skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"... Conspiracy, or just a boring story? ..."

Both. What is not reported is sometimes just as important as what is reported because you have to ask why?

"... Changes in war reportage since the Vietnam War are a microcosm of the perception management that is embedded within society. ..." ~ http://old.disinfo.com/archive/pages/article/id1298/pg3/inde...

If business is war, could it not follow that under reporting of the battles business undertake in court also be a casualty. Noam Chomsky noticed this with East Timor, an Australian neighbor. The country was at war with Indonesia but barely reported. [0]

[0] Chomsky, Radical Priorities, 1981 ~ http://www.chomsky.info/books/priorities01.htm
Things that seem to work for me:

A) try to get the projects to be as minimal as possible. perhaps you are avoiding finishing them because they don't need the finishing work? relentlessly try to remove as much as possible in order to ship.

B) get things shipped. social feedback and pressure work wonders for motivation.

C) write things to do with a given project on cards, and put the cards out in front of you. as you do the thing, you retire the card to the retired pile. watch it stack up.

D) draw a 2 x 4 grid on a piece of paper and write things that have to be done in the grid squares. as you finish each one, cross it out and put a new item underneath it. when the sheet gets too messy, rewrite it.
Techzing 33 - The Passion Fractal (instant audio)
I forgot where I read this
"What's the one thing you would do if you knew you could not fail?"
It might be a chemical problem for which there are no behavioral solutions. Investigate AADD and think about seeing a psychiatrist about it.
You've assumed your conclusion there: that the system Searle describes is able to encode information in a way similar to a human Chinese speaker.
The meaning of words is subjective.

No. Or at least, not entirely, not in any significant way, and mostly just no.

If language were truly subjective, we should expect almost all attempts at communication to fail. If language were radically subjective, then two people speaking to each other in the same language would be for all intents and purposes like a speaker of (only) English trying to communicate to a speaker of (only) Chinese. It's manifestly the case that this isn't so. Beyond this, if language were truly subjective, we wouldn't be able to think (since the person-to-person communication problem would emerge even for one person).

The real world strikes again.
marketplace for people to sell the art they create with aviary tools; this model is potentially inclusive of consumer products like cafepress, business logos like 99designs and virtual goods like imvu developer community.
What's wrong with the objection that, if you accept that any two universal Turing machines are equivalent in power, Searle's argument amounts to(letting P be "there exists an algorithm A such that any computing system executing A understand Chinese" and Q be "a human simulating a computing system executing the algorithm A understands Chinese") "Suppose P. It's obvious that ¬Q. Since P is equivalent to Q, P leads to a contradiction. Therefore ¬P"? It begs the question.

Searle's thought experiment does inspire one of my own. Consider a computer that executes a sorting algorithm(mergesort, for example) on inputs consisting of sequences of number. Does it understand how to sort a sequence of numbers? What if a person uses mergesort manually to sort sequences of numbers? Does this person understand how to sort a sequence of numbers? Is there any fundamental difference between the understanding of a person who uses mergesort to sort sequences of numbers and that of a computer that uses mergesort to sort sequences of numbers?
You may be interested in "the $5 Guerrilla User Test", which was posted on HN last week:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1120820
and
http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/the-5-guerrilla-user-test/

the basic idea is to go into a bar and find someone who's a little bit drunk who'll spend 15 minutes using your software in exchange for a drink. "Watch your application crash & burn as people do all sorts of ridiculous ass shit they would never do in a lab but constantly do in real life", and learn from it.
Whether consciousness is only illusion is of no consequence. This path of thoughts (just like Berkeley's subjective idealism or its modern form, the Matrix movie) ain't leading anywhere (besides madness) hence it can be classified as solipsism.

In my opinion, what matters that you experience consciousness, life, happiness or sadness. Have great meals, love the people who love you, do cool stuff as a 'hacker'. Your life will be as 'real' as it could get, whether it's an illusion or not.
If enough reviewers like a product, I trust in the majority opinion even if some people where paid for their responses.
This article had multiple points; I found it useful to take notes and summarize: http://akkartik.name/blog/2010-02-20-23-55-51-soc

Tell me what I missed.
Maybe he wanted to throw people off his trail by misspelling a word a doctor would be able to spell correctly.

Could you imagine how terrible it would have been if he misspelled the to: address and it was returned to sender(assuming that address is legit)?
Yes, I agree and have found that the projects I manage to finish are often the ones that have measurable, visible progress and positive feedback (either from the computer or from people.)

There's a reason TDD and agile are approaches programmers generally enjoy more, and it's because you get positive feedback early. The success of these techniques are only partially due to their inherent ability to adapt to change: it's also the fact that the people using them are inherently happier because they get this re-enforcement they are going down the right path and making progress.
For some reason I thought of this post when I read this story, so I came back to post the link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-wr...

