skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Does anyone else find it hard to read the text against the (yuck) background texture?
Data Portability: It’s The New Walled Garden
This is pretty funny as usual. Ironically, Randall uses a Windows XP tablet PC. He said he couldn't switch to Linux cause he needs Photoshop (I told him about Wine).

By the way, did they every figure out which dev was responsible for commenting out the relevant lines?
smanek asks innocently without waving around around a big beating stick or anything
Interesting and personal account. I liked the fact they are frugal with the money even though they have "millions in the bank".
Surgery to implant a modicum of tact, humility, and social grace?
Paypal subscription API problems hurt a lot of small startups
Right, we should probably use "effective for N" or "inhibits X" instead of good/bad, right/wrong.

Value judgments used to be effectiveness positions, wherin N and X were assumed to be common among people (or at least were implied to be superior to any dissenting view.)
Yep, looks promising. Really like that you don't have to configure anything. Just upload, enter user/pass and works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromo-DragonFly

In fact... Erowid.org says Dragonfly is sometimes sold as LSD to those who can't tell the difference.
when you've programmed for 10 years, how much further do you hope to be than you are now?
As it's creator said, the main purpose of Erlang is not to be fast, it is to be reliable. Sure, you can throw a lot of processors at it, but at the moment we are still not there (I just bought myself a QuadCore, not a QuazillionCore), and other languages might be able to benefit from more cores, too (once they arrive).
Why is Ayn Rand bullshit?
The actual article is at http://mobilecrunch.com/2008/05/14/android-vs-limo-whats-the...
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It sounds confusing. I think I'll leave it alone.
Dinner Recipes
Dinner recipes and menus for meal planning.
You don't need to write a 600 page book to convince people to be selfish.
This is a funny post. I see that you got tons of posts. Probably because everyone who has a kid, thinks they are an expert on the subject. Can you post a follow up with the finer points? I have four young kids and all I know is that it is fucking hard work to do a good job and I lie to my kids whenever I have to make life sound fair or fairytale nice.
A Few Easy Ones from Raymond Smullyan
Top Health Stories and Health News by H. Duthel, Master in Oriental Philosophy and Yoga
| (I told him about Wine)

What about Gimp?
opps. decree.
You are totally right, scaling linearly is just a side effect of the shared nothing concurrency- and reliability-based programming model but it's quite a feature anyway!
Global Left and Social News by H. Duthel
Is driving better for the environment than biking?
Ya know, when I first this comment on library support I thought "Well kinda..." but after a couple of hours mulling it over not so much.

Erlang has a pretty good set of standard libraries, and whatever missing is relatively easy to build yourself, by comparison.

Granted, there are some very good OS Java libraries, but there's also an awful lot of drivel - one need only fire up their profiler to verify it.

I'd say you're being quite uncharitable to Erlang.
The Evolution of Computer Commercials - What Consumers Want
Digg - In the name of a democratic and social Europe: “THE GOVERNME
Ya know, as much as I love Gimp; Photoshop it ain't.
In this case, I would have rather seen the link to the article posted as a comment in the other thread about Provigil. A lot of discussion has already centered around it; there's no sense in starting up a second thread on it, and fragmenting the discussion.
Tits or GTFO. Where are the screenshots?
H. Duthel PR, Media,PHP,SMS,CGI, API ready made Scripts and Top Clones Storefront - Lulu.com
H. Duthel , Author, Philosoph - Published at lulubooks, Inc.
Erlang still has a lot of warts. Just wait until we have cheap threads in the JVM.
xkcd is consistently awesome... and consistently lost on most people.
Digg - Candidat indépendant pour la première présidence européenne
I think the factory system referes not to the subjects but the methods of teaching. It has been argued for the last 40 years or so that modern education just creates humans to work in cubicles since that is what employers want. This does not benifit society.

An example in the UK is that all TEN year olds in the UK are taught to use Excel, Power Point and Word. They are not taught what these tools are for or how they work but how to use them. It has no educational value but gets the children ready for their working life of complete boredom. It is a complete waste of time in my opinion.

