skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
These interviews are pretty dense with information if you are ready to pay attention and take action. These are people who have "done it" and are teaching you what worked for them.

Yes, spoon feeding days are over. And yes, that is a good thing.
Of course, giving money to state programs would have suffered from adverse selection problems, especially if cross-state purchase was allowed.
I never gave much weight to these tests but saw myself described very well in poster's article and decided to do the test. Turns out I am also INTP. Pretty cool test.

As a side note, to solve my not finishing anything, I make a list of things I am to do during the day each morning and make sure it gets completed. It is important that the items in the list be doable in a reasonable amount of time and that they be measurable.
We seemed to act quite decisively in real emergencies: financial collapse, wars, terrorist attacks. In most cases, we act badly, but we do act decisively.

Health care isn't something you want to rush. Getting it right is more important than getting it now.

The main reason Obama was trying to push it through quickly was so to prevent the opposition from reading it and publicizing the bad parts. I.e., to prevent a public debate.
I agree. By aligning his success with his audience, his podcast will get better.
Diagnosing Gollum
[self-delete] - seems I was thinking about something different than OP.
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/07/meds-to-cut.html

robin hanson consistently blogs on this topic.

http://www.overcomingbias.com/tag/medicine
None of these theories support the fact that there's a class-action lawsuit being filed.

You don't go through this kind of trouble over "oh, little Timmy lied about a laptop being stolen and got busted".

The family has given an interview and claims the school is accusing the student of selling drugs

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30977_3-10457077-10347072.html?tag...
Chinese schools deny role in Google hack
The Ten Golden Principles For Successful Web Apps
Connect A Million Minds
You Can't Launch the Next Generation of Startups Without Women
It seems like now, more than ever, politicians see their positions as a profession rather than a service. While the two aren't mutually exclusive, I believe that if their mindset was that as a servant of the people more so than a politician, things may be different. There's a social disconnect.

But there's also the way that politicians conduct themselves. It's more like a bunch of spoiled kids that feel entitled crying foul and bringing congress to a screeching halt. Everyone seems to be so engulfed in pride that they can't come to a compromise. Isn't the point to at least come to a compromise to please as many people as possible instead of bringing things to a complete standstill?
Ya, me too patrick. If you put even a fraction of the information into practice, you're bound to have some interesting experiment of which, many will likely pay big dividends. At least that is how I see it.
Sequel: A Database Toolkit for Ruby [GitHub]
Ur/web looks very cool - I just skimmed through some of the documentation. I have often thought about creating my own web framework and writing a DSL using Gambit-C (probably by building on Blackhole, Sprock, etc.) Something with the ease of use simplicity of Sinatra.
Govern, not "rule over." Big difference there.
The best response to this will be to not pay. Watch this week's video, and maybe save the stream. Take the responsibility for archiving into your own hands.
Scavengers of the Physical Universe
> I'm hard pressed to name a single business in which consumers have been well served by call centers.

I can't speak for everybody, but I'm a big fan of the fact that my bank-experience is a credit card, an online app with digital signature features and a distant, streamlined call center. I can get someone on the line in seconds, 10 (I think) hours a day, 6 days a week. They can fix 80% of my problems immediately, and escalate the rest, in those cases they typically return my call in <24 hours. My favourite: No faux "we have a special, personal relationship, part of the community"-crap. My previous bank was 20 minutes away and was only open when I was at work. I had to take time off from work to do what I do in three minutes on the phone today.
Have you seen the Chance Bernett interview? http://mixergy.com/direct-marketing-techniques-launch/

It's bleeding with killer actionable information.
Honest question here: So you're saying that Ghandi's movement was just a overemphasized size-show to a more violent revolution?

What I am talking about it an idea; perhaps phase two is violent, but without phase one, it's violence without a purpose.

P.S. Where are your italicized phrases sourced from?
There are many reasons health care is so expensive right now. Among them the expense of equipment and equipment operators, the expense of education, the expectation of huge salaries (often $200k+, always $100k+), the complexities of private and socialized insurance programs and the complications in collecting payment from insurers and then patients, and so on.

Modern medicine is really, really messed up. I think the whole thing needs a reboot, and everyone involved needs a reality check.

As far as the article is concerned, I definitely don't think "phoning it in" is the answer, and I don't think that solution addresses any of the issues listed above. We need to reset everyone's expectations.

Law and decree may help temporarily, but they'll just find ways around it, and the government can't pay them off forever. We need a real solution to this and no one's coming up with any.
Well I thought the transcripts were edited with community help. If that were true, and if I spent some time editing something I thought was going to be free and then the site owner took it behind a paywall I'd consider it a slimy move, but that's just me.

