skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
To take the on-topic example of OS changes, it was viable for XP users to completely skip Vista, and continue to use the old OS, over a period of nearly 10 years, without issues of incompatibility. Try doing the same with a typical Linux distro, and you'll find your apt-get (or equivalent) will pull in all sorts of dependencies that you may or may not desire if you want to use the latest software.

You've made a mistake in your Linux distro selection, if lifecycle in a priority (and for me, it usually is). RHEL (and thus, CentOS) has a seven year update cycle. During that period they will never "pull in all sorts of dependencies you may or may not desire". It is a stable platform and it remains the same throughout its lifecycle. If you prefer apt-based distros, Ubuntu LTS has a five year lifecycle. Debian tends to be about 3-4 years, but is based on the development of the next revision rather than a stated lifecycle, as far as I know (so if Debian develops faster, you have to upgrade faster).

That said, I suppose one could argue that on older stable Linux distros, one might have to add some dependencies from outside of the core OS in order to run super new stuff...though I rarely find things that won't build against the libraries available on CentOS 5 or Ubuntu 8.04LTS. Some developer tools move really fast, as do some of the new-fangled Gnome or KDE user applications, but mostly I never notice that the OS is a couple years old.

So, yes, Open Source does change faster, but there are very easy ways to opt out of the rapid release cycle for systems that need stability (like servers). I can't tell you the number of folks I've met over the years who've started out with Fedora or Ubuntu, only to figure out that upgrading every 12-18 months is stressful and unproductive, and moved to a more predictable distro, even though it has older packages.

In short, you have a choice about how long you can use a Linux distro safely and productively. You can prioritize for the latest and greatest or you can prioritize stability and predictability.
If you consider taking away other people's freedom to be a freedom, which we already decided we don't.
Here are my $.02. Great idea. Warms leads are very valuable and if you can help you have a winner. Your voice came out very well.

I am wondering why the videos are hidden on the pricing page?
I'm a big believer in showing the video up front so I can take 2 mins to decide if this is for me. I'd also recommend a shorter video that highlights how you take an rss feed and turn it into a lead in order to demonstrate value.

Once I've determine this product could be of value to me, then I might want to get details about how it works.
so link to a blog post that just links to another blog post?
You're the one who's too afraid to leave your house, not me.
YouTube is built in.
IANAL either, maybe somebody with a bit of expertise in the field can chime in?
I'm 35 too and wondering what I'll do when I grow up;-)
> Actually, none of those books are banned. Americans are perfectly free to buy them.

Of course, I realise that - if you read the article it is about them being banned at a school (I never clarified that because I assumed it was obvious ;))

I consider that awful: books like catcher in the rye (and similar) are great reads when your growing up/developing. And some of the other books (His Dark Materials for example) are just great yarns! Banning them from kids is bad.
Sunk Cost Fallacy
An average speaks nothing about the standard deviation. The minimum quality of life in the US is far lower than many European countries, but young, educated, intelligent, and motivated people are rarely at the bottom.

PS: Consider the AIDS rate in Washington DC at ~3%. "Our rates are higher than West Africa" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03... However, other areas of the country are way below that, even as other groups are much worse. "Black men, with an infection rate of nearly 7 percent, carry the weight of the disease, according to the report, which also underscores that the District's HIV and AIDS population is aging. Almost 1 in 10 residents between the ages of 40 and 49 has the virus."
While it's not entirely the same situation, perhaps you should read up on the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOL_search_data_scandal.
I get osdir coming up constantly, regurgitating mailing lists and forums with tons of ad spam.
I sincerely apologize, but "I just think people like reading tangible case studies, so I'll oblige." is misleading.

What is tangible? I read case studies every. single. day. to the point of nausea. You are sharing experience--which is left up to the reader to decide if it is true or not--rather than any "tangible case studies".

