skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You're right that automation generally improves everyone's lot, by allowing people to create more with less. The problem is that in specific cases, someone may well lose out, and in a very difficult way. If you're a 50 year old factory worker without many skills, losing your job because of automation, the prospect of widgets that are now $1 cheaper each for everyone may seem meager compensation. What is, in the aggregate, a significant gain for society, is a fairly big loss for the individual in question.

There are numerous solutions to that problem, of course, and depend a lot on the society and culture involved. Preventing the automation from happening in the first place is probably not a good strategy though. Most countries have policies in place to redistribute wealth in various ways so as to provide some aid to people in the above situation. Of course, those policies have their own problems.

"It's complicated..."
IPhone 3D Programming
Client side - yes. Server side - no. Server side code typically only runs through one interpreter, and is never minimized.
My understanding was that they signed over the rights for something nominal (see $1) in most cases.
A Fast Introduction to Hookbox
Is it possible to be burnt out for extended periods? (2yrs+)
I am American and it's not outrageous, just not (yet) conventional wisdom. Switzerland has banking and stability. That will soon come at a premium. It has self-sustaining energy and perfect transportation systems. This will all be very valuable in the near future.

Sure the US has arable land. It has oil. The problem is, it doesn't have enough oil. (You probably weren't around in the 1970's, but there was a big crisis as America switched to depending foreign oil and OPEC took advantage.) It's been a net importer ever since. Two coasts? Really? Greece has more. It's not going to help them. The most advanced technology? That's China.

In fact, China and oil are the big elephants in the room. I can happily write more about why, if you're interested.

a government that actually supports rather than just pays lip service to capitalism, the only system proven to lead to economic prosperity

Sweden is doing much better than America by every account and it's Socialist.
An abstract is a reduction, I tried to write this with some context so that it becomes easier to figure out if this is something that you might be flirting with or not, to make it live. As a person that has come pretty close to burning out (not quite ready to admit that I did) I figure I can sketch the situations a bit clearer than if you've never experienced this first hand.

I know we just had a burn-out discussion on the first page, that's exactly why I wrote this.

Please note that it is very well possible to be well on the road towards being burned out without realising it and that by showing what is and what is not burn-out related it might help a few people to realise what is going on.

Sometimes the 'normal' lack of inspiration or drive for a while gets mistakenly labelled as burn-out, sometimes you get the notice that person 'x' is no longer because they and those around them failed to notice the seriousness of the situation until it was much too late.

If you feel that it is a waste of space and time to write this you're welcome to use the 'flag' option, I thought it was relevant and that's why I spent the time on putting it together.
Report on why men buy sex (prostitutes)
Capturing the Experience of Random Web Meanderings
If I had a strong enough preference for not using airbnb, I would. If my choice of accommodations is that big an issue, I probably don't want to work there anyway.
Security is not the product of rules based systems
Practical threaded programming with Python
Excellent lesson to other startups: When two or more products do what you need, choose the one you can more easily hire help for.

(not that there aren't a fair number of postgres experts, but there's no question there are far more competent mysql experts)
New #startups IRC channel on EFNet
For those of you who frequent EFNet instead of freenode, I'd like to announce the formation of a new #startups channel on EFNet. It will, of course, focus on startup related discussions.
Parenscript; the happy amalgamation of Common Lisp and JavaScript, in your server or your browser.

http://common-lisp.net/project/parenscript/

People are writing Node.js code in it :-)

http://tryparenscript.com/

It reminds me of an old Scheme dialect, implemented in Common Lisp, and was used to implement the Yale Haskell compiler (by Sandra Loosemore[1], et al.); it's just one of those baroque language towers that you're not sure how it works, but somehow works perfectly.

Combine parenscript with CSS-Lite[2] and you enter a weird world of web development in 100% Lisp (not entirely good though; you wont be able to cut-and-paste stuff from SO, but then, thinking for yourself might not be such a bad thing after all :-)

--

[1] Yes, that Loosmore; Ms GNU libc herself, along with being an OG GNU hacker, right from the start and an RMS buddy, she was also an editor of the CL spec.

[2] http://www.cliki.net/css-lite
Was going to say that this is clearly a bug in the minifier but then I thought about the effort involved in properly supporting non-terminated lines (or even detecting it). You're going to end up writing a JS parser.

This really shows the cost of this syntactic nicety to the language.
I just released F.lux for Ubuntu (fades your screens at night)
Without any doubt, in fact, that's probably a good sign that you need some external help (friends, family, maybe professionals) to guide you back on to the road to recovery.

I've spent 3 full years doing nothing but manual work (metalworking, building a house and a windmill) because I was literally at low tide. Still not sure if it actually was 'burn-out' (no sign of depression afaik) but other people I know in my environment that structurally overworked themselves have taken similar measures.

