skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Dell Speaks About Its Struggles With Faulty PC Components
It seems to me that the benefit that the author describes comes from listening and seeking to learn, rather than by viewing oneself as inferior. I have a particularly hard time believing that you can sustain a successful career if you're not able to sell yourself, something you can't do effectively with a negative self image.
Not to mention a large proportion of the water I get daily comes from my food. Much of which can come from far of places like Chile and South Africa, and for my Kiwi's New Zealand.

Very good point, I hadn't considered that source until I read this comment. Given that they're measuring the ratio of the isotopes, this kind of "pollution" could probably cause significant noise in any sample. I wouldn't be surprised it it were enough to make pinpointing nearly impossible for many people.

It'd be interesting to see an actual study of a few hundred people, and see how accurately it can pinpoint travelers (and their destinations) as opposed to global-munchers.
IE9's Hardware Accelerated Canvas
Enterprise Software is old, very old. And old software is hard to change, even from a UI point of view. There are already thousands of users trained, and changing the way of user interaction in the next upgrade is a sure-fire way to prompt the customer to look around at the competition. After-all, users might as well learn a brand new system.

Is change coming to Enterprise Software? I'd argue emphatically - Yes. However, change is in measured movement, at a pace where users are not overwhelmed. Conservatism is more valued than being on the cutting edge.
Disruptive isn't always such a bad thing. Give them some credit for coming up with an idea a lot of people will wonder why they never thought of.
"Most people are so worried about looking good that they never do anything great.

Most people are so worried about doing something great that they never do anything at all."

That was wow! Though, thinking you are below average outs constraints in some people making them believe that certain bigger things are "not for me". That can be devastating.
Assuming it worked as advertised (see electromagnetic's comment for thoughts to the contrary), what use wouldn't there be for a way to track people, especially one as unobtrusive as this? Not useful for the average person, but for any covert study of someone it could be handy.
Blackhawk Partners is in private equity. The short version is that they are the scum of the finance world.

Private equity companies perform leveraged buyouts. By structure these deals are high risk for everyone except the private equity firm, and the profit potential mostly comes from the fact that companies get a tax deduction for interest owed. Therefore the huge debt from the buyout creates a tax write-off that can then go as dividends to the private equity fund. (As much as they claim to despise government regulation, they derive their profits from exploiting a tax loophole.)

These are the same folks who were called the junk bond kings in the 1980s. They went crazy, their funds crashed (though because of the financial structure the junk bond kings made a ton of cash), and the investors in their funds lost money. You may have heard of the S&L crisis? Yeah, the savings and loans institutions had invested in the junk bond funds in a big way, and when it collapsed the taxpayer stepped in and lost about $124 billion. (Unlike most of the TARP funds, the government didn't get this money back.)

Since then they've changed their name, and in the last period of easy credit they went even crazier. You're going to hear a lot about them in the next 3 years. You see, most of their deals have principle due back in 2011 or 2012, most of the companies they bought don't have the cash, and this is going to result in a lot of bad credit. Oh, and this time around the investors in their funds who are likely to lose their shirts are mostly government pension funds.

So we're going to see a wave of bankruptcies (and people losing jobs from that), a credit crunch, and more financial problems on overstretched governments at all levels. It is at least an order of magnitude bigger than the S&L crisis, and I wouldn't be surprised if the combination turns out to be bigger than the subprime crisis.

But never worry. The way the deals are structured, the private equity fund only puts up 20% of the cash (the other 80% is born by the company purchased), and of that 20% only about 20% is the actual money from the private equity folks. Conveniently they get their 4% back almost immediately in management fees and closing costs, so no matter how badly the rest of us get hurt, they've made their fortune.
You cannot "create jobs" by instituting tariffs.

You can't create jobs through tariffs, but you can shift the balance towards the US.

China keeps artificially inflating their currency when it would've naturally increased by now; maybe to the point of being economically infeasible for some companies. Don't forget that there is a huge overhead in shipping products across the Pacific Ocean.

And to fight this economic manipulation, tariffs are needed.
I don't really pay much attention to the average, or to what other people "know". I mostly compare what I know to what I don't know, or more accurately - What I can do to what I can't but want to do. That is a sure way to keep yourself fairly humble - no matter how smart I am, there is never time to learn to do all the things I want to do.
The way I see it, it's both - more like surgery in that regard. How you do it involves a huge amount of craftsmanship. Knowing what to do and why you're doing it is what makes it a profession.
NUKEM – Your service provider for the nuclear industry (uranium supplier)
"The number of people making a real living in the arts will remain very small."

