skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
As someone with a philosophy degree and many years of formal training in classical music, I give this piece a hearty thumbs up.

While the author clearly values the liberal arts (um, it's McSweeney's), there's something to be said for actually getting things done in the world. A lot, actually.

What the author is parodying is less the degree itself but more the miles wide and inches deep approach to education and life that many intelligent people are fond of taking.

I've been guilty of this, and satire is usually born of familiarity, so I assume the author has been as well. The point is, recognize that pursuit of education as amusement and status symbol is a hobby done for you and none other, and if you want to make some kind of impact outside of your own head, you're going to either have to get deeper and more focused or get more pragmatic.
I had spent thousands of dollars on treatment, and spent the greater part of 12 years in pain before I spent $1300 on a sit-stand desk. I have had virtually no back trouble in the last few years, which correlates to the time I have had a sit-stand solution.

If you think the cost of prevention is expensive, wait for the cost of the cure.

I highly recommend workrite desks...

http://www.workriteergo.com/products/sierra.asp
In the spirit of brevity: great article!
Listen... I studied Math (B.S), Philosophy (Minor), and Classical Literature(B.A). I'd like to take this opportunity to encourage a bit of perspective on your part.

Sure, read some books, give them good thought, encourage others to read them too. Write poetry, publish articles, and start groups to discuss and reevaluate the social, psychological, and aesthetic relationships expressed by and represented in artistic productions. Think about, read up on, and be interested in history, social geography, food politics, 10th century Latin lyrics, the structuralist writings of Roland Barthes (Mythologies is one of my personal all time favorite books), and the consequences of modernism in the 21st century - do all of that. I'm saying do it. But do not attempt to argue that the study of the natural world is bereft of its own wonder, beauty, and artistry. Science, and more importantly, the scientific perspective, has liberated us (as a civilization) from the oppression of authority-as-truthmaker, and imbued us with an inquisitive fact-seeking attitude that serves the progress of humanity.

I'm giving you a point up - you deserve a second chance.
I like the way I have set up Gnome. I don't want to have to change it.
A simple way to do it is to imagine your apples sitting in a row, assign each one a random number, and sort them by those random numbers. Then the first ten apples go in one crate, the next ten apples go in the next crate, and so on.

But for some reason these guys always seem to want code, not a discussion of how the code might work.
Are there a lot of sites tricking people into liking a different page?
great library, here are links for learning more:
http://delicious.com/popular/raphael
You can just push the button a second time, right?
Indeed, but on some platforms it's worse than others.

If your app is intensive enough that it will have trouble running on a pre-3GS device, you'll probably know it and it'll be worth buying an old device off of eBay for testing on. At this point, there are only two significant segments of the platform (pre-3GS, post-3GS), though there are other slight differences in processing speed amongst the models. If you're requiring GPS or compass, likewise you'll know to not declare that your app will run on devices that don't have those features.

I believe the App Store review process also does some degree of testing on the various devices that the developer claims their app will run on. I'm not at all sure of how exhaustive it is, though - I know I've seen people say that games were unplayable on pre-3GS phones despite officially supporting them. This certainly seems a prime (good) case for Apple to deny acceptance to the store and I hope they do more of it in the future.

And of course this will get more complicated as time goes on and new models are introduced. But it seems unlikely that Apple will introduce models with, say, varying aspect ratios, non-integer scaled resolutions, vastly different numbers of hardware buttons, or things like hardware keyboards. Freedom and diversity are great and it is absolutely necessary for the ecosystem to continue to have platforms with high amounts of them, but they also come with a price.
Swedish Television Goes Oreskes on the Pseudo-Sceptics of Climate Change
A Statement from Trey and Parker about SouthPark episode 201
Last time Jobs went on stage, everybody knew about the iPad down to its exact specs and what magazines were going to be available on it.

Didn't seem to hurt the sales nor the excitement one bit.
> The original Mario has already stood the test of time,...

