skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> opening up countries to the world's economy and ideas is the first step towards democracy.

Not saying that might not be true now a days, taking the optimistic view. But keep in mind that Iran took the first step towards democracy (from a quasi-sultanistic plain autocracy to a theocratic republic hybrid) when it closed itself to the world economy and ousted the Shah.

I know you mention that part of history in your fifth point, but this is probably something that is important to acknowledge when talking about Iran relations. Traditionally speaking, the Iranian people have many more reasons to associate the United States with even worse dictatorships, rather than with democracy.
But the bits of tunnel that aren't empty are extremely full.

A tube train carries over 1000 people maximum. But it also takes up about 1km of track before the next train (estimated since stations are about 10 minutes walk apart). We have 1 person per metre of tunnel. The platform is roughly the length of the train, 130m.

A small cart carrying one person could be, say, 1.5m long, and take up 3m (very optimistic, I think). Now we only have ⅓ person per metre of tunnel.

Let's say 200 people get on or off the train at a busy station. There's a train every 120 seconds. The additional space is slightly larger than the train (the platform).

If it takes 10s to get off the cart, in 120s we can load/unload 12 carts. But they're smaller, so we can do, say, 75 in the existing platform space (130m). That's 900, so this bit isn't a problem.

Maybe it adds up; I'm actually far to tired to continue working it out...
The aliens are superfluous entities because "aliens did it by unknown mechanisms" has no additional explanatory power than "it occured by unknown mechanisms."
I sure hope so. Incandescent bulbs are much more pleasant than any fluorescents and the vast majority of LEDs on the market.
I lived in Sydney for 8 months and Brisbane for 4 years. When thinking back, both feel like a distinct part of my life to a surprisingly equal extent. Maximizing the number of distinct phases in your life seems to me to be important in making it seem longer.
One country (DPRK) does not make a rule. An besides, the DPRK and the Islamic Republic of Iran are very different regimes with very different citizenry. Iranians, by and large, do not believe in a death cult of personality surrounding their leaders, and can be much more critical of governmental choices.
I just took it to mean he doesn't really value spending his time building a PC when a Mac fulfills his needs. If you truly enjoy building PCs, then it's not bullshit.
History of a fake football team that fooled the NYT
Blue Apron is the cooking version of a LEGO kit or a coloring book, the former of which has been popular for decades and the latter of which is apparently experiencing a moment as people look for ways to combat the lack of direction and clear goals in their careers and lives.

A lot of people aren't creative, or don't have the energy or confidence to be creative, or cooking just isn't "their thing" but they want to try it (or maybe they just need a gentle introduction). Following clear directions towards a well-specified goal when you have all the tools and ingredients you need right in front of you can be fun, relaxing, satisfying and confidence-boosting. See just about every video game ever made.

Of course someone who loves cooking isn't going to see the appeal of Blue Apron. For a lot of other people, cooking looks like this: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cook_home.
This is article is contradicting itself although it may not be so obvious. I imagine dwelling on regrets can be classified as a bullshit activity. It certainly does for me. I am sure you can infer the rest of my argument.

Just do the best you can with your time. If you become unhappy with how you spent it you can use that to inform you on future decisions but you can't change the past.

The pain of having missed significant time with someone you care about is severe, but it is also a thing you can't change.

I am not saying pg is wrong, I am pointing out a problem.

Life may be too short to worry about how you are spending your time.
"Aliens exist" and "an advanced technological civilization built a physics-defying megastructure around this specific star" have rather drastically different prior probabilities.

Anyway, I'll give the megastructure conjecture much more weight the second someone in the research community suggests it, preferably with some sort of a testable hypothesis. As far as I know it has been purely layperson speculation and as such not much more plausible than the ramblings of UFO believers or free energy cranks.
When time is scarce, you start to prioritize things that are really important to you. If your main life goal is to ship great software, then building your own PC is just taking away precious time.

As DHH said in Twist interview: "If you're not working on your best idea right now, you're doing it wrong"
The Sokal affair is explained in realizing that he didn't know what he was talking about and essentially quote-mined the people he was targeting while carefully shrouding his deception. He claimed to believe in what he said in good faith, and he actually didn't. You can't tell that from reading his essay.

http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/fish.html
This is complete b/s. I (too) often take the tube at peak hour, the left line is usually full, even in long escalators like the connection between the DLR and the central line at Bank. The idea that you have an empty left line and a packed right line is just not true.
With many thing once people get used to a change their behaviour adapts in ways that the changer did not hope for. I suspect this will end with each person standing across both sides of the escalator cutting throughput.
Really, how naive can one be? Who is still using phones with dial disc? Who uses VHS recorders? CRT monitors? Would anyone like to stick to them because of a wooden case?
In 50 years we surely won't be using laptop style devices but rather something with much more intuitive input...
I wonder if it also means US citizens will again be permitted to enter Iran as tourists.

