skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
http://www.beatpoints.com/cherrytomato

Windows only, but I am making it open source so hopefully somebody will port it
This is not a new phenomena.

I remember 20 years ago learning that styrofoam is one of the most recyclable materials (very little energy to recycle, can be recycled many times), and the waxed paper we make paper cups out of is one of the least. Yet the world switched to paper cups because styrofoam caused unsightly litter.

I remember 10 years ago having a friend tell me about a conversation he overheard between two co-workers. The upshot was that a woman was criticizing a man for driving a gas guzzling pickup truck. As the argument progressed it turned out that his 2 mile commute to his apartment in his pickup truck used much less gas than her 15 mile commute to her colonial in an efficient car. And she was so fixed in her view of the world that she couldn't accept that her desire to have a large house was less environmentally friendly than his desire to have a vehicle that he could use to carry a dead deer.

I can't count how many times I've heard environmentally active people talk about how the forests are the lungs of the world. Yet they are wrong. True, cutting down forests inevitably releases a lot of carbon. But mature forests are at equilibrium. They both absorb and release large amounts of carbon with little net effect. (This is especially true of jungles, slightly less true of deciduous forests whose leaves tend to become part of the soil.) The real "lungs of the world" that act as a carbon sink are the algae in the ocean.

I could multiply examples, but the trend is clear. When I hear someone start a lecture on what is good for the environment I first try to verify how much that person knows. Most of the time I'm able to ignore that person in good conscience.
I can see iPod and Adsense, but Windows? Windows won for very, very different reasons. When Windows first appeared, it was far from the best product on the market. It won because it was already everywhere (because of DOS). Microsoft practically invented the "give it away to ensure market dominance" game (Ok, slight hyperbole there). It took the court system to slow them down.
Which is basically why I quit reading the NYT.
Why? Because they can...

The trick is avoiding a Lord of the Flies culture due to extended (pre-)adolescence.
I'm looking for something in magazine format... to put on my coffee table, in the bathroom, etc.

Edit: Thanks for the suggestion, I've actually read a lot of the essays online. Like I said, just looking for something to throw on the table for casual reading material.
An eagerly anticipated release. I'm really looking forward to utilizing the fibers associated with native kernel threads.
Financial stability is harder and harder to come by. No 20-something wants to move back home, but often, there isn't much of a choice. Between inflation knocking the hell out of the dollar and putting a strain on social security and that fact keeping older people in the workplace for longer, nevermind the withering away of the American manufacturing, opportunities for stable, decent paying jobs that might actually cover your student loan payments are few and far between.
> enter a list of authors I like and get notified when a new title is available by any of them.

I must confess you are not the first person to suggest this. I don't plan to implement it right away, but as the service grows, I'd like to add an "alert" component to it.
Why WP Engine has already won
Relativity unified some of the elementary units in surprising ways that make this sort of file hard to write if you really, really want to be rigidly correct. Technically, in some sense, "time" and "length" shouldn't both be atomic units, we should have only one or the other. But that would make this less useful, even if more accurate.
Wake me up when somebody has a means of inducing the condition that they can show is more reliable than a placebo.
Okay, I am now officially sick of this kind of story.

I'm 45, and if this trend of increasingly defining older and older people more and more infantile continues, I could end up a baby again before I retire.

Seriously though, I don't see the newness here. My father told me that his grandfather told him that you don't truly become and adult until around age 35 or so. That bit of family wisdom dates back to early the last century. A hundred years ago.

If we're into social commentary, I'd point out that as we become more and more pampered, we become more and more infantile. I expect to push the button on the iPhone and have the pizza show up 15 minutes later. I expect to be in contact with all of my friends instantly via text message. I expect to have college paid for and a warm house with the folks if things don't work out.

These are probably great things to expect, but when you're not making work-or-starve decisions every day, you can easily start expecting a helluva lot of stuff that just realistically isn't going to happen. We call people who have unrealistic views about their status in the world, an inability to make decisions, and the need to be taken care of, well, chidlike. I love optimism, but that's not what I see from this article. This is different than optimism. Optimism says we'll make the most of it and things will be fine. This is I-want-to-be-a-rock-star. I have everything else I want. I want this too. It's all luck, anyway. Show me the button I push for the limo.

Put another way, these super-cool new things need to be compared to something. If you compare them to nothing, you know what you have and what you don't have. If you have no frame of reference, it's all just "normal". That lack of context makes a difference in being able to do stuff.

I don't mean that as commentary on "those dang kids". I think every generation has an awesome potential, mainly because of all these cool new things. I see no reason why we need a new developmental stage. 20-somethings can fly nuclear bombers, I think they'll do alright with career choices. If we let them. Pointing out they are mentally impaired is no more useful than pointing out the average 85-year-old is mentally impaired. Yet many of them drive, work, and do just fine in the world.

