skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"On the MBA side -- the MBA program at my alma mater has placed several of my friends in jobs that were a big jump in salary and growth potential from where they were coming in -- and none of them were bankers"

But I think this is what the author was trying to say. An MBA (I'll talk about the MBA since undergrad business degrees seem really terrible) is a way of gaming the corporate structure (and getting a raise in salary and so on , as you point out) more than acquiring any real skills or insights, which is why most MBA students become Management consultants vs entrepreneurs. One job is about talking the talk and the other is about walking it.

As an enginner/hacker I am a bit dubious about how business school professors can actually teach anything business related. (By and large) They have never run businesses, so how can they teach you how to run one? If they could build or run a multimillion dollar businesses would they be teaching? ( Not snark, I am genuinely curious. Can someone who has done an MBA explain how this works out. What value do these professors add. Couldn't you just read the books yourself?)
Single page version: http://thetyee.ca/Life/2009/12/16/MakeLove/print.html

So, the author starts with an academic study of the sex lives of modern young people, which drew some conclusions that porn is not the devil: "pretty conventional, almost identical to their parents," and "pornography has been demonized and that its effects are negligible." Then, she spends more than a thousand words trying to refute that entirely by anecdotal evidence, capping it off with "porn is having a profound impact on our culture."

I know asking everyone to act like good scientists is too much. But I would like it if people would at least try to act like bad scientists, and selectively use studies that support their predetermined conclusions. What a world, where you strengthen your point by citing only studies that refute it.
Try out Google Android OS without having to buy a phone
When does hard work pay?
Was the article in bad taste? I found it rather interesting.
Some of us don't quite have the luxury of fixing our tools (MSVC++ I'm looking at you). Considering the sheer complexity of languages like C++, it's unsurprising that there will be problems here.

I've been a blamer of tools as well, but I've convinced myself that it's ultimately wasted effort to do so. Better to simply come to terms with the fact that there do exist bad tools, that they ought to be avoided when reasonable, and that they should be used with care when necessary.
Steve Jobs and The Soul Of Things
HN! /. <blush/>, Charlie Stross, Lambda the Ultimate, New Scientist, Huffington Post, Fantastic Fiction (well weekly).
the tone of the article is that sex is something that happens to women. this perspective is damaging because it both precludes women from taking responsibility for enjoying sex, and gives men responsibility for their partner's satisfaction. sex is, to a certain degree, about selfishness.

i think it's great that gallop started MakeLoveNotPorn - being aware that both men and women can / should speak up when you like / don't like something is a good first step towards taking responsibility for having a good sex life.
> You're arguing among other things that the US and U.K. can't be bailed out, right?

There seems to be a disconnect between actual economic prowess and the notional value of fiat currencies that perhaps you will excuse my layman's final analysis that in the current international economic regime, long term viability is inherently dependent on force, and that nothing short of (re)asserting hegemonic power over planetary resources will avert the meltdown. US dollar is (afaik) apparently tangibly backed by military power and not much else.

If NATO fails to secure an unchallenged controlling position in the resource rich Middle East and Central Asia (aka "the War on Terror"), the collapse will be inevitable.
Off-the-shelf camera hacked to grab high-speed video
Yes, tools as big as C compilers and C++ compilers are pretty hard to fix, but then there was an effort to "fix" this by starting LLVM and clang, etc. One might argue that pg is "fixing" lisp by starting arc, and that Rick Hickey is fixing Java (and some say Lisp) by starting Clojure. In my case, i "fixed" fortran by getting into compilers and learning other languages.

So really "fixed" in this note I guess translates as "moved away from".
It's always nice to see papers published by my profs on HN. I would not have looked at those on my own.
"The euro slid almost 1 per cent to $1.357 yesterday, meaning it has lost 10 per cent of its value since November. The pound rose to 1.14 euros."

Data point 1: On day one the value of the Euro was exactly US$1.00.

