skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In college I used a paper by former green peace founder where he talk about the fallacy of recycling paper.

That we'd be better off burning it for energy. And some other arguments about the life span of a tree and the amount of oxygen it produces.

Can't seem to find it now as my quoted URL is no longer valid.
You guys really do some beautiful design work on these.

I'd really like to see you partner with PG and release a 'book' of his essays done in this fashion. I'd buy that in a heartbeat!!!
Sounds a lot like the ByNase protocol that Ward Cunningham (inventor of the wiki) came up with:

http://c2.com/cybords/wiki.cgi?BynaseProtocol
Interview with Jason Henrichs Co-Founder of PerkStreet Finacial
I see it both ways. If you run out of savings and have to get a job, then that might kill the business. The good thing about side jobs (or contracting) is that you still have a lot of freedom to pursue the business. The key thing is to keep the business as the number 1 priority.

With a side job of teaching piano, might be ideal because it would not become your top priority very easily. If you were contracting, it is very easy to shift from part time contracting to full time contracting because of the cash flow.

So I don't see an issue with it. Being able to stretch your savings out longer, I think will give your business a better chance of being successful.
So, I don't see anything. I'm guessing many others don't as well.
Startups are too skiddish about charging. This shouldn't be novel or surprising, this is regular business 101.

Businesses charge money for useful products. People are used to paying for useful products.

The only difference is that the variable costs associated with hosting more users are tiny. How much does each user cost you? Basically nothing in the scheme of things. The problem is that the fixed costs are high - development, overhead, etc. Just becuase the variable costs are low doesn't mean you can't charge your users for the fixed costs.

Other businesses do this all the time. Startups should not be afraid of charging their fixed costs on to their customers. Advertising is fine if you are a media website and are trying to be an online newspaper or a website with no real function at all, but if you are a full fledged web app with useful features, CHARGE!
Cool idea.

Feature request: enter a list of authors I like and get notified when a new title is available by any of them.
Facebook Ready to Introduce New Location Service, Analysts Say
You would also have to measure and account for over how much time the free users convert to paid users. If it happens over two years, you have to take that into account.

As the gigaom article mentions:
The thing is, over time inactive users drop off, and active users start paying. Once Evernote finally figured that dynamic out and started talking about it, term sheets and partnerships requests started flowing in, Libin said.
Is there such a thing as a "well-behaved cat"?
How To Configure The AIDE File Integrity Scanner For Your Website
Doctors are actually very careful not to be overzealous in diagnosis. To meet the criteria for a real diagnosis, the symptoms must be "excessive, long-term, and pervasive".

Similarly, not everyone with "blues" is clinically depressed, and not everyone with unexplained weight loss has cancer... the folk estimates of the prevalence of these conditions are way overblown.
Looks great! I'll just add that I think there's too much going on in the navigation... moving spotlight, changing colors, and some sort of other effect going on.
Interestingly, that was one of the parts where he had some sort of numbers listed so it seems a little unfair to accuse him of rehashing anecdotal evidence. Not that he's shy about using anecdotal evidence.
Yes, that's why the study can use age to measure inappropriate diagnosis.
Something else to take away: don't require people to give away their billing information upfront when signing up for a trial; simply downgrade their account if the trial period ends and they haven't paid yet.
I must tell you that I find the navigation animation to be very distracting. I think you'd be better off without it at all. Otherwise, appears to be an nice service.
I agree to what you said, but isn't it the problem that we consider people with political views that we _strongly_ disagree with, as less smart or smart but evil?

To answer the question of waterside81:
Yes, I rejected somebody just because I did not want to have an 18 year old kid working with us that calls himself 'very very conservative'. I do not care much about left or right wing. I just do not want extremists. :)

And I am pretty sure I got rejected myself at least once because of my political views that collided with the business model. Which is perfectly ok and a very understandable reason.
site layouts killed the web.

Everyone just design their tables/divs to look pretty on 80% of their user's browsers.

When the game change few are able to update.

Who can read /. On their mobiles? That's the main reason I spend more time here.
I bought a USB lamp that is controlled with my pomodoro software. Whenever I am in pomodoro, it goes red (and skype/msn switches to do not disturb). It works surprisingly well - people know not to disturb me when it's red and they respect it because they know that it will max take 25 minutes before they can talk to me.
I couldn't read the entire article, all I could think of was some old codger yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

Seriously, times change, people change, things change. Society didn't collapse before and it's not going to now.
I helped design and setup 2 large SMTP infrastructures for two different European mobile carriers. Both carriers had more than 1 million customers and processed close to 100 million messages a day. It was about 7 years ago but I doubt things have changed that much.