Side note: Your writing very clearly mimics Tim Ferriss and your whole basis may very well have been inspired by him. Just an observation and possibly the parallels are resonating with those who are commenting on here and have read him.
A day in the life of a programmer v1.0 (image)
Car manufacturers have to make sure the brakes and air-bags work. Elevators makers have to make sure they won't fall. Parachutes can't have holes. Lots of examples.

Heck, imagine if companies could do things wrong and get away with: "Hey at least I was, like, trying reeeeally hard. I thought it was ok to do this".

Acting in good faith would become the excuse to use when the shit hits the fan.

PS: "Acting in good faith" in the real world means following the standard, industry adopted, government mandated: policies, process, regulations, laws, etc... That's what let you get away from problems. Not happy thoughts.
slaaaaaaaaaaackwaaaaaaaaaaaare ;)
Well looking at your profile picture, I would say you got rich by pillaging and plundering on the modern high seas: the internet.
New Nanostructured Li2S/Silicon Rechargeable Battery with High Specific Energy
My wife and I have been co-founders of our nights/weekends startup from day one. She runs customer support (phone and e-mail) and is the prototype "seller" in our online marketplace. I handle product development, marketing, finances and some front-end design.

We spend most evenings laptop-to-laptop in "Genlighten World Headquarters" (our daughter's old bedroom.) Last night we worked the booth together at a startup demo event. It was tremendous fun and particularly exhilirating to be doing it as a couple.

Our CTO lives in another part of the US, and so far (~2 years) we haven't experienced any obvious problems with the couple + third founder arrangement.

Bottom line: it works for us.
Seconding his recommendation of Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
Frugal San Francisco (with AirBnB)
Oh, ok. But that's more a failure of labelling. Most romantic novels for women are (at least) equally bad (and also printed on pulp). That doesn't devalue the best.

Interestingly, I find that Dick tends to borrow from the pulp stuff a lot. He's a pulp writer--but he distills the best out of it.
Right, but I find it astonishing that it was necessary to cancel the competition altogether.

I find it surprising that there wasn't a middle-ground which anonymized or didn't include personally identifying information.

I feel the lack of a middle-ground is probably due to the lawsuit plaintiffs refusing to back down (presumably for financial gain) and thus causing Netflix to hedge their risk.
> Banks take the precautions ahead of time (deposit insurance) against robbery

Are you arguing in support of my point? Banks insure themselves against robbery precisely because they are held 100% accountable for it to the customer.
It is. They mention in their privacy policy that they may disclose anonymized histories, so they might have a decent legal leg to stand on.

I don't think this helps them much in court of public opinion, and it helps even less in not pissing off a segment of their customers. Making it opt-in seems like an easy compromise. The only downside I see is if they get a really low response rate.
No.

Einstein is championing a system shown not to work. Why should I spend any more time refuting that in 2010 than I would trying to counter some old essay by an economist on the luminiferous aether?
Happy anniversary NYC R Meetup, let's analyze the data
With one false assumption you can prove anything. There are a ton of examples, but here is one of my favorites (from http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html):

Bertrand Russell, in a lecture on logic, mentioned that in the sense of material implication, a false proposition implies any proposition. A student raised his hand and said "In that case, given that 1 = 0, prove that you are the Pope". Russell immediately replied, "Add 1 to both sides of the equation: then we have 2 = 1. The set containing just me and the Pope has 2 members. But 2 = 1, so it has only 1 member; therefore, I am the Pope."
There are sci-fi elements in IJ for sure. I just think IJ is too broad in scope to label it sci-fi though.
Is video chat on airplanes OK?
FCC comes through with Consumer Broadband Test app for iPhone, Android and home
More economic arguments? Try this: you are on a spaceship heading to another star, help is years away. The air and water recycling systems are fragile and need maintenance. All the passengers are arguing about who pays for it, all the while the air is growing stale and the water tastes funny. I imagine they would sound a little like your post above.
Why most companies don’t develop software for Linux
David Foster Wallace.
Image gallery: Open-source hardware gadgets
Someone forgot "Perfect doppleganger technology, then go back in time to kill Stroustrup, replace him, and write C++ in a way that you actually can learn it in 21 days. Also, obsolete Sun Microsystems."
So, yes, a load balancer. Thus the term "virtual machine" - meaning several machines provide a single service, spread over clients, time or whatever.
Some more thoughts on innovation in eCommerce
I don't think Europe is unfree, or broadly socialist - there are some social compromises, but it's not non-capitalist. And it's not like the US has a free economy either - there are plenty of restrictions, tax breaks / subsidies, etc.