Data point 2: The pound was worth €1.40-€1.45 for at least four straight years until last year's sterling collapse.

Yeah, clearly the Euro's in trouble.

In fact the enormous relative value of the Euro since the crash has been causing significant problems for exporting businesses (and tourism) across Euroland for the last 12 months. We could really do with a devaluation.
Embedded compilers are much worse. You have to pick and choose which stable version of gcc-4.x you can safely use. My AVR projects have been broken by compiler changes.

But it's much more than the optimizer. Even code generation at -O0 can be broken by assumptions about alignment, insn size, etc. This usually happens when you're using a very new or very old part and the gcc developers make assumptions based on their limited dev board setups.

All appreciation should be paid to those gcc developers as it is a very difficult job they do for free. Thanks!
hey, i filmed a video about it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1merER1zVFg

I work SEO for 3h59, and then I started a school in India teaching children how to use the computer....and I also have been traveling to a new country every 4 month2 for 2 years to study the language (i speak spanish italian and portuguese, lived in italy spain argentina brazil and India)
Yes, his more detailed piece (in two parts) tells far more.
And it isn't only insightful about the blunders of the newspaper industry, much of it applies to the mess that is commercial t.v. broadcasting and the broadcaster websites as well. (at least for the U.S.)
I found the bug (I think).. It's not "really" an optimizer bug per-se (although it is CLEARLY triggered by the optimizer).

Always treat __asm with caution !

--Ivan
Totally. I mean, he's begging for feedback. It's not like "You like that, baby?" has a subtext of "of course you do, because I'm awesome" or "of course you do, because my power to treat you like this turns you on." It's an honest question.
It's very different than the Green Stats.

One is simply using a service, the other involves rehosting content without the request or permission of the author or content owner.
Not I think. He anybody has ideas and/or dreams and believe in himself he would have pursued it anyway.
Now if you have some doubts then obviously go for the safer option.
And may be as nfnaaron points out may be they are gaining experience.
The Origins of J
Lower prices to the consumer is the most obvious answer to your last question.

Either you take as a given that people will buy that GIJoe from China or they won't. If they will, some company is going to provide it; in your case it just happens to be Walmart. If the consumer won't buy it, no retailer will provide it.

If your argument is that we should attempt to assign economic penalties (taxes, if you will) on the externalities such that the true cost of those is reflected in the fuel that Walmart (and everyone else) buys, I'm all for it. If you're suggesting that the most appropriate way to correct for those externalities is to raise the income taxes on the Walmart execs who appear on the "top 20 retailer execs" list, I don't see even a tenuous connection with which I can agree.
The Life, Times (and Death?) of Internet Explorer 6 (Comic Strip)
As much as I think that the article is problematic, I can totally imagine someone saying "you like that, baby?" in a rhetorical sense, rather than meaning it as an honest question. If that is the case, however, then it is a real problem that needs to be addressed rather than being blamed on porn.
A good workman should be able to make do with a nail and screwdriver, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give them a hammer instead.
The experience of being there when a room full of really bright and really accomplished kids learned that the company that 9/10 had passed on became a multi-million dollar success was priceless (and vice-versa). The message was unmistakeable.

What was the message?
I laughed when she mentioned the asking seven times part. First of all she counted, and she doesn't respond, and then she blames the guy.

I am so thankful for my girlfriend right now.
Corporate taxes (which are levied on profits) are most naturally passed through to the owners of that corporation. (Basically, they are taxing undeclared dividends.)

Taxes that a corporation pays in the course of doing business (fuel, payroll, etc) are presumably NOT allocated in this fashion.
Agreed on the first point. That's why my example is more like someone who for whatever reason (kids probably) is ready to trade the ups and downs of entrepreneurship for a steady high-level job.

To your second point: Is that true of most b-school professors? I honestly don't know, but I think some if not most have some good experience. The guy who taught me finance rocketed up the ranks for Coke, ran the operations of a multinational region, and retired to teach while in his 40s.

