skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> If Myrhvold wanted to give the book away for free, he'd
have put it on the web.

I agree. Not that he should be ashamed of this, but from this I'd conclude that his primary goal is not the advancement of knowledge as some have stated. Possibly he thinks maintaining a for-profit system of IP is more important, or possibly, because of his public stature, he doesn't feel it's possible for him to make it freely available despite his desire for the information to spread.

> Don't kid yourself; you're not torrenting books to get access to the knowledge inside of them.

This is technically true, but only because I've yet to read torrents any books that I don't already own. I was recently excited, however, to find a torrent of one of the most expensive books I own, Angelo Corvitto's "Secretos del Helado",(in Spanish and 150 Euro, but the best book I've seen on making ice cream), as it enabled me to refer a high school student in Montreal to a passage that I thought would help him in his endeavors. He, I warrant, was "torrenting books to gain access to the knowledge inside of them", and despite the ethical ambiguity, I'm glad that he is able to do so.

> Going to the library to read the book is inconvenient (no
library is going to let you check this book out; most
libraries won't even have it for a couple years).

Yes, this is true. I've checked out different volumes of TAOCP by interlibrary loan at least three times, and I've been grateful for the privilege. I've read the El Bulli series sitting in a library (City College San Francisco has an excellent cookbook library), and am aware of the difficulties. This book will not be available by that means. How does that affect the ethics of reading a hypothetical illegal copy of this book?

> Don't expect universal sympathy for this endeavor on a
site dedicated to people who earn their living creating
and selling intellectual property.

I don't. I think it's a complex and thorny issue, moreso than you make it out to be. I've yet to come up with a position that would make the interlibrary loan and the used book purchase fully ethical, despite their legality. Personally, I'm working on a book that will be roughly equivalent to an expanded version of the ice cream chapter of Myrhvold's. My personal leanings are to make draft PDF's available for free, and price the book high, in the way that some academic authors do. But there are definitely tradeoffs.

> I'm actually surprised people here are as supportive of piracy as they are.

Yes. At a certain point this might make one reconsider one's own position. :)

I'd love your answer to the last question in the parent, though: is it that there is a better alternative, or that the collateral damage (reducing the market for future works) is too great?

ps. I'm not asking for an excuse to torrent this book. Oddly, I'm one of the few people who will likely buy it.
I work outside in 40C heat, in the sun for 8-10 hours a day; municipal water doesn't cut it for me. I've drank over 4 liters of water inside of an 8 hour period and have still needed to drink a minimum of a 1L gatorade to get hydrated enough to actually urinate. (Note: we're recommended to drink 1.2 liters in a day, and I can get through 5 liters in 1/3, it's advised to drink no more than 1 liter per hour* of heavy exercise or extreme heat exposure before you risk water intoxication)

Water Jug coolers simply don't cut it, even filled with ice cubes you'll only get until noon. I freeze 3 bottles of water, use ice packs and still my water can start getting warm on a hot sunny day.

Since I moved to an apartment building our water has actually been of good enough quality to filter. Where I used to live the water had an acrid taste, even filtered, and when we had a municipal waterline break it only made it worse (note because we had bottle water, we weren't all that concerned when we didn't have water for two days).

I use a bottle for a work week, refilling it with filtered water. I buy it for at most $3 (got it down to $2 before) a case containing ~4.6 gallons (35 x 500ml) and it's spring not municipal. Here in Canada it has to provide the source, has mineral contents on the label (my tap doesn't!) and as for meeting e.coli tests I find it rather moot considering the water is ozonated, and it's there whenever my water supply is down.

The facts about bottled water, for me, is that it enables me to stay hydrated (and cooler) during a day without dying from dehydration, it can be stored at ambient temperatures for well over a year, it's of a far better quality than my bare municipal supply, doesn't contain insane amounts of fluoride (or any) and supplies the mineral contents. Most importantly of all (for some people I know who are affected by this in Hamilton) it doesn't even contain trace amounts of lead or mercury, and considering the Hamilton region is considering changing the makeup of their municipal water so that it doesn't leach lead from piping rather than remove the lead pipes!

I'm sorry, I'm not comfortable with the idea of drinking or even showering in leaded water. Despite lead absorption through skin being rare, I think when it's covering your entire body it's present at some rate.

Sorry, bottled water is just fine for me. The reason I filter water is because it's economically prudent and for all I can tell (where I am at least) it tastes the same. Not buying 3 cases of water a week saves me roughly $450 in a year, which can be spent wherever I want from buying that $100 bottle of scotch to buying video games or whatever, I could even use that $450 to take the better part of a week off and who knows, plant a tree to save the environment or some other crap. There's far better ways to save the planet than to worry about bottled water, you know by renovating power plants, building nuclear + green, subsidizing improvements to home insulation levels. Offer subsidies to people who buy high-efficiency appliances, like washing machines (generally the most expensive appliance to run in any house) and dryers.
Intellectual Property - Worthless To A Startup, Priceless To A Big Dumb Company
Find the Operators
Find the operators so that 3 ? 5 ? 2 = 7. ? being an arithmetic operator, math symbol, computer symbol, etc.
Lets see how many different results we can get. :-)
I fail to see how your criticisms indicate that I simply don't understand what I'm talking about, though of course that's always possible.

