skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think it's sad; I think it is a matter of having motivations so disjointed that each side can't make sense of the other's enough to even begin a discussion toward understanding.

I don't think that, even for people who actively sacrifice human contact to read, that it is an end to itself. It is possible that they are also building toward a better life, but that their concept of a better life does not include being in the presence of others whenever possible with something to share. Their better life might be one where they can spend time in quiet contemplation, and reading is the fuel for that contemplation.

Some people are just not that gregarious. And some who are gregarious find that it is a tendency that interferes with their goals.

The pressure for people to be gregarious is intense, though, and it is harder for those who aren't natural social butterflies. The natural tendency might be for someone to soak up an enormous amount of time reading. Because of the pressure to constantly be socially on-call, they have to make the choice seem much more deliberate. As a result come off as someone with an anti-social disorder. The result would be the same, but because we brand the end as less than desirable, they get cursed for their means. Either way, they get patronized, which simply isn't conducive to anything but antagonism.

This may not be the thought pattern aaronsw is following; I don't know. He might be actively fighting a natural extroversion because his goals don't align with his extroverted nature. I'm rather strongly introverted as a natural tendency. He may make a deliberate choice, while I drift, but am forced to make it seem at times a deliberate choice. Same ends, different means.

Nevertheless, the net you cast to catch him caught me as well. I suspect I have much more to understand about the naturally gregarious frame of mind, and would enjoy a discussion toward understanding. I'd also enjoy a discussion toward others understanding the less gregarious amongst us. I don't think casting an unusual or confusing behavior as 'sad' is going to help at all in understanding; it indicates a mind already made up. I'd rather be misunderstood or confusing than sad; then I'm not forced to apologize just for the opportunity to explain.
Porsche unveils 'green' supercar for petrol-heads
No one is forcing you to be in the iTunes store and write iPhone apps.

As for all personal PCs having only software approved by a central authority -- all electrical appliances are approved by UL. I don't see that as having resulted in much evil. To get to drive in the US, everyone is approved by their State. I don't see that as being very evil. The former is opt-in and arranged by insurance interests. The latter is entirely government. Neither form seems to necessarily produce evil when given central authority.

It's a question of how much power is involved, and how corrupting it is. Is DRM on all data really all that much power? It would be if it were ironclad. But I doubt such a thing will ever exist in an economy run by human beings.
I think your premise is wrong - constant surveillance did jack-all to prevent this assassination and will continue to be little deterrent. Surveillance doesn't often detect crimes/attacks before or even during their commission. It's primarily good for piecing events together after-the-fact.

Until behavior-analysis and/or facial recognition become ready for primetime so that a hotel security's gets an alert saying, "possible organized covert activity by these people", such operations will only continue.
Beside the point of this article I'm amazed by the following: "The average person spends 1704 hours a year watching TV".

From my understanding an average work year is around 2000 hours. If 'the average person' worked in an enjoyable environment that was as pleasant as watching television or reading a book they could easily almost double their input at the workplace by cutting out television.

Whether that would double their output is a different question all together.

Would be interesting to see a breakdown of time spent watching television vs. per capita productivity for different first world countries.
Copying my comment that I posted on Aaron's blog:

One more simple lesson that I learned only in my early twenties.

You don’t need to finish every book.

This is a simple but powerful lesson. It reduces the mental burden of starting a new book to near zero. I’m now comfortable putting a book down 200 pages in. And that makes it much easier to start the next 600 page novel.

High school english classes teach us the wrong way to read books. It took me a long time to unlearn what I was taught.
LF: No emails from Jason were in any way involved in the making of this story. Nothing was spoken about, reprinted, or transmitted by me in any way.

JC: Bad on me for sending this to Loren. I honestly didn't even read the whole thing... I was like "oh here is an email from the dude who got extorted cool... " I actually didn't think it was that big of deal.
By the time you get to managed switches, the cost of the device and the overhead to maintain it means that the location usually has an IT person to handle this. This is not our target demographic.

A Soekris board is a very small Geode based i386 computer with 4 network ports. It has one usb 2.0, one minipci and one full sized pci. We use the pci for the "modem" device (T1 interface, cable modem, dsl card), the minipci for the wireless radio "bake in" and the usb for local storage. The OS boots and runs read-only from a compact flash card inside the case.

pfsense was too limiting, we use 4 gig CF's with full centos 5 server distros for maximum utility.

Here's the mainboard we use http://www.soekris.com/net5501.htm

Here's where we get the broadband interface cards: http://www.sangoma.com/products/

All the wireless cards and antennas come form netgate, as previously mentioned.

Hmmm. Sounds like I need a big blog post about bootstrapping this kind of business for those interested. Stay tuned.
"Rule No. 1: Never Lose Money. Rule No. 2: Never Forget Rule No. 1."