We made heavy use of Mirapoint. But we also made use in different places of qmail and postfix. At the high end of scaling SMTP routing starts becoming similar to routing IP traffic. You're just not going to beat a dedicated device like Mirapoint with some Unix box you make from scratch. You need dedicated and differentiated mail routers for inbound, outbound and mail storage. You monitor their usage and when they get overloaded you just add more. Since everything is load balanced you can scale close to linearly. We used SAN for storage. Local storage just doesn't work.

Mail hits an inbound SMTP router and that router does an LDAP lookup to find which storage box actually handles hat account. Then it forwards it. That's all it does and it does it fast. Each storage box handles mail for the accounts it stores and IMAP/POP3 access for those accounts as well. The outbound routers just take mail from the storage routers and spool it for outbound.

I could go on but I think you get the idea. The main idea is to put everything behind a load balancer that you can so that you can scale it linearly as much as possible.
Very good read. I was very amused to see the author, at the end ! I didn't know richard Branson was living in India ?
The Web's top songs about start-ups and Silicon Valley
Great idea. One nice feature for down the road might be to send only one email per week with the different categories a user selects combined. I know I have always enjoyed update type emails that do this as it is quicker and easier to scan just one email.
I like the idea, but I feel like some categories need sub-categories, I wouldn't want to know about every Programming book under the sun that came out this week, I'd rather just know of any new Python or Ruby books.

However, your target audience might not need that feature and it would just make the UI messy, so I'm somewhat on the fence about what I think you should do :P

Looks interesting though, keep up the good work.
Practical Haskell: scripting with types
Transport and heating/air-conditioning presumably are by far the biggest energy hogs of the private individual.

So if you want to use less energy: don't drive and fly gratuitously, and live in a property which already by its construction and location keeps the heat in (if you live in a cold climate), or keeps the heat out (if you live in hot climate).
I'm impressed it has the smoot and evens includes a reference: http://spectrum.lbl.gov/www/personnel/smoot/smoot-measure.ht....
Mozilla Thunderturkey and its malcontents
http://scienceblogs.com/
Some of my favorite coworkers over the years are ones I've vehemently disagreed with politically. Politics is a funny thing. I can't think of anything else that turns otherwise intelligent people into bumbling idiots to the same degree. Whenever you get caught up in the political issue du jour, it's good to keep in mind that much of the political news is about petty bickering inside the beltway and not about governance and policy.
Also, it's really hard to resist the temptation to "rant back" on the kilogram question. Unfortunately / fortunately, HN comments are not the right place for that.

(Basically, kg is the perfect unit of mass and if you disagree you are a heathen and should be burned)
I've been a telecommuter for the last 4 years. The key to being successful is learning to say no and having an office with a door. Working from the couch with a laptop doesn't work -- you have to be out of sight of the rest of the family.

You also have to learn to say no when they ask for your attention during those trips to the bathroom, or the fridge. Eventually they will realize that you are working.

That being said, I do usually eat lunch with the family, or at least not in the office. It gives me a chance to let my mind relax and sometimes come up with a new way of looking at whatever problem I'm working on.
which pomodoro software do you use? I've been looking for a good one, but the ones I find are all kinda crappy from a ui point of view.
Well, considering the criteria used to diagnose ADHD, pretty much any kid who fails to be in exact lockstep with the rest of his/her class runs the risk of being forced into conformity with psychoactive drugs. Below are the currently official criteria (from http://www.neurosurvival.ca/ClinicalAssistant/scales/dsm_IV/...; note that these criteria are the ONLY means of diagnosis). I think personally I failed more than half the things on the list back when I was 6; thank Goodness they didn't have ADHD diagnostics back then.

-Fails to pay close attention to details or makes careless errors in schoolwork, work or other activities

-Has trouble keeping attention on tasks or play

-Doesn't appear to listen when being told something

-Neither follows through on instructions nor completes chores, schoolwork, or jobs

-Has trouble organizing activities and tasks

-Dislikes or avoids tasks that involve sustained mental effort (homework, schoolwork)

-Loses materials needed for activities (assignments, books, pencils, tools, toys)

-Easily distracted by extraneous stimuli

-Forgetful

-Squirms in seat or fidgets

-Inappropriately leaves seat

-Inappropriately runs or climbs

-Has trouble quietly playing or engaging in leisure activity

-Appears driven or "on the go"

-Talks excessively

-Answers questions before they have been completely asked

-Has trouble or awaiting turn

-Interrupts or intrudes on others
That's an excellent book. I have a paper copy of it. While the article
is right about cellphone chargers things like this lack some context:

Glass requires so much energy to make - or recycle - that it is
always more eco-friendly to use aluminium cans

Firstly, that depends on how you recycle things. Perhaps in the UK
they melt down their glass and make it anew, but in some other
countries such as Denmark they'll actually use the same bottle again
after cleaning it out.