It's about writing fiction, but I think we can learn a lot from people who spend years holed up in a loft with a laptop typing out tens of thousands of words that may or may not ever be seen by anyone.

One theme that resonated with me is that you should try to get to something you can vaguely call "finished" as soon as you can: have something on the page that you can then come back and edit, refactor, tinker with. Might help. Good luck.
Unfortunately the rewrite was necessary no matter what tools were used (even if we had stuck with PHP). The existing codebase was bad. Very very bad. And, all things considered 3-4 months for a full rewrite was pretty good.

Whatever downsides there are to the scala/lift decision we have not experienced them yet. Though certainly we may run into them in the future.
That's a quote I first heard from Robert Schuller, the televangelist. I don't know if he originated it,
I'm not sure. Every large enough system ends up needing a lot of boilerplate to tune it to work correctly. I think if such a law existed most decisions would go through the (non-elected) supreme court or some independent autarchys than through congress, and what would be sunseted each four years would be the statements creating such institutions.
interesting idea. a few issues come to mind:

- people concerned enough about privacy to use such a service might have concerns about their emails being passed through your service as well.

- the domains of that service might get blocked on certain sites due to abuse and people using multiple email addresses to create multiple accounts.

- spam filters might block the inbound emails because the 'to' address doesn't match up to the user's. though i can't imagine many would place a high probability on this metric since mailing lists and such would act the same way.
Completely agree. I really hate the mindset that someone who opts not to micro-manage something is an idiot or dumb. It's insulting to me. As someone who spends 8-12 hours a day immersed in technology I just have no interest in customizing my slide-to-unlock screen. If people want to do that type of thing more power to them. I'm not going to call them an idiot or infer they are dumb. It'd be nice to get the same level of respect in return.
Hey there, I don't know you so take my advice if it suits you.

I generally pick up new things very quickly which is exciting at the beginning, but then it gets to be boring after a while. Five years after graduating university, the longest job I've held has been 9 months - which I don't consider a bad thing as it's not difficult for a programmer to find work.

I imagine you're like me - you learn very fast and enjoy challenges. When something becomes less challenges and more monotonous, that is when you want to pack it up.

One thing I do for things that are important is commit to working on it for just 15 minutes a day. You would be surprised at how much just 15 minutes a day can add up to after a few weeks. This is similar to Jerry Seinfeld's "Don't break the chain" (You can google it). Every day just do a little bit more. Since you limit the time you spend, you will probably find yourself not wanting to stop after 15 minutes if it is enjoyable. But make sure to stop anyways. Waiting until the next day will allow you to retain the excitement of the project and you will be looking forward to working on it tomorrow.

I would also highly recommend picking up the book "Mastery" by George Leonard. I have never heard anyone describe the learning process as well as him. His word for people like you is a hacker (this book was written well before hacker became mainstream). Hackers pick up things quickly but then quit when they reach a plateau. However, plateaus are normal parts of the learning process. Mr. Leonard says that many people quit when they get to that first big plateau because they feel they are no longer making (rapid) progress. However, he says that you should enjoy the plateau. The plateau is a way of your body saying "Ok, I've learned enough for now. I need to take it all in first before I can move on to the next stage." In fact, a plateau is a way of knowing that big gains will be found just around the corner if you can persist. If you're spiritual, you might think of plateaus as a test to see how much you really want to attain your goal.

Definitely, check that book out. It's very concise and you can read it in a couple hours.

And don't be so hard on yourself. Most people are exactly like you - it's easy to start things, much harder to follow through. Why do you think New Year's Resolutions are mostly a joke?
For Professor, Fury Just Beneath the Surface
Seems extremely inefficient to have modsecurity parse every request. Why not just block it at the script level instead of forcing modsec to deal with yet another rule to match.
Searle doesn't make an argument about formally equivalent Turing machines, he makes an argument about a person using an instruction book to manipulate strange characters.

It's a perfect trap for your intuition. You have an intuitive feeling that if you were to have a conversation in Chinese by following mechanical instructions from a book, you still wouldn't "really understand" Chinese. All well and good, so far.

But there are enormous leaps from the Searle-scenario that's so appealing to your intuition to a machine powerful enough to hold a conversation. As a trivial example, the Chinese room cannot even simulate a Turing machine unless you give the person inside rather a lot of scratch paper.

You can keep countering objections like this by adding more stuff to the Room. So to hold a conversation about the weather, we'll need to add some separate input channels to observe the outside world, and to talk about the Room's plans for today, we'll need to throw in something that can keep track of time, .... it just goes on. (And while you're adding all the extra machinery, don't forget that even the original book is incalculably large, not the merely hefty tome that you're picturing in your mind's eye.)

