skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Any achievement in a video game is a “fake achievement.”

(Disclaimer: I'm assuming he's talking about any achievement in a game, whether it was placed there by the creators or naturally occurring).

Life is a game. What's the difference between rules in a game of monopoly and laws governing corporate actions? Controlling a predator drone in real life vs in Call of Duty? A game is usually something with predefined rules of which you'll need to manipulate and work around to do something. A video game is a new type of game, which also provides audio visual stimulation, as well as mental (however little).

It's true that fake achievements that are setup so that anyone who plays the game can achieve them, like leveling up, is pointless. But when a game is skill based and competitive, you can position yourself against others. And as far as I know, every game opens up the potential to compare your performance with other peoples' in a task with predefined rules. What's life if it isn't full of rules? There is really no line between virtual and reality. Everything you do is in reality, even your imagination, because it will carry over where ever you are in this world.

> The easy part to culling the bullshit is to ask yourself: Is this activity making a positive, tangible difference in my life or anyone else’s life? Is it a real, true prerequisite for a tangibly effective activity? Alternatively, am I totally okay with doing this just because I like doing it, laboring under no illusion that it benefits me or anyone else?

What does the Olympics do besides motivate and inspire people (and bring in money to the host city)? Can't (video) games theoretically do the same things? Whether or not an activity makes a positive difference in your life, or anyone's else's life is relative to everyone's priorities. There is no absolute universal law which defines what "benefit" is. Whether or not it benefits people depends on whether or not it can get what people want. And what people want these days vary.

I think the author is confusing what he wants and what he thinks is beneficial to be what other people want and think are beneficial. It's a matter of preference if I want to walk on a treadmill or go for an actual walk. Whichever one is better is highly subjective. Everything you do is in this world, has consequences and benefits in this world. And as I have argued, games, video or otherwise, are simply isolated well defined subsets of our universe which are also analogous to the universe (both are defined by rules).
One's major is too understated when described as simply 4 years out of a 80 year lifespan. It is the moment in your life when you decide your career path. It is the time when all of society give you a pass to spend your time preparing for greatness.

After it is over you have responsibilities, bills, and work becomes a necessity if you live with any ambition. 40 hours a week you will be working to fulfill someone else's desires, if those are you customers or your own. But you will almost never again be given a free pass to spend four years ostensibly studying.

And getting a good start towards a career is extremely valuable. Most success, in math, science, or industry come as the result of a long journey. A good start can significantly shorten the duration between start and finish.
But the flaw with this reasoning is that we aren't comparing one age group the previously compared age group. We are comparing all age groups to 16-year-olds. A 14 year old is not basically a 16 year old.

That said, any government facing this problem has to decide whether it's more important to draw an easy-to-see line that is entirely unambiguous, or consider what might happen to the families of 15-year-olds if they can't get work.
I think the idea more than anything is that such a system would encourage (force?) people to be more engaged in their advertisements (like the high 5 example he gave).

In this way, having a more integrated point system is a very natural extension of everything that happens today. The only difference is that because everything is so connected, people will be much more aware of it, and the advertising will be much more effective.

The question is if this is a good thing...
Or can you?

Are some things necessarily unquantifiable? Or is it just that people haven't found the right metrics yet?
Search Y Combinator
> But that isn't my stack. What about nginx, memcache, and more recently a nosql tool like couchdb.

If you're working with a project that needs nginx over apache, and needs nosql, then you won't be using a packaged solution anyway.

> Why start with anything less?

Because it's better than not starting.

Beisdes, "less" in this case is subjective.
Perhaps you can point me to some sources on which you base your argument?

I'd like to read some more into this at some point. Thanks.
Sorry, pet peeve, but...

virtualenv is a hack to work around the fact that python packaging is a joke.

That said, it seems to be useful.
You're responding to someone who pointed out a correlation by suggesting it be replaced with a causation? "I've stayed in major cities on three continents and the places with free wireless invariably had a more creative and lively vibe about them" makes no assertions about which leads to the other.
Its all nice and good to point out the problem that parking causes in terms of the development or destruction of any downtown, however unless the lack of parking is compensated for by having an excellent public transit system (like Portland) simply removing parking or not starting to address the issue is a recipe for disaster.

Take Los Angeles for example, there are way too many parking structures and lots all over downtown. Unfortunately there isn't really a way to get into downtown unless you are withing 5 miles of it. And you don't really want to live in that area. Even the SF Bay area for that matter, yes there is BART and Muni, but unless you live in the city (for the most part) BART is quite useless if your area of interest is more than a mile outside the sliver that BART services (ignoring all the other problems BART has), and Muni is a joke during rush hour, not to mention the combination of BART + Muni + anything else that you use gets to be pretty pricey.