Example 2: All UK children from 9 are given lessons and tests in using a calculator. This can be inspite of the fact that they may not 'understand' multiplication (note I mean understand as opposed to perform).

Children are taught that education is needed so that you can get a good job (in a cubicle). While this is true it is a small part of the world as any adult knows. The idea of life learning is absent from modern education. Little or no attempt is made by the system to inspire children to go beyond the syllabus, children who fall behind are however 'worked' until they catch up.

BTW I do not blame teachers for this. As education has become more prescriptive and motivational the role of teaching has been sidelined.

It's a good article and as a parent it rings true to me.

PS: I have two children aged 10 and 3 in the UK education system atm.
The Optimisation of Business Intelligence via the employment of multiple philosophical dispositions
http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPreviews
Digg - Das grosse Deutschsprachige Anti-Action Bewertungsportal
Champ.
I think they make a reference to the sexualisation of children through the agressive marketing they refer to. It is because we allow children to act as a herd, directionless and meaningless that they are vulnerable to these powerful marketing techniques. Adults to not allow children to operate in the adult world in any meaningful way so marketing people have filled the vacuum with, well, a vacuum, but a vacuum that they can make money from.
Yay, I'm going to model my library after someone else's opinion of what I ought to read! Literature ought to be a popularity contest!

I think I've read over half of the volumes mentioned there, and disliked a lot of them. I thought "The Grapes of Wrath" was awful, and never did figure out why anybody was ever impressed by "The Catcher In The Rye". To me, both of those were good examples of books that people read because other people read them, and nobody can really describe why they're so profound, but since everybody else has read them, they must be. And, among all these "profound" works, they included "Into Thin Air". I enjoyed it, and I used to be a climber, but what's it doing on that list?

Then, there are the many titles not found on the list. How about "The Decameron", for one? "Pale Blue Dot"? "A Brief History of Time"? "Cosmos"? "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"?

And, I'd argue that reading should be done as much for enjoyment as for edification. So, why not some "Calvin and Hobbes"? Or "Words I Wish I Wrote"? Or some Neil Gaiman or Greg Bear or George RR Martin?

I'm not ranting at you; I agree with you 100%. Your comment just seemed like an appropriate place to attach a rant against the article. :-)
Chinese Birth Chart
The Chinese Birth Chart to find out the gender of your baby.
123
text
nhnn
Aaaargh. According to her own words, Rand didn't set out to convince anybody of anything. In fact, if a particular reader needed to be convinced of any of Rand's ideals, then that reader probably wouldn't understand what Rand was writing about anyway -- and indeed I find that that describes the bulk of people commenting on her stories.

From the introduction written in "The Fountainhead":

"Was The Fountainhead written for the purpose of presenting my philosophy? ... This is the motive and purpose of my writing: the projection of an ideal man. The portrayal of a moral ideal, as my ultimate literary goal ... Let me stress this: my purpose is NOT the philosophical enlightenment of my readers..."

...and so forth. Emphasis was hers, BTW. Having read both "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead", I didn't need to read an author's introduction to know that they were both simply works of fiction intended to glorify ideas that she thought were important. What's most frustrating is the way people conflate those ideas; the notion of a society without any regulation at all was only a minor element in a work of fiction intended to describe this complete exaltation of creativity.

I would have expected that reverence for the creative human spirit would be better received here.
"Learning Python [...] is a very nice introduction to an actual programming language."

What's an actual programming language?
Sounds fair to me, based on the information you've given. Do you think you're contributing significantly more to the success of the project than the other two? If so, that could signal a problem.
Just bought a bike trainer (it stops the bike moving and applies friction to the rear wheel) and I'm doing 2 x 15 minute sessions per day. I'm about to get a rower so I plan to do the same amount on that, hence 1hr per day total. With just 15 minutes per day though (my easy-to-do starting point) it's made a tremendous difference to how I feel. Not sure I'm working any harder though *8) I just feel better.
Ah, well, from the sound of it, the curriculum's changed a bit since I did my schooling in Switzerland (I'm only 28, though, so it can't have changed THAT much).