Aggregate personal income is typically roughly proportional to GDP. GDP has grown quite a bit over the last decade, which suggests that aggregate personal income has too. The population hasn't grown much over that time, which suggests that mean personal income has also grown quite a bit. (More quantitatively: US GDP growth has been something like 40% per decade recently, US population growth more like 10%, so mean income has grown by about 30% over that period.)

If median income goes down and mean income goes up, that typically indicates that richer people are gaining while poorer people lose. (It doesn't have to; imagine, e.g., that everyone below the median income jumps to $1/year below the median. Result: the median stays the same while the mean goes up. This is not at all what typically happens, though.)

If the growth in aggregate personal income has been slower than that in GDP, that indicates that businesses' profits are growing faster than what they pass on to their employees. That translates in the not-much-longer term to more money for the owners of the businesses. Who are, surprise surprise, on average substantially wealthier than median. So, again, more gains for the wealthy than for the not-so-wealthy; so, again, increasing inequality.

What any of this has to do with the bizarre notion that when you buy gold the money gets eaten by a golden rock god, I'm not sure. (I can kinda see how you might have got the impression that yummyfajitas thinks that, but immediately after making the golden-rock-god comment it seems like you start speculating on how I probably have no clue what I'm talking about. Highly mysterious, but I'm probably just being dim.)
Trying JDK 7 Lambdas
At this point, I have >10 years of programming experience. I've been programming for the majority of my childhood and the entirety of my adult life. I don't like to overestimate my own abilities, and I wish I could prove to you that my above claim is true. I simply have enough experience where I know for a fact that I can understand 99% of algorithms and architectures that were designed to solve a practical real-world problem.

So you're right, "there isn't a single..." is probably pushing it. But I'd definitely stand by the fact that I can read, understand, and re-implement 99% of algorithms or architectures.

My point is simply that the breadth of the field of software engineering apparently pales in comparison to that of mathematics.

Or rather --- it's very strange to me that if you are an expert in a given branch of mathematics, then all of your lifetime of experiences cannot be applied to an entirely different branch. If I understand cperciva correctly, if you want to learn a particular specialized branch of mathematics, then you basically have to start from the ground-up (years).

It would basically be equivalent to wiping your memory of all programming knowledge, then re-learning it all, in terms of effort. It's just strange / interesting that mathematics works that way.
I am skeptical that employers have been raising wages. The average could have increased simply because job losses have been concentrated at the low end of the wage scale.

Even if we are in a deflationary environment, that isn't necessarily good for the average person either. Their wages may be worth more in real terms, but deflation would increase the value of their debt as well. With so many underwater mortgages and a middle class riddled with consumer debt, prolonged deflation would be much, much worse than inflation.
I heard this from other people too, but somehow it just /feels/ less durable for me, especially when I am plugging it in. I feel some grinding of metal parts and often wonder if this thing will last. Actually, I feel the same thing with the iPod/iPhone connectors, but it's definitely more pronounced on the micro-USB connectors.
It's hate born of fear. Why hate big cities? If you keep getting mugged in big cities you'll likely fear and hate big cities, even if there's much else that's good about big cities (and even if there are many ways to protect yourself from being mugged).
Mad at Google? No. Should I be?

Can I stop using it? Well, I use https://ixquick.com for search. I like Google Maps, but there are other alternatives, and I can always grab maps I care about from the gas station, so it is more a novelty and a convenience than a need. I do not depend on any Google services, partly out of disliking the idea of calling out to another server in order for mine to work.

So in a word... yes. But I know there are many people who built their business using its convenient technologies and would need to find good replacements. Maybe it is just a matter of marketing; I am sure there are plenty of alternatives for everything Google provides. What is the fear here? Leaving our easy comfort zones?

This internet/software stuff is all smoke and dreams. There are better things to get worried about.
Tags are a great alternative or adjunct to a hierarchical, single-node organization. The largest problems I've encountered with tagging are cumbersome and/or overly limiting implementations.
Ah, the jobs that are out there for the young and restless.
Guake - A Gnome terminal inspired by Quake
I agree that deflation would be worse, at least for those of us with mortgages, etc. People on fixed incomes (and without debt) might view it differently - I wonder if a deflationary period would prompt baby-boomers to retire earlier?
Good. Rest up, too. Maybe pick up some other hobbies? This will also help you approach your existing problems in a new and interesting way.