I wish he'd state this more clearly. It's not "Don't invest in anything that fluctuates in price," but "Only invest when you know you're buying something at less than 100 cents on the dollar, and you also know it's going to be worth more than that dollar in the future."
Also note that 1074 hours per year is just shy of 3 hours per day, seven days per week. Unbelievable!
Who says that an "enlightened manager" is one who opens his company up to potential litigation by providing honest feedback to any rejected job applicant that wants it?

There's not a whole lot of people who are going to like what a potential employer has to say about them if they have been rejected. They have no way of gauging how someone will react and there is virtually zero benefit to providing any feedback whatsoever. This has nothing to do with management style; it's just common sense.
if must-have software starts showing up on Android, it would really help.

You mean like Google Voice and Google Maps Navigation? Unfortunately that doesn't seem to have helped much.
A more practical approach: contribute to open source projects that enable privacy and security on the internet (Tor, Truecrypt, et al.). In addition to technical work, these projects need UI work badly. Long term success depends on whether non-technical people can understand how to use these technologies effectively.

If the quality of these open source technologies is high enough, it wont matter what legislation any government passes.
> Why can't competitor's "adopt" OS X and iPhone by copying them feature for feature, polish for polish, detail for detail

They can't copy the code for OS X because it's covered by copyright. They also can't make it look exactly the same because of trademark. What does that leave? A competitor could then still completely implement their own operating system, User Interface, related hardware, and put the effort into polish and attention to detail. And somehow that's a problem that requires legal recourse to prevent?
Read the claims, not the titles. The title of a patent means nothing, from a legal sense. So while a title can be broad, the claims must be very specific.
Everyone needs to do a search through the patent database sometime. You don't really know how much of a cesspool that system has become until you see the prevalence of patent trolling.

The Signal/Bullsh#t ratio of our patent system is perhaps a little better than the Legit/Spam ratio for emails. Yes, it really is bad on a par with that!
Serious question: What would that person say? How could Jobs be nudged out of his reality-distortion field enough to realize the ways in which he's damaging their long-term credibility with their developer community?

Alternately, is their something we're not seeing? Is there possibly some beautiful universe that gets created when Apple controls the entire ecosystem?
Your last paragraph is way off reality. People will use your talent to judge whether you're worth considering for a job. People will use your perceived character to decide whether you are worth doing a favor such as helping you in your career. If your attitude of "I'm talented enough to deserve your time and advice" showed, that alone would be sufficient reason not to help you.

A little humility while asking for help goes a long way with most people. That means if someone chooses not to help you out you recognize that their world isn't centered around you and your problems, and don't hold it against them. Instead, be grateful if they do give you the gift of their time and advice.
Http://healthmedicalcare.blogspot.com
Really?

I was under the impression that something like 25 agents had their covers blown by having their pictures in every major newspaper in the world.

If the Israelis did it (which looks very likely), they sure are acting like it was a major disaster for their intelligence services. There have been calls for people to resign, editorials about what went wrong, etc.

The problem as I read it is that this was conducted like a military operation -- probably very similar to the way operations are conducted in the Gaza strip. Only in a modern western city, you leave a lot more dirt behind you than you do in a poor slum somewhere.

That's just what I've gathered from half a dozen articles or so, though. Perhaps you are right: perhaps these same guys can be effective in other operations. I doubt it, though.
I imagine they slowed down and sped up the video's playback slightly to match with the song's beat.
Medical Health Tips & Care Protect 
new treatments for both safety and efficacy in what are termed clinical trials and all other research that contributes to the development of new treatments.The latter is termed preclinical research if its goal is specifically to elaborate knowledge for the development of new therapeutic strategies. A new paradigm to biomedical research is being termed translational research which focuses on iterative feedback loops between the basic and clinical research domains to accelerate knowledge translation from the bedside to the bench, and back again.
In terms of pharmaceutical spending, Europe spends a little less that the United States .50bn compared to .05bn in 2006 and there is less growth in European R&D spending.Pharmaceuticals and other medical devices are the leading high technology exports of Europe and the United States.However the United States dominates the biopharmaceutical field accounting for the three quarters of the world’s biotechnology revenues and 80% of world R&D spending in biotechnology
Ask HN: Agnostic Platform vs. Segmented Approach? or Both?
We are in the process of launching our site/service. We've been through the incubator process. The sales prof's tell you to segment, segment, segment. Get a target market and focus on it like a laser. Classic Crossing the Chasm type stuff -- b/c the idea is that one segment will exponentially grow because of network effects. i.e., focusing on one market segment enables you to build up a brand and product awareness in that niche. People in that niche talk amongst themselves and then you get more market share b/c they refer each other to your service. Contrast this with the approach of focusing a little bit on a variety of segments. You never build up enough critical mass in one segment; consequently, you get less return on your investment of time and energy, and, overall, less total market share. This, in a nutshell, is the segment, segment, segment approach.