(So, I just archived all the available transcripts that I was interested in. Who knows when those go behind a paywall?)
Thanks, the praise means a lot to me.

One factor I forgot to mention: prevention can be scheduled, incident response cannot. This is really a quality of life issue for me: if I can pick the hour I do the preventative work in, then I can pick an hour where the work will have minimal impact to the parts of my life which happen away from a computer. (All appearances to the contrary, I do occasionally get away from a computer. Not very much these last few weeks, granted, but soon hopefully quite a bit.)

However, outages requiring my immediate attention will probably happen when I want to be doing something else -- like sleeping, or spending time with family, or wooing a young lady, or eating unhealthy food and singing karaoke songs with the guys. Obviously, its in my best interest to minimize that, even more than it is generically in my interest to maximize my productivity.
Our kids may care about brands, but do brands really care about kids?
I'm in a lazy state at the moment (where I have lived most of my life), but during periods where I exercised regularly I have had much more energy and drive.

It really is habit forming, though once you fall out it's hard to get back in. After all, being lazy is habit forming too, and once you've stopped accounting for gym time in your day it can be hard to start squeezing it back in.
From first link: Unknown effectiveness - 46%

Unlike other sciences, medicine is mostly empirical science. The "new research" results we get every other day are evidence of this.

Unless we discover a law which governs our sickness and health, we are still in stone age in medicine whatever the progress this field claims.
Having an open good web is absolutely in Googles financial best interests. If people spend more time online, Google makes more money.

So I think it's not a case of not being evil as such, it's just that their interests are absolutely aligned with users - to build a free open web with as much accessibility as possible.
How to identify your interest in dating you.
Ah, I see. No hard feelings. Thanks. :)

FRT, I wasn't "mad" about the music in the video, either, just a little annoyed by it, because it seemed pointless in context and didn't add anything to the video. There was no reason for it to be there, so I was caught off-guard by the fact that it was and so the thought to wait and watch the video later never occurred to me. A video about wireframing-doesn't sound like something you couldn't watch with a kid in the room.
Network Analysis With Wireshark On Ubuntu 9.10
This is the entire content of the slide deck. I'm sure the talk will be good, but this isn't really anything at all.

Speed

Instant Utility

Voice

Less is More

Programmable

Personal

RESTful

Discoverable

Clean

Playful
I found 'em.
So is the number of laws.
“This book is a Toyota,” said Robert S. Norris, the author of “Racing for the Bomb” and an atomic historian. “The publisher should recall it, issue an apology and fix the parts that endanger the historical record.”

Some people in my neighborhood are going to get dragged over the coals tomorrow morning (again) for the first five words of this quote.
I agree - the business model seems a bit forced. I think your first point will translate into quite a reduced maximum popularity. I would have tried the opposite approach and gave sites some easy way to embed clips of the interviews on their sites/blogs.

People are used to paying for live video (PPV). People are used to paying to download content. They aren't used to paying for old content.

This seems to be like giving away your new hits for free and charging for the long tail - not sure that is ideal.
Piracetam is the safest and cheapest nootropic that has consistently had positive effects on me. It is nothing like adderall, modifinil, or coffee. It just slightly improves motivation and short term memory. Have some pubmed abstracts and wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropics#Nootropics_and_racet...

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

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16007238

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19517672
The advertising model will not generate much revenue. As Rupert Murdoch is wont to say, the online publishing marketplace has an infinite supply of inventory, which drives down prices for display advertising.

The DVD idea might work for some small entrepreneurs who are not in the Internet startup space, but since most of the Interviews are focused on tech and the audience likely wants to see the videos online, there is a conflict there. Maybe Andrew should start expanding into other areas of entrepreneurship that appeal more to the non-Internet crowd?

One other note about transcripts: They are a pain to produce, as most of them have to be done manually. Prices are coming down thanks to online services and Mechanical Turk. But once voice-to-text tech improves to the degree where it's possible to instantly convert any podcast or video interview to text (and thence to e-book or whatever) that will really open the gates to e-book and custom publishing models, IMHO. It will also boost the output of journalists, who now have lots of overhead related to listening to audio post-interview and transcribing some of the results.
I have the same problem and its tough but this is not a new issue and some books/videos exist to help.

'Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain' http://vimeo.com/5895898

"The Now Habit" http://www.amazon.com/Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination-G...

"The War of Art" http://www.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/04...

"Linchpin" http://www.amazon.com/Linchpin-Are-Indispensable-Seth-Godin/...

