skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"By that same logic Ars Technica are allowed to detect if you have blocked their ad and not deliver you the content you requested."

Absolutely! It's my choice what I will render on my machine, and it's the server's choice what it will send me when I make a particular request. If they are capable of detecting when I've blocked ads and choose to deny my request for the content, that's well within their rights.
That's stung me a few times, actually - when American friends of mine talk about their interest in Asian cinema, there's still a slight mental delay before I realise that they don't mean Bollywood.

Also, when I was at university, a black friend of mine went to study for a semester in the USA and he found the amount of times that he was referred to as 'African American' absolutely hilarious. He was born and raised in London and his parents are Caribbean - making him, as you say, neither of those things.
*Anglo-Caribbean. An awful lot of the islands in the West Indies would take great offence to being called Jamaican. Also, West Indies is pretty much an unknown term in the US. Just another example of how complex the notion of race is internationally.
Sokoloff's post pretty much nails it, but I'll add that it's not just about sex. Before the invention of trade, there was basically no way for one tribe of humans to profitably interact with another tribe. So anyone who has the trait "Treat my genetic relatives (my tribe) nicely; be hostile to anyone who looks different," will have more material success (and more kids) than someone with another set of genes.

Give civilization another couple thousand years, and this might change. But if you look at the results of the Implicit Association Test, and the continued popularity of ethnic conflict, you've gotta assume that evolution has a big lead on political correctness.

By the way, have you taken the implicit association test? I highly recommend it for those of us who aren't biased. It's often illuminating.

https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/
In my experience, modulo cleaning staff that's the same thing.
It's better not to use macros. Let the compiler optimize. If you really need more control use __inline. Debugging code generated from complex macros is close to impossible.

If you have to use someone else's macros you can use a wrapper function with exactly the same effects.

Also avoid #define constants not related to compilation or pre-processing themselves.

Readable code > unreadabe code. Same counts for compiled binaries.
What do you mean?

"Design" as in the memetic evolution has an unnaturally recursive feedback system compared to our biological evolution, thus producing patterns of regularity determined by initial tiny quirks? Or what the people who downmodded you seem to think you meant?
No. I think you're fundamentally missing the point, and moreover one of the most basic reasons for government.

Loans (deficits) shift expenditure from one time to another. Welfare and welfare-like policies funded by deficits (loans), in this branch's context of counter-cyclical policies, don't "take value from one group" and use it to "prop up another". They reduce consumption from the future, where hopefully we're richer, and increase consumption today, via loans.
Ugliness is not a nice thing to have! Like stupidity, or unfriendliness. At the extremes, words for those traits are also generic insults: words like "hideous," "retard," and "asshole" all describe people. And they're often used as more generic pejoratives.

These words are all relative. If you decide that "asshole" is simply too cruel a term, people end up using the next-cruelest term as the cruelest-possible one. So maybe if someone cuts you off in traffic, you say "Jerk!" But now "jerk" can't be used to categorize someone, since it's the worst word.

You'll just be forced to keep making your language more and more bland. There's no logical point at which your argument stops applying: "He's very special, and doesn't play well with others. And he's a more authentically handsome person," will eventually be wordy way to say "He's a hideous, retarded asshole."

There's no loss of meaning, but there's a profusion of syllables. Let's just say what we mean, and assume that people with unfortunate traits have gotten used to hearing about them by now.
I'm not sure you read the post. The post makes the same points you do, but in a different way; and it answers your question as to why you would want to collect "ethnicity".
Ignoring those statistics doesn't help, either. Maybe a lot of people working on the Netflix prize said "But maybe IMDB and Netflix target a completely different audience." But those people didn't win.
Unless you've started a product company recently that you're not sharing with us, all the above plus your website says you're not an entrepreneur anymore. You may have been one 30 years ago, you may like being around entrepreneurs, but catering to them is not the same as being one today.

Today it seems you're a consultant/service-provider.

Although not original, your breakfasts may be good. Just please for the sake of our patience, call out your conflict of interest when posting here. There are many charming ways to do it. Denial or dismissal isn't one of them.

If someone calls you on a conflict of interest and there's even a remote chance there might be a conflict, just say something like: "Forgive my oversight. ...". Then graciously move on.
I was following along when I came to the German list.

I highly doubt that any German would describe the ethnicities in German society along that list, but still there was some truth in it (mention of Turkish and Balkanic immigration.)

Then I came upon the French list, and I spilled tea on my keyboard ! (I'm French.)

The CIA list apparently describes historical successive waves of immigration, which is definitely not how people in the French society would describe their ethnicity/identity. (And it's probably wrong in the same way for almost all other societies.)

This doesn't even take into account the fact that the French political culture actively discourages thinking one's identity in terms of ethnicity, and that many French people (of all ethnicities) would find any mention of ethnicity distasteful.