Contrast this with what I call the 'agnostic platform' approach. There is likely a better term for it, I'm just not aware of it. Build an awesome product that appeals to everyone. Have your marketing messages clearly spell out the features, advantages, and benefits of the product, but don't segment. e.g., think of some of the successful companies that have done great in the recent past (Twitter, Scribd, YouTube etc.) These companies (at least from what I can tell) didn't segment early on. Facebook, on the other hand, did. They were clearly focused on colleges from the very beginning, and Ivy league colleges in particular.

Finally, the approach we are taking is the BOTH approach. We are building an agnostic platform, but going after specific market segments at the same time.

Any thoughts on which approach is the best? Why? Any helpful experiences/tips in increasing adoption on an open/agnostic platform? I've asked these same questions to MBA profs and others. Most of their knowledge seems tied to traditional sales processes. In their minds, it seems the jury is still out on which approach is the best. I get the impression that they think the both approach is fine, but that we'd be better off if we instead segment, segment, segment.

Hopefully this discussion will help others out who are also in the process of nailing down their adoption/sales strategies.
Tell HN: Apple one-to-one only supports Safari 3
I am sure that if that started to be an issue, Apple could just address that in Software and let iPads exist independently.
Why is that sad? It reminds me of that extrovert vs introvert thing: some people prefer to spend time alone. Also, not all topics and hobbies are mainstream enough that you can easily share without people's eyes glazing over.
Just because you don't like a specific policy doesn't make it unprofessional. Employers have no duty to job applicants to help them through the qualification process.
Online and offline - they are erasing the “line”
My next computer wont be a Macbook. :-/ Which makes me really angry because I love my current Macbook. And there goes the thought of buying an iPhone as well.

Unfortunately at this point I feel that I'm obligated not to buy Apple products. Walk with your feet, as the saying goes. Believing in patent reform can be damn inconvenient sometimes.
Obligatory link to one of my own side projects: http://shoptalkapp.com

Basically designed with exactly this use case and these issues in mind.
This Scheier article discusses how useless security cameras were/are in cases such as the recent assassination. Its a good read.

http://www.schneier.com/essay-309.html
IPhone ego clash costs Flash at Virgin America
How To Make Your Own Home Server
Why A/B testing fails
I guess he wrote it when drawing this: http://dilbert.com/2010-02-28/
As Paul Graham wrote:

Hanging out with friends is like chocolate cake. You enjoy it more if you eat it occasionally than if you eat nothing but chocolate cake for every meal. No matter how much you like chocolate cake, you'll be pretty queasy after the third meal of it.

http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html
I can feel the shift from ops to devops happening and can see it everywhere. More managed hosting solutions are coming out, you can upload your code to the cloud and it just works. While this is great for devs, its a bit tough on us ops. While classic LAMP stacks wont be phased out anytime soon we do have to change with the times, that is by no means a bad thing. I find myself learning more and more ruby code as I want to shift into that devops category.

Welcome change, change with it.
If that was your point, you could have just said "Microsoft doesn't support HTML5, end of story."

I wasn't trying to argue that HTML5 has the same adoption as Flash, simply that HTML5 is technically capable of creating those "state-of-the-art" websites cited in the first post.

FYI, HTML5 also addresses hardware accelerated 3D in the WebGL module. ;)
Not only did JC not out Sam Odio but some of us smart people figured out who of Sam's friends bought Daniel the iMac..

Sam Odio was dumb enough to open his mouth even..I mean when you blab that bad over internet about what you thought you got away with why do you expect it to be secret for long?
Thank you. I recently spent $80 on another brand that uses foam tips. It had the highest rating I could find amongst the choices at a specialty shop, at IIRC 31 dB attenuation. I haven't been in a suitable work environment since then, to try them out.

I'll probably give those a go, first, but if they do not suffice, these look worth trying, and at about $120 are within my price range (as opposed th the $300 plus that I've seen for some other items).

As you say, though, these work via passive blocking and not active cancellation. Some time ago, I came across an explanation by an audio engineer claiming that cancellation will never work fully with headphones. Even if the processing is fast enough, he argued, the distances involved between the speaker and eardrum just won't permit it. Perhaps this was in combination with the inertia and therefore delay in the speaker elements; I no longer recall fully.

When people state "wear canceling headphones", I've never yet seen the statement backed up with a real / real world use case.

EDIT: I guess/imagine it might be more a matter of the location of the microphone that drives the noise cancellation, than that of the speakers. Although I do seem to recall also something about the limitations imposed by pressure waves operating in such a small, confined space.
"Which is true."