It's tricky because it is easy to confuse an extended case of 'programmers block' with being burnt-out, I think the key difference is that a person that is burned out will not be easily able to get back in to the same profession that they burned out in.
Just do what Doug Crockford says, that definitely includes braces
If you want to count lines of C you count semicolons.
If you expect an orange and get an apple, you're automatically not happy, no matter how tasty the apple is. That's where a lot of criticism comes from.

I found Inception to be a masterpiece. Yes, there was a lot of explanation to do, but it never felt unnatural and was necessary for the mind-blowing climax. Unlike Memento or Mulholland Drive, everything made sense to me right away. And ending the movie with the spinning top was just a genius move, especially since it was so carefully placed right after the intentionally dream-like airport scene. Never has such a static scene held so much tension.
European banks stress test shows everything is ok, or not
Generic programming is a way of writing code, not a thing that your language supports or you can't do it. I can write perfectly re-usable C code that is also very efficient by relying on the pre-processor to customise the code to the exact types and conditionals required for the situation at hand.

It's a bit like saying you can't write functional code unless you use a functional language.
Algae as Fuel
How do you score on your Internet reputation?
In HL2 the tutorials are really great.

First, there are a lot of mini-tutorials throughout the game with no instructions where you can not advance until you learn some easy skill - like breaking wood with crowbar, shooting a padlock to open a door, putting concrete blocks on a swing for it to rise, etc.

Then, there are cases where you'd want to practice a skill before the using it in battle - like using Magnusson devices to hit striders. You get instructions and a chance to fire it seveal times to get a feeling of its trajectory without having to load the game a dozen times during the real battle.
I my early 20s, after getting out of the service, I worked as an assistant manager at a fast-foot restaurant in the evenings while I did college during the day. It was a full load of credits, and the food place I was working was very busy too, so it made for a long, hard slog.

One day I was talking to another of the assistant managers. I asked him about burn-out. Do you ever feel like you might be burning out?

"Not me. Can't happen"

"Why"

"Because I got burnt-out a year or two ago. I just pushed through it."

He was smiling. Sort of in a fatalistic way.

I'm not denying burn-out: I get it all the time. But I do think we over-emphasize it. As Jacques points out, if you live a life of leisure you have little danger of burning out. You also have little danger of living a life of challenging yourself to do new and complex things.

I think, as my friend pointed out so many years ago, that the problem is viewing burn-out as an yes-or-no situation. In fact, there are degrees of burn-out, and you can drift into burn-out land and drift back. What people really need to do, in my opinion, is learn their own rhythms. Personally, I like working hard for a few months then skating for a month or two. I find I get more done. I find when I am working hard, taking a ten minute break every hour helps. Sometimes I take all day on Saturday and watch movies. Or go for a hike.

So the trick isn't avoiding burn-out. The trick is learning your own rhythms so you maximize your productivity while you're stuck on this rock. Burnt-out? Back off, sure. But note your rhythm, and next time you won't burn out as much.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't get your kick on.

EDIT: That didn't come out exactly as I wanted. It sounded as if I were just telling folks to buck up. But that's not what I meant to say. The point was self-reflection.

This gets back to learning yourself -- your rhythms and values. I find that if I immerse myself in something I am deeply committed to, burning out is a learning experience. But I immerse myself in something I hate -- working for some other guy, doing something because I am forced to? Burning out can really hurt and require lots of time to recover from.

That's why I don't do that.

Burning out early and for a long time -- indication that you are putting a lot of effort in something you resent.
Yes, because JSLint tells me to do so, among other reasons.
Buy Revlon Gentle Cuticle Remover - 0.5 Oz From otcrx4u.com
Skimping on commodities that affect the talent is skimping on the talent.
If health care circa 2010 (including things like MRIs and Viagra) is a "need", then every single person in 1960 did not have their needs met.

Also, if you have evidence that health care bills cause many bankruptcies, I'd be curious to see it. All I'm aware of is Elizabeth Warren's utterly flawed studies, unfortunately widely and uncritically cited in the media (she considers Michael Vick's bankruptcy to be caused by medical bills).

"(Of course, jobs are often "lost suddenly" no long after a "cancer" diagnosis)."

Losing your job != losing your insurance - look up COBRA. If you have no savings it might, but having no savings is a choice.

"This has been postulated is also the reason why per employee productivity has been going up since the 70s -- people simply have been putting in more hours and doing more work because they are afraid of losing their jobs."

On average, people do not put in more hours.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2000/07/art3full.pdf

I don't have any data to back this up at the moment

Google is your friend.
You make an excellent point. We are many times heavily mentally engaged -- even when relaxing.