They currently can't, and it's presenting a problem for people driving/riding round the world.
You are wrong about the bottleneck at the bottom, generally you can usually proceed up the left and walk the escalator without being delayed by the bottleneck queue of people wanting to stand on the escalator. Those folks are generally to the right leaving a relatively clear path on the left.

So it is slow now for those of us that normally go at speed through the warren tunnels such as Holborn. There will be no fast overtaking lane on the escalators.
> One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option.

This also has a darker cousin for some parents: since spending time with one's children is always a viable and valuable option, spending time without them becomes difficult. People without children often notice that most of their parental friends disappear. This despite the prior protestations of many that "We'll still do things after we have kids."

Undoubtedly some parents work more efficiently than their childless selves (this is also motivated by a desire to earn money to support the kids). But can they socialize more efficiently too, in particular with people who don't have kids?
How long are those escalators in Vancouver and Japan? According to the article, what they saw in the London escalators was that on the really long ones, not many people wanted to walk, but on the shorter ones they did.
The space on an escalator is quantized. You don't stand on the same step as the next passenger, lest you be accused of frottage; the closest packing in the direction of travel is one person per step. The inter-step distance on escalators is large enough to acommodate walking motion.
He Irons,. She Stitches
Some practical ways that readers can implement this advice:

1. Don't work for a start-up, since they don't impart salary-winning experience to you, they don't pay you or provide reasonable benefits, and they also don't allow you the freedom to work on big ideas that they usually promise. The lines used to sell naive engineers on working in start-ups are as paramount to life's-too-short-bullshit as anything can be.

2. Don't agree to work in Agile/Scrum-like one-size-fits-all software management environments. Almost every single aspect of these systems is bullshit and will waste your time and break down your morale while draining away your productivity in the best years of your life.

3. Don't work in open-plan offices or even offices that merely have cubicles. It's been settled for a long, long time that even in dense urban areas, providing private offices for individual knowledge workers is extremely cost effective for businesses, as productivity, work-place cognitive health, job satisfaction, moral, etc., all go up substantially. Generally the only reasons for open-plan offices are (1) bullshit trendiness in which an organization performs a shallow copy of some other organization, (2) hyperbolic focus on short-term costs, which means you should be thinking that the upper management doesn't know what they are doing and are bullshitting you -- it's similar to seeing a company stop providing free coffee as a money-saving tactic. It's bullshit -- coffee is so cheap and the productivity and good will it brings are so valuable that it's virtually never a reasonable plan to cut it; and (3) environments where upper management get off on surveillance and cognitive manipulation, and so it becomes a company cultural value to cram everyone into big rooms where you function more like a piece of office furniture than as a worker.

Personally I would also add that life's too short for enterprise C++ and Java (the languages themselves are quite fine, but anyone telling you that some legacy system couldn't have been maintained and incrementally brought into a better state by 2016 is, once again, bullshitting you and see you as nothing but a glorified code janitor).

I think if I could give any advice to young developers, it would be that if they want management types to respect them throughout a prosperous career, they have to avoid the bullshit of the items above. If you let a manager or executive bullshit you by duping you into working for a start-up, by getting you to agree you are a child whose own creative thinking about problem solving can't be trusted and so Agile/Scrum cookbook management is needed and you must play your part, or by getting you to agree that your natural inclinations for privacy, clarity of thought, protection of productivity and time, should all be sublimated so you can be a "team player" by wearing headphones that cost more than your employer's 401k matches for the year so you can just barely function 10 feet from a foosball table, you've already lost, and it will take years to undo the damage.
This is the best essay I've read since the Addiction one. Cheers.
This was a really powerful essay. Don't know if using "8" is a good way to measure if there are not a lot of something. 8 light-years is pretty far and 8 tons is pretty heavy. But overall, great insights.

My favorite: "One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area under the curve is small, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin."
I think the gap between what a person would be willing to pay to play this game and what a casino would be willing to charge is the reason that no one plays it.
Which freely available works on this matter would you recommend reading instead? I'm interested in seeing what kind of philosophy other people prefer.
This article resonated a lot with me. It verbalizes what I've been trying to do over the past year or so with my own life. For me a lot of the BS elimination on the first pass was just getting rid of distractions and interruptions, so I cut out the phone/email/chat, etc all during my working hours except for certain times, like 10 minutes after lunch and just before the end of the day. The noise was all driving me insane.