Not so fast. There are propositons in arithmetic which are unprovable, Even getting the 3 (or 4) individuals to come up with a common set of boolean propositions is probably difficult, to say the least. Then coming up with a means to prove...
What makes or breaks on invester is being willing to sell a stock that went up 30% a year for the last 5 years, and being willing to buy a stock that lost 50% of it's value last year.
Ask HN: Possible for Non-hacker to learn iPhone dev?
Long time reader, first time submitter.

Some background: I'm not a hacker. I have no real programming experience, other than a bit of html and css. And I've fiddled with already-written RoR apps.

I have a bunch of (what I think are) simple iPhone apps rolling around in my head. So I'm attempting to teach myself objective-c and iPhone development.

The first step I'm taking is working through the book "Beginning iPhone Development" (http://bit.ly/bWz0ID). There are a few other books in the same series that I plan on working through, should I feel the first one to be helpful. There are a ton of other books available, but I've decided to pick just one for now. Better, I think, to focus first on one "instructor" and style as I figure out the basics. I've also scoured the web for a bunch of video tutorials which I'll dig into later.

Will I be successful? Anyone have any words of wisdom as I set out on my journey? Suggestions/tips/other resources I'm missing? Thank you for reading.
Nyah. Not so good a read, unfortunately.

Scheier is making a case about CCTV cameras being effective at preventing crime. If you're organizing a hit, it's not the same as knocking off a liquor store. Completely different scenario.

Look at it this way: the CCTV cameras got enough of the faces of the agents to blow their cover. That means that facial recognition software, which is being used to scan passport photos, can easily pick up these guys if they try to travel anywhere to do it again. They lost all the resources that went into training 25 people; all for one hit.

Sure the cameras aren't going to prevent the assassination, but that's not the danger to teams like this. discovery is. Look at it this way: countries will always have the ability to assassinate people in other countries. The question is whether or not you can insert a large team and act precisely, or if you have to use a car bomb or cruise missile. If the only thing you have to be precise is large specialized teams, and border agents all know the identities of your teams, you're out of business.

Here's a better link (I think) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870447940457508...
Yeah. I thought I would give them another chance, but they are trying to be as controlling as Apple without having the ability to do it.

They say they can't allow arbitrary firmware reflashes (or root access) because they want to sell DRM'd content. Well, their content library is like one home video. It sucks and reflects poorly on their company and shareholders. (Same with their DRM'd games and other crap.) It's time for them to realize, "we're not Apple", and to stop acting like Apple. Archos is a hardware company, but like many other hardware companies, don't get software. So they should just let the community write the software for them. (Remember Sony? They made awesome hardware, but their consistently bad software did in all their consumer electronics that run software.)

Archos now lets you flash Angstrom Linux instead of Android, but the image they provide is just horrible. They seem like they're trying to improve, but sadly, I don't think they are ever going to make it.
It's clasically MITM. MITM is just a "man in the middle" intercepting data and changing it before it gets reported to either side, then using the original data to their own benefit. There isn't a defined "middle" point, other than "in between the source and the destination"; if the "middle" is on the victim's machine, it's still a valid MITM.
Embeddable software rocks
Oh, I agree. But as soon as the governments realize this, who are they going to come after? I am speaking out now, before it ever gets that far.
Ask HN: Anybody interested in a Palo Alto/Mountain View Running/Biking Group?
Any HNers in the PA/MV area interested in having regular run/bike meetups?<p>Weather is getting warm so I'm looking to get more exercise outdoors.
I don't know why, but this just makes me laugh.
Destructive obsession…
My strategy is to convince people outside of the US to stop voting for political parties that do whatever the US tells them to do. Voting doesn't matter in the US, but it seems like some EU countries really have their act together. And the EU is big enough to tell the US to fuck off. If only they would...
Hike The Geek
Here ya go

http://www.opinbot.com/reviews/show/agdvcGluYm90chwLEhVyZXZp...
An example in the wild:

http://ask.metafilter.com/147349/Government-funding-for-a-ne...

Everything after the number is just for humans.
I suspect more deliberately exaggerated than sarcastic.

Many people tend to see deliberately introversion and aloneness as deliberate alienation. It's a cognitive leap that still confuses me; people assume a behavior that isolates the individual is out of spite for the social collective, even if the person carefully explains that they aren't doing this out of scorn but out of personal need or desire.

My suspicion is that aaronsw is just describing his relationship to those around him the same way they would describe it, but in more matter-of-fact terms. That he seems to have offended people so makes me think he touched a nerve, even if it did it tongue-in-cheek. My first reaction to this is to start reflecting on the social biases we have which would cause us to recoil in such disgust to the suggestion; are we being unreasonable in our expectations of the people around us?
The death of Memcached is greatly exaggerated
What's wrong with the free-for-all of the PC where anyone can write and offer for download their software? Just because Apple wants to advance DRM into the 21st century, it doesn't mean people want to be restricted in what software they choose to use.