Certainly what you describe sounds pretty useless.

Daniel
what does your site do? any hints?
"we have a pretty poor understanding of how various foods interact with the human body"

That's a fascinating area all by itself. I read a couple of years ago about a study in hyperactivity and (while it's not classic double-blind, etc) the anecdotal examples presented were interesting. In one case, a woman with identical twins (who were hyperactive and very unruly) started feeding one on "real food" rather than the processed stuff that many busy parents rely on. Two weeks later, there was a huge difference in behaviour, in the way that you might predict. I'll see if I can dig out a link.

A friend of mine is a school-teacher, in a really rough school. They just banned all forms of soft drink, and he says that has, in itself, made a big difference with discipline. Basically, kids who were getting tanked up on sugar and "bouncing off the walls" are now noticeably calmer and easier to manage.

Religious debates to one side, it's easy to forget that our bodies are just a bunch of chemicals, so the chemicals we put in are bound to make a difference. Thanks for relating your experiences :)
Please do so. That would be interesting.
I think nostrademons is essentially saying that the top nine drivers are indistinguishable from each other, as none of them have been in an accident. They are all "the best". Depending on how pessimistic you are, there are either no people in the top five, or nine people in the top five.
That changes when you start to write options i.e. be the counter-party which does not have the right to buy/sell but the obligation.
Matroska
I have actually programmed for more than 10 years. My current impression is that I will probably never become a specialist for anything and will just have to make up things on the go, because technology changes so fast.

Maybe I have acquired some kind of taste, but then I always think about the many successful PHP projects out there (PHP is horrible in my opinion). So maybe even that "taste" is overrated. Just doing it seems to be all that counts.

Another thing is that I somehow try to optimize for the changing demands, and try to become faster at picking up stuff. I try to make it seem normal to pick up a new technology, rather than a reluctant effort. Not sure if it is the right way to go, though, and I also don't have a system for it.
How about you just stay at home on your couch?
Why word of mouth doesn't happen
I think it's clear that they know that - it was the point of Ryan's post - but have chosen to not address it. As I see it, there is no good that can come (for them) from admitting this "feature". If they say, "Yes, it's a problem but..." then people will latch onto that. If they say, "It's not a problem though!" then people will ballyhoo them. If they ignore it though maybe the commenters will go away...
I like threaded comment systems and I prefer digg/reddit since I can collapse them. Really though - how hard could it be? Any capable hacker could write the system to do such a thing in less than a day I would guess.
just ban him already
in NC?
I guess this is a spammer testing the waters at HN
Google Hacks Google!
List of tips for how to get the most out of Twitter
Blog post about how to make Twitter work for you
AfriGadget: Constrained Creativity
Set it up equally and make sure your vesting clauses protect each owner's shares/rights in case a founder leaves or stops contributing during the first couple years.
Baby Names
Baby names and baby naming tools.
I'm planning on experimenting with 6-hour days for everyone at my next startup. My thinking is that people will get more effective work in a 6-hour day (knowing that they have an extra 2 hours to spend with their families, or goof off, or whatever) than in a standard 8-hour day.
Next question: Do you feel that they work as hard/effectively as you and will provide as much value to the company?
From literacy to digiracy: Will reading and writing remain important?
That's cool, though-- because it isn't aimed at "most people." Part of what makes xkcd so consistently awesome is how (unconsciously) tuned in it is to its target audience.

What's always surprised (and scared) me, on the other hand, is that the readership of "Dilbert" scaled so well....
I think we want our kids don't develope the full power of analysis, since them they should discover a huge number of contradictions in our social life, perhaps more than they can cope with.

The problem is that this way, when they become adults perhaps follow the same route: Don't think to much since there is no solution to this problem.
Should you invest ten years in (a) becoming a better programmer? Or in (b) learning how to manage the people side of things? Or in (c) discovering what kinds of problems are worth solving?