For example, creating a limited company in Ireland cost me no more than 200 EUR or so and a couple of days. Most governmental administration was in the form of an annual return, but providing accounts isn't necessary for the first return. You send off your income tax monthly, and corporation tax (12.5%) yearly. And VAT isn't a concern until you hit a revenue threshold. The bigger problems in Ireland are networking, partnership opportunities, etc.

From what I've read of obligations on employers in California, the going is somewhat rougher. For example, I see that CA has an 800 USD annual tax for the equivalent, LLCs.

WRT to your boasts of ruling the world, I don't think it quite works that way. Current international trends are quite Westphalian in nature - the US military can't be stretched much further and soft power is fairly easily ignored. See e.g. http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2010/03/what_does... for some discussion of the limitations.
As long as they respond to ARP, a virus on your subnet will report them all to the controlling server.
Good job. There are so many "lessons I learned..." from YC companies. And almost all of them are just repeating what PG said in his essays. Most of the 'lessons' are becoming cliche now. I will love to read on your startup story. You should write a post about it
So? Elderly people who are trying to buy stuff from you have a name; we call them customers.

If you cater to them, they will be more loyal and spend more than most other demographics.

And truly, if you make your product usable by the elderly you also remove a lot of barriers for other groups and reduce the friction on the merely busy.
eXistenZ was written by David Cronenberg, not adapted from a PKD book/story.
I believe that Python, Java, C#, Objective-C and Javascript all have the same basic approach to this problem. The Ruby way is better for handling some Japan-specific problems. But that's at the cost of making life harder and less predictable for everyone else.

It's a pretty straightforward tradeoff. Of course people who are not Japanese will naturally be upset to pay a cost in complexity for a feature of benefit primarily to a programmers from a single country. Non-Japanese Ruby programmers will just have to decide whether their solidarity with Japanese programmers outweighs their personal and collective inconvenience.
I'd love to see some modern testing results on that, honestly. The idea of "flicking" the mouse to the corner of the screen made sense on a 512x348 Mac Plus desktop. It doesn't seem as appropriate on a 1920x1080 monster, where generally nothing is maximized anyway. And with a touchpad you can't do it at all.
>> Are you arguing in support of my point? Banks insure themselves against robbery precisely because they are held 100% accountable for it to the customer.

No, Im saying that your example was irrelevant. If netflix said in its terms of service that it would dutifully anonymize the collected data, then are they liable? If some hacker reveals a weakness and Netflix pulls the plug should they be sued?
That's really the leap I was trying to describe - that "no law respecting and establishment of religion" probably meant an organized, government religion, not a prohibition against religion at all. And no, atheism is NOT a religion, so there is no such thing as the free exercise of it. Agree with that or not, the point is there is no verbiage in the Constitution preventing religion AT ALL from being part of our government.
I'm a developer, but I also agree that it makes sense for Apple to ban spam and to ban what they describe as "degarding and objectionable" content. So I agree with your sentiments.

imo, the one thing Apple should do is provide more clarity and transparency about the rules for the app store - i.e. what is allowed, what is not allowed, why an app was rejected etc. That will help developers decide whether or not to build any specific app for the app store.
> Will be found on the desk of a character in several movies to indicate the character is of above average intelligence

I guess that's why I'm hesitant to use term like "real literature". I'm very picky about what I read, that is I tend to stick to books like those you described. On the other hand I don't like to appear that I read those books just so I can name drop or look smart when someone sees my bookshelf.
You're forgetting - get in a niche that you know, and do a better job than anyone else.