My international business professor, however, was an insufferable douche who had no real-world experience that I know of.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1125031
Lego Augmented Reality
HP's Wynyard finally Open
I find this very funny, the public is starting to see the arrogance of Google when they slip up on these public facing projects - most Adsense publishers or Adwords advertisers have seen this over and over again in the past with them... It is Google's true colors (always has been).
"Dr. Bisutti says she loves her work, but regrets taking out so many student loans. She admits that she made mistakes in missing payments, deferring her loans and not being completely thorough with some of the paperwork, but was surprised at how quickly the debt spiraled."
...
"After completing her fellowship in 2007, Dr. Bisutti juggled other debts, including her credit-card balance, and was having trouble making her $1,000-a-month student-loan payments. That year, she defaulted on both her federal and private loans. That is when the "collection cost" fee of $53,870 was added on to her private loan."

She's horrible at money, I have no pity. I will agree though that this form of debt should be dis-chargeable via bankruptcy.
The Art of Being a Location Levite: Where are you going to get your haircut?
I think dkarl was being sarcastic.
Making OLED Displays Cheaper
Huh, that idea seems so obvious, now that someone else thought of it and did it. Interlaced video in two dimensions rather than one, with the number of fields potentially adjustable on the fly. Trivial to select the number of fields (and thus the max framerate) as any perfect square. A little more work to select it as any number from 1 to the total pixel count. Though you'd need a monster aperture or a very bright subject to get anything but solid black from a one-pixel image sampled at 25MHz.
I think you've misunderstood. Sure, the author agrees that porn is not the devil, i.e. it doesn't lead to violent crime and it's not going to lead to the collapse of civilization, but nonetheless wants us to knows there are serious negative consequences that we should be aware of.
I have been on both sides of this feeling. In my freshman and sophomore year, I believed school was crap. Here are the feelings and attitudes I had:

1. school can't teach me much

2. I already know so much

3. Gosh why am I here?

4. Am I ever going to use this?

I was so turned off by the busi100 classes that I gave up even applying for business. Instead, I chose the easiest major on campus(communications) in hopes that I can quickly get my degree requirements and then drop in to higher level busi classes bypassing the annoying b-school prerequisites.

So after sophomore year I took a 3 semester break. During that time, I was working on my startup and living life as a non-student. It is also when I realized the holes in my "skillset"(for a lack of better word). I returned to school with a new attitude: I am going to nitpick classes to fill up the obvious holes.

My attitude upon return:

1. I have stuff to learn

2. I will take very specific classes fill up specific holes

3. I don't expect the class in itself to teach me as much as for it to provoke thought in me

My experience has been a complete opposite since return. I have learned a tonne from a few specific classes(sales management, market strat, market analysis). I am a startup guy. So when I say learned, I am talking about very practical shit that I am putting to use right now.

It's all about the attitude IMO. A subtle thing I realized: the classes in itself might not teach you but they can provoke thought in you that pushes you to learn specific stuff yourself that you wouldn't have known about.

If you think school can't teach you anything, take time off! It'll validate or invalidate your thinking.
Cyber attacks against Australia 'will continue'
The key is to keep your stuff out of your lifestyle. I have an immersion blender that I use about a dozen times a year. I got it as a gift, and it lives at the back of a cabinet underneath my kitchen counter. It's awesome!

I have three kettlebells that I use two or three times a week. They live beside my couch. There's a weight belt and a medicine ball beside them that I rarely use, and I swear I keep putting them in the closet, but the kettlebells are like a magnet for exercise-related junk.