Just a note: 30 years is not a test of time; I think you need to hit around 200 years to get to that mark. Video games are truly a nascent art form, and I think Mario's got a shot at surviving for a while, but it's too soon to really tell.
The irony of this is incredible. You're reaching to label this as an example of confirmation bias. What's the term for trying to make data fit a preconceived idea, again?
People settle down (with or without explicit contract) because the good outweighs the bad. People provide all sorts of justifications but in the end, it's a good/bad tradeoff. If you don't like living with compromise, then don't settle down.

And if you won't revisit your choices, at least do others the favor to not whine about them :-).
Just preserve your home folder. I believe the changes are just a theme.
Might also want to check how topcoder did it. They're not perfect (like WoW) but they've built a huge company on free labor, basically. WoW gets the serfs to pay for it.
Great point. I wonder, though: does first focusing on brevity bring natural clarity, or the reverse?
That's what I was thinking - a second thin system on the shelf with VNC.
That may or may not be true at the moment, but Apple is definitely trying to change that with their new iAds.
Ubuntu 11.04 will remove the notification area (systray)
Well, that's certainly the story as Gizmodo reports it. Unfortunately it comes from a source with plenty of reason to lie about the details, and can't be verified as nobody outside of Gizmodo knows who that source is.

It also leaves open the question of how someone can be clever enough to realize the importance of what he'd found and clever enough to know who to sell it to and how much to sell it for, but not clever enough to figure out how to contact the guy who lost it even though he knew the location where it was lost, knew the guy's name and had visited the guy's Facebook page.
How Apple conceals prototype iPhones
The engine/mechanics/code in KDE 4.4 are great, but I hate every single KDE theme. Way too much candy, way too cheesy. I personally kind of wish the two projects would merge in just the right way.
I'm guessing that whatever money gets dragged in by the ad clicks on Downfall parodies it isn't nearly enough to pay for a major copyright case.
There’s a lot of fuzziness about what “liberal arts” actually means. To me it means something like a general education including both sciences and the humanities. In this sense there’s nothing the least surprising about getting a liberal arts education and a degree in the earth sciences. But I see it in a lot of contexts where it seems to mean fluffy humanities and only fluffy humanities.
We only know about the threats to our existence because of science. You could not even make the above statements without the knowledge it has delivered.

Its true that some things it has created have caused problems, but it is also responsible for many of the solutions to those problems and will deliver many more.
I am new to xmonad and loving it so far

my only issue is how terrible floating windows are, I would love to be able to use xmonad tiling mode for my constant windows, but if I want to bring up skype or a filebrowser for a few minutes just use a normal gnome type window that has the familiar mouse interactions.

* well not my only issue, I would also like to easily hide and restore windows
You should provide an alternative to the "reply to confirm" over http. Just a link with the same secret. I find it easier to click those than to reply via mail, since I'm back at the originating application after I've clicked the link.

Think I found a bug. After I received the "All set!" email I got this message when trying to create a list: "Please reply to the confirmation email we sent you. Only verified email accounts can create a list. "

So, I'm basically unable to test the full application. But I loved what I've seen so far. More people should use minimalistic interfaces like this for their applications.
From the article:

An RAF spokesman said the Typhoons were "very high performance jets" so staff were "just being extra cautious".

...military jets...are "a whole different world".

Note that no jets crashed.
"In the remotest regions, beyond the Functional Kingdoms, lies a fabled realm called Lambda the Ultimate. In this place it is said that there are no nouns at all, only verbs!"