Most of us here know that mantra, but I guess you were too busy erm .. doing stuff.
We Bought A Toxic Asset; You Can Watch It Die
One of the most confusing parts about this switch, to me, was that it immediately precedes an LTS release. Why would you spring experimental changes right before the release you're calling 'stable' and committing to for 5 years? I was under the impression that LTS was supposed to be the distillation of all the new features that were embraced or rejected during the wild and crazy intermediate releases.

The actual change isn't that big of a deal. It's pretty easy to fix, and it would have been fine in a minor release with plenty of lead time before it became 'official', just to try it out. The big deal is that this reveals a broken management and release process, and comes across as a serious trust breaker.
ditto my above comment. If netflix says data will be collected and then anonymized in its TOS, and it does so, then it acted in good faith. If a hacker reveals a weakness and Netflix pulls the plug, should they be sued?

If yes, then how can companies innovate, when they will constantly fear liability?
I read through most of the first page and I'm still not quite clear what this app does. Where does it get the leads from? Do you have to generate the leads yourself? If so, is this basically a CRM tool? (in that case, why call it something else?)
First thought: your logo looks like an envelope stuffed with excrement.

Also, my eye is drawn the the sad faces on your landing page. Without reading, it looks like a feature list for your product, not a comparison. It took my awhile to figure out that I had to click to see the good.
Creation of sample zone in Solaris for hosting apache
Exactly! That is what was going on around the world. Our (American) rights are "inalienable"
Wish that I were a religious person masquerading as an Atheist if you like. Only I know what I am, thank you. And I am NOT religious. And most days I find the idea of God absurd. But as they say, there are not Atheist in foxholes.
I was wondering that as well. I am pretty confused about the time frame, he said the book was released last summer and in it's first month made $10 and in it's 12th month make 40k. How can he know what the 12th month is if it hasn't been twelve months since the book was released? Am I missing something?
Designing sites to appeal to female audiences
Again, no support in the Constitution for that. I'm sure you object to God, I just don't think we should use the Supreme Court and shaky arguments to back it up.
The other part nkh didn't mention is you can retire after 20 at half pay. If you make Lt Col by then (not so hard), that'll be about $45k free yearly income at age 42 for the rest of your life.

Plus, it's quite easy to then get a military contracting job. That, with the secret clearance you'll have as an officer, pays pretty nicely.
I'm sure I be will down ranked for this, but the irony was to much too pass up.

"Days later Facebook contacted Warden days later and asked him to hold off on release of that data as well." This isn't a typo, it is pretty bad an obvious grammar mistake. The irony is that the website is called ReadWriteWeb.

As for the article, it raises privacy concerns for me, for obvious reasons. Without the option to opt-in or out, this borders invasion of privacy, especially since one of data sets their selling is photos!
Fantastic find, thanks for sharing!

While I am now very interested in learning more about Medieval Iceland and it's government, I do wonder if some type of "federal" authority would have prevented it's demise?

Now, I am not in favor of the current heavy federal government and its power over the states here in the U.S. I think the balance between Medieval Iceland and the U.S. is to shift power back to our 50 states, and have our federal government there to do what it was originally intended: prevent what was the demise of Medieval Iceland.

Hopefully that made sense.
Out of curiosity, can you share any more details on your company?
The authors of the book also have a blog: http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/ it has lots of good reads
Which implies an even more skewed number of old people dead per Prius-mile driven.
Debates about how ‘Twitter is this’ and ‘Twitter is that’ have become an almost-daily spiel for us internet folks.