What I think is missing at this age, frankly, is some sense of comparison. You need to know you are unique and special, just like everybody else. I think some form of mandatory national service could help.

Either that or I need to start looking for rattles that I find appealing.
"We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us."

There are many choices for life, and choosing never to get married and never to have kids is exactly the right choice for many people. People don't need to build an army of labor to tend the farm or whatever anymore.

Having said that, the human body is geared to having children young. A lot of women are putting off having children and then finding it either impossible, or learning that the risks of an endless array of defects goes up quite dramatically.
Ask HN: Harvard or Stanford?
What school do you think would be better to gain entrepreneurial(technology) skills?
That is for undergraduate/graduate degrees?
Yet, the jury put part of the blame on her, and further attempts to sue corporations for serving (or making) hot coffee has gone nowhere. The temperature issue is probably just a legal McGuffin here; in reality, she got the money because McDonalds blew it in the first round, when they refused to contribute to her actual costs.
It's interesting that Gabriel is complaining about lack of support. Does he really expect support at 4am for a free service?

So far he's had it good: he's built a not-bad quite successful - if niche - search engine off the back of a multi-billion dollar company who have so far provided their search api for free. To complain about the lack of support seems trite.
The rise of helicopter parenting. I'm 24, and my mom was roughly half a helicopter, and it was unbearable. I can only imagine how bad it could have been...
Freelance Employment is easy to get
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I am waiting because I need a critical mass of content before I start up. I have one digitisation station, but work it myself. I can produce from 4-10 items per hour if I work hard, and estimate I need about 10,000 items done before I launch. There is also the issue of supply. I need items to process, and right now only have about 300. These items cost between $1 and $20 each.

I see how much I have left to do, think about how long it will take, and then start thinking about how to speed up the process... automate it.

I start to think about whether or not I am actually getting what I need so I don't get through 3,000 units and need to change something and have wasted the work. I think about how to scale the system to use multiple workstations, and multiple central servers because I can't store 10,000 units on the one server I have.

I'm working on a shoestring budget, and have creditors calling me every day. I borrowed $40,000 a few years ago hoping that that would help me get going in anticipation of another $100,000 I was going to get, but that fell through and I was able to use less than half of what I borrowed before the rest was needed to save my mother's business.

So, that's what's delay'n me.
At some point I may include an option that allows you to specify the type of ebook you own.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_General_Corporation_La...
Even then, we still have options that people haven't always had, like adoption or surrogacy.
It's my site, would be interested in any HN comments.

-john
I agree. I think it would be almost impossible to introduce a new, non-free OS now since from day 1 it would have to be not only better than Linux and BSD, but significantly better.
Is it likely (in the future) to see more domain specific chips? Something like what http://www.deshawresearch.com/ has created---a custom chip Anton, optimised for Molecular Dynamics simulations.
Entop: `top` for erlang nodes
As the argument progressed it turned out that his 2 mile commute

The counter-counter argument at that point should have been that if it's only 2 miles you should walk or ride a bike, and leave the pickup at home.

edit: Just to be clear, I agree with your argument and find it strange that so many "eco" people insist on living in houses far off in the country side where they have to drive everywhere.
This is something I would like very much as well. Currently I do it manually, by periodically checking if there are any new books out from my favourite authors. This is of course far from perfect, as I tend to miss one every now and then, and it also takes time. Anyone know of a service that does this already?
Agreed. From the point of view of the customer, Windows is free since it is bundled with their computer and cannot be unbundled. (There now are some chinks in that bundling armor, but not much.)
So you don't like aggressive upselling but don't mind passive upselling so much?

The problem here is that it is difficult to know if the user sees value in the product that they are upselling, might as well don't upsell or leave a small information at the checkout about related products.
I feel like a lot of people are responding to this article as if the title is meant to be incendiary; the way a jilted friend spits "Grow up!" at the object of their indignation. I don't think that was the intention, though. I wonder, in fact, how many of these commenters thoroughly read the article, because--as a guy/boy/man/child of 25--I found it to be a fascinating exploration of why the trappings of my life, and my peers' lives, differ so much from that of our parents at this age. I don't see it as an attempt at bastardizing our ability to take responsibility for ourselves.
You are right, maybe i should have stated what i meant more clearly and in a different way, i'm not claiming that. See my other comment below.
Nah, it's actually true for Germany too (where do you think the Americans got the idea? :-), but I guess you hear enough stories about German lawsuits over there as I do here...
I couldn't quite figure out the source of the more eyepoking stats. "The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once."
His complaint is that if kg is the perfect unit of mass then make what we call the kg be the base unit and call that a gram instead. Makes perfect sense to me.