There are tons of ideas and startups out there. Not every idea will work out. Life is too short to kill yourself over just one.
New Flash Player with H.264 GPU Decoding for Mac
My wage was raised by about 8% and my friends by around the same (same company). The company used the recession to lay off a few bad eggs and raised pay for everyone who stayed on.

Big employers might not be raising wages, however small employers either made it or went broke in the recession (at least here in Canada). I can only really speak for the construction sector, but this has been the norm here. Bad companies have thankfully gone under and the companies left are making the profits.

There's still work there from all the companies that went broke because they were skirting the margins before the recession, which means the companies that were doing well before the recession have been riding it out and absorbing the jobs of others. Right now we can't go fast enough, which is bizarre this early out of a recession.
1ktris packs Tetris into 1024 bytes, but so does the competition
We are both making a claim. He has provided no evidence at all, and obviously hasn't read the literature.

The claim here is that the variance in learning rate is absolutely tiny. Think about this. He's basically claiming that despite a large known population variances in IQ and MA, there is no variance in learning rate. Despite research showing ritalin increases learning rate in a large fraction of society, this increase was meaningless. Despite verbal learning test normative data showing non zero variance, the variance is still zero.

There is a large body of literature comparing learning rate in different populations in both human and animal models. Take any study on learning rate, even the ones comparing "normal" to abnormal. Go to the methods and find the variance for each group. See it's non-zero, but often so large that differences between groups is hard to see.

Now, if you accept that learning rate has a non-zero variance, and also that learning rate decreases over time (well supported in the literature as well, and no I'm not going to find papers) and that time is finite, then the only conclusion you can make is that some people have a much higher chance of doing well academically. Not only that but there will be some people who despite trying will never be able to do well.

I don't see how stating this shocking to anyone at all - in a population of some 7 billion, there are millions of people >3 standard deviations from the mean.
Wow, a video game staycation. That sounds awesome!
Gah, I really love Rescue Time's product, but this post makes my skin crawl. It should have been titled, "How NOT to Fire Your Boss". And on top of that the story is positively covered in too-good-to-be-true forced-internet-meme-sauce. The original source is a parody site for goodness sakes, and a poorly done one at that.

Poor form, Rescue Time.
Another fact: You can choose one that tastes better than your local tap water. Brita or not. Boiled or not. I still prefer Highland Spring over both other bottled waters and tap water, just because of the taste. I can go through 1L of it a day in summer (or more if I go to the gym) and it would have to cost ~10 times more before I'd consider not buying it.
I've let a response percolate while doing other things. I suppose I shouldn't respond without actually rereading the whole article (I referenced it based on memory). I'll let the tags notion stew a bit longer.

Is your project public? I'd be curious to see what else is in it, and how you are applying tags there.
Fake

http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20100810/meet-the-prankster-...
Are you kidding me? RescueTime tries to capitalize on the "story" when their monitoring software is the very thing the story mocks. They want to have it both ways. As if any manager is going to volunteer to be accountable. The last paragraph is downright perverted:

"Employees should be able to use tools like RescueTime to defend skipping out early on Friday, after putting in extra time to meet deadlines during the week."

RescueTime sure has given a gift to the world! Employees can now use it to "defend" themselves from leaving a couple hours earlier!
Why Apple should buy Skype
Early-20's BlackBerry/Android owners fear not, statistically you will have more new partners in the next few years than iPhone owners. http://twitpic.com/2diasv
Certain parts of our society have been rushing headlong toward the ideal infantilization / dis-empowerment of the individual, toward utter dependency on the police and the state for protection from violence, poverty, etc. As a personal connection to self-reliance, self-defense, weapons, firearms, and indeed violence becomes increasingly taboo it also becomes increasingly potent (see also: the draw and power of sex in puritanical society), and thus that much greater of a draw for entertainment.
Shared intentionality (video)
Tech companies? what exactly did those tech companies do during this whole debate, nothing, they stood idly by and let Google try to do something, they have only themselves to blame not Google.
40mm equiv. is too wide for portraiture. typically you use around an 85mm lens. this would work out to 40-50mm in micro four thirds.
> Otherwise some of these groups of people, like china or japan who have been isolated for thousands of years, would have serious intelligence differences as the rest of us.

Have you read the literature on IQ? These differences exist, whether you will accept it or not is a different question.
I only use two Google products regularly these days: search and Gmail. I would like to move from Gmail but I haven't found another provider to go to. I used to like Fastmail but, for some reason, I don't like it that they are now owned by Opera.

Maybe I just need to hope that someone like Colin Percival gets interested in starting an e-mail service, as I really like the way he runs TarSnap.
> The article mentions potential 3d video services as a possible business model on the Internet.

"The internet" is covered in the proposal. This mythical 3d video service would have to be outside of the internet - a completely new service.

