. I haven't checked up on everything that I read about, but the things I did look into were consistent with the claims...

http://www.amazon.com/Truth-About-Drug-Companies-Deceive/dp/...
I live in fairly urban US, about two miles from a major pipeline with so much bandwidth that attempting to describe it would only show my lack of networking knowledge.

My university has spent thousands of man-hours throttling student bandwidth use (to 30GB/mo). Right now we're using less than half of the bandwidth we pay for.

:-(
Interesting that "6. More variants of CRM" hasn't had much attention.
He has a book now, Elements of Programming: http://www.amazon.com/dp/032163537X/
20mbps up speed is essencial are you kidding? At 10mbps (approx) I have three people online at the same time.

1 playing on facebook
2 playing twitch-based video games online (twitch mechanics = it is important to know exactly where the other player is because you are avoiding his bullets or fireball or whatever, WoW is not twitch based, counterstrike is)

None of the 3 people experience anything less than perfect service, all running on the same router.
"The best thing I can do for many of my patients is to make absolutely sure they have bipolar disorder (and have a need for one of these medications). The recent rate of growth of the diagnosis is concerning for over-diagnosis."

Indeed. It is surprisingly hard for medical system to reverse a diagnosis, so what's made first often sticks. (I know this from my own experience, my friend's, and Rosenhan's experiment). And too often bipolar is confused with borderline, or ptsd, or simply depression... this is particularly bad because some of the drugs which work for some of the illnesses instead drastically increase suicidality in others.

http://www.gladwell.com/2003/2003_03_10_a_dots.html

"In the early nineteen-seventies, a professor of psychology at Stanford University named David L. Rosenhan gathered together a painter, a graduate student, a pediatrician, a psychiatrist, a housewife, and three psychologists. He told them to check into different psychiatric hospitals under aliases, with the complaint that they had been hearing voices. They were instructed to say that the voices were unfamiliar, and that they heard words like "empty,""thud," and "hollow." Apart from that initial story, the pseudo patients were instructed to answer every question truthfully, to behave as they normally would, and to tell the hospital staff--at every opportunity--that the voices were gone and that they had experienced no further symptoms. The eight subjects were hospitalized, on average, for nineteen days. One was kept for almost two months. Rosenhan wanted to find out if the hospital staffs would ever see through the ruse. They never did.

Rosenhan's test is, in a way, a classic intelligence problem. Here was a signal (a sane person) buried in a mountain of conflicting and confusing noise (a mental hospital), and the intelligence analysts (the doctors) were asked to connect the dots--and they failed spectacularly. In the course of their hospital stay, the eight pseudo patients were given a total of twenty-one hundred pills. They underwent psychiatric interviews, and sober case summaries documenting their pathologies were written up. They were asked by Rosenhan to take notes documenting how they were treated, and this quickly became part of their supposed pathology. "Patient engaging in writing behavior," one nurse ominously wrote in her notes. Having been labelled as ill upon admission, they could not shake the diagnosis. "Nervous?" a friendly nurse asked one of the subjects as he paced the halls one day. "No," he corrected her, to no avail, "bored."
Dear HN, I wrote a Firefox extension that strips out google links from adwords
I think I would like the Leopard Skin a lot better with the Leopard still in it. Not a very practical pet but they are a beautiful animal.

http://www.fugly.com/media/IMAGES/Strange/leopard_skin_sheet...
lithium guarantees irreversible organ damage

Kay Redfield Jamison has been on lithium for a long time and credits it with saving her life. Lithium does have some nasty side effects and not all patients who start with it stay on it. Lithium does need to be used with medical supervision, as its "therapeutic range" is narrow.

It is incorrect that patients using mood stabilizing medications lack normal emotional affect. What they are often able to achieve, with differing patients benefitting more or less from differing medications, is freedom from ENDOGENEOUS mood variation unconnected to life events, and a return to the normal functioning of the human mood system as a response to what is objectively happening to the patient.

Investigation of long-term treatment effects of lithium on the human brain reported in the primary sources cited in the Goodwin-Jamison textbook

http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Rec...

suggests lithium has a neuroprotective effect on brain cells. That is demonstrated by neuroimaging and brain chemistry studies in human beings, by in vitro studies of animal cells, by necropsy studies of animal subjects and by autopsy studies of human beings who die from causes other than mood disorders.
Okay, on further research and a bit of help from Wikipedia - I believe it's not leopard fur, but rather 'serval' fur:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Serval_in_Tanzania.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serval

Servals are not endangered, does not mean I'll be making myself a cape out of it though!
PDFs on the Kindle 2 are effectively unusable in 99% of cases. There's no zoom function, so unless you break out a magnifying lens, you won't be able to read a damn thing on most PDFs. Quite sad, as I was looking forward to the update :(
Based on the title of the post, I'm sure that's where part of the inspiration for this post came from. That said, great book which I completely recommend.
Thanks for the pointer. I've pushed a commit that avoids __proto__, and produces this...

CoffeeScript:

Horse extends Animal

JavaScript:

Horse.__superClass__ = Animal.prototype;
Horse.prototype = new Animal();
Horse.prototype.constructor = Horse;

Calling super uses the __superClass__ reference. I hate to add it as an enumerable property, but there doesn't seem to be any other way to get at it, and at least it's on the class and not the object.
Nice idea. I've changed the official extension from ".cs" to ".coffee", and it'll go out with the next release. Thanks.
Hardly. Part of public awareness around the issues, sure.
With a DX in rotated mode I've never had a problem -- and I've downloaded and read dozens of different PDFs, including e-books with lots of diagrams.
Capicola and some Italian bread dipping sauce from my Mom, with a bottle of raspberry ice wine (yum!) on the way. New York hard rolls (oh how I miss New England sometimes) from my dad. Investments by Bodie, Kane, and Marcus and a hangover from myself. It's been a good Christmas already.
I'm bookmarking this because it's interesting, and potentially useful, but it highlights one of things I really, really don't like about Scala. Namely, like C++, it feels like the Scala authors put absolutely everything in, along with a few bags of syntactic sugar.

Import renaming, lazy evaluation for function arguments, and variables for closures all use the exact same syntax. The glob operator for imports (_) is different than it is pretty much anywhere else, and it means something different in the context of an iterator.

I like static typing with type inference, and syntactic sugar for common operations. But Scala takes the latter way too far, and IMHO it drifts off to unreadability pretty quickly, especially because it introduces a lot of uncommon conventions for common tasks.
Good lord. In the UK I get 24Mbit DSL (giving me effectively ~12Mbit speeds) for about £8 per month after a rebate offer. Is it that expensive in the US due to lack of competition, or just the sheer size of the areas you have to cover?
Even if they're on IE7, get them to go to IE8. Less buggy, and it has a js debugger.
I got a cool Threadless shirt (101 cameras), a nice vest, a David Sedaris book, a nice light, 'The Ruby Programming Language', 'The Definitive JavaScript Guide' and a wonderful day with family.

I'm digging into the JS book now and loving it, very comprehensive.
Which state can I move to to opt out of the national debt?
Yup, that's the one. The only issue I ran into with install today was that in my unibody 17-inch (latest gen, got it just a few months ago), the bluetooth module does not screw into the optibay (it was originally screwed into the superdrive). There are holes in the optibay for it, but the screws don't fit. Not a big deal though, the module is very small and won't move if left by itself (attached to a larger display cable).
Even though I drive a Ford Explorer I think I would have enjoyed getting a repair manual for it. I derive way too much pleasure from fixing my own car.