skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think in some sense we're all moving towards this model of "ownership", in one way or another.

For example, when it comes to the most easily mass producible thing in the world--information--we're all "billionaires" now. I can ask Google to get me all kinds of information, and it just appears. Even 15 years ago some fairly trivial Google searches would have required privileged access to sources of knowledge (libraries, universities, etc... stuff not always available everywhere in the world) and lots of free time.

There are very few limits (or if there are, we haven't reached them yet) on the reproducibility of information. The marginal cost of reproducing information for another ten or twenty billion human beings is fairly negligible. Will it ever be the case that we can overcome the limits on the reproducibility of material goods? Or are there fundamental constraints on material goods that don't exist for information? If we can overcome them, then one day we will all be "billionaires", in this sense.

EDIT: Amazon Web Services is a good example of this kind of transformation; it's made all of us "millionaires" when it comes to computing. A few years ago, "get me a thousand servers" would have required millions of dollars, a fair amount of time, and a lot of technical expertise. With EC2, it requires $100/hr.
Living Will
If you do not have a living will your silence may be setting your family up for emotional and financial turmoil. A living will specifies in advance your decisions regarding artificial life support.
Popular comedy in the UK (Armstrong and Miller) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cjf_u_Q-ho

"Dad, why did you and mum get a divorce?"

"The thing is Paul, it was all your fault"

There's a whole series of these sketches with similar themes.
Telling the truth in all instances to kids is idiotic :)

One of my other favorites that I can't find on youtube/script:

"Dad, why don't I have many friends?"

"The thing is Paul, you're just not that interesting. I sometimes struggle to stay awake when talking to you myself." etc etc
You asked for a source: I provided one. A request for an explanation is something else. I'll give you another source instead: http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/Mike.Shor/courses/GTheory/do...

As for $35, it pains me to mention libraries...it was a source, with a link so that you could see something about the book.

I can't say I know of a single public intellectual or professional philosopher who takes Rand seriously. I do know of a well-regarded mathematical logician who does, but this is an aberration.
It seems like it's really just a matter of personal semantic interpretation to me. Did Hacker News not drive some traffic to TechCrunch as a result of this post? How much bigger must Hacker News be relative to TechCrunch for it to begin "driving" traffic as opposed to some other verb? According to who? Either way, call it whatever you'd like, but the point remains that driving/sending/adding/creating/dispatching/routing traffic and/or increasing visibility is what these "parasites" have going for them. Whether or not that's worth the cost of letting them "leech" is debatable, but I'm going to go with yes given that people keep on cranking out APIs.

P.S. Since you didn't seem to notice, "perhaps" was sarcasm on my part. FriendFeed will most certainly create some additional traffic and/or visibility for the sites it "leeches" off of. It is important, however, to note that traffic != visibility. Sometimes times visibility detracts from traffic because there's no need to visit the source (i.e. Google Maps, YouTube, Scribd, etc.) but other times it creates traffic because the source provides added value (i.e. Thumbnails -> Larger Image, HN Links -> Stories, etc.). It's also worthwhile to note that the former (increase in visibility, decrease in traffic) still has benefits, as your service becomes more well known (creating future traffic). I'll leave you with this: http://friendfeed.com/e/d1ffcc73-040a-5609-6168-993c4549591a
Anyone find any particularly interesting lectures?
Even erlang can't save you from messing up the factorial function
Well, obviously, you can keep your false-positive rate low by requiring absolute consensus. If you require fourteen different people to agree on every hire, then you're not likely to hire any bad people....you're also not likely to hire anyone at all.

Your second argument is more reasonable: if you stick to strict majority-rule voting, it's true that you're less likely to get a false-negative result with a larger number of voters. (You'll also increase the number of false-positive results). Problem is, nobody actually does it that way. Most hiring managers are trying to keep the false-positive rate low, and tending toward consensus. Thus, random false-negatives have quite a bit of impact -- one or two "no-hire" votes are enough to torpedo a candidate at places like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

Clearly, when you do enough interviews, you start to expect "no-hire" votes, just due to chance. You can claim that this is good for the company, but like I said before...these companies do a lot of complaining that they can't find "qualified" applicants. Perhaps if they re-thought screening processes that involved dozens of interviews, they might find that the qualified applicants were there all along.
...and you have already 3 (including hermaphrodites).
Tahitian Noni
Tahitian Noni juice is made from pure noni pure from French Polynesia, natural grape juice concentrate, natural blueberry juice concentrate, and natural flavor.
A degree signifies that someone knows what they don't know. I am quite competent in many technical areas, but my formal education pushed me into areas where I'm not comfortable and would have avoided if it was up to me.
Biggest Drawing in the World
http://www.lecturefox.com/computerscience/
Installing And Using OpenVZ On Debian Etch
Don't forget your towel today
True, although I suppose if they put "houseless" you probably wouldn't have read it...
> Also, that sucks you were downmodded so much without replies.