If you buy a soft drink in a class bottle in Denmark you'll get a
container that looks like it's seen war.

Secondly, it's presuming that pounds sterling is the best way to
measure sustainability, and that just because something costs more now
it's less sustainable in the long run.

Which is just patently silly. We basically have infinite energy on
this planet as long as the sun keeps shining, but we don't have
infinite easily accessible aluminum.

In the future access to basic material resources is going to be a
lot more important than whether someone expended a few extra joules
back in 2010.
I'm pretty sure most 20 somethings reading this forum are doing big things with their lives.
You should read Hackers and Painters.

It's exactly what you're talking about and includes most of his essays.
I did a startup in my 20's that was an intense experience. Now I have a sweet job at an amazingly run video game company where I don't care about making payroll, hitting sales goals, the joy of having employees, managing cash flow and inventory.

I have a few hobbies that might turn into something someday, but I think I need a bit more recovery time, and I think I'd rather share the hobbies with the world than sell them.
I found your categories to be a bit ambiguous. What is the difference between Computers & Internet, Programming, and Professional & Technical, for example? I can guess but then I might be wrong and miss out on the email I wanted. Maybe show sample titles?
Like talking to the guys asking $10/month for access to a site that makes social movie recommendations, grappling with the wisdom of asking for money for an extremely attenuated version of the free Hacker News site fits the ethos of Hacker News just peachy.

Part of charging for your work is figuring out, early, what people are going to find valuable. Simply putting a price tag on everything requires no more business skill than does busking in the subway tunnels.
If you think you dislike it now, wait till you're in your 50s and reading a version for the fourth time. It does not improve on acquaintance.
Re: their on-the-fly thumbnail system -- I just started building something eerily similar this week. Wondering if I should hit the breaks and build on top of Google's work...
Adobe proves that Flash can work on mobile devices | Examiner.com
Well, that's not strictly true. There have been plenty of societies that have collapsed in the past, if not ones of which we have been a part.

Noting that our society hasn't collapsed so far and using that to infer that opinions like this have no merit is one mother of a sampling bias.
This is fantastic. The reality is you have no idea how good the idea really is until you have finished anyway. So what the hell, may as well give it a shot. My only advice is make the produce a slightly better version of everything else out there. Good luck.
World of Warcraft has a couple of other things going for it though.

1) Network effects. If you've got friends who play WoW then that's a major reason for you to play it even if there is something better out there. Of course you could all move to the better thing but they won't because...

2) "Loyalty". Anything where people invest time which can not be transferred (for instance in levelling up characters) tends to incur loyalty, if only because they don't want to start over.
How the Internet works. Infographic.
Near as I can tell, the real question is "why has marriage/childbearing been delayed?" The answer is the sexual revolution and women's empowerment. Except during the 50's and 60's, I don't think it was ever that common to pick one job and stick with it until retirement on a defined-benefit pension. The 50's and 60's were exceptional.

I think the real issue here is that the baby boomers and later generations enjoy infantilizing their children. First they needed to protect their 10 year olds from nonexistent child predators, wifi and inorganic food. Then they needed to protect their 16 year olds from depraved newfangled sex ("rainbow parties", etc), completely unlike the sex they had during the 60's/70's. Now that their kids are grown up, they need a new reason to remain involved and treat them as infants.
I think there's a difference between political views and activism. Our employees tend to go through Government clearance, which weeds the activists out. We do have people with differing political views, and used to have someone that would be considered borderline extreme right wing and it wasn't a problem as long as they weren't active.
> Part of charging for your work is figuring out, early, what people are going to find valuable.

Given the feedback they're getting here, along with the revenue (or lack thereof) from the previous month, I think they're doing just that.

I won't pay for it either, but people too often jump against for-pay services just because they aren't free. If HN Monthly wants to charge $10 an issue, fine -- if people don't want it they won't pay for it. edw's comment appeared to challenge the premise of the magazine's existence itself, which I don't think is correct.
There's a mapper API http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2010/07/introducing-mapp.... It's a layer on top of task queues. No reduce yet.
Http://jobnownow.com/scholarship_for_nigerians.htm
This is a great idea for those that have a really big #noprocrast
Because they can. We live longer now than we ever have...We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us. A female friend of mine just turned 30 and she's just getting into an actual career (and she's perfectly fine with taking her time).
You are probably being downvoted because you are making the claim that ADHD is not a real disorder and that treatment for it is comparable to homeopathy.
I didn't read if this is reflecting in billing, that is, can I have a particular customer pay for the resources they use?
It's pretty obvious why: the jobs situation sucks (they don't pay well or are non-existent), college/other debt is higher, more education than ever is needed to get the few jobs there are.