I think sometimes people think that because something is "work", it can burn you out. But anything that you can't do forever can burn you out, right?
I would hope that minifiers use a JS parser!
Not quite - it's not a question, it's a variation of "you can play that forwards and backwards" which would be a literal translation of "du kannst das vorwärts und rückwärts spielen".
German's free word order allows you to change the position of subject and object in that case: "das kannst du vorwärts und rückwärts spielen".
The original quote is colloquial speech where the object "das" (that) is not realized - that's a common pattern. However, it would be very strange to leave the object out if the sentence were a question.
I would think the non-compete enforceability is the big killer here. If MA wants to compete against Austin (TX) or the Triangle (NC), they have to make it safer to work for small companies. The weather's an issue, but Cambridge is walkable while other possible sites are not.
The Battle of Economy of Scale versus Control and Flexibility
What is wrong with Justice must be served idea?

Although your suggestion might work in criminal law, in contract law it is not so much as a question of punishment as it is a question of putting a right wrong, so too in much civil law. So, the notion of justice is very much fundamental to law. Even in criminal law, what is just is the basis upon which any authority can legitimately imposed. It is for example not just to punish someone who was provoked to kill at the same rate as someone who intended, with full and clear mind, to kill.

Also, even assuming that individuals do not have any free will at all, a murderer still should be punished, regardless of any notion of moral responsibility. This for example we do with the insane who it can not be said are morally responsible, yet are locked away so as to not harm others.

Thus, in a fundamental way, it is not so much as to what is evil that the law is guided by primarley, but practical matters, what is desirable, fair and very much just.
I don't have a source and I don't quite remember where I heard it. It's probably not true. Although this post from Lambda the Ultimate mentions a similar sentiment:

http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/1905#comment-23217
Perhaps your interviewer asked the question to see if you could justify them, thus gauging your understanding of how the language is parsed at runtime. The fact that the conversation continued may indicate that he or she wasn't convinced by your answer?
To defend the film critic regurgitation a bit, I don't think characters have to have emotional depth or development, but it's typically a good thing when you care about them and their problems.

As for the exposition point, I think something can be said in defense of the story in the link.

(Spoilers follow.)

Re: emotional attachment. One of the things that annoyed me about Inception was that the big reveal of what happened to Marion Cotillard is totally internal to the weird mechanics of the world. She got driven crazy because she had to be manipulated into giving up the dream world. Erm, okay. To me the main plot with Cillian Murphy had a more interesting core: a guy's self-understanding in relation to his inheritance and successful father. Both are shallow and not "deep", both "develop" in the movie, but the second has some meaning to me and the first doesn't, and it seems to me to be a real advantage.

Re: exposition. I agree that one can get overly concerned with this. But I think it's annoying when exposition goes on during the entire movie, so that rules are introduced in order to explain something going on right that second. For example, all of a sudden it matters whether or not you die in the dream world, and it has to be explained why. Or the elaborate and (to me) cool idea of worming one's way through someone's subconscious by constructing labyrinths and stuff is suddenly thrown out in favor of action sequences involving a "militarized" subconscious. It makes the movie feel more ad hoc and random.

If the movie is going to just be about the mechanics of a world with weird rules, then fine. It's not favorite cup of tea, but I can definitely appreciate it. But there are better and worse constructions and presentations of artificial mechanics, and more and less involving plot vehicles for exploring it. Though some of Kirk Hamilton's particular complaints strike me as silly, I overall agree with him that Inception was inferior to the Matrix in this regard. If anything I think the right analogy with Inception is the second Matrix movie.
benefits are mostly going to shareholders instead of the broader economy

Interesting choice of words. You could have said "401(k)s".
Of course. My comment wasn't phrased extremely well. They just don't do much other than providing centralization of information. That's why "without a whole lot of middlemen" -- the line between AirBnB and the individual is pretty direct.

I think that services like that are important right now, and I'm glad that they exist.
We can probably achieve higher densities. On land farming is also more efficient than hunting.
No question, really?
How to import YouTube flv to imovie with YouTube to iMovie Converter?
Rolling meet-up: Looking to meet hackers as I drive cross-country
If interested, email me at niels.olson@gmail

Saturday, 31 July: Drive from Portsmouth to, roughly, Alabama or Louisiana

Sunday, 1 August: Drive to Houston or College Station, TX

Monday: 2 August: Stay in College Station

Tuesday, 3 August: Drive to San Antonio

Wednesday, 4 August: Drive to the Arizona border

Thursday, 5 August: Arrive in California

Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=portsmouth,+va&daddr=montgomery,+al+to:new+orleans,+LA+to:Houston+to:Bryan,+TX+to:san+antonio+to:Lordsburg,+NM+to:san+diego,+ca
شرح برنامج تشغيل الفيديو عالي الدقة Mirillis Splash PRO HD player v1.1.0.0 ML
The article focuses on a very narrow point, but it does offer an insight on the debate of free will.