And for simply being wrong, rather than offensive, a troll, or whatever.
Is there not as much ego as wanting to have museums named after you as there is in having fancy cars and houses. This determination to leave a legacy can often be just as conceited. Its not enough to be rich, people want to have a stamp on history like the Rockefellers or Carnegies.

Donating to a museum may seem altruistic but don't be so foolish, you can never really know people's true motivations.
Dedicated Hosting
I love how English is quite happy to absorb new words, even if the English speakers only know a subset!

Back in school, we were warned about "faux amis", words which sound like they'd be right to an English speaker, but very much out of place to a native French speaker. I think in English we'd just accept any and all alternative meanings and let context sort it out, who's up for some creative reading?
You're certainly right about abstraction being useful. My fist thought was that the simple-English for autodidactic here would be "self-taught", being aware of unnecessary abstractions, though the subtler meaning is closer to "someone who will teach themselves".

Simply saying "self-taught" wouldn't have had the right connotation: instead of "clever and driven", it would have been, "but what have they missed?" and we would have missed out on this interesting off-topic sub-thread!
Different venues perhaps, but for someone attending because they want to, the goals are much the same.
The limit of concurrent connections is only between two hosts. If a Host X can maintain 2^16 TCP connections to Host Y, then it should also be able to maintain 2^16 TCP connections to Host Z, Host A, Host B, etc.

Thus, a host could theoretically maintain 65536 TCP sessions with every host on the Internet.
> You still haven't answered my question - how can I, sitting behind one NAT, receive a connection from my friend behind another NAT, if neither allows direct incoming connections?

This is exactly the problem that STUN solves. But you need a third party server, most of the time application-specific, and yet another layer of complexity.
In Search of the Super Easy Super-Phone
From what I've skimmed from the article - it is just a giant colocation centre.
Wow, I love it. Brilliant visualisation of the browser's rendering process. This could even be useful in practice for working out how efficient your markup/CSS is. People with slower devices will appreciate shorter rendering times. Now if only there were instructions for how they came up with these. (I'm guessing it's some special debug mode for the developers, so you'd have to compile Firefox with some patches)
> IPv4 isn't routing it; AIM is.

Yeah, but that breaks the principle of encapsulation. The IP layer has routing that works great, the app layer can take it for granted. Why should each app re-implement routing? This would raise the cost of entry, again.
Facebook Will Be the Mainstream Everything
I am currently in the process of launching a new product for my business.

You can contact me at: matthewking [dot] yc [at] gmail.com
Parsing the visual math that led to some of the world's most recognizable logos
YouTomb by MIT
The Customer is the Company
The website is down because someone removed the X-Box
I expected this article to be about soldering things in a toaster oven.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Toaster-Oven-Reflow-Solderin...
The OECD stats look quite interesting. They break things down into Type A[1] and Type B[2] programs. Superficially, Type A are 3+ year courses, Type B are 2+ year courses. Results for the UK and US are here[3][xls]. Executive summary: for the 3-4 year Type A graduates, in the UK, 97% graduate. The OECD average is 67%. This report also has data for the US.

For actual numbers of people in the UK with degrees, there's this page[4] from the National Statistics. For people of Working Age, 18 to 60-ish, in the UK, 16% have degrees, and another 8.5% have "Higher education qualifications". 15% have no qualifications. It would be handy to have data for the 25-35 age range, since not many 18 year olds have degrees.

[1] Type A: http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=5440

[2] Type B: http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=544

[3] World Stats: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/15/39245059.xls

[4] UK Degree Stats: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Product.asp?vlnk=10446
Corollary: labeling non-servers with "This is actually a server." sounds rather fun.
Dirty Political Facts
His employer's search business got eaten by Google, at the time I think Google were hiring 50%+ PhDs.
Solving the Twitter Business Model Problem
Provided you believe that P(A | B) = P(A & B)/P(B), Bayes theorem always applies.
It's a cute logic game, but I'd take it a lot more seriously if the author didn't try to use Zen to market it. The metaphor is a faulty one; koans are not meant to be "solved" according to some rule.
I was fortunate enough to get a demo of this by the people working on it at the university of Tokyo in April. Our CS class was on a study tour in Japan. The technology is really amazing, especially when used to record animations. They also had other cool stuff, like a 3D leaves/flowers/trees design tool.
>I can't say I know of a single public intellectual

Alan Greenspan (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/business/15atlas.html).