This was true 2-3 years ago. Most of us "internet folks" have since moved onto more interesting frontiers. The conclusion that Twitter's real value is the open API is something that I heard at every conference I went to in 2007. It was sort of a novel idea when there were still relatively few open APIs, mashups were new, and before Facebook launched their platform. Sure Twitter still drives pageviews for silicon valley rags like TC, but there's not much interesting to say about them anymore.
The Failing Fast Controversy
Though I have to agree with his final thoughts:

Personally, I would have the max and min on the
left and close on the right.

Why they chose against this idea (with the title centered) is not explained. Personally, I think that his blog post poses more questions than it answers.
Gregory Chaitin: The Limits of Reason
Excuse me but, how do you expect redditors to use your shortener ?
Reddit is about sharing links and, for some people, your service may seem to get in the way between them and content.
What about The Economist's science section? Or do you mean something a bit more lowbrow, or with more multimedia?
I'm just curious. Have you read most of these books or did you get these recommendations from people you've networked with?
It seems a very conscious act to go to the trouble to modify your genome in the lab. Leaving little room for evolutionary impulse to be the guiding factor.
If 24 people drowned in my town, and the majority of them were holding an ice cream cone when they did, the ice cream truck driver would probably be a suspect
Example of Subliminal Advertising
The ’70s Photos That Made Us Want to Save Earth
One of my favourite sci-fi narratives is that found in Bungie's 'Marathon' series. Not a book, obviously, but a game - however the story is still text-based. I suppose you could look at the game elements as illustrations to go with the text. But the text (the story unfolds when the player reaches and accesses various computer 'terminals' strewn about the levels, sometimes hidden) is much more than just prose, it's really a hybrid between prose, code, and 'concrete poetry' (poetry where the position/spacing of letters creates a visual impression). The characters who narrate the story are powerful AI constructs for the most part, in possession of their own psychology/pathology and free from their human masters/creators, and from human concerns.

I think in creating a new voice (that of the AIs), Bungie used an entirely new mode of expression, with brilliant results (I bet the Marathon's Story website is still active). The story, by the way, is relatively far removed from the present day.
they could incentivize it with reduced monthly rates.
Complete Load Of Utter Diarrhoea
> The movie was nearly incomprehensible and the acting was terrible.

Try watching it a third or fourth time, paying close attention. It’s a dense film, visually, narratively, and symbolically. It dumps you straight into a fully realized world, doesn’t stop much to explain how it works, and is full of rich and believable but extremely socially awkward characters (they’re a mix of utterly isolated engineers – who build robots to hang out with because they're so incapable of dealing with people – and killer robots). I think it’s one of Harrison Ford’s most impressive performances (not to mention Rutger Hauer). Especially if you watch the version without the voiceovers, the film does very little to help the reader out.

But I’ve found it one of the most rewarding films, raising all kinds of deep questions about modern society, the nature of cognition and consciousness, teleology... but it only gives back as much as you put into it.
For good lectures and slides, see Andrew Moore's collection on statistical data mining:

http://www.autonlab.org/tutorials/
What is the protocol for which words to begin capitalized in a headline?
When Fairchild Fired People Over The PA System
It's more of a plugin for CRM's than a CRM itself... it fits in between the general market and your existing CRM. I.e. it helps you filter out warm leads from the general market, so you can initiate contact with them and then funnel them into your CRM.

It helps you keep track of random leads you come across, and it also imports leads from any RSS feed that you feed it. This includes Google Alerts, job posting boards, etc. The idea is that eventually, it will have the ability to crawl the web on it's own so as not to need a Google Alerts feed.

It also keeps track of how many useful leads come in through each feed, so that you can decide which feeds to keep and which ones waste your time.
Ah, but Powells' sci-fi section is 4 ailes, 30 feet long by ten feet high, both sides. One author can only take up so much space.

Go for quality, not quantity. Remember, 90% of everything is crap ... and I hope that you get that reference.
Gattaca
All that marketing style corporate speak is because it's a product aimed at the marketing people. I agree about the tagline, that was me having a bit of fun.