Unless the issues of public transit are addressed properly, nothing will fix the parking problem or the congestion problem or the gas usage problem or the pollution problem to mention a few.
I'm sure Guitar Hero players gain better rhythm over time too. However, will their musical skills be as good as someone who actually take the effort to learn guitar? Probably not.

I agree with you that the author ignored some important facts. However, the thesis still holds that many achievements (i.e. education) have been dumb down to make people feel content about being less skilled.

The problem is that we are getting better at hacking our own brains to give us more reward than we deserve.
The cost savings are based on acceptable exploitation in another land.

Come on, this is ridiculous. The cost savings are based primarily on a dramatically lower cost of living, differences in exchange rates, etc. If I can hire someone in NYC for $125 / hr or hire someone in Arkansas for $50 / hr and the Arkansas guy has a higher standard of living in Arkansas, how am I exploiting him? It's no different on an international level.
> The one where Medicare's overhead costs are in the single-digit percentages (like 3%), while private insurers have overhead rates well into the double digits.

They're not defining overhead the same way.

Note also that medicare doesn't count its fraud costs while private insurers do.

> Insurance companies, not because they're evil (although they are), have to cherry-pick and screen if they want to stay alive.

Actually, they don't. They merely have to keep payouts plus expenses lower than revenues plus investment gains.

> Government, which is not driven by the profit motive, doesn't have to cherry pick and can insure all citizens (at a cost).

Govt is definitely driven by a profit motive.

Govt doesn't have infinite resources, so there will be limits. You won't like the ones applied to you, and you won't have the money to do anything about it because it will be taken from you and spent on someone else.

Oh, and certain folks will have very different limits. That's how govt works.

> Also, government-run health care and the elimination of the fee-for-service model will reduce the amount of unnecessary testing and make health care cheaper in the long run.

There's nothing stopping a private organization from doing something other than fee for service today. In fact, Kaiser doesn't, and I'll bet that they're not the only one.

"Unnecessary testing" is in the eye of the beholder. When are mamograms unnecessary?

Of course, there are defensive tests, for liability reasons. If you're arguing that govt healthcare shouldn't be liable for mistakes....
Cool Mock-ups and Artwork from Glitch
Games are typically spatial based (shooters mostly) or strategic based and for whatever reason (genetic or cultural) boys are more interested in these topics than girls.

Girls have been shown to be more interested in reality based games (playing house etc.) which is why games like The Sims are such a hit. Constrastly boys look for an escape/imaginative games which sums up most games and is why your son plays more games than your daughter.
Tsunami Forecasting
Though it's entirely trivial by comparison to your earthquake, for the curious, jam and jelly are used to refer to two very similar but slightly different things in at least some American dialects.

Thanks for commenting, and good luck with repairs and rebuilding.
Is there a reason this site looks oddly similar to Hacker News?
I never did get the concept of "real programmer", I mean when it comes to defining a programmer I would go with wikipedia

A programmer is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software.

Now tell me how anyone who does not know how a language or framework works, but can still make computer programs out of it, is not a "real" programmer?
The only thing that keeps me fuming is that anyone took the initial accusation seriously in the first place. There was no secret conspiracy, really! There couldn't have been.

There's a lot of speculation in this thread that I think is wrong, but is it worth correcting it all?

I've put a lot of my career into making web standards useful, clear, architecturally coherent, extensible, and I'm not interested in slowing down features or adoption into the open web platform. I'm a big fan of open systems, and I think in the end they benefit everyone.

But "open" really does mean "transparent": tell the truth, don't mislead. Assume people really look at the charter of a working group and believe what it says, without having to squint and look at it sideways.

I'm fuming a bit about how I can't defend my credibility to people who think I'm a liar, since saying I'm not.... well, it's just more evidence of how much of a liar I am, isn't it?

While I've had a lot of experience with rough-and-tumble standards groups (chairing the HTTP group in the 90s wasn't easy), this seems a lot worse, but maybe it's because I'm getting the brunt of it this time.
I'd probably just toss the letter. If they persist, contact a lawyer. California is one of the few states with a solid anti-SLAPP law, incidentally.
> Buffet in the article: "I felt that this is something like I've never seen before, and the American public and Congress don't fully understand the gravity of the problem"

Do you really think that Buffet has a "sense of the people"?

> General Motors needed to be rescued

No. General Motors needed to go into bankruptcy and have all of its contracts broken.

> and there are millions out of work, yet these items have little association with Bear Sterns, AIG, Wall St. etc., the financial institutions where the damage shook the pillars of our economy which rests upon the financial system and the dollar.