The blender is awesome, even though I could easily live without it. The kettlebells are clutter -- until I find a good way to store them. (Any suggestions?)
Agreed, if you have a bug in a C program your first thought should not be that you're dealing with a problem in the compiler or standard libraries. However as you move farther down the chain, it's quite common to encounter bugs in open source code, especially in projects which have have a large body of "contributed" modules (I'm thinking of Drupal as a particular example, not to pick on that project, but I have found that the quality of contributed modules is generally not very good, excepting the modules that are widely used). Therefore I'd say that as a general rule, the likelihood of a finding bug in your "tools" is inversely proportional to the number of users your tools have.
Perhaps. On the Internet, it can be hard to tell sometimes. If so, then my bad.
Be VERY careful what you wish for. The fact that student loans are not dischargable directly contributes to increasing their availability and reducing the interest rate charged. (By dramatically reducing the risk of default.)

Otherwise, why wouldn't someone just run up $300K, declare bankruptcy the day they graduate, suffer credit-wise for 7 years and celebrate their 30th birthday completely debt-free without ever paying a dime of the loans?
You are absolutely right that you should speak up if something bad is happening to you. For example, if someone is smacking you in the face, you should speak up about it. But that person shouldn't be smacking you in the face in the first place. The author's complaint about porn is that it makes a lot of people think that unacceptable behavior is acceptable. I know I only have anecdotal evidence to back it up, but I went to a boarding school where a couple of guys had a pool going about which one of them could cum on their girlfriend's face first. The reason they had a pool going is that all of them knew their girlfriends wouldn't be cool with it. There definitely exists a class of men who do shitty, immature things in things in the bedroom. Don't blame the victim.
Alan Kay on Lisp and Fexprs
Seeking to Crack the Fed’s Secrecy Around the Bank Bailout
“you're explicitly engaging in redistribution”

Even a flat tax is redistribution of wealth as it would need to take into account that most people don’t start to earn money before they reach a certain age (and will likely stop earning money several years before they die).
Kids don't builder a coarser model of the evironment, adults do. Once again pg doesn't do his resaarch before espousing his amateur psychology.
I find this article somewhat related: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/14/techno_toys/
I often think about this. And of one more hidden cost of stuff, especially furniture: it occupies space in a place you pay rent for for. If that sofa takes 2 square meters out of my 40 square meters apartment, that means every 20th rent I pay is just because of this. If my rent is approximately the same as the price of that sofa was, I refinance if every 1.6 years.
> The software runs off of a Ubuntu Linux OS

Besides, one should say "on Ubuntu" not "off of".
But if it's procrastination because I'm trying to avoid it (because I'm not good at it), isn't that the perfect opportunity to bring in the "marketing guy/gal" cofounder to do that work for me? Ideally, you would then only have to actively "sell" it to one person who can pass it on to the rest.

What's being called procrastination here, I'd prefer to call specialization. But I'm probably being naive about this.
You see, that's my point. How do we know there are serious negative consequences at all? Because of the anecdotes she mentions? She didn't cite any rigorous study that concludes pornography is harmful, but simply appealed to our gut feeling that it's got to be hurting us somehow. While I may agree or disagree, my complaint is that her anecdotal evidence is somehow supposed to sweep away the presumably well-designed study cited at the start. That's the opposite of science.

Edit: My tone here is a little combative. Sorry, it's not intended as an attack on you.
I think the perspective of younger women is that they have to acquiesce or else they will not have a boyfriend. That is, if it is fairly universal that younger men demand such things from their girlfriends then women must decide to acquiesce or be celibate. I'm not saying this is the case but it is the author's point. Well, I believe it is her point.

They are saying that too many younger males have had their perspectives skewed by pornography and that something needs to be done about this. Maybe what the boyfriend really wants is something similar to '2 girls 1 cup' and that this want is the result of porn?
ChatRoulette was also discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123314
You Bought It, You Own It: Vernor v. Autodesk
If they could build or run a multimillion dollar businesses would they be teaching?

Business school professors are very well paid and live the life of leisure. Starting a business is risky and is hard work, and business PhDs aren't generally recruited to work as CEOs.
Microsoft Ends War on Macintosh with Office 2011
I just recently graduated from a top undergraduate b-school program. As an entrepreneur, I don't see anything that enticing about going back to get an MBA. Even if I was accepted into a top tier program. Why you ask?