As you do this, you get farther and farther away from the original appeal to your intuition. So far that your only hope of making sense is to acknowledge that your intuitions about the simplified situation has absolutely nothing to do with a Chinese Room powerful enough to actually meet the original stipulation, that the room can "pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese".
There's a lot of good advice here, but I'd like to offer another perspective: since you consider this a personality flaw, perhaps you should consider if the projects you choose are well suited to you.

As an example, would you make a better farmer or a better chef?

A farmer deals with many short and long term projects: choosing and planting crops that will take the entire summer to grow; looking after the soil over the course of many years by rotating his crops; planning and executing a large scale harvest in the short few weeks that the produce is ripe.

On the other hand, a chef thinks day to day and minute to minute. Planning a menu for next week's meal; finding the ingredients; taking orders from customers as they come in over the course of an evening.

Both these occupations are valuable, but require vastly different skills and mindsets. Maybe you're trying to be a farmer when you'd actually make a fantastic chef!
From Okasaki's blog:

Sales were steady but trending downward, until 2004, when a book review by Andrew Cooke appeared on Slashdot. After that, sales doubled and have stayed at that level for several years. Of course, I can't be sure this increase was because of Slashdot, but it seems likely. Thanks, Andrew!

http://okasaki.blogspot.com/2008/02/ten-years-of-purely-func...
She's not saying she likes it because it's _from_ Google, she's saying she likes it because it makes interacting with Google services easy. Which is entirely objective, and apparently compelling enough to switch from her iPhone.
The Impact of the Lambda Calculus (1997) [pdf]
...Needs context. Why is Bill Gates going to Antarctica?
If you're already using mod_security then it's more efficient to use another rule than it is to pass the request onto the CGI
I think that all this advice is good. I would add to any list to find out what you want your end goal to be. When you decide what that is, make a list of smaller tasks that will accomplish your goal; like a do to list of sorts.

Then, complete each smaller part or your list. I tend to do the harder projects first, makng my work easier as I progress. If you are having an off day where you know you won't complete something, break it up into smaller tasks that you can complete.

Make sure you have enough time to complete one thing on your list so that it doesn't drag into the next day or whatever time fram you are looking at. Obviously, bigger projects may take longer than 1 day for whatever you are planning you goal to be. This way you still get a feeling of accomplishment, and you work towards something that needs to be done, even if it seems daunting at first.
In the full report -- as referenced by previous item <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1138099>; -- it's suggested the misspelling was intentional to highlight a code of bolded 'T' and 'A' characters.
Willow Bark contains salicin, similar to the primary ingredient in aspirin. Many modern drugs are plant derivatives.

I think the key here is to understand the chemistry and medical impact of the substance, regardless of whether it is "herbal" or "synthetic".
I would love to what tool were they using to create the layout after the paper wireframes? It looks like it can make 5X better looking web pages than I can, in half the time.
Ask HN: Would you use/participate in a translation site like this?
I think that this is only really a problem for people that have to do actual work. The best solution might be to move into management. Then, after you promise the project will be finished at such and such time, it will be easy to keep asking your developers why it isn't done yet.

Also, I have heard that Ritalin and Adderall are good for this sort of thing. Seriously. You've got to fight chemistry with chemistry.
That's a funny equivalent, MacDonalds was an initial investor and majority owner of Chipotle[1].

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipotle_Mexican_Grill
I had a similar problem. Here's what I've figured out myself over the last two years. I unconsciously sabotaged myself because I believed I was smart and didn't want to be proven wrong. I exhibited the following behaviors:

* Obsessed over details because I wanted every project to reflect my brilliance. When projects turned out to be decent (but not earth shattering), I would just abandon it rather than finishing it. I didn't want to dilute my image of myself.

* Pulled all nighters before deadlines without doing work. The I would attribute the fact that I did poorly to lack of sleep.

* Didn't ask for help on projects when I actually needed it because I wanted to be considered smart. Didn't ask questions when I didn't understand something for the same reason.

The solution for me was to bombard myself with proof that intelligence doesn't matter. Hard work is the only thing that matters. Intelligence doesn't mean anything if you don't invest the time. How are you supposed to compete with someone working 100 hour weeks when you work 10? You would have to be an order of magnitude smarter than them, and that's just not possible.

So if you're anything like me, you might be trying to cultivate the perception of intelligence rather than proving your intelligence through action. Real artists ship, and real geniuses finish their projects. Don't let the fear of failure or mediocrity stop you from finishing your projects.

