skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think a good question on HN would be to whom here is pg not a hero in some way? Isn't that why people want to draft him for Congress / get his advice on everything / build statues of him out of old sim cards?

That being said, I did enjoy reading "I like the way Paul Graham quacks". And I do wonder if there are other people in the startup/investor community who have the same positive cred as pg.
The equities of where the burden should fall are debatable, but the fact that different people on the same street or city block end up paying vastly different amounts of tax for the local same services is not.

Something else to bear in mind is that when commercial property is owned by a corporation which is a wholly owned subsidiary of another (eg BigCorp owns Big Property LLC, whose sole asset is the Big Tower building), the corporation can be sold without triggering the tax reassessment (ie BiggerCorp buys Big Property LLC, which remains the titleholder of Big Tower). This hurts new companies just as much as new homebuyers; here's a 2003 press release from Shoerenstein co. grumbling about how they pay $16/sqft in downtown San Francisco while most of Disneyland is taxed at 5c/sqft although the land is worth about 7x more than that figure suggests.

Property taxes are reassessed periodically, but prop 13 limits increases in tax to 2%/year, so for those who hold real estate it takes 36 years for the tax to double in value even if the price of the land goes up much faster or inflation is high. Back in 79 stagflation was a pressing economic problem, so the net effect of Prop 13 was to reduce property taxes for existing homeowners - inflation was ~8% then, so a 2% tax increase cap meant your property tax was going down by 6% in real terms.
I have no experience with this, but in my experience, a lot of smart people who do illegal things don't post about them on the Internet.
Jared, from the linked article:

"it's hard to reconcile the stated need for net neutrality in this agreement with a giant exception for wireless networks, which are quickly becoming the most important networks of all"
> You said engineers were not prisoners.

I would be willing to bet you that engineers working on the Typhoon class submarines were not prisoners. In general engineering was an esteemed and respected profession. Think lawyers and doctors in US. These are all general statement relating to the situation in Soviet Union based on a personal experience.

Your comment made it sound like "no, that is _wrong_ most engineers were prisoners".

That is just simply wrong. There we some engineers who were also prisoners. But most of them were not.

Those engineers that worked on building submarines were doing very well. That was a very prestigious job. Again think about someone being a stock broker or a corporate lawyer in US.

> The Wikipedia article states that. Do you really believe that Khruschev, just because he chose to oust Stalin, gave up on such a convenient source of scientific labor?

Alright the history of the Soviet Union might have been obscured and covered in secrets but you forgot one important thing -- the Soviet Union fell apart. It lasted only 70 years and people from the 50s are still alive. So no matter how much the Soviets tried to rewrite the history, as long as there are still millions of eye witnesses it is just not possible.

> I have no idea where you found anything in my post about American moral superiority.

You are right, you didn't say it. I put those words in your mouth because I thought you implied it. The reason I thought that is that your perception of the situation in the ex-Soviet Union, especially as far as the naval engineering goes, is completely wrong. Being that you refuse to admit that it is wrong, leads me to believe that you are just drumming up the same boring Cold War propaganda that we've heard before from the Americans -- stuff like "in Soviet Union everyone was in a Gulag", ... , "any progress was made just because people were prisoners and forced to work",... and so on.

I am not excusing or romanticizing the ex Soviet empire. I am glad it fell, I didn't like. I want to be able to write whatever crap I want online without the fear of someone knocking on my door and so on. BUT painting everything with a broad black brush is just wrong. Life in the Soviet Union was not hell, people were not crying on the streets, everyone had their basic needs taken care of, crime was law and so on. No matter how much we want to hate it, we cannot re-write that, because that as well would just as dishonest and wrong.
Learn C++ in 20 minutes! If you try to write C++ code armed with this minimal guide, boy, are you in trouble. I would suggest to buy "Accelerated C++" (http://www.acceleratedcpp.com/) instead, which is a great (but short) book to make the leap to C++.
I see, but what about the fundamental problem of bandwidth scarcity? If it's not the market that allocates, is there a fairer way?
Good thing I don't have a mac. :) I was going on the basis of ComputerGuru's post here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1587352
wow too bad it tanked so quickly with spammer types

very cool and thought provoking. BTW, I was "foo". :)

Feature request: When I log out & come back to a room, the conversation should still be there.

edit: interesting, someone just downvoted a bunch of comments here. HN has grown large and attractive to idjits. I upvoted the zeros back to ones.
"Regulating it" has the wrong connotation when associated with Net Neutrality. It suggests an evil-facist government-controlled internet, when in fact it's the exact opposite.