The next step was to remove things from my life that cause stress and are not worth the effort because of the BS they involve. Whether that's just life situations or clients it has been very refreshing.

The next step was to kill a lot of tv/movies, and most of my free time internet usage.

Finally, I started steadily filling in the new time gainings with things I really care about and the personal sense of well-being and accomplishment has improved drastically.

So I have no intent of doing anything other than continuing to go down this road, I've gotten in better physical shape, better health, enjoy life more, have learned a new language, visited many new places, my stress level has dropped by at last 200%, its been a very positive journey so far.
I read some "rebuttals" to the previous essay, and while there were definitely some valid points brought up, a lot of them seemed to me to have misinterpreted a lot of what was said. PG tweeted about feeling like a lot of his side of the "debate" was pointing out that he hadn't said something. [1]

[1]: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/688044252744527875
From what I understand? Saudi Arabia has plenty of money banked; They can survive a decade without the sort of windfall profits they've enjoyed.

"SAMA's net foreign assets totaled $628 billion in November, down from a record high of $737 billion in August 2014,"

The marginal price to produce a barrel of Saudi crude is still the lowest in the world, at just three USD. What's going die out once the equipment is worn out (or require extensive subsidy) are marginal plays in developed countries like Canada, the US, and the North Sea, the Arctic, the deep offshore drilling, tight or heavy oil, tar sands, tar shales, smaller fields without economies of scale, and all forms of biodiesel & ethanol (yes, even the most efficient, Brazilian ethanol).

All the oil-dependent economies are going to suffer and compensate monetarily, by drawing down sovereign wealth or cutting expenditures, but the harder bound is the level at which it makes economic sense to stop drilling. Production prices in the above settings are high enough that they just can't make money at $30/barrel, which is a whole other category of problem than not making enough money to feed the government budget which has ballooned only in the last decade taking advantage of higher prices.

http://knoema.com/vyronoe/cost-of-oil-production-by-country
Wide disagreement? Sure, the people who disagreed wrote essays, but people who agree are usually invisible (how do you write an essay about agreeing with some other essay? and why would you bother?). I think the reason some people got so riled up was that there was so much uncomfortable truth in those essays. Just as people usually don't bother to post when they agree with something, they usually don't bother to post when they disagree with something that is obviously nonsense. Graham's essay created the perfect storm by hitting a raw nerve with a vocal community -- but that doesn't mean there was "wide disagreement."
Only if the number of people running is small. If there's a large enough number of people running up the escalator, then the capacity will be increased over everyone standing. It's quite simple.

According to the article, the problem they had was that on really long escalators, not many people bothered to run, so the capacity was indeed too low.

The solution is simple: cattle prods for people on the left who run too slow. That'll get them up it faster. Seriously, what a bunch of lazy people. I can understand elderly or obese people not running up the escalator (which is why the right needs to be reserved for them), but the rest of you have no excuse.
"Research shows sharing links on social networks prevents cancer"
who would pay? that's probably the person you should asking first. Would an office pay extra for a tele-presense robot?
Use https://startpage.com/

It uses Google, but Google won't get your ip.
My father's death taught me to finish the things I start. He was a software engineer in the 70s and 80s, and he taught me how to program when I was a little kid. When he died in 2011 I went through his computer, looking at the projects he was still working on. It was profoundly sad to think that these projects were frozen, that no one would ever use them. The experience of looking through his unfinished projects led me to make the transition from hobbyist programmer to professional.

It was hard to stop playing with a bunch of different projects and make myself focus on one single project, but in the end it has been extremely satisfying to finish what I start. I wish my father was still around to see what I've done, but I might never have finished anything without the lesson of his passing.
Homemade Arduino Water Sensor (2013)
Poor PG, who only sees people telling lies about him when they vehemently, sardonically disagree.
This is such an ignorant statement that it is difficult to decide how exactly to unpack it. As an Iranian let me attempt to do so anyway:

First, Iran is Shia, not Sunni. So, no, they are not Wahabi. Just like the Queen of England is not Catholic but rather Anglican (Protestant).

Second, it is arguable whether Iran is more liberal than Saudi Arabia. In some instances it is. In others it is not. This is a matter of religious debate. Just like Saudi Arabia, as a Muslim, you can not simply stop being a Muslim or convert to another religion or become an atheist.

Iran also has consistently persecuted non-Shia Muslims (including Sunnis, Sufis, Ahmadiys, etc.) as well as the Bahais who are the largest religious minority in Iran.

The reality is that Iran implements Sharia just like Saudi Arabia. They chop off hands, blind people, hang people in public hangings off cranes, etc. The Iranian version of Sharia is a little different than that of Saudi Arabia. This is because they are Shia and have a different version of Islam, not because they are full of sugar and spice and everything nice.