If verizon wants to create this new service, and use up all their available bandwidth on it (and therefore reducing their available internet bandwidth) then that is their choice, but I imagine their customers would just switch to a different ISP that offers better speed.
lol what a fucking retard
I didn't know that about RNs' pay, and was merely thinking from a doctor's persective; thank you.
No Idea Is An Old Idea
These infographics never seem to be created by people with hard water or well water. Life does exist outside of San Fransico, and even with a water treatment system, water can taste bad. Sometimes people take action for reasons you don't understand.
Works well. Experiment with different weights of paper. Wrapping tissue or thin toilet paper work well.
All of society benefits when mundane tasks are automated. Sure, those warehouse workers never get that job, but there are jobs at the robot makers, robot technicians, systems designers. The freeing up of this labour enables it to be deployed elsewhere, making everyones lives better. I don't see anyone complaining about cheaper books.

Ever read the Penny Arcade cartoon "Automata"? There's a scene where automata are banned, and the chief of police goes, "It's about time someone got rid of those damned autos! Those jobs should go to hard-working American men!" To which the robot character, Carl, responds, "Actually, sir, hundreds of American workers were involved in my construction..."

It made me smile. Especially as an employee of a robotics company.
Que e-reader is cancelled due to delays, market changes
If you enjoyed this blog post, you might enjoy my travel book for people interested in science and technology: The Geek Atlas

Is that a boilerplate footer for every blog post? Because I didn't really see the connection between gore in movies and the book :)
I've never understood why people dislike bottled water, yet seem to ignore soft drinks. Soft drinks are packed with sugar, acid, colourings, synthetic sugars, flavourings; while a bottle of water is a healthy alternative. Granted, people should be more prepared and purchase a reusable bottle for water, but soft drinks should be the target for these things.
No, No, and with lots of effort.

Ironically, I almost never use Google search (thanks DDG!), but I have multiple Gmail accounts, plus Docs, Reader, Wave (though no more I suppose), Gtalk, Calendar, Android (no desire to use other smartphone OSes). And this is just personal -- I don't have my own business.
I think it's shocking to a lot of people because Google has long claimed that "what's good for the internet is good for [Google]". It was something more concrete than just the nebulous "don't be evil". It stood for support of open-standards, better infrastructure (such as their work on revising DNS) and none of the walled-garden bullshit the entrenched players relied on.

To see them compromise those principles on the wireless side of the fence is hugely disappointing and, frankly, quite puzzling in its apparent short-sightedness.
+1 for "rocket surgery"
Why Gamify DevHub? 
Post the launch of the brand-spanking new DevHub.com system on July 9th, we've had a lot of inquiries as to why we introduced game elements into our free website builder (most people love the idea, but a number have been curious as to how we arrived at it). This post breaks down some of the thought processes that went into making the decision to gamify DevHub...
By that time, Verizon may support 4G LTE, at least in major metropolitan areas, which does support simultaneous voice/data usage.
I know jealousy is wrong, but damn I wish I had created an app like this ;)
Stormfront causing panic at the Hietaniemi beach [video & power of nature]
A severe thunderstorm passed over Helsinki, Finland the 9th of August.

Only nature may offer you such a show.
Believe me, that thought has crossed my mind. After the HR interview, where I found out the job wasn't at all what I expected or wanted, I was actually sort of depressed at the thought of taking it. I eventually settled into the idea that I therefore had nothing to lose - either I got the job and had cashflow again, or I didn't get the job and didn't have to move to a city (town, really) I didn't want to me in, doing a job I didn't want.

To that end, I decided that I wasn't even going to bother preparing for the interview, and I'd just wing it and see what happened (this was likely a defense mechanism - if I don't bother to even prepare, then it doesn't reflect on me if I do poorly / don't get the job). Feeling how I do about the interview, if I don't get the offer then it doesn't hurt my ego since I can be reasonably sure they passed on me for the exact reasons you described.

That said, I did try to do some preemptive damage control. I asked about opportunities for advancement in the company, expressed an interest in the certifications they mentioned, etc. In the HR interview, when asked whether I could be happy in a testing role, coming from development, I explained that I had enjoyed the bits of testing experience I had as part of my last job, that I wouldn't mind a break from development at the very least, and that any development itches I had could be scratched by my side project. Incidentally, this also opened the topic of intellectual property and all that, and she said that there were established procedures for that, and that it wouldn't be an issue.

So whatever happens, I'm ok with it.
>I have no idea why a "HTML5" reset would have style sheets for IE5?

It's a template, you're supposed to remove the bits you don't need.
Your second point is patently wrong: http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality_letter.html
I'm not sure how much of that info-page to believe. Right at the top it cites bottled water as costing $10/gallon, which is way more than I've ever paid.
yes, there are plenty of vending machines that date the dollar coins and are unable to accept them. my local car wash and every parking meter i have seen in my county included.