Clarence Thomas (http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1090180289132).
Although this doesn't involve machine-learned models, this story highlights the worth of good human judgment, something that currently isn't replicable in machines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
True, but this is pretty cool:

"the company managed to acquire what was once meant to be Enron's broadband trading hub for a song. This gave Switch access to more than twenty of the primary carrier backbones in a single location."
Ask YC: What to do with repetitive strain injury problems?
Hi everybody,

I have developed RSI problems (repetitive strain injury) in my lower left arm. At first, it only occurred after playing the guitar. I have since stopped doing that (1 year ago already). But now, my wrist/lower arm hurts even when I am only programming and it's getting a real problem for me. After all, I earn my living as a programmer. I was wondering:

Has anybody else had these problems? What did you do to get better? Was there a "magic trick" that worked for you? Is there a special keyboard you can recommend? Also, do you have experience with some kind of speech recognition software that you can recommend? Is it even possible to use speech recognition with Eclipse, for example?
"You ignore..."

She also ignored an infinite number of other things.

Congratulations. You just uncovered another level in pg's hierarchy of disagreement: acusing the other of ignoring anything she didn't say. Cool.
Is there any proof for the statements made about left/right brains? Was the prof learned in neuroscience? Or is it just some folk tale stuff?
Ask HN: Is a distcc style plugin for professional workgroups an idea whose time has come?
I've been thinking about an idea for a startup for the past few days, but I have my own startup to concentrate on, so I have no time to do it. I'll offer it here for comments and if someone else chooses to do it, all to the good.

It occurs to me that in recent months, dual and quad core CPUs are now becoming more or less the default choice for new workstations. Typically, they'll also come with 2 or more GB of RAM. While I don't have load averages to back this up, it's my guess that the average developers CPU sits almost idle about 95% of the time. When they're writing code, browsing documentation, using the source control system or bug tracker or just at lunch or chatting idly.

This means that in a typical team consisting of some 10 or 12 developers, and supporting staff such as managers, architects, integration coordinators, etc. etc. You have thousands of processor cycles a second going to waste. Typically, all these workstations will be networked together on a single wired LAN segment that's considerably underutilised.

I think it'd be great if someone makes a decent distcc style plugin for some common dev environments like VC++, or Java/Eclipse. The plugin ought to advertise itself via zeroconf networking, and automatically utilise as much spare capacity on the network as can be found. The plugin should be smart about avoiding the user noticing that other users are compiling software on their machine. Locking itself to a single processor is a good start, and refusing jobs if the user on the local machine is compiling code or doing some other processor intensive activity.

Does this sound like a good idea to anyone else? In some of my past jobs, something like this would have saved me whole hours a week.
So what about questions like

"Which of us kids is your favorite?"
"Do you like my latest bit of art? toilet roll glued to a box"

What about adopted kids? What about kids who came from really difficult childhoods. What about a kid that was the product of his mum being raped?

Do those kids really need to know that? Are they emotionally developed enough to deal with such harsh realities?

The OP doesn't seem to have had to deal with particularly hard questions at all.

Say there was an escaped convict loose in your town, who had previously murdered several children. Your kid sees some vague reference to it on the news before bed time, and asks "What is that about dad?"
Would you answer:

a). Oh it's quite scary Son. There's a madman who sneaks into kids bedrooms and cuts them up. He's loose outside.

b). Nothing to worry about, get back into bed :)
This is a great technique.

I've noticed i actually do this inadvertantly on long plane trips. I can't eat on a airplane or 12 hours before a long flight. When i arrive, it is usually midnight and there is nothing to eat (since most stores are closed). In the morning i usually have a big breakfast. I've never suffered from jet lag, due to readjusting my food cycle.

I know this works for me regarding jet lag. I will use this tequnique to adjusting my sleep cycle at home.
Does anyone else feel pretty creeped out by this?
Consumers Want More Applications And Services For Mobile Web 
"Some 80% of consumers would prefer a service provider that gives them more choice in the applications and services available on their mobile device."
What is this? Digg?
Youth appeal - In efforts to recruit today's college grads...
How many college students pick up a newspaper to scour the classified ads for a job? Probably not many, yet some companies still post job ads there.
Luckily the question doesn't really come up in a community of non religious types.
Test Cheating
Caveon Test Security helps testing program improve their security and stop cheating.
I don't use the service either, but my understanding is that while yes, you could use a standard RSS reader such as Google Reader or NetNewsWire to aggregate this info, but if you did, you'd be likely to start wishing for more custom support of the specific services you're aggregating, and providing those services is their value proposition.
un/serializing to file system. Why is this better than letting mysql do the disk I/O for you?
Alternatively, do it the way I did: Travel to china, and when you get back, don't allow your sleep schedule to revert back to your timezone.
Find a good physiotherapist. They'll be able to teach you exercises that you can do yourself to help things.