I already live in that Kingdom, so when I say "members", I mean member variables or member functions.
Thanks for the feedback, that helps me gather up Qs for a FAQ.
Christianity is self-defeating in its pursuit to be relevant
Masterminds That Have Redefined Startup Life
No it's not - unlike iPhone, Android WebKit does not have SVG support.
Nop, I did that and it will keep all your changes... you'll just notice the improvements over the notifications area.
Yes I agree, a whole website should not be done in flash. Web applications on the other hand are a different story.
Honest question. Can you tell me what specifically you like about IE's address bar and dislike about Chromes? I've heard this comment a lot, and I honestly don't understand. I personally don't use the address bar a lot (bookmark things I go to regularly - search for stuff that I don't know) so I think Chrome's auto-complete address bar is really nice.

You mention Determinism - what deterministic behavior are you looking for?
What's the best way to block this entirely? /etc/hosts won't work because it's not on a subdomain (the iFrame loads from http://www.facebook.com/plugins/activity.php). This would make a nice Chrome/Firefox extension.
Java Timezone Madness On Ubuntu/Linux
Perhaps you should

- stop using your computer

- stop using electricity altogether

- stop using any form of transport other than walking

- stop wearing modern clothes

- stop drinking water that was cleaned with the help of technology

- stop eating food that was produced with the help of technology

- stop living in a house

And most of all, stop reading those books for your liberal arts degree. Who needs science?
Assuming you don't care about IE, what's the Pros/Cons for SVG vs Canvas? Canvas seems to be pretty nice from what I've used it for so far...
Raphael.js definitely rocks. I've finished a little coding project (it's a visualisation of an algorithm; didn't release it yet, though) and it was really a pleasure to work with the framework. You can do really a lot of cool things with it. The demos on the Raphael.js page are also quite impressive, and run pretty fluid on almost every browser (my project runs pretty fast in Chrome, but loses it a little bit in IE, perhaps because of the layer added by excanvas). That said, I have to admit that I love Raphael.js, too. It's surely not the last time that I've worked with it.
Also, unless you have extremely narrow shoulders (read: you are a woman < 5'4"), laptop keyboards force you to bend your wrists unnaturally.
Online Newspapers, Offline
99 year old Lady uses an iPad, calls it "addicting"
I've done that...a lot of churches are getting WiFi, and even though the intent is to cover the church school or office, you can often find some sweet spots in the sanctuary.
I think it's great that you're interested in the law, but I think you're missing some basic copyright concepts here. These things don't lend themselves to brief discussion, naturally, but I'll try anyway:

1. What you're looking to enforce is an IP right in industrial design.

2. There is such a thing as a design patent. They last a little over a decade, and cover "ornamental" aspects of a thing, as opposed to utilitarian aspects of it. It's doubtful Apple filed for, or would be entitled to, a design patent in this case. More importantly, publishing images of an object that is protected by a design patent probably isn't an infringement of the patent.

3. In the US, copyright can also protect an industrial design. In this case, even if you assume Apple has a valid copyright on the design of the new phone, it's hard to call the publication of images infringement for at least one reason: there is arguable news value in publishing the image, which falls under the good old "fair use" exception.

4. There is also "trade dress" protection for industrial design, but publishing a representation of an object's design is very different from creating and selling a counterfeit version of the object. Trademark/trade dress protects against someone using the design to confuse consumers about its origin in order to profit. If Gawker Media released a phone that looked just like the new iPhone, it would likely run afoul of this protection...but that isn't the case here.

5. Misappropriation of trade secrets. Now we're talking. Not, strictly speaking, an IP right, but nevertheless there is generally protection for anything that gives a business an advantage over competitors when kept secret (with a big exception for monopolists/cartels, right?) Questions that would need to be answered include: (a) Did Apple undertake "reasonable efforts" to keep the secret? and (b) Should Gawker Media have known that the phone in question was meant to be a secret and had value as a secret and would harm Apple if revealed?

Note: The answers may not be as clear cut as they seem. My analysis is really back-of-the-envelope here. IAAL, but this ain't legal advice so don't hold me to it or get confused about whether I represent you – I don't!
Accidentally voted you down - sorry (last time I try to do that mobile before zooming down).