You're babbling.

> The point being things are connected

Yes, but that doesn't tell us that TARP was a good idea.

> The dollar is no longer backed by anything but promises

That's nothing new and TARP did nothing to change it.

> It's true the dollar has been fairly consistent for about a decade, and that's because our standing in the world has remained so - people still die to get in. However, a truer measure of faith in the dollar is the price of gold 10 years ago vs. today - $280 vs. $1080 respectively.

The price of the dollar relative to other currencies tells us the relationship between the US and other countries. The price of gold is a combination of absolute value and general skepticism.

Note that TARP didn't address any of that.

You do remember TARP. You're trying to argue that it was necessary. Yet, you've only mentioned generalities that are independent of TARP.
Interesting article, it also beings up the question(in my mind) how operatives can operate in a hostile environment(not necessarily hostile, just one in which they don't want to be caught).

How could US (or British for that matter) HUMINT operate in places such as PR-China (which is beginning to operate such pervasive surveillance systems) without leaving a trail. How can you be a real/digital ghost?
They did mention a correlation even with sibling pairs, though.
Which reminds me. Would you rather raise a dispute over coverage with a govt agency or with a private insurer?

You can fire a security company that fails to protect you. You can't fire the police for failure to protect. Do you think that health care will be any different?
My personal hack to stay open without losing too much work time is 'office hours'. I try to accept every request for a chat, but schedule everything on a Tuesday. Maker's schedule style, my day is shot anyway with the 3 or 4 must-have weekly meetings, so filling up the day with another 5 or 6 doesn't hurt my productivity. It does leave me pretty shattered if I get that many of course!
you can teach.
or you can spend your life blogging poetry/prose in hopes of a life of non-obscurity.

but neither pays well... take it from me. an english major.
It's cloned from the http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/. That one was written from scratch in a couple of days after the haiti quake.
its true.
the thing thats funny about this though is the understanding that if you go into English you're going to want to teach others. but apparently we English majors have failed.

i have an English degree... but I LOVE complex problem solving... hence the love for programming...

its difficult to pitch the old man and the sea to anyone with 1/2 a brain.
Yes, "This site is about Arc, a new dialect of Lisp..." Paul Graham & Robert Morris
'Let it beep' - Interview With Jim Reekes, Former Sound Designer at Apple
I'm sure making your game suck if it detects a crack is annoying for the pirates, but it also means that most of the people who play crack versions of your game will just assume it sucks. That can't be good for its word of mouth.
"What we could do is make trade contingent on a base level of standards being met."

That's exactly what Apple does, and that's exactly why you're reading this story about Apple, instead of Asus or Lenovo or any other company--because Apple, unlike almost every other company, does the audits and enforces the standards on their contractors.
I am very annoyed by the current brute-force, heuristic approaches to human-sound acoustics. I wish the sounds were dynamically computerized by way of mechanical simulations of the anatomical parts involved in human speech articulation.
At the end of the YouTube video, he mentions being able to think "nearest bus" and having it query the internet and speak the results to you. This would allow you to augment reality without pulling out your phone, unlocking it, launching Google Maps, selecting your location, etc, etc. Sure, it sounds like the flying car dreams of the last century, but given they can recognize 150 words now, it hasa lot of future potential.
You cannot always say dat a puzzle can be solved much efficiently by a computer. And after all we have to program the computer to do so, and for that first we have to understand the problem itself (at least partially).
> Cutting taxes while also increasing spending is not fiscally responsible

Reagan didn't cut taxes. He cut tax rates but revenues actually increased. You can argue that revenues would have been even higher without the tax rate cuts, but then you get to argue that people don't respond to tax rates.

> FDR didn't get us out of the Great Depression. That's right. WWII did, deficit spending did.

Actually no. FDR waged a war on production until WWII made that impossible. You can't have an arsenal of democracy that doesn't produce things.

> Green technology (nuclear, solar, whatever, let them dish it out with some subsidies to offset initial costs) has to be the answer nowadays.

Spain is finding that each green job costs more than one not-green job, and the green jobs are temporary while the not-green job losses seem to be more persistent.
It seems a bit odd that an EIR can sit in on other founders' pitches. I'm the last person to get paranoid about NDAs or stolen ideas but this guy is getting paid to sit around and think of something.
openERP is written in Python and widely used. As far as I know there is some Python used in Gimp and Blender.

For commercial desktop software, Windows is still the major market. Cross-platform development costs are far greater than the value of the small increase in target market size.
Perhaps approaching gaming as a streamed service in the manner proposed by OnLIVE (http://www.onlive.com/) could be a viable means of reducing piracy. It seems possible for a sizeable games publisher to move to a subscription based business model.
For some of us, technical writing. You know those (non-Engrish) manuals you toss aside (or leave uselessly bonking around in the box) for your software package or electronic thingy? Yeah, that's our work. You're welcome.