All of these books have one thing in common and that is getting used to shipping things. I noticed lately that while I was horrible at shipping my little pet projects I could cook and prepare meals for me and my girlfriend without worry that it tasted bad. I just cook it and good or bad we eat it. I've gotten over the fear of failure here.

Now I just need to get over the fear of failure for my projects.
I'm not sure that it matters which technology is used. However, it is helpful for developers to be able to point to large, successful sites that are written in Python, Ruby, Scala, Clojure, etc. because management is not going to take a chance on something that's "unproven". It usually requires overwhelming evidence to convince someone not to keep using the status quo. Java/JSP, for example. There are companies that can't make the move from Java 1.4 to 1.5, for some reason.
Let me say here, though, that the above regards the federal government. The United States of America is a group of independent states on the American continent, just as the European Union is a group of independent states on the European continent.

As such, these things are imposed upon the federal government in part because the majority of laws are intended to be enacted by local governments, like states and cities. Each state in the United States has its own constitution and is free to make its own legislative procedures insofar as such procedures do not contradict the Bill of Rights contained in the federal Constitution.

For instance, if Kansas wanted to do away with free speech, they would have to withdraw from the union to do so (theoretically), as such a prohibition is contrary to the constitution of the union of independent American states.

Or by contrast, if the federal government wanted to impose a law which said all people must wear a seat belt while riding in a car, this would be violate of the federal Constitution and the independent states are free to reject such a law (theoretically). The federal Constitution is clear that any powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government are within the purview of the state.

Now, that's the idea. In reality, states make laws and operate under procedures that circumvent fundamental rights frequently, and the federal government enforces its will by withholding funding or imposing other forms of ostracization upon any state that doesn't comply (see age 21 drinking age). Things are even worse now, and constitutions are rarely upheld -- the congresses and legislatures at both federal and state levels just pass whatever they like with complete disregard for its legality, and the public lets them do it -- as long as the public can get their American Idol and Zoloft there are no problems there.

The whole thing is just really sad.
For the first section of the article, I was rather annoyed. The entire premise of the argument is that healthcare "reform" is progress, it is our destiny, and that anything standing in its way is wrong by definition.

This is most certainly not the case, and reflects that as much as we have problems with our government, the foundations are still working. The compromises inherent in our bicameral legislature and the electoral college are there to protect from the problems that an unchecked majority might lead to. Our system is designed so that even popular ideas backed by a "mandate" (an invention of the media; who actually voted for the supposed underlying initiative?) can -- and should be -- blocked if it's so thoroughly repugnant to others.

At the risk of skirting up against Godwin's law, the idea that this "progress" is destined, part of the inexorable evolution to a higher social order, sounds decidedly Marxian. Frankly, I find such an attitude every bit as alarming as these "reforms" to which it refers.

That said, the article really does even out and put this all in perspective. If you can make it through the whole article, I think that the picture you wind up with is a pretty fair picture.

[Edit: fix bad phrasing in next-to-last para]
A Fix for Discrimination: Follow the Indian Trails
To this end, they'd murder or steal if it weren't for the risk of prosecution, and do so in its absence. People are different. While the law is a disincentive, the main reason most of us don't kill, punch or burgle is that we think it's wrong and consequently prefer not to. Corporations have no such moral sense.

Corporations have no will, motivation, and incentives independent of individuals.

It is like saying that the free market is greedy.
Interesting how memes repeat:

We have heard the America is ungovernable mantra before. In the fall of 1980, Lloyd Cutler, President Jimmy Carter's counsel, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine: "one might say that under the U.S. Constitution it is not now feasible to 'form a Government.' The separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, whatever its merits in 1793, has become a structure that almost guarantees stalemate today."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870482090457505...
>Take the responsibility for archiving into your own hands.

That's called copyright infringement.
Windows XP and Vista Speed Secrets – Microsoft Doesn’t Want You To Know
Official version is here: http://github.com/jeremyevans/sequel

Lots of good docs here:
http://sequel.rubyforge.org/

For anything SQL, Sequel is to me the best of breed library. Blows ActiveRecord away at anything.

I used to like DataMapper when I'm building apps from scratch. But since then I've replaced that with MongoMapper to target MongoDB.