I did want to add though: does anyone know why this is, or if it's slated for a future (2.2?) release?
Student Loan Debt = Why joining a startup out of college is hard (for some)
copied & pasted from the website
This whole thing is a giant un-story. The internet drama has far outweighed it's significance. This isn't the first iPhone; it's just a prototype of an n+1 version iPhone. It's not like we didn't know Apple would come out with a newer model. I doubt halfway competent cell phone engineers would have trouble guessing what it would look like.
Anybody else consider maybe Apple allowed this whole fiasco intentionally (viral marketing style) to take press away from the TOS change that the blogosphere has been frothing about for the last few weeks?
Apple, postmodern consmerism and the iPad
How To Build Utterly Reliable Systems
Foursquare for Business
It happens all the time.

Ideally venture capital (and especially angels) is a force that helps creative people realize their dreams in return for a realistic premium associated with the risks.

They should help with guidance and their expertise to maximize the chances of those dreams becoming a reality, and should use their portfolio to balance the risks between existing money making (and thus now lower risk) ventures and newer high risk early stage ventures.

In practice venture capital all too often distorts the market, creates unrealistic expectations (both for founders, the public and partners alike) and is 'penny wise and pound foolish' when it comes to evaluating new ideas.

Our host is - unfortunately - in this respect, imo not that much different than the rest, even if they do get the mentoring and assistance factor (far) better than most, there is not a single investment in the current batch that I would call worthy of the 'V' in VC, they're pretty safe bets, if they fail they'll fail quickly and if they're going to take off they won't fly too far. The scope of most of those projects is simply far too limited.

It's all about the batting averages, and that's essentially what these small funds are all trying to do, to show a good track record of managing their portfolio in the hopes of landing one that hits it out of the park, more likely than not due to a pivot.

By increasing the dealflow they're playing 'scratch lottery' instead of a strategy game in the casino, statistically speaking if you keep at this long enough sooner or later you recoup your losses with a healthy profit margin and you can continue to play until you score big.

The one nightmare I have is being unfunded, healthy and growing and suddenly getting a copycat me-too project with VC backing and a bunch of inexperienced cowboys in the same space.

That can really ruin your day, and possibly much more than that.

Back in 1997 or so, the real beginning of the .com bubble there was this great cartoon in a newspaper here, it pictured a train with tons of guys in suits, pockets bulging with money trying to get on board. The train was clearly labeled 'Internet', and a reporter was asking one of the guys the question where they were going. The answer: "No idea, but we really don't want to miss this train".
You don't need to test on every iPhone OS device though. Just the ones with different hardware changes. So basically: original iPhone and, iPod Touch 2G, iPhone 3GS and iPad.

And this hardware combination (or 3 of the 4) isn't hard to imagine. Not for a US-based developer, at least.
Will Facebook Be the Death of the Google Content Network and AdSense?
Most laws against "hacking" have some section that defines hacking with various levels of specificity, but at the end it always some generic statement that allows them to prosecute anyone for anything. Something along the lines of "using a system to gain inappropriate access to information", or even just "usage of a system for purposes other than it's intended use".

Wasn't there a news story recently about a student that accidentally found a file with personal info available from his school's libary computer, and was subsequently arrested when notifying the administration?
They are stunning though, aren't they?
But it's not just the downfall parodies, it's all parodies they'd be making a stand for.

Youtube should be willing to make a stand on this, clearly these have cultural value, and to lose them is a real pity.
How Chromium does a diff to push updates, almost 10x improvement over bsdiff
I just backed out some changes, which should take care of that, what an embarassing bug!

Sending a link in an email is definitely in my tracker as a feature to be added. Thanks for checking it out.
Banned from buying iPads... for life.
Unemployed, with just enough to magically pay the rent.
SVG is better supported and has some content creation tools already such as Illustrator and Inkscape. Also: SVG stuff can be used on IE (aparently...) via a flash conversion tool.
Do you have a link to share?
Buy ? They should have just asked to be given those slots for free in return for not asking to have the content taken down. Win-win.
Hell, you can even start pointing at particular bits of science. For example, there would be mass famine without the Haber-Bosch process for ammonia synthesis.
The skill you're looking for here is called meta-knowledge. It is knowledge of your level of knowledge about a given topic.