Of course this is an imperfect world. In a perfect world I'd like a meter chosen so that gravity is, to a good approximation, 1 m/s at sea level, and I'd like all of the units to be in base 12. (Easy divisibility by 3 is often very useful.) Including time, so that one doesn't have the awkward 3.6 factor converting from m/s to km/h. And our number system should also be base 12, and...I think you can see that I'm willing to complain about lots of things which will never change.
Flash news: post-Baby Boomer generations fail to follow social expectations (early marriage, early job, lifelong career) set by pre-Baby Boomer generations. Social scientists hard at work describing the problem and wondering how to fix it.
Also who cares if the hybrid is more fuel efficient? If we all drove hybrids we'd pump the last liter of oil out of the ground 20 years later? Whippie!

If these people actually cared about the environment they'd buy a used car, or bike to work.
You should.

Who doesn't use package management? Nobody I want to have bits on systems I have anything to do with, that's who doesn't.
If this Chrome OS rumor and the iPhone + Verizon rumor both turn out to be true Verizon's going to be one busy network in 2011
http://www.amazon.com/As-World-Burns-Simple-Things/dp/158322...

Reminds me of this comic book.
This article makes a lot of broad statements without citing statistics.

We 20-somethings ARE growing up, the process just looks different due to a combination of technology and a slow economy. I bet that as we grow older, we will adopt many of the practices that people older than us (the type of people who write articles like this) should have been practicing; i.e. fiscal responsibility.

20-somethings experienced 9/11 during our teens, a time when most people feel invulnerable. At the same time, we've seen the transformative power of technology. I'm old enough to remember booting up DOS from a c-prompt, but young enough to see a world of limitless opportunities. Cautious, but optimistic.

In other aspects of life, we will be measured and thoughtful about our choices. Rushing into commitments simply because we've reached a certain age isn't smart. What isn't mature about taking time to understand why you want to get married, have kids, or commit to a career path?

There will always be people who can't handle pressure or who are just lazy.
I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive. I don't know about comparing 2010 to 1990, but I do know that if you compare roughly 2000 to 1970, all of those expenses went down.

See Elizabeth Warren's book "The Two Income Trap", which shows that basically everything besides taxes and expectations went down in cost (you need to read carefully, she plays down the tax numbers by presenting them in a confusing manner).

[edit: to clarify, housing/medical/car are more expensive. But incomes went up as well. As a percentage of income, those expenses went down.]
Isn't it common in countries outside of the US for the younger generation to stay in the same home as the older generation? Perhaps this 20-something phenomenon is just a sign that Americans are becoming more established in their communities and closer to the world norm.
a la Native Client (NaCl).

Honestly, I see NaCl as the only actual reason why things will move to being almost totally web-based, and a damn good one at that. It's the ultimate merger of both worlds, and you can (and they do / will) sandbox every application (something I've wanted since I started looking into computers at all). Easy installing + easy purchasing + easy updates + performance = win.
They did a similar study about sports expertise. Being born at the wrong time makes you less likely to become a sports star, because the kids who are nominally your "peers" are physically superior, and it creates the perception that you are not as skilled. Pretty rough deal.
One thing I don't like is nothing on Buxfer's site tells you they are dead - I was considering signing up as a new customer, but suspicious due to the lack of blog activity and the questions if they are dead on GetSatisfaction.
They looked like a really decent web 2.0 style personal finance manager, with some really slick features. Way nicer than Mint.
I'd also add a "How Does it Work" section to the site.
A Chip That Digests Data and Calculates the Odds
Boomerang For Gmail Lets You Type Now and Send Later
Maybe the use the technology behind SilverPop which is PowerMTA.
North Korea Hops onto Twitter
Yes, it is. That's an extremely old version I wrote as a "let's see if I can do this" project. You can see the newer one by browsing the subversion repository, which unfortunately is broken until I commit the fix tonight.

I'm working on integrating it with Google docs so that you can work on your documents using a vi/emacs-like editor, which is extensible just like emacs except using javascript rather than elisp.

I hadn't seen yi, but it looks very similar to what I want to do, which is combine the best of vi and emacs into a new editor. I'm particularly interested in decent web-based editors, however; the implementation language is secondary.
This just sounds like a normal 6 year old to me.
This discussion took place in Michigan. For a substantial fraction of the year you really don't want to ride a bike there. And 2 miles is long enough that walking is inconvenient.