Net Neutrality is government enforcing non-control of the internet, over everybody. It says that no one, including the government, can make the internet a non-level playing field. Like national parks, it's a Good Thing™.
Open sourced code or it didn't happen.
looks great, can I control who is in my room if I make one?
I think the stance taken by MathOverflow is correct. It would be one thing if that were the only venue to have a discussion about the proof validity possible but there exist much better discussion mediums. The linked blog is a case in point. MathOverflow is geared towards being a Q&A site.
Bug (or feature I guess): if I scroll up and someone posts, it autoscrolls me down to the page.
Great work, was fun till the spammers showed up.

You leaning towards open sourcing it or selling access to chat servers?
My biggest complain when it comes to writing with a pen is the thickness of the lines. I'm a huge fan of 0.5mm lead for that reason.

If that's your qualm, take a look at finer pointed pens- step outside the ball point.
I guess the argument I would make against that is that the risk of starting with network neutrality is low because it is approximately what we have now (I'm sure someone will provide counter examples, but I would still say it is fairly much the situation). There is more certainty in maintaining the status quo than adventuring into unknown territory.
Right, that's part of 'worse is better'. Easier to build the system, harder to program well on it.

EDIT: I wrote that before reading. The title isn't very relevant to the post.
That was fantastic and fast, but it definitely needs Flood control http://www.irchelp.org/irchelp/mirc/flood.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat_flood
OpenVMS vs. Unix
Somebody grab Jason Calacanis for a meaningful soundbite :)
Firstly, county should be country :). I like the idea, it's pretty nifty and I can see it being useful, but I think your approach is wrong. When I go to search for something, I just type it into my address bar and search, I never go to google.com and then search for something, I haven't done that in about three years :), so as you can probably tell, I don't really want to go through seekier.com every time I want to search for something.

So here's how I would approach it. Why not make a browser extension that does everything in the background, this way, I can use the service without having to run over to the site every time I want to look for something, I'd probably forget about doing it altogether after an hour :). If you decide to take this approach though, make sure you put a big button somewhere that allows you to to turn the service off if you decide you want to go and look for porn or something ;).

Keep up the great work guys! Don't get discouraged if anybody tells you that it's the most useless thing in the world, people said the exact same thing about twitter, until they began using it and realized it's benefits.
hmm... someone's stress testing http://2wi.ch/hackernews atm. let's adjourn someplace else. suggestions?
What I've noticed "Professional" software like Photoshop is that a vast quantity of copies are pirated. In corporate settings and among very successful practitioners, not so much, but among any other category of people I've met that use Photoshop/Final Cut/AutoCad/etc, a very large portion of the copies are pirated.

From that, I really wouldn't be surprised if they grabbed stuff such as these textures from Deviant Art without any regard to the rights. I've certainly seen it happen.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I'd be interested to see how many people among the users of Photoshop who aren't such kung-fu masters of it to have tons of their own such things worked out are going to pay for this stuff instead of looking for it on torrents.
This should definitely be a feature. Also, when somebody posts it scrolls down to the bottom. Sometimes the bottom half of the window showing the chat turns black and blocks out the text in opera on mac.
Plenty of HN people are 'pg skeptics (it's getting harder to be skeptical about YC, though).

Here's a manifesto:

http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
As the article's author, I'm somewhat biased :-), but I respectfully disagree. If you try to learn C++ armed with only this guide, sure. I certainly didn't write it as a comprehensive guide. But doing is the only real way to learn a language, and I think that for a C programmer, this might be a good place to dive in and start trying things.
It takes at least 15 minutes for people to get back into a productive working state after being interrupted.

In my (somewhat limited) experience, it's actually "up to 15 minutes", depending on what I was doing. If it's something relatively mindless, I'll be back to work in maybe 30 seconds to 2 minutes; if it's more involved I'll go over my notes (some of which I wrote down immediately at the start of the interruption) and pick up about where I was after 5-10 minutes.

If it takes you 15+ minutes to swap back in after an interruption, you're trying to keep entirely too much state only in your head.
How to Take a Walk
"old sim cards"?

There are people who go through those things enough to make even a stick figure?
I've been using the same sim card for the past 4 or 5 years.
I just looked this up on Jon Skeet's website, and apparently he doesn't know either. Here is a lively thread where he posed the question to his readers:

http://msmvps.com/blogs/jon_skeet/archive/2009/11/17/where-d...
I love this one!!! I can start the group chat in a second!!!
This is great. I have a contract next month with a local company looking to build a video site in their niche (elementary education tools). I'll be using this for sure :)

Do you guys have an API?
You just found the entry to the rabbit hole of psuedo-scientific crackpottery. Wave when you pass the flat earther's, marvel at the moon landing conspiracy-ists, and send me a postcard from numerology.
An extension is something we defiantly wanted to do from the beginning. That was one issue we saw was either people not wanting to go to seekier or simply when they search they don't go back to seekier. Thanks for the feedback!
How's it different from http://github.com/ry/node_chat?