It is a teachable trait, arguably what very selective schools with hard grading curves teaching difficult things teach people to develop (as you have to determine what you don't know to pass/excel/etc there).

I've always personally believed the test: "What would you need to get going on these 5 projects?" Is a great question. If talking about researching X Y or Z don't come out of the candidate's mouth (and it's not an old solved problem, like self-contained embedded C code), you mark them down as less meta-knowledgeable. (Doesn't mean unhireable, but you don't want them in highly independent positions or constantly learning new things; people with low meta knowledge appear to actually be quite happy in places that high meta people hate, such as long term maintenance programming).

In software particularly, study of estimation (and it's continual use) can teach people the practice of evaluating all risks, including metaknowledge. I like the book: http://www.amazon.com/Software-Estimation-Demystifying-Pract... (non-aff link) for getting people going with the practice.
I totally can't wait! 7 days left!
When Google Owns You
Are you referring to the positioning of the window control icons?
Python is in the same boat, by the way. Core is writen in C, but there's a huge number of things to be done in the stdlib.
Here in Denmark motorized desks are the norm rather than the exception. I am always surprised when others speak of them as a curiosity.

I tend to stand for about 25-50% of my time working. It really relieves the back to get up and shift around for a bit. Helps to burn a little calories too, during what would otherwise be sedentary office time. I also seem to work more focused when standing up. Finally, it is a lot easier to do pair work with a colleague while standing - no jostling chairs around for position.

A sit/stand desk is a condition of employment for me, nothing less.
Star Wars arguably has stood the test of time, at least in the film realm for being hugely popular 33 years after its initial release. Only 29 years after our first seeing Mario and he's still hugely popular and putting out sequels with new characters everyone hates.

Although I do see your point in that the medium as a whole has only been around, recognizably, for 40 years. Surviving 3/4 the life of your medium isn't a profound achievement, when compared to The Art of War being 2600 years old. It's a bit like comparing a glass of water to the ocean. But then film is still a nascent art form when compared with literature, architecture and theater.

So: Compared to film, I would disagree. Mario has stood his test of time. Compared to literature, then film is in the same boat.
Fucking loving Jeezus christ. This guy could have solved wolrd hunger with his skills, instead he maxed out Simcity 3000.
Which silly because this phone isn't news. Steve might pimp it during a keynote but it would be a lame center piece.
I made an adjustable height desk recently, using the frame of a GeekDesk and a salvaged door:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/psmith/4491882894/in/set-721576...

The door is from a Habitat for Humanity ReStore. It was ~$25. I sanded, stained, and sealed it, and mounted it to the desk frame.

The frame was $550 so not the cheapest solution but I love the extra space, flexibility, and plan to have it a while.
In the past, ITA seemed to be focused on Lisp. I hadn't looked at the puzzles in a number of years, but the newer ones seem focused on Java. Anyone know if that signals a change at ITA? A move from Lisp to Java? Perhaps more customer-facing code?

In any case, their puzzles are always good for a brain workout.
Facebook May Not Be Skynet, but It Is Getting Smarter, and That's Bad for Google
I already upgraded, and I'm quite pleased with the changes. Unfortunately, the new default theme is slightly buggy; for example, when you open gvim from a terminal, you get various error messages show up which are to do with the window manager. I swicthed back to the "Human" theme, and the error messages disappeared.
I think a more flexible way might be to shuffle the boxes, placing each box into a ring data structure, and placing each apple into the next box.

As we'd expect each box to contain more than one apple this should reduce shuffling.

But yeah, I agree, they always want code not how it might work.