That is what helped me when I got what sounds like pretty similar to you: Too much guitar playing causing left hand/wrist/arm problems. Unfortunately it still isn't entirely better, but fortunately typing doesn't seem to be a problem with it.

Sort out your posture, wrist/hand position when typing. I'm sure someone else can point you to decent information on this.
Honesty and truth are not absolute. The delivery is quite important, as is the environment in which this delivery occurs. In a family environment where parents have been honest with their children, their children were nurtured in a different way, so examples such as these are quite meaningless.

For the sake of argument:

> "Do you like my latest bit of art? toilet roll glued to a box"

You're a regular Duchamp!

As for the multiple choice question (which is worse than a CNN poll), how about none of the above, or

c). (Father has already explained the situation in an honest way to his son, explaining, too, the precautions he -- and the town -- are taking to keep his son safe.)

In the end, though, one of the "lies" that parents have been telling children for ages now is the bedtime story where the children are killed to teach a harsh reality: back then, children died quite often.
Hi. First, sorry to hear about your problem. I too develop a mild pain in my lower left arm every now and then when working long hours, so I can empathize with you.

As far as getting better, I don't believe there is a magic trick. It all boils down to posture and taking appropriate breaks. There have been several discussions on HN about keyboards and desks [http://searchyc.com/keyboard] but it takes a while to find a keyboard that suits you well. I personally have gone through several keyboards and have come to the conclusion that I will have to spend the money to get a really good one.

The other issue, as I mentioned earlier, is taking breaks. Getting up from your desk at regular intervals is good both for your arms, and back as well as your eyes. There are a variety of exercises you can perform while at your desk [http://tinyurl.com/rttqm].

I haven't used any speech recognition software, so I am afraid I can't help you there. In all honesty though, catching this early and doing something about it helps.

Good luck and I wish you well.
This is really neat, i've been looking for a web.py tutorial like this for awhile.
Nice answer @ Duchamp.

I don't think kids are developed enough to calculate risk well enough. Adults also generally suck at that. So even if you tell him the good news (What precautions you+town have taken to keep him safe), he will focus on the bad news (Murderer on the loose) so I don't actually think in the kids eyes that is any better than (a).
Just out of curiosity, when was the last time Dvorak actually said something relevant? Anyone remember back that far?

Today's choice quote: "Go ahead: Type in the keywords "best knitting site" into Google and tell me which site, out of the 300,000-plus results Google returns, is really the best knitting site. It cannot be done, despite the fact that there must be a best one."

No, John, actually it's not at all clear that there "must be a best one." There are probably lots of sites that are best for differing purposes and contexts and sets of values, and you're going to have to type something slightly more sophisticated that "best knitting site" into a search engine to find them. If you walk into a library and ask for the best book on knitting, don't you think the librarian will ask some follow-up questions, to get a better feel for what you are looking for?
I guess not eating breakfast is why my cycle is so unstable...

This actually makes plenty of sense as when I used to have breakfast regularly I would wake up within a minute every morning without an alarm.
Killer idea - potential to create a lot of value for people
could you put your email address here or in the "about" field of your profile? (the email address field isn't displayed to other users)

or email a copy to peter at pchristensen dot com

Thanks!
Too true, but I'd rather have him spend his money on a museum or library that I can enjoy than a pair of private jets that I cannot. The original motivation matters very little to me.
Hi. There is no magic cure. I've found that swimming helps because it involves whole body movement. The most important thing you can do is to take restbreaks (I use WorkPace software)
For a certain, made up definition of selfish. I think the data cited really means to say that "search engines are good enough that people prefer them over manually going to a likely starting point and hunting for relevant links". I can agree with that.

And there should be an automatic warning on any article that contains the phrase "beat Google".
Meh. I ran it and it has lots of reported things that are not real problems.
The Entrepreneurial Generation
It's possible to think of the process that airline safety regulators have gone through where they have observed crashes and guessed about the cause and then suggested fixes as a type of learning problem.

For goog's case it would be fun to try and build a supervised learning system whose sole purpose is to try and identify the queries which a human observer would consider a "catastrophic failure"

I've also heard of stories where decision trees supposedly outperformed human cardiologists in making diagnoses. (I'm skeptical of this claim but let's assume that it's true) If this type of advance is real then it could save a lot of lives. Unfortunately, if goog's engineering team has this kind of doubt about the machine, then I imagine that it would be easy to persuade a random jury that installing such a poorly understood black box is negligence.
Offtopic, but what's the difference between framework and library?