(As for the original cause of this behavior, it most certainly was what other people are pointing out. From a young age I had the idea that I was smart cultivated by my parents and my teachers. This community is full of people who received similar treatment. Having such attentive teachers was a huge benefit, but this is one negative side effect.)
heh; i hadn't seen that - thanks. :)
Not a good way to make your point in my opinion. 3D rendering is also slower on both OSX and linux distributions. I don't doubt Adobe and their software is a problem, but I also think it's become far to popular to blame everything on Adobe.
RDF doesn't do much of anything. Its about OWL. I wish some people would learn about OWL.
Why am I being down voted? I'm trying to understand this guy's opinion. I don't understand why he made that comment, so I was wondering if it was a rule on HN or if he simply didn't like URL shorteners in general.
Last Christmas we were playing some kind of Jeopardy in my family and of course everyone was trying to use their portable wireless device to cheat one way or another. It's really an acceptably functional "external memory".
Ok, I didn't know about that. I can understand why they would seem unwanted, even though I don't see a reason to ban them, since I'd think links with shortened URLs would simply not be voted up in the first place...
Maybe join a team for your next project. There seems to be a lot of advice to pick a small individual project (which I agree with) but it may be helpful to be part of a team to start. Stay on a team until you get a few wins and go from there.
Transifex is probably a competitor in this space (http://www.transifex.net/).

One of the problems that I've had with lowest bidder translations is that the cost of a poor translation can be quite high. Working on a large real estate management application a few years ago, we hired a firm based on cost alone for a bunch of translations; and they did some weird things like using the word for "zipper" when we wanted "zip code". The translations were generally correct, but little things like that really made us look pretty bad in the eyes of our international customers.

So, my point is that I would go out and look for a company that had a good translation track record before trusting the public face of my company to someone on the basis of cost.
The field Searle is retardedly attempting to dismiss is now referred to as artificial general intelligence (AGI), not AI.

Also, philosophers should try to realize that we have this thing called science now.
The Mac Wrap is the worst thing I have ever tasted at any McDonalds, by a huge margin. Just...weird.

That said, I am glad they are innovating -- other things introduced in the past decade or so are quite good (and the Big & Tasty is now just $1.79 where I live -- perhaps half the price of what it used to be.)
As posted twice in this thread already: http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core-animation.html

They're currently burning a lot of cycles just drawing to the screen.
I'm hoping that some crowd-sourcing features will handle quality better. For example:

1) Similar to 99Designs, etc, everyone could vote on quality, so that could give you some confidence in the text.

2) Translator users could accumulate karma and reviews.

3) Translators' previous work would be public for inspection, and you could see comments and votes on previous work.

4) The requester could seek higher quality by offering a higher price.
doesn't work right in chrome
What about the alarmist content? Really, the fillet-o-fish is bad because it's made of ugly fish? Milkshakes used to be milk and icecream - and icecream has no ingredients, eh?Coffee syrup has coffee too low in the ingredients for your liking? You wouldn't expect to find water in chicken breast?

Aren't there enough genuine weird things to pick on in fast food?
Huh? How do you get from:

(1) It is possible to emulate the mind on a Turing Machine.

to:

(2) We don't have qualia or consciousness.

In my opinion, there's nothing about (1) that entails (2).
The herpes-bomb (or any crazy Harvard PhD hobbyist-bioweapon) would have made for more interesting news.

Scary stuff. Someone will adapt it to film.
Visio or OmniGraffle
> Parents who instead say, "Wow, you put in a lot of effort," teach their children that the success is based on factors that you can control, like how much effort you put in and how prepared you are and what you do. These kids do a lot better in life.

This is doing the same thing these parents are doing: "I was brought up this way, it's not my fault/I can't do anything about it" ;)
Didn't say she was from the company. I was pointing out that she admits to being a thorough Google Fan-gal, enamored of everything the company produces. Fan-boys/gals typically aren't critical, and this article did not give me any objective insights. I read more emotional torment in it than I did concrete analysis.

Plus, what I do gather is more repulsive than attractive. Google is building a device to [ultimately] lock us into their services and devices (or make their services available solely via their devices)? This is great?

Same concern with Apple. I worry about the fans of both behemoths.
Sounds to me that the VC funders think that they're not going to get an exit via IPO so the only exit where they can possibly get a 10 fold ROI is to sell it. And the only way to demand a higher price at sale is users. Lots of locked in users.
Any one looking for Summer Interns in CS
Hi Employers,

If you are looking for summer interns in CS field, post the info so that it helps ppl like me.
So why did this guy just target Democrats and liberal media, enemies of the Bush admin? Why did he associate it with 9/11, attempting to pin it on Islamists? How was he able to get everything ready in a week? How was silicon use to weaponize the anthrax when Ivins didn't have access to the tools to do this?

Killing oneself with Tylenol seems as odd a decision as David Kelly's "suicide" by penknife. Also no suicide note, yet they didn't do an autopsy.
It's OmniGraffle, you can catch a glimpse of the menu bar at around 0:44 or so.