Particularly laughable in the French case is the "Celtic and Latin with Teutonic" label.

The lesson is simple : when localising, get local help. Ideally from several people, all of whom should both know their own society well, but also have extensive foreign experience (it helps because everyone has blind spots regarding his own society)
Try that in Northern Ireland.
ok, to clarify I meant in terms of websites/webapps.
Why not make it easier if you can? Vagueness is hardly a virtue for a programming tool. Also, I don't think the ladies are impressed by your cryptic error fixing skills ;)

What this feature needs now is code correction on the fly. Any error reporter smart enough to ask "did you mean 'x'?" should allow me to answer "yes", and write the changes to the file. That would sell clang to a lot of people.
It's time for Microsoft to turn itself upside down
And the most annoying part of that generic advertising is the fact that most of it seems to be made with powerpoint (complete with slide "dissolves" and text "slide-ins"), so it's of a very low quality. Even from the likes of McDonald's and Coca Cola...

Luckily, here in Portugal most movies have reserved seats on their most busy schedules and are free-seating on the slow schedules. So you can go by just arriving at the scheduled start time or a few minutes later, seeing only the trailers and 5 minutes of better quality commercials at most.
Having a Hard Time Finishing? -- Less Everything Blog
Same here - for missing retain/release calls (i.e., stupid memory leaks) it works great.
You are not responding to the argument that I made.

I said that if such behavior ever became the norm, the human race would die. As of now, only a small portion of humans behave this way. This happy fact enables humans to survive.

However, on the basis of your comment I will scale back my argument a bit. It might be possible for some humans to survive in a movie fantasy post-apocalyptic world of pure rampaging feral aggression. But the number would be very few. It would consist of a few people picking berries and hunting rabbits in secret, and gangs of others occasionally sniffing them out and looting them.

In reality, in order for a human being to survive, he must have things and services produced by other humans. He can't do it all himself. If he wants to ensure that other humans continue to produce the things he needs, the best way is to offer something in return.

Certainly voluntary trade is not his only option. He could plead hardship and gain some sympathy that way. He could commit fraud, deceiving others into giving him what he wants. He could use force to take what he wants.

But ultimately all of these options are limited and fraught with risks of their own. Why risk death when you can just wash a few dishes instead?

So yes, humans have been doing stupid evil things for as long as there have been humans, and they will continue to do so. My point is, stupidity and evil are not sustainable or reliable methods for achieving life, happiness, health, and wealth. That is why they are called "stupid" and "evil."
I'm not sure that these albums do much good for the humanitarian effort to begin with; people who buy the albums will feel that they've already done something to help and hence donate less through other channels. All I can really see it adding is overhead; it's more of a tool to promote artists and the RIAA than actually increase the amount of aid.
What statistics? Why do you differentiate between "cultural and societal norms" and "natural human behavior?" Cultural and societal norms are natural human behaviors.
a loan is predicated on the idea that the loaned money will be invested in wealth producing ventures, enabling a payback of principle + interest later. this is counter to the digging holes and filling them in bit, unless you plan on heavily taxing anyone who took assistance later on to make up for it. in which case again, why make them dig holes?

in the other case, where investment is made in a wealth producing venture, why is government needed? the only reason money isn't available for sound investment will be due to malinvestment brought about by shitty incentives in the first place.

also, WRT transferring future wealth to the present:http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/09/maturit...
Algebra in Wonderland
Why do dating apps need ethnicity anyway?
HackerNews Trends
Wow, do people simply translate their dating websites and expect to get away with it?

American ethnicity categories don't make much sense even in the US. I hear that all Brazilians are considered "hispanic" there, even though Brazilians don't speak Spanish and are a linear combination of (native) Indian, European, African black, Arab and East Asian. Well, of course official Brazilian categories don't cover all of this. They are: "white", "brown", "black", "indian", "yellow". Obama is "brown", by the way.

Apart from ethnicity, lots of things have to change when localizing a dating website. For instance, in Japan the ethnicity field is mostly irrelevant. Japanese websites simply assume everyone is Japanese. If you're doing a website for Japanese and foreigners, you would use "nationality" instead. For foreigners X foreigners, you'd probably need separate websites for each group anyway.

On the other hand, in the Japanese Yahoo dating site there are fields for "my income" and "desired partner's income". Of course, that wouldn't translate well in many parts of the world.
Free Download Games-Road to Riches 2
But wont anybody please think of the children????
And I guess that by saying this, you are also undermining their effort. Well, maybe even more, those who downloaded the album at least showed some interest in this way of, hm, "helping", and even might buy it later. It's just an compilation, it isn't really worth of downloading just for the music.
Yeah, glad that we did this when we rolled out FBC here at gdgt.
The Beast File: Google
I worked on this side project a few months ago in order to learn some ActionScript and Python.