In any case the guy in the conversation wasn't the wannabe environmentalist. He just didn't like being harassed about the impact of his lifestyle choices by a hypocrite who was demonstrably far less environmentally friendly. (But who thought she was doing her bit.)

In other word it was a standard beam/mote discussion.
Looks nigh-identical to a talk they gave, what? A few months / a year ago?

I think NaCl is the single biggest part of all this. As I said in another comment here:

I see NaCl as the only actual reason why things will move to being almost totally web-based, and a damn good one at that. It's the ultimate merger of both worlds, and you can (and they do / will) sandbox every application (something I've wanted since I started looking into computers at all). Easy installing + easy purchasing + easy updates + performance = win.
Do they have a sense of humor about their political views? As a practical matter, I think having a sense of humor is important, especially on small teams. Someone might have political views that I disagree with it, but the important reality is how they handle themselves in regards to those issues, and how do they handle disagreement from others. Some people get angry when others have different views - and I think these people need to be avoided. Other people meet disagreement with a bit of humor - I think these people are easier to deal with, even if their views are somewhat extreme.
Nice, but part 5 omits an important concept: Your data are broken up into packets which are routed in such a way as to ensure reliable delivery should one or another part of the network be unavailable. These packets can be reassembled into a cogent whole when needed because they contain information about their data. This same information can be used by the systems transporting and relaying your packets to treat them in special ways; all packet should be treated the same, but that's not guaranteed. [INSERT ADDITIONAL AGITPROP CONTENT HERE]
Paragraph one is worth an upvote, but I don't think you need go so far as the pop psych of paragraph two. Paragraph one -- indeed, sentence one, which points out that marriage and childbearing are delayed in modern technological societies -- explains most everything else.

Especially when combined with the key fact that in the USA all incomes except those of the rich have been declining in real terms for over a generation. And independence costs money. Kids stay involved with their parents longer because the marginal cost of the fourth bedroom in a four-bedroom house is a lot smaller than the cost of a one-bedroom apartment.

The other thing I'd point out is that the "traditional American way" to run a nuclear family -- the one where kids hit age 18 and then move out on their own, sometimes to other states -- is (was?) actually a very specific pattern of life from a very specific time in a very specific culture. In many cultures, historically and around the world, households traditionally contained grandparents, parents, and children all living together. It would be considered alien for a child to desert the home of their parents unless they were explicitly married out to another family, in which case the child would be expected to live in the home of the spouse's parents. To strike out on your own would be crazy! What would your family say?

(And one wonders if the nomads of the Tibetan plateau are sitting around reading Tibetan op-eds bemoaning the decline of the traditional Tibetan family: Some women are taking only one husband! What are his brothers supposed to do for a wife? [1])

Traditions can be pretty ephemeral. One of my favorite things to do is to find "ancient traditions" whose inventors are still living.

---

[1] Note: I took Anthropology 101 from a world expert on polyandry -- one of the world's most unusual family patterns -- but I should note that I made up this particular example. I actually have no idea to what extent polyandry is in decline, or whether a family of Tibetan nomadic brothers and their wife are likely to read op-eds.
What consumer OS on affordable computers (that leaves Macs out) was/is better than Windows?

It took the court system to slow them down.

That was not for their dominant desktop OS, it was for using their monopoly to push IE and server products.

You can call out Microsoft on dodgy anti-competitive behaviour in some respects, but you cannot take away credit for building the solid product that is Windows. Heck, even now after goofing up with Vista, they are back with Windows 7.
What's with the "Kindle" option? I have a Sony Reader. I read E-Books. I don't read "Kindle ebooks" whatever they are.
Google Tablet this November
Why bother, what does ChromeOS do that Android doesn't for a tablet?
Windows 7 has the Math Input Panel, which lets you write equations on a tablet and convert them to MathML. The same recognition engine can be used from OneNote, which I've used to take notes during a lecture and later convert to a decent-looking document.
If interested check http://www.energytransitionmodel.com/ there you can build future energy scenarios. For instance see that you're far better off when you invest money in a better (house) insulation then in efficient light bulbs. Or how much total CO2 emissions are reduced if everybody switched to electric cars.
Exactly.

I am 2 years behind career-wise due to the recession. While other people who graduated a year or two before me are qualified for senior-level positions, I am stuck with dead-end opportunities that don't expand my skill set.

Luckily I don't plan to be an employee for life, but if I did want to be a company woman I'd be screwed.
What I take from the article and from your comments is that Freemium is a great idea for any product that relies on network effects, either to create a more useful product or to provide a strong exit. But with any other type of product, it would make sense to put the Freemium aside. It's probably easier to try paid only (with or without trials) first, rather than starting with Freemium and dealing with the fallout of cutting off free users later on.