Third, Iran certainly does exports their version of Islam just like Saudi Arabia. The most obvious one right now is Yemen where the Houthis are being used by Iran as a proxy to fight Saudi Arabia.

But Iran has also funded Shia Muslims in Nigeria [1] and elsewhere in Africa. They also created and continue to fund Hizbollah to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year as well as shiploads of weapons and explosives which Hizbollah uses as a terrorist organization to perpetrate untold atrocities.

Iran has also perpetrated many acts of aggression and terrorism globally: Kenya, Thailand, Argentina (AMIA bombing), Paraguay, etc. [2]

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/23/nigeria-s-k...
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianoce...
[2] for more complete list, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro...

It is only as a consequence of a wholesale ignorance of the reality of the Iranian regime, its government's motivating philosophy, and its brutal autocratic and dictatorial grip on power that someone could say what you've just said.

If this comes across as a sharp response it is because I'm tired of people giving Iran a pass by way of a false comparison to Saudi Arabia and/or misunderstanding or not taking the time in the first place to inform themselves about the realities of the current regime.

As an Iranian who has had family members and friends of my family imprisoned on trumped up charges, tortured and killed and their property seized (to then be charged for the bullet that killed them) it is unconscionable to give such a blood soaked regime a pass of any kind.[3]

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_fee
What to do when you realize you made a bad hire
Aren't LEDs and CFLs significantly more durable than incandescent? Certainly they're more durable than tungsten-filament incandescent bulbs. Hopefully they can do better than just parity with LED/CFL power consumption otherwise it wouldn't seem worthwhile.
Should We Allow Bulk Searching of Butt Archives?
Capacity is ultimately a measure of many people are passing a point per second, not about how well they squeeze together.
Yep, been there, done that. I took the stairs there. Americans are incredibly lazy.
Not forever, but long enough. RHEL in general has quite a long period until they EOL it.
It is optimistic, but not naive.

I'm not saying that our relations will in any way reduce the two sides' hatred for each other. The US now has a vested interest in reducing tensions between Sunnis and Shiites.

If we have a diplomatic partner on one side of the fight (e.g. only the Saudis), our response must be to either support their interests in the region or stay out of it. If we have interests on both sides, our options are to either push for peace or to play the sides against each other in hopes of chaos and a mutual weakness.

We may end up pushing for the latter, as was the case in the Iran-Iraq war, but with a shared enemy in the Islamic State and our long-overdue recognition that chaos hurts our own security and economic interests, it is in our own self-interest that we advocate for stability.

Let me be clear: both Iran and Saudi Arabia are ruled by theocratic despots. They will continue to revile each other and assert themselves in the region. But it is far easier to turn a blind eye on their bad behaviour when we have no other option (both in SA and Pakistan.)
Aaron Swartz's Top Rules for Success
Lower density, but moving faster. Capacity is about flow, which is people per second, not people per inch.
Cuba? Burma? Syria?
I'm no fan of Saudi Arabia, particularly their global proselytizing of radical Islam and internal repression of opposing thought, but they're not comparable with Iran. Iran directly arms and funds terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. They funded terrorists in Iraq with the sole purpose of killing as many American troops as possible and undermining the new Iraqi government. They are allies of Al-Qaeda and provided material support to their operations, including US embassy bombings and 9/11. They've also continued to support the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Even though they are not shy about their imperial intentions in the Middle East, the West seems to be sticking its head in the sand. The risk of an Iranian-dominated Middle East should not be under-estimated. They already have their hands on Syrian, Lebanese, Yemeni, and Iraqi politics. They exert their influence by extortion. If you don't bend to their will, Revolutionary Guard-backed insurgents blow you up.
I guess with all these contributions, where do you draw the line for the inevitable Nobel Prize? When these structures were first discovered? Or when some could use them for genevediting?
BIDTHRONE – AUCTIONING 4.0
>You are wrong about the bottleneck at the bottom, generally you can usually proceed up the left and walk the escalator without being delayed by the bottleneck queue of people wanting to stand on the escalator. Those folks are generally to the right leaving a relatively clear path on the left.

Yeah, that's nothing at all like America. Over here, people will just get on and stand in the middle of the escalator and hog as much room as they can.
US citizens can currently visit Iran but must be accompanied by a tour guide.

Neither the state department nor the Iranian government would like one to do so, but Americans can still visit the country.
You kind of do. Energy available is a function of the difference between the input and output energy.

You can do useful work with the difference. It's not possible to harvest everything without also emitting some.