How about (d) all of the above, making this "necessary but not sufficient"?
ObPeeve: In general, you don't focus lasers. The narrow beam is a result of it being collimated as it's produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser#Laser_physics
It isn't much of a secret in free softwar :) According to the LWN write-up (http://lwn.net/Articles/281434/) the culprit was a Debian developer Kurt Roeckx, though obviously this patch never swam upstream and he didn't seem to get much help from the OpenSSL developers in assessing the patch in the first place.

See also: http://lwn.net/Articles/281436/
Ask YC:  People in San Jose interested in getting together?
We're having a meetup this Tuesday in San Jose:

http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/1737/

Anyone's welcome to come along.
Pyrex - a Language for Writing Python Extension Modules
Bread Pudding
Recipe for old fashioned bread pudding.
"What's always surprised (and scared) me, on the other hand, is that the readership of "Dilbert" scaled so well...."

With what I've seen, it would have surprised me if it didn't.

I'm one of those who never really laughed at Dilbert. I just said, "Yea, I've seen that before." Sad, but true.

I have to admit, thought, I've never really seen a feline human resource director. I've seen many that were dumber, but never feline.
I would just echo the idea that you need to eliminate distractions - turn off phone, email, tv, and choose music with no lyrics. I have to have music going to get in the zone. I would add two other things that prevent me from getting in the zone: (1) small (less than 10 minute) tasks, and (2) tasks that I've procrastinated on. If there are lots of 10 minute tasks floating around, they are a distraction since, while working on a major code change, I'm often tempted to just do the quick fix here, quick fix there and then bam - I'm out of the zone (and now am checking email, etc). Do the little tasks and get them out of the way - even if it takes the whole day.

The second thing for me is clearing out any procrastinated items. If I don't answer that email, return that call, finish writing that article or whatever, sure enough it's going to pop into my brain at the wrong time and then I'll start thinking what a loser I am b/c I didn't do x, y and z on time.

So to sum up: not only is it important to minimize email and other interruptions but it's equally important to clear the chatter from your own head. To do so requires that you eliminate the small tasks and those things that make you think less of yourself.
So You Want to Be a VC
Definitely a huge issue as a subscription site I'm helping out with is 100% monetized using paypal subscriptions. We just started testing out trials and it's been a complete failure because NOTHING is showing up in people's paypal accounts and we're not getting any money. FAIL!
I've been a vegetarian for 12-13 years and I have the same thoughts. I've noticed huge changes in my concentration abilities when I eat a mostly junk/unhealthy diet for several days. I know that isn't restricted to vegetarians though.
OnStartups explains why someone who advocated low-cost, efficient startups went out and raised not one, but two venture capital rounds for his latest company.
Enhanced date range picker using JQuery UI widget as a base
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Doesn't sound much fun. If you've solved everything technically, what else is left to do :/ Maybe you should find some harder problems to work on.
I don't know why your comment was downmodded. It's a valid opinion IMO.
What Would You Do for Free Broadband?
Using the Mobile Phone as a Medical Diagnostic Tool
Spoken like a true programmer hehe :)

I have to disagree here as I think Photoshop for prototyping will save you days of time. Starting out coding is like saying, "I don't value the design; I want to skip that and just get the app ready." By doing it in Photoshop (or something similar) you can ignore the differences between browsers and ignore CSS, HTML, Javascript, etc and focus on the design. I've found that, if I use Photoshop, I'm able to complete the design and then focus on the code. Step 1: design. Step 2: code. If I try to start with the code, it's a back and forth, back and forth and the process takes me a lot longer and the design suffers greatly.

Photoshop is a design tool, not an HTML generator, in my opinion. You need an HTML editor to code it and it's probably best to code it by hand instead of using a generator. I use the Photoshop-generated HTML only as a last resort if I can't figure out how to hand-code it.
Personally, I'm glad this was posted separately. It was much more informative and better written than the first article, and I would not have been likely to see it if it was added now as a comment in the first post.
Ask YC: Road trip. Which audio books would you recommend?
I've got to go on a road trip for a few days. Which are your favourite and most inspirational audio books?
Astrology
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Word of mouth works best when there is a definite incentive to talk about it. If I tell you about <xyz>, you benefit, but so do I.