Sequel is still always going to be in my tool box as its great for working with any existing SQL database.
BPO service providers
The form of outsourcing that involves the contracting of the operations and responsibilities of a specific business functions to a third-party service provider. BPO is growing because companies want to focus on their core businesses. Companies worldwide feel the need to shed their ancillary processes, free up internal resources to focus on their core business competencies. BPO is a strategic management tool that can help organizations to improve process level efficiency and effectiveness, as well as reduce costs.
Olympic Hockey USA vs Canada Live Stream Online
Tactics to beat Akrasia (acting against one's better judgement)
That is a pretty significant error. It puts the whole book's accuracy into question because clearly the author didn't do his research thoroughly.
Of course it matters - migration of a site of this scale to a new set of technologies is interesting, regardless of the trendiness of Sourceforge. Sourceforge is still a much, much larger operation than github, to boot.
Have you seen this?
http://yeroon.net/

It's a bunch of web-based graphical wrappers around R created by a UCLA stats prof, Jeroen Ooms. Slick stuff, for a hobby project.

I agree with jdietrich: In order to be more than a hobby project, you need a "quantum leap in usability." But I'm optimistic. I think someone will definitely figure out how to do this in the next 5 years.

Justin also has a good point that a tool aimed specifically at students would be great. Most intro stats courses are taught using SPSS or Stata, and most of the kids in the course have never done programming before; as if stats weren't a perplexing enough subject in itself!
I don't necessarily think that this monetization strategy is the best idea but I'm not going to begrudge the guy for trying to make money from his business regardless of whether he already has a lot of money.
> Govern, not "rule over." Big difference there.

Fair enough, but that means that there are two questions.

(1) When does anyone earn the moral authority to rule over you?
(2) When does anyone earn the moral authority to govern you?

Both lead to related questions - when does the US govt have said moral authority? (It's okay to answer "when folks who I like are in power.")
same here. Was trying to watch http://mixergy.com/daniel-delaney-vendrtv/ which was posted on feb 18th (3 days old) but it is behind the pay wall. how come?
basically, any video i am trying to watch is behind a pay wall.
I agree that an opposite model would probably have worked out better -- charge for early access instead of archive access. Those who appreciate and anticipate new installments can pay to receive them sooner, [past] interviewees are perhaps less disturbed because the content will ultimately become free, and users searching the web for things like "Paul Graham interview" or similar would be able to find the content and get hooked, thereby creating new paying customers.

It'd really be interesting to hear Mixergy's thought process on this, though.
I think the Olympics are 80% business, 10% politics and 10% athletic competition. No wonder NBC can call the tune. Since I don't really care about the Olympics (YMMV, 'sOK) I don't watch and don't have Silverlight installed.

I wonder if Adobe can build a Silverlight plug-in in competition with MS, just like the many .PDF readers available from 3rd parties.
The UK equivalent is NHS Direct.

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

I've had several positive interactions even though, unlike most of rural India, I'm 5 minutes from a major hospital.
Hint: try a search engine.
You didn't address the point of the article: Ruby is optimized for the common case. Yes, I too like the idea of how pure Python's approach is, but look at your code; you are mostly writing methods. They should be primitive. Ruby gets a little messy, but it does it for you, so you can write cleaner code.

As for those four types, methods are one of the central pillars of Ruby, they are more than functions and they deserve their own type. Blocks are not a type, that's a common confusion. Lambdas are just what you'd expect, and more powerful than Python lambdas. Procs are there to support block syntax, again for convenience in the common use case, because if you used lambdas for blocks you wouldn't be able to return out of a method while inside a block such as a loop.
Correct. I think I'll do that...
Agreed. Nurse practitioners are a great addition to the medical field. They can handle most common problems and are well-trained enough to know when to refer you to someone higher up the chain. All the nurses in our school system are NPs now. This pretty much guarantees good, basic healthcare to all of the kids in the school district. They can all get their annual physical from the school NP and if a kid comes in to see the nurse and has, for instance, strep throat, the nurse do the strep test and write out a prescription for antibiotics and the parents, who may not have insurance, don't have to pay to take their kid to the doctor (granted, they still have to pay for the medication, but this is still a huge cost-saving service for a lot of uninsured families).
I think a call center is a good idea -- you can call in with your symptoms and they can tell you that it's minor just take some Tylenol and enter the symptoms into the system. They can also tell you that based on your symptoms to call them back if the the condition continues, if you start to experience a fever, etc.

I've called the doctor before (talked to a nurse), and told her my symptoms and asked if I should come in -- they said that if the condition persisted then I should come in, but there were a lot of people with the same flu in the area and rest/fluids would take care of it.

I think the more we can standardize medicine the better, it is a mess of a science. With machine learning and the rapid pace of new sensor development hopefully we'll be able to get more automated care -- that can be reviewed by a doctor/nurse to make sure it's ok.

The economics of call centers are no different than having nurses on staff -- how many people can you treat an hour.
Yes that's a good point - I think in most cases you're probably right and simplicity (e.g. attempting to not show irrelevant information) is more important than the telling them that their toaster is toasting.