The script has been logging HackerNews's front page news articles every 15 minutes since then, which is why it currently takes a little while to load. If anyone is interested, I can export the data and post it, which might make for some interesting analysis (ie, when is the best time to post, etc).
I found that first list interesting, in that I couldn't fit myself into any of the categories (besides "other").

I'm not black, asian or indian. I'm not an hispanic. I'm white, but only if not comparing to a german, or a norwegian.

I guess I could fit as a "spanish" on the German list, although I'm not spanish. I'm portuguese, but I could very well be italian (which is also on the German list).

I guess ethnicity is very hard to get right. Unless someone is really "dark black" or a "blonde white" it is very difficult to classify, and even then, you can't just go by on "black" and "white", you have to give more details.

That's just goes on to say that ethnicity is bogus. However, in the context described by the article, it is an important piece of information. Maybe it should just be free text.
Lessons from Amazon's Success
Why the down votes? Do you not see adverts like these every day?
I tried to google and find your post but could not see it. I would think the word scrumbut is a typo [or perhaps crass], but without seeing the byline or the article I would not know for sure.

Please don't curse in your writing but any local color is very nice! Personally, just as I enjoy hearing foreign accents in real life, I enjoy seeing them on the web. It helps remind me that the web is a many splendored and located place :).
You have linked to a story of people who used authoritarian force to violate private property. The people who took that land from its rightful owners were thieves.

Rightful property is established by production or trade. A rough recursive definition goes: Your body and mind are your property. If you make a thing using your property, that thing is your property. If you obtain a thing by trading your property for it, that thing is your property. (I view "gift" as a special case of trade, where the price is zero.)

I would also define "trade" as a voluntary contractual interaction between two parties. The word "voluntary" precludes force, and the word "contractual" precludes fraud.
Mini-Shifts
We've definitely been wanting this... Nice work.
Maybe I speak for myself, but just like accents, I like reading the English spelling of words--and dare I say prefer it?

I think it is absolutely fine. Now, if your bigger worry is getting the SERP pages on Google, then I can tell you it is very rare that I do a search and come across an English or Australian article in my results with the English spellings.

I know that wasn't your original question, but it is a fascinating one that I just thought of while replying to you.
> It has to by definition, or else it wouldn't be entered.

This is Econ 101 dogma. I'm surprised you can write this without examining it further. People are not rational actors. That's why advertising works.

What's particularly interesting about your using this argument is that advertising exists precisely to manipulate the non-rational decision making of consumers.

Once we realize that humans in general are wired such that they make certain cognitive mistakes again, and again, we have to modify our understanding of a "freely contracted trade".

A trade where I take advantage of your human nature to encourage you to make a decision that is in my interest is not truly freely-entered.

With respect to your tax rant ... you should know that people respond more to what is annoying or vivid than to longer term considerations.

Ads are a low-grade but constant irritation, whereas I make enough money that taxes are just some numbers on paper.
19th century writing in general makes a mockery of today's level of education. I believe this is due, in part, to the more limited availability of print at the time. most of the people printing things in any sort of quantity that ensured it would survive to our times was generally pretty worldly.

not that i'm arguing that such times were better. the diaspora of artistic expression fueled by cheaper means has been a boon for humanity.
Sadly, none will be featured on Techcrunch in articles that basically say 16 year old makes website that would be nothing special except it was made by a 16 year old
any ad blocker for mobile safari?
Worth reading if for nothing other than this insight:

"Settle arguments with A/B testing and Web Analytics. (Avinash Kaushik calls this getting rid of the influence of the HiPPOs: Highest Paid People in the Organization.)"

(Then again my worst problems with HiPPOs were of the low level architectural type that killed the company outright, but that's probably because I'm a "engine" vs. UI type.)
Anne, thanks for the feedback. Actually I'm still proof reading the post, so it's not quite ready yet (suddenly realised a few bits needed turning upside down). For the typo I meant 'Defence' vs 'Defense', by Scrumbut I mean 'We do Scrum but..' as in http://bitsnwidgets.com/2008/04/19/DontBeASCRUMBUT.aspx
N
As long as they are the standard spellings, it shouldn't make much difference. It's the unexpected spellings, especially the ones that make your readers stop and wonder what you are trying to say that are problems. Anyone who reads much will be as comfortable reading the British spellings as the American. I use some spellings interchangeably - I am more likely to write "grey" than "gray" and I spell "defence/defense" either way (it is possible that I have even mixed them in the same essay - which is generally a bad idea).
The free market runs on firm failure, not just firm success.