This is the basis of the entire MLM industry. There are many other good examples, too. (Refer 10 friends, get a discount.) Not everyone likes it, but it works.
Webcomics belong on the comics subreddit.
If my boss saw me on Hacker News for 3 hours trying to solve this puzzle and said, "I forgot to take my Xanax this morning, I never lie, and all the other programmers are working hard, therefore you're fired," would that make him insane?
Is it acceptable to profit from the poor?
Slim down your wallet by scanning its contents into your phone
Crossing Borders with Laptops and PDAs
Jerry To Yahoos: Please Keep Working! Jerry To Bosses: Here's What To Say
Danish Mobile Social Network ZYB Acquired by Vodafone for 31.5 Million Euro
I know the type of parent you mean (I live in Cambridge, MA), and I definitely would not be one of them.

Incidentally, though I agree treating kids too much like adults is a mistake, I don't think it's the most common one. Only a small number of "progressive" parents do that. From what I've seen, the worst mistakes parents make are (a) setting a bad example and (b) inconsistency.
Why is the past different from the future? - Boltzmann's anthropic brain
Ask YC: Do you love or hate software piracy?
There are 2 sides:

Side-1 says that piracy can have its benefits over the long run. Because people will get used to using the pirated s/w and over time those using pirated software will eventually convert to licensed software. Pirated s/w also creates brand awareness and popularity of the s/w. Microsoft would not have become popular giant if there was no piracy as their s/w are expensive to begin with (especially in 3rd world countries). BRIC countries has the biggest pirated s/w users, but at the same time today they are the biggest market for legal s/w, if people didn't had an option to use pirated s/w then they wouldn't be knowing about that particular s/w, hence no revenue for that s/w company.

Side-2 says that stopping piracy will generate an additional tens of thousands of new jobs, billions in economic growth, and millions in tax revenues for each country. (though no one explains how and from where these numbers came from).

What's your take???????
UML's sole purpose is to make people who do not know what they are doing appear as if they do.

How else could pay someone $50,000 per year and bill them out at $150 per hour without them actually doing anything?
You need a new boss ;-)
Why do you want my opinion?
Okay, if you enjoy history try The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (Volume 1) - each volume is around 48hrs each, it might sound like a lot of hours listening but it's a great book and taught me a lot about Roman history.

If you're into sci-fi try the old BBC radio series Journey into Space, Operation Luna (the first in the series).
I'm sorry but a very small, light grey font on a black background is not something I'm interested in right now.
Just a side note - during the days of the Manhattan Project Feynman found himself limited by the "computers" which were people that operated mechanical calculators - they needed to compute by hand certain long equations to determine the amount of certain materials they were going to need.

Back then, even, Feynman determined how to split up the work among several people, in effect, he paralellized the computation.
2 sides of the coin, it would be interesting to know which side is shinier for you :) if you were microsoft or oracle or ...
Nice example that shows you don't have to EITHER bootstrap OR raise investment. You can do both. Thanks.
One of Raymond Smullyan's best contriubtions is his allegory "Planet Without Laughter"

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html

I like things that encourage people to expand and/or examine their world views.
Interesting. I was thinking more of 'business' stuff, but there's always a correlation between business and topics such as rise and falls of empires. Thanks for that!
I read an article a few days ago about how distracting listening to audiobooks or talking is when driving.
"The story of google". Quite entertaining and I have more respect for them after listening to it
I don't understand the experiment? I guess I would not be able to quit smoking easily? But that wouldn't show me anything? Could be that coffee does the "easy to wean off" deception, and smoking doesn't. I suspect there are more coffee drinkers than smokers in the world (no idea, though).
http://brainrules.net

neat site.
Digg - Top Smoking Cessation News to Help You Quit Smoking by H. Du