Here's my clone with a shared jukebox: http://github.com/akkartik/node_chat
infinte rooms. so you just go to twitch.me/foobar and send other people that link. You're chatting with just those people.

Sure, you could host node_chat yourself, but a) then you have to host node_chat yourself, and b) if you found yourself in a situation where you wanted 2 rooms open at once, you'd have to start up another instance of node_chat.
You need to put an example embedded video prominently on your page. Does your player rule? Great!

Does it suck? I don't know. What I DO know is I wouldn't become a paying member just to find out.
Yes, daily. I can't remember the last time I used a pencil, though, 10 years at least.
Patent troll or not, you (probably --- I don't have the books) have to respect the effort. The guy has a zillion dollars and has chosen to spend some of it to make the largest possible impact on cooking. That's pretty cool.
Sometimes I'll go for a long walk, maybe six miles. I don't walk fast or listen to music, I just look around, maybe at people's yards. I like to see who has a bird feeder or interesting landscaping. When I first start, my mind is full of thoughts and my muscles and legs are full of bounce, even tight, but after four miles, my mind is nearly empty, except for the kind of slow easy thoughts that someone who works the land all day, someone who sees the sun rise and set, might have, and my legs are heavier, yet loose, and ready for many more miles. After five miles, my gut feels lean and empty, my body feels purged of something.
I laughed out loud at "wireline" internet becoming irrelevant in a few years. Even when I'm surfing the web on my phone, I'm doing it on wifi as often as on EVDO. Then there's the 10+ hours a day in front of a computer.

Cellular internet is a long way from offering the speed and convenience of broadband. And even then, the cost of landline internet is just so much lower that we'll see wi-fi continue to proliferate.
Thanks! Unfortunately, I haven't had time to write an API yet. I'm the only developer, so I focused on the features that needed to be there right away for users to be able to use our service. I had just about 2 weeks to pull this together and still have a fulltime job. Almost none of them needed an API.

Building an API, however, is very high up on my list of things to do though. What kind of things would you like to see in an API? I think we have another, very large, customer who needs an API too so I'll try to get something set up ASAP.
Tips on the Healthiest Ways of Eating and Losing Weight
To the disappointment of Ayn Rand fans everywhere, this 'Rearden' metal originated in the (government-funded) public university system. :P
Random documents in MongoDB
I'd second the $5k per month. It'll be on 1099 so you will have a tax advantage and take home will look good if you have a lot of Schedule C expenses.
The version I heard was that they got it off Usenet, where it had been posted by the supplier.

Sounded like a sensible way to seed the service, really.
Could it be that the million dollar millennium prizes are actually slowing down the resolution of important problems because they discourage crowd sourcing proofs?
hi everyone. suggestion: start your own twich by just linking to
http://twich.me/[roomname]

and post the link to get others chatting with you. it's getting too crowded in the main room.
Serialization benefits massively - maybe the framework devs wanted it or perhaps its just about staying ahead of the curve.
C++ is is a loaded rail gun with a faulty safety switch, useful and powerful but dangerous to use!

A journeyman programmer like myself has so much to learn once the basics are mastered, this doesn't seem to be the case in other languages I've used. I'm slowly working my way through this list starting with Scott Meyers http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-b...
> Your comment is basically "You're being too informative. Could you break it down for me further, again, one more time?

To me, his comment is basically "primary, not secondary, source materials please". Where I come from this is a reasonable request.
Yes, I completely agree. We DO need a player on the homepage.

Like I noted, however, this was a real rush job. We needed a minimum set of features so that we could migrate users and I really only had time to focus on that as opposed to the marketing material. Once we start marketing the site to new users, we will hopefully have a good intro video to show off the player.
Because it's the internet. You're supposed to have an opinion about everything here! And you must express it at every opportunity.
It's never good to be purposefully out of touch. go deep in get-it-ness. But i have noticed w/ non-traditional facebook users the appeal of fb is directly related to how active your friends are, you may not like fb because your social network does not like it.
I had to change once in the last 10 years as apparently the standard (guessing file size) changed and new phones wouldn't support my old sim.
3G is roughly as fast as DSL, isn't it? Like 1.5Mbps. 4G is supposed to have 100Mbps down, and 50 up. That's plenty fast.

And the cost of wireless internet is cheaper. I pay $30/month for my unlimited data plan with T-Mobile, and I pay $60/month for my FIOS.
HN lurkers such as dlsspy, pquerna, and zedshaw are my hacker heroes.

They need not introductions but I suppose links won't hurt:

http://hackerne.ws/user?id=dlsspy

http://hackerne.ws/user?id=pquerna

http://hackerne.ws/user?id=zedshaw
daily exercise. daily.
I don't. Every Mac user I know doesn't. Maybe I'm a weird demographic (I switched back in 2000 - prior to that, I used Windows strictly - from DOS/3.1 up to 2000!)