To an outsider, the problem seems that the current establishment, posing as laissez-faire, has made an art of "privatizing the benefit, socializing the loss". With a bank, no one is risking the chaos of millions of people stripped out of their savings, roaming and ransacking. The prevention measures differ.

For example, Sweden nationalized a bank which nearly bankrupted, thus punishing the stakeholders by removing their profits. The USA just pays them more money. The message is clear: let's resume the financial bonfire, because risk pays.

At the end of the day who are more "libertarian", the socialists or the neo-liberals?
Solution : Let's users add their own ethnicity or select from list of other user added ethnicities.
Thanks.

It is interesting that for proofs without words, comments are needed :)
So his parents are "African-American" after all. ;-)
Write in your most natural voice; and with your canonical spellings. The only British-isms that I have trouble getting my head around quickly are the over-casual dropping of place names and neighborhoods in London. But we Americans grow up reading plenty of Dickens and Orwell and Shakespeare and whatnot, so just like a British accent we can handle it as long as it's consistent.

In general, you will do quite well to have even your American audience think, "Here's an well-written Brit."
Yes, sure, large projects can take time to compile, but doesn't your compile environment just try to recompile the last file that it failed on during the build? That is, if in trying to build my app FooBar, and foo.c compiles ok but bar.c fails, when I try to run the build the next time having modified bar.c, it starts by trying to compile bar.c anyway... So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't understand the advantage you are apparently getting by woring from bottom up.
We have an Australian resident in our surgery training program. He's going bald, has bushy eyebrows, and wears glasses. People have been treating him like a professor since day one. Even the faculty revere him.
here it is : http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/21/olympics2012-civil-...
5 Things Every PHP Developer Should Know About MongoDB
Google Robots vs. Humanity
Is the Google page rank algorithm messing up our culture?
Because some people have preferences for certain ethnicities, and putting yourself into a certain group means people can search for that group and find you more easily.

Yesterday there was a rant here about how people shouldn't prefer to date members of certain races, but the reality is that people do. (Next thing we know, we'll hear that it's unfair to only date people of the opposite sex. "Excluding 50% of the population is barbaric!" Only on HN...)
I'm having trouble seeing how this is relevant. Can you provide more context? Thanks.
Build Your Own Video Community With Lighttpd And FlowPlayer (Debian Lenny)
> Amazon reportedly used doors for desks, in some cases.

I don't recall ever seeing anyone there who did not have a door (plate) for a desk.
I'm moving to Brooklyn this summer and get very excited to keep seeing articles like this. I'm also going to be in town at the end of March, what are some "must see"s in the scene?
Actually, things tend to get really ugly for girls in a society where they become a scarce and valuable resource for their families. E.g. their value is in what can be extracted in the marriage market (note the comments on how this is skewing savings in the PRC), not in what they intrinsically are.

All in all I'd have to say this helps explain why the PRC is ramping up their police state (e.g. see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870424050457458...)
New Sony Gadgets Take Aim at Apple
Did you read the full post?

This was not a "complaint". I was trying to sum up the 2 key points of the discussion and defend Ms. Culver's excess press via sociology in both the historic (e.g. Ms. Polese) and current context of the Silicon Valley press ecosystem. I also did my best (clearly poorly) to give some defense of her efforts.

This sort of thing gets highlighted on HN, and having modern studies to quantify the effects is useful, but one need look little further then Helen of Troy.

Nothing new under the sun here.

Who's iJustine? ;-)
Seems particularly troublesome because of cascading failure, not just when deliberately deleting your own account. Facebook regularly suspends accounts for all sorts of reasons, and I'm not sure there's enough transparency and oversight in why and how they do it, and what the process is for getting access restored, to trust them as an general-purpose authentication gatekeeper.
Digsby: chattiamo con un unico programma
WSJ video with Walt Mossberg http://online.wsj.com/video/digits-sony-takes-on-apple/0B34E...
Ars article was about how when they blocked the ad-blockers people complained.

If you have the views espoused in this article you should have no problem using an ad blocker which tells the web-server that it's blocking ads and leaves it's up to the website whether it chooses to return you content sans-advertising.

If you're using an ad blocker that specifically misleads the website into thinking ads are being viewed when they're not, then that's clearly unethical.

Imagine if you asked someone for a favour and they asked you for a favour in return. And then they did what you wanted but you only pretended to do what they wanted. That's exactly the same situation as this.
If these are lead generating ads, you could determine if a click lead to a sale. If you had this data (which was pointed out by the OP about tracking every click - although he insinuated its bad), you could determine what types of ads work and which ones don't.

So this is two fold, you remove the ads that don't work (so you don't annoy your audience), which in turn creates a more potent advertising experience for vendors which makes that real estate more attractive.

The trick is not letting every dog through the door and keeping some class.
I think that this would result in a large number of fragmented categories that would make the searching/matching hard.