This sounds a lot like an agricultural-age person saying "the number of people making a real living in manufacturing will remain very small". If all physical goods are really cheap enough, you don't need to earn that much as an artist to afford them.
If you know what private equity is, you'd know that this destroys the fundamental assumption of the article that the person talking made money by creating value. No. The person talking made money by structuring deals that left him with profit, everyone else with risk, plenty of people unemployed, and the US government without tax revenue due to a silly tax loophole.

As for the argument itself, it is reasonable when it applies to people who actually made money by creating value. But that set of rich people doesn't include the author of that piece.
What were the results?
Math/programming puzzle
A much better idea would be to come up with a battery compartment shaped in such a manner that the direction the batteries go is self evident. This means the user does not have to make any additional decisions. This is a technology hammer applied to a problem that requires a different type of fix. The user now has to make an additional mental leap. It is not simplifying the world for people, despite what it does at first glance. It's making it at worst harder at best no harder than it is now.
This can pose some serious problems if the device gets spoilt at some time. However, Microsoft has done an excellent work in creating this totally innovative and ingenious solution to a problem which was more like a way of life than a problem.
will this protect against most type of falls. It looks like it works, but I need to see someone test it out before I am sold.
agreed, deluding yourself into believing that you're below average is about as useful as deluding yourself into believing that you're above average. considering yourself below average at everything is indicative of low self esteem which is really bad for your mental health. a much better approach is to take things you want to be better at, subdivide them into skills that you can actually improve, and then improve those skills. really average has nothing to do with it, as average is usually pretty bad. the average programmer, where a programmer is defined as anyone who has ever written a computer program, is not cut out to be a professional programmer. it is way more important to know your strengths and weaknesses in terms of meeting your goals so you can improve your weaknesses rather than worrying about being average.
Harfbuzz really sucks at asian fonts because of compound alphabets (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&...)

SIL Graphite smartfont technology is probably better suited for this - but I dont think that anyone considers that important enough.. even though there are all indications that Asia might be the biggest market for Linux.
Use the first $1000 to live while you find a decent job, then work for 6 months.
http://adam.heroku.com/past/2010/6/30/replace_cron_with_cloc...

found this here yesterday -- might be near your needs
Jason didn't dig deep enough on this one.

Jason Fried didn't author this article. It's credited to Zubair Hamed.
I wrote a "framework" to handle this exact problem: http://github.com/capotej/theman

It's a simple wrapper over rufus-scheduler and god to create scheduled workers that execute tasks at specific times.
Please don't SHOUT so much.
>These people receive wealth. They do not necessarily generate it. Athletes and movie stars are certainly talented, but entertainment is a place to push excess wealth and not necessarily a source of it.

That is my point.
I think the 'answer' insomuch as there is one, is not a quick fix, but to educate people in order let them compete for the 'higher level' jobs. 'Making education work better' is a big, long, ugly, hairy and very political topic though.
In other words, as wages drop, the unemployment rate will go down, and less will be outsourced. This is just the tradeoff.

You make that sound so simple.

You left out the bit about that meaning falling standards of living, and the social dislocation that causes.
Could Boxes of Water Help Reforest the World?
Maybe, but have you thought that it's not because there is something wrong with the invention, but rather because you have been trained so far in your life to look for the +ve and -ve terminals.

If this catches on, in a few years maybe people will get so used to this that the current way of doing things will seem oh-so-primitive.

This seems like a classic disruptive technology, so simple but so useful.
My real point, though, is that consolidation is inevitable. Production jobs ("Scaling," etc.) are going to become less important over time, not more important, whether they're in China or America. Any forward-looking argument that doesn't take that fact into account is flawed from the outset, and I think Grove's piece falls into that category.

Is it really healthy for Silicon Valley if Apple has a factory cranking out iPhones in Cupertino, Google has a 99%-identical factory for Droids in Mountain View, and Palm has yet another factory producing Pres in Sunnyvale? What's the point? The hardware's all very similar from a production viewpoint, or it soon will be. In a rational business climate, all of these products would be made on the same line, by a company that sells manufacturing capability to the highest bidder. Competition will happen on a purely IP-based playing field, not on the factory floor.

Going back to the Tektronix example, when Tektronix finished one of those CRTs, they practically had a one-of-a-kind relic on their hands, a part that would not only not fit in any one else's oscilloscope, but could in most cases be used only in a single model in their own product line. They didn't have what we'd call excess capacity, and if they did, they darned sure wouldn't use it selling excess tubes to the competition, because those tubes were a big part of what made their overall product competitive. So every manufacturer of those particular widgets had to either build their own CRTs or buy them from a common vendor (in which case their scopes sucked).