I've found that any Windows software I need (i.e, some software to capture a stream or a uTorrent-equivalent client before uTorrent was available...), there's an equivalent version on the Mac.

I do still use a Windows machine (and have worked on a Windows machine from XP, Vista and currently Win 7 Enterprise) - but personally, I have no need for it. Although, honestly, I find Windows 7 quite nice.
the public telephone system

You mean Ma Bell?
You should read the section of SuperFreakonomics devoted to him before dismissing him as a patent troll. If that book is to believed (and I'll take the word of Levitt and Dubner, distinguished authors who visited his lab, over that of Michael Arrington any day) he's a pretty swell guy.
Thomas Jefferson would be pretty close to the ideal hacker. (if others disagree I'm interested in why as I have very little opposing data so far).
I was pro-nuke and I'm still more pro-nuke than I am pro-coal.

I just re-evaluated my risk tolerance in the wake of this whole gulf thing. Anyways happy death spiral is a great way to put it -- I kind of view my past feelings about it through that lens.
Interesting, I don't know of these except zed shaw from article titles (catchup time).

I do know wheels and patio911 are always a good read though
Depends on when you buy, as always. I sold my Condo in 2006 for $535K (3222 Glendora Drive, #109, San Mateo, CA).

It was last listed at $386K before the listing was finally removed.

All we can really say is that in the last 50 years, home ownership was a better buy than renting. I don't know anyone confident about their 20 year forecasts regarding California Real Estate right now...

As for me - I'm renting a room for $750/month.

I don't think that I would ever have come out even if I hadn't sold my Condo. The key thing to realize, is that sometimes the decision isn't "Buy or Rent", it sometimes (in my case) is Downsize+Rent. Gives you flexibility + reduced costs.
"The abstract for this study supports the assertion that carbohydrate restriction is an effective and healthy weight loss technique. It does support the assertion that starving yourself can also promote weight loss; I do not believe anyone here has disagreed with this hypothesis, however. (I would argue that few people will willingly remain on a 1200 kcal/day diet for the rest of their life, however.)"

The abstract of the paper made it clear that attrition was high in both groups -- neither cohort could maintain their diets. Also, you're doing a fair amount of selective quoting. From the abstract, right before the part you quoted:

"There were no differences in weight, body composition, or bone mineral density between the groups at any time point."

In other words: neither group lost more weight than the other, at any time point. Which was the OP's point. Also, the following papers were trivial to find:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15148064

"Participants on a low-carbohydrate diet had more favorable overall outcomes at 1 year than did those on a conventional diet. Weight loss was similar between groups, but effects on atherogenic dyslipidemia and glycemic control were still more favorable with a low-carbohydrate diet after adjustment for differences in weight loss."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16476868

"After 6 months, individuals assigned to low-carbohydrate diets had lost more weight than individuals randomized to low-fat diets....This difference was no longer obvious after 12 months....Triglyceride and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol values changed more favorably in individuals assigned to low-carbohydrate diets....but total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol values changed more favorably in individuals assigned to low-fat diets"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12684364

"There is insufficient evidence to make recommendations for or against the use of low-carbohydrate diets, particularly among participants older than age 50 years, for use longer than 90 days, or for diets of 20 g/d or less of carbohydrates. Among the published studies, participant weight loss while using low-carbohydrate diets was principally associated with decreased caloric intake and increased diet duration but not with reduced carbohydrate content."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17507345

"Variability in dietary weight loss trials may be partially attributable to differences in hormonal response. Reducing glycemic load may be especially important to achieve weight loss among individuals with high insulin secretion. Regardless of insulin secretion, a low-glycemic load diet has beneficial effects on high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglyceride concentrations but not on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentration."

Confused? You should be. What a quick perusal of the evidence tells me is that a) despite what you may have read on the internet, the question is far from settled, and b) if there is any conclusion to be made, it's that low-carb diets may have some positive benefit on cholesterol and triglyceride levels, but don't seem to have any net benefit when it comes to weight control.
I guess I'm no-one to complain.

I'm a geek though, and more bothered by the illogic than the morals. "I'm unemployed and failed school and broke up with my girlfriend so a 6-volume set of books on modernist cuisine should cost me $0".

If he had just thrown "and my dream is to become a chef" into the mix my nerd cortex would have been at peace.
Why on earth would we ever try to build a nuclear plant anywhere near any general area that's prone to earthquakes? There's plenty of other real estate available for any we decide to build.
Likely a subtle troll. Many try to sneakily infiltrate conservapedia and post articles that sit between crakpottery and satire.
i disagree. the wimax in my area is actually pretty good. not great, mind you, but i could see the entire industry improving in a few years such that its equal to or better than land line based access.
AT&T warns exclusivity for 'a number of attractive handsets' will end