If the jobs were there that were there in the 90's or 80's, which required less investment, had more reasonable starting salaries compared to housing/medical/car costs, many people being drifters and living with mom and dad wouldn't.

I do think the tech industry is still doing better than most though, and requires relatively smaller amounts of training, so I'm not sure HNers empathize with what it's like for non-tech people.
Thank you. At some point in the future, I'd like to be able to send/avoid sending some Kindle ebooks in the weekly selection, based on your preference.
Autism Diagnosed with a Fifteen Minute Brain Scan
One thing that I noticed in the article is that several of the sociological milestones cited are all distinct to American culture. For example, the "leaving home" milestone doesn't exist in a lot of cultures. Kids live in the same house as their parents and grandparents - forming extended families. The concept of a "nuclear" family consisting only of parents and children is a distinctly American one, and even then it only became the norm at the beginning of the twentieth century.

As far as marriage goes, I think the advance in marriage age is a good thing. I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? Its not that the kids are changing, but rather that society has enough resources to better accommodate the needs of its youth. I don't think that's something to be afraid of.

And where children are concerned, I fail to see why that's a milestone at all. By that standard, Bristol Palin is more of an "adult" than most responsible and hard-working twenty-somethings.
The way I look at it, I'm an adult now (29), so I get to decide what "being an adult" means.
If anything it's worth a shot, request sent :)
Jonathan Rees on OOP
So, I see something, but feel I must be missing the pièce de résistance here. There's a background covered with parallelograms and the words "Mother-Fucking Lasers" that flash every once in a while.

Should I be seeing something else? (I'm using Chrome on Ubuntu.)
Times change far less than most people think they do. Everything old is new again.

Columnists invent trends and crazy new behaviors that are neither trends or new.
Why are so many people in their 60's not retired?

Why are so many people in their 70's not dead?
Like reading this forum....
Thanks, those are all good suggestions. :)

Yes, the reports give me very specific details about what has been clicked.
It seems to me that its largely due to the fact that our society doesn't let you do anything until you are 18, sometimes 19. For example, when my parents were teenagers, you could get your full drivers license at 16, now in British Columbia, you get your learners license at 16, your 'N' at 17 and you don't get your full drivers
license until you are 19.

Also in British Columbia, you can't rent an apartment without someone signing for it until you are 19. So its hard for someone to grow up until they are in their late 20s because they are used to society protecting them until such a late age and then when it is time for them to move out etc. they don't know what to do with themselves
because they haven't been able to learn what to do when they are on their own.

So if our society wasn't so over-protective, people would be growing up faster, but instead we are treating them like children until they
are almost 20.
Agreed. Also, there is the value perception. When players have to sort through all these MMO games to play, the paid ones stand out over the free ones. (for those players with limited time to play, and can afford to pay)
So research how to make it less nasty. Check out the Lexer Hack article on wikipedia.

It also helps to familiarize yourself with classical pathological syntax issues for languages like ALGOL-68 (requires 'semantic actions' to parse correctly) and early versions of FORTRAN (identifiers could have intermediate whitespace, which meant that a typo could corrupt the meaning of the program) and figure out how to do parse a language with an Offside Rule (and not all offside rules are created equal; Haskell 98 is very complex). Then look at techniques like scannerless/lexerless parsing (SGLR, PEG, etc.), combinatorial parsing, etc. Understand what mathematical properties of a parser algorithm and a parser generator you should look for to ease your job. Understand why naive user of a parser generator tends to result in slower lexing/parsing than hand-coded ones. Understand why for some applications we might be able to not care. Understand how to embed good error messages in a grammar-based approach vs. hand-coded solution. Understand the notion of unparsers, which, IIRC, are not covered in any of the Dragon Book at all.
You would need to unplug it or switch it off for a year
to save as much energy as it takes to have one-and-a-half
baths.

Maybe something is lost in translation but what on earth are they comparing? The energy cost to heat the water in a bath?
Ruby 1.9.2 Released
My Ph.D advisor will go crazy, he had his European research project on a probability computer turned down a few months ago.
Rees (http://mumble.net/~jar/) studied under Sussman at MIT and is one of the creators of Scheme48 (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/projects/s48/).
Perhaps part of it is because they are told that the "real world" is deferred until they are out of college. Now that they're