Tektronix in 1960 couldn't afford to treat production as a red-headed stepchild in their overall business plan... but they sure can today, when the bulk of the test equipment they sell is OEM'ed out of China just like everything else. Sorry, but IMHO, the production of solar panels, portable fusion reactors, or whatever is just going to take the same inevitable course. The business will be commoditized if it prospers at all. Trade policies and externalities have absolutely nothing to do with that.
Right, but the point is that that kind of blind deference to authority is dangerous.
on the side, I will add.
If AP link doesn't work, try this BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10484898.stm
That would be the EPA that is blocking the use of many oil skimmers in the Gulf and forcing the ones that they approve to run at about 1/6th efficiency.

And that's the department of labor that is keeping experienced crews from running the skimmers that the EPA approves.

I forget which department decided that oil in sensitive wetlands was better than putting up sand berms.
online travel agent (ie. web-based)

to differentiate from old fashioned bodies-in-seats-in-office-somewhere travel agencies that you had to call, fax or stroll into in person. Agents there typically sat in front of either a terminal connected to a GDS like Galileo, or, more recently, a Windows box with native apps doing approximately the same thing. Agents would perform queries for you on their computers and they sometimes had to type in a sort of mini-language full of various commands and brief codes.
Simulating a click and slide is nowhere near as hard as automating, for example, decoding of Google's CAPTCHA. The whole point of a CAPTCHA is to make the automation as hard as possible without making it too hard for a human.
Then you'll need something nice and risky if you want that kind of ROI.
Also in the same vein: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity." - William Butler Yeats
http://www.adaptcha.com/
I like to think of myself as above average in my areas on strong interest. That being said though I love to meet people that are better than me, allows me to learn a lot.

I hate working with people and knowing that there is much point asking them a question because they will go through the same basic stuff I have already tried. Much prefer to be surrounded by really smart people and feel like a beginner than be the smartest person in the room and get some things done much more slowly.
what was the outcome? Did they come back with arguments the next day?
PHP page load hack is a solution if you're writing a web app for end users that doesn't have access to cron jobs.

If you control the server then the better solution would be to schedule one job that runs every minute or so and executes the task you need.
could we go one day on this site without a blog that contains the epiphany that being less egotistical results in better social skills?

not to mention the condescending, lecturing tone in the post makes me want to vomit
And use it to do more ... hedge funding.
Net filter trials 'unlawful', claims engineer
Probably the best citation is of course the classic economic text "Ferris Buller's Day Off". To quote:

In 1930, the Republican controlled House of Rep, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the… Anyone? Anyone?… the Great Depression, passed the…Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act which, anyone? anyone? Raised or lowered?… Raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal gov’t. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the US sank deeper into the Great Depression.

Further details are available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot%E2%80%93Hawley_Tariff_Act

The conventional argument goes like this: A trade war causes prices to rise because of the increased tariffs. That price rise flows thoughout the economy as the increased costs are passed on.

The increased cost of living forces a great proportion of household wealth to be non-discretionary spending, which in turn causes the economy to contract.

That contraction in turn causes companies to stop hiring, which increases unemployment.

The increased unemployment reduces demand, and the cycle continues.
I can't help but think there is a flaw here. Isn't this a bias in favor of survivors? Without measuring the control group of people who have similar genes but did not survive, it's not possible to conclude that genes ~> longevity.
I assumed that by "30:1", you were referring to odds. Now I take it you are referring to leverage?

In any case, why do you believe Blackhawk trades in CDO's and CDS? Near as I can tell, they do mostly private equity, also some commodities.

http://blackhawkpartners.com/Portfolio.aspx

And, there's a reason they're called raiders.

Yes, the reason is that they are outsiders coming in against the wishes of insiders. Typically their goal is to increase shareholder value at the expense of entrenched interests (e.g., management which cares more about their paycheck than about growing the company).
Yes. If you are looking to buy an ERP system to cover your South Korean, New Zealand, and Norwegian sales operations (as well as North America and your small but growing and complex Vietnamese operation) including support for all local tax laws, currencies, and languages (including double-byte right-to-left screen layouts), then how would you choose which of the users should make the buying decision? A vote?

Should the sales users override the financial users, or should purchasing have the final say?