So, usage manuals, reference books, instructional posters, Material Safety Data Sheets, quickstart guides, and so on. Every company that makes anything needs at least one writer (unless you do agile programming, which for some reason shuns documentation being a resource unit and more of a PITA). And, I suppose you can make someone on your development or QA staff write docs, but who would want to? That's where we step in.

I mean, the guy mowing the lawn outside your office complex has his job, I've got mine :D Mine does pay 90k year (and this is in the South), but my colleague in Sunnyvale is just over 6 figures. Yes, solely from writing for a major software company.

Of course, there is the entertainment industry where, if you can get a good "holding" or "development" deal with a major studio, you're well into 6-figures, probably quarter-to-half million a year. Scriptwriting teams that don't get the byline in a movie make about 60-80k a film, depending on overall budgets. That's 2-3 months of work for some, so you can see how that stacks up in a year. I don't want to live that world, though, because you basically must be in Hollywood unless you're a superstar.

Finally, there's game design and story writing, which for the most part, you'll find everyone there are from an English Lit. background. Talk about hand-to-mouth, though. A true feast/famine career. But, if you have a solid track record, you tend to "fail upwards" to bigger budgeted games at major studios. Be prepared to move to Vancouver, BC, though. I like that route, personally, but I don't have anything game-related under my belt (yet).
> he claims that they are a charity, says NY Angels is a non-profit:

That just means that the investors don't get monetary returns. It doesn't imply that employees are working for free.
What people are really buying online: infographic
Agreed. Altruism is rarely ever a bad thing. The issue is balancing the time requirements for charitable ventures and those for personal advancement.
NOAA does a lot of cool stuff.

Data collected from Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) and modeled with the Method of Splitting Tsunami (MOST) model.

http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/Dart

http://nctr.pmel.noaa.gov/model.html
Octopy looks far too simplistic for anything too large. For example, it pushes the entire python source file to the client, including all of the data. It then assigns a client data to process? I've been reading the code for a few minutes and can't imagine using it for anything substantial...

I too prefer to have local processing, but there are times where I also like to farm out jobs to a larger HPC cluster (I'm at a university with 2 large clusters). The downside to this is that I usually have to wait in a job queue.

I guess what I really want is a hybrid approach where I can run jobs locally, but if there are too many, spin up either a loadleveller / pbs job on a university cluster or spin up a few EC2 instances.
Well, sure, but then a real collective mind wouldn't use twitter.
The basic hypothesis: Women are attracted to good-looking men.

Well, duh.
Dark Room
I think that the author's point in claiming that such killings are technologically implausible is kind of shaky. Better disguises and more intelligent communication channels (select a hotspot in the city at random every time you need to send a message, encrypt the data, and bounce it around the globe for good measure. Hell, you could even use a bot net to do it so the neutral parties were oblivious).

Or you can call it part of the war on terror and blow the individual up with a remote controlled airplane.
> Now if only the roads could be moved underground and replaced with parks (and a bicycle path); that would be really nice.

That was the Big Dig in Boston- it worked, but it was really expensive.
Absolutely. This is why child labour laws are typically stronger in more affluent countries, where there are opportunities for better jobs beyond factory work.

The efficacy of education isn't really as much of an issue as the job prospects for the educated, which, in affluent countries, are generally better than job prospects for non-educated individuals. My policy rationale presupposes this, and it's certainly not relevant in every country.

I do agree that the Western view of completely boycotting child labour causes more harm than good. But corporations must respect local laws. Such laws are created by the countries themselves, who are in the best position to decide whether the imposition of a minimum age is a good policy choice.

I didn't mean to say that a minimum age is a good policy choice everywhere, because it might not be. But we can't make an educated decision on when to have a minimum wage if we don't know why we're doing it :)
I mean the surface streets. Although you would have to call them something else after moving them below the surface :)
> The last thing we need right now is a nation of Hoovers.

I suggest that you re-read your history. Hoover was a progressive and was ramping up deficit spending and production controls. FDR ran against those policies but did a 180 when he got into office and basically just did more of the same.

That war on production is what made the great depression great. It didn't really end until WWII made it untenable - you can't have an empty arsenal of democracy.
Stupid. The people seeding DVDs and child porn all use IPreadator (or similar) now. The people in coffee shops just want to do work or read their email.
I think it's unlikely that a VC would want to compete with an existing startup. If they had an idea relevant to one of the startups it's more likely that they would just give it to the startup and/or start funding them for it.