Well, I am going to provide a very subjective opinion here, but would love to get some responses...

Most top ranked MBA programs cater to those who want to do one of 4 things after they graduate:

1. Become an Associate/VP in Private Equity
2. Become an Associate/VP in a Hedge Fund/Trading
3. Become an Associate in Management Consulting
4. Become a corporate executive

Now an MBA has some real benefit for those entering these fields and there is nothing wrong there. If you're an entrepreneur, I don't really see the added benefit of getting an MBA. Most of the knowledge obtained in the coursework can be learned through experience or just by picking up some literature (see "The 10-day MBA" by Steven Silbiger). From many seasoned entrepreneurs I've spoken with, an MBA limits the time you could be spending starting your business (unless you can start while in your program like Jerry Yang or Sergey/Larry)

There is an advantage through networking with other like-minded entrepreneurs in your program and using the school's resources, but it pretty much stops there.

The one exception I would make for an MBA program really benefiting the entrepreneur is hands down...Stanford.

Stanford has the proximity to the Valley and also the roster of success stories (yahoo, google, HP, Cisco, Sun) but it's real value is that it serves as an ad-hoc incubator for start-up innovation. Just take a minute and subscribe to the free podcasts from the STVP (Stanford Technology Ventures Program) on itunes and you'll get an idea of why Stanford seems to be the only program that values entrepreneurship.

If anyone can think of other MBA programs that help entrepreneurs, I would like to hear about them.
Google Buzz is Already Dead
Thanks for input guys!
See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1123211 for more comments
I recently decided to give away all my coding books. They were great, and I learned a lot -- but I never reference them. I remember most of the core concepts, and the details are a quick Google away. My other coworkers decided to follow suit, and our work library has grown to 4x what it was a week ago. And my apartment is slightly less cluttered.
I think this is a good point. But there's a balance. Questioning tools (blame is borderline useless) can be useful of course.

I think it boils down to -- be humble about whatever context you're operating in -- so as to understand it and use it fully. But that doesn't mean one should stop questioning.

The fact that gcc doesn't warn about a lack of return values (without the appropriate -W flags) is pretty silly. Maybe if you're programming assembly as much as you are C, you don't have to worry about that. But most people who use gcc don't exactly know assembly (though they should!). The tool itself is fairly well-documented, but it's not perfect. Could be improved.

Actually, I don't know. Maybe it is good the way gcc and gdb require the programmer to step up and be more active about the whole process (and maybe learn assembly and how the machine is actually working). So I don't know the right approach. But there is a risk in just 'accepting' tools as they are. Hmm.

I think it's more like -- channel your problem with a tool into a better understanding of what's going on.
This especially applies to buying a house.
Ask HN: Review my Startup
I've often wondered why Amazon doesn't have a program like "send in your books, get a free Kindle copy of them"
I love the way he describes "continuous integration, unit tests, assertions, static code analysis, memory checkers and debuggers" as "scar tissue." "Callouses" might be a better literal fit, but "scar tissue" feels right and true.
Tell HN: Meet CoffeeScript
I would disagree. I believe that moral absolutes exist and that certain things are intrinsically wrong.

If you really believe that moral absolutes exist, then you must conclude that there exists some infinite being capable of being the foundation for that moral absolutism. Here's why...

Absolute morals (a perfect morality) can only be established by infinite knowledge... A perfect morality is knowing all information at once, weighing all that information, and then making the perfect decision.

We as humans are morally relative because we don't know all available information and knowledge. It's why a tribe on some island genuinely believes infanticide is acceptable (they genuinely believe the child is possessed), while you do not (you would know the child has a neurological disorder).

As I demonstrated by a simple human example, more information and knowledge = better moral decisions. Thus, an all knowing being, God, is the foundation for an absolute (and perfect) set of morals.
iPhone fring voice & video calls over 3G
I believe the author is a programmer who makes his own software. So, he's making and selling his own work. Not a troll.