Maybe it sucks because the buyer is not the user, but maybe it also sucks because it tries to solve awkward problems. Everything is relative. It doesn't try to be simple, but there is a market for complex software, like it or not.
It's not about being below average capacity, it's about believing that your currently-realized capacities are below average and below their limits. It's motivating. It's not about discouragement or not believing you can do something, it's actually the opposite; you know that you can improve in whatever you do so you're not afraid to learn from others. Assuming that you're "below average" in this article merely means to be teachable.

It's actually the opposite of what you're talking about here; Derek is not below-average capacity, he just has a lot of capacity yet to be realized and is willing to both admit that and take steps to improve.
Very well put. Enterprise Software fails to connect to the end user drastically. They are never made keeping in mind the requirements of the end user. The buyer poses with his/her requirements and this creates a lot of red tape associated with the whole process.
Then perhaps the more accurate statement would be that food would be all they'd be able to afford. At that point, options are really, really cheap (and incredibly toxic) fast food, or buying some sort of staple in bulk like rice or grains. And if you don't have a roof over your head, it won't do you much good to spend 2/3rds of your monthly salary on a big bag of rice from Costco.
Thinking that you're smarter than average can also hurt your social life in more ways than imaginable.
Perhaps Enterprise Software sucks because it is really, really hard? Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to reduce the most complex of human institutions, which has processes beyond number -- many of which are documented only in the heads of the dozens of geographically disperse individuals carrying them out, or worse, actually emergent behavior -- into a CRUD app. That CRUD app will, by necessity, be orders of magnitude more complex than any other shipping product created by the human race. And everything changes so fast (emergent behavior, thousands of autonomous actors, etc) that it is unlikely to remain static for the duration of the planning meeting to say nothing of the multi-year timeframes often planned for (or stumbled into) in this type of development.
Umm, do you know what private equity is? Last time I checked, private equity included any form of investment in private companies not traded on public exchanges. This would include venture capital, angel investment, growth capital, etc. I consider that to be creating value. And as for this specific firm, I can't find a ton of info on them, and I can't tell from your comments whether you know a lot about them specifically, or if you're lumping them in with all other private equity folks. I'd like to know more before assuming they're the "scum of the earth" and dismissing their argument.
So you're assume that you're above average in the category of assumptions about one's averages.

One the one hand, I don't want to call someone falsely modest, but on the other, that tag fits awfully well.
And if you DO meet the high barriers for entry, the likelihood that you'll make disastrous errors is pretty high. The statistics vary wildly depending on sources, but it is quite possible that iatrogenic and nosocomial diseases cause more deaths per year than auto accidents.
It is not blind deference, it is natural for students to enter a classroom during class time to learn something.

And getting students to think about why something might happen before they are told is a very common tactic.

Also, extending a theory is also very common, where they are told something one day, and why it doesn't always work in all situations the next.

I am sure the teacher would love it if everytime she tried to explain something, a student came up with a smart ass answer about how she could have tricked them.

"So why does this cloth pick up the bits of paper?" "Cause you put glue on them" hahahahaha

That is going to be a great class from that point on.
Dangerous, you really don't want your students thinking you are lying to them every lesson.

Depending on how you did the lesson of course. I could see it as valuable if you were asking the students to explain why your observations don't fit with the actual world.
I was wondering if you could add a link to the hacker news homepage to the "Unknown or Expired Link." response that you serve up. Often I'll click more on an old page or hit back on an article I am reading and get this response. My next action is almost always to navigate to the homepage.
Actually I suspect that spelling checkers have made them more common. I know I see them a lot more often on the Web, and have been seeing them increasingly frequently over the last few years.
This is all fine until kids grow up with a few devices that don't care - then they get a device that's not willing to pay the royalties so the kids try to shove the batteries in the wrong way anyway and damage the device.

Aren't people getting a mini-science lesson to learn +/- anyway?

What happens the first time the kid needs to jump start his car?
In fact, I was in China five years ago and again two months ago. It's trending upwards quickly - the pollution was near unbearable five years ago and is rapidly improving. Infrastructure is improving. Air and water quality are improving

All of these things are because of deliberate government policies. I'm sure you know this, but it's worth pointing out. I think you & donw are agreeing with each other here - he's just underestimating how quickly the Chinese government acted to fix what was becoming a problem.
While many of these are probably valid points, some such as the "better than average driver" one just doesn't seem valid personally. Unless you can demonstrate that I'm not average or better at driving, then just because everyone else also claims to be better than average doesn't mean that I'm incorrect. I've never had a speeding ticket or been in an automobile accident, and I've only been pulled over once (for a missing tail light in a truck I had purchased just hours earlier). Please try to convince me I'm average or worse—I think you'll fail.