However, it does not quite tackle the crux of the matter. If the choice we make is determine by influences beyond my control, as much as the cup of coffee has no choice but to follow my will, so to we as humans would have no choice but to choose the choice we made. Thus, perhaps it can not be said that we have free will.

We do not know the entire complexities which create any given behaviour at any moment, thus in any practical way we do have free will, but in a theoretical level, if like the cup of coffee I am bound to act in a certain way, how can it possibly said that I am free?
But electronics just rot on the shelf, too.
Postgres was also a bitch to install and work with in the early years, even on really supported platforms.

The usability push started with the performance one, from 7.x onwards (2000) and especially with 8.x (2005).
who uses MySQL as anything but a glorified key-value store when reaching large sizes?

My assumption is both Quora and Facebook use MySQL this way. While you are right that this is not using it as a real database, I want to know if PostgreSQL is deployed in a similar setup at all. Most of the people (including you) don't take into account the fact that there are many cases where MySQL (used as a KV store) proved to work, while I have never heard of such huge PostgreSQL deployments. If this was a general discussion regarding MySQL and PostgreSQL I could understand that, however, I think the post is more about whether to choose MySQL or PostgreSQL if you are going to use it as a KV store.
Your presentation is kind of one-sided. Warren concluded that modern families are worse off for a reason, as outlined in the Mother Jones article.
This is an utterly terrible idea.

Acceptable — barely — in dynamically typed languages, but utterly moronic for a strongly typed language where you can make references null-safe statically and at the type level.

Hiding nulls under the carpet is only a recipe for painfully hard to discover bugs in the long run.
A slightly-more-frequent-dev-release Chrome which can be installed along-side a regular Chrome (stable/beta/dev). Neat. Windows-only for now, sadly.

I wonder why "Canary", though...?
Why does Generic Programming require static types?
You Can’t Take It With You
It's still a bit weird, I think: a lot of the migration to Java was from enterprise C++, and while C++ has null pointers it doesn't have null references. So that wouldn't have been much of a change.
Javascript demo from mr. Doob
This Is How You Handle Data Center Security
It's already being done, based on Postgres.

http://www.enterprisedb.com/products/postgres_plus_as/overvi...
You have to go with the lesser evil.
Why Your Company Needs A Front End Developer
I did miss that out accidentally but I'm sticking like glue to your reason.
> But with every abstraction you're loosing flexibility, because to get an abstraction you're putting the lower parts in a concrete combination.

I don't think this is true. You might lose some, you might get some, in a different place, with greatly lowered brainload.

Or are you going to argue that lisps are less flexible than C?
Firstly, using the preprocessor will mean there is code duplication, even if it is not necessary. Secondly, once you are using the preprocessor to do generic stuff, you have probably thrown type-safety away.

That's not to say you can't write C in a generic way, but "generic programming" means something specific to computer scientists and has certain prerequisites.

And you can't write functional code without a functional language, without building a functional language on top of your language (which may not even be possible, e.g. you can do functional-ish stuff in C because of function pointers. Without them, you'd be stuffed.)

You can write functional code in a "non functional language", if by functional language you mean "Haskell, ML or Scala". But you need certain features like function pointers to do it, and in that sense you do need a functional language. Same for generic programming - you need certain features.
Standard applied Marxism: hedge funds are evil capitalists, university pension funds on the other hand operate on clean-burning unicorn flatulence.
An Introduction to OpenType Substitution Features
I downvoted you because i think you're flat out wrong, both on the functional account and on the generic account. Although i'm curious, how would you do generic programming in C a language in which you can't even define a generic list type without renouncing to static typing ?
fwiw, I often see this

var bla = function() {
//stuff
//more stuff
//some more
}//no semicolon
At last, we have found our successor to Lord British!
From http://glinden.blogspot.com/2008/05/yahoo-builds-two-petabyt... :

Yahoo builds two petabyte PostgreSQL database
James Hamilton writes about Yahoo's "over 2 petabyte repository of user click stream and context data with an update rate for 24 billion events per day".

It apparently is built on top of a modified version of PostgreSQL and runs on about 1k machines. In his post, James speculates on the details of the internals. Very interesting.
From the OP's definition, it needs static types so it can be compiled efficiently. You can do it dynamically (e.g. Ruby) but you can't do it as fast in general.

Additionally, generic programming is a computer science concept, and those types tend to prefer static-typing for safety reasons. They're probably not strictly necessary if you ignore efficiency.
Ruling on DMCA could allow cracking DRM for fair use
There is literally nothing I have ever done that I could do forever, even things I LOVED.

The fact that somebody doesn't want to do something forever doesn't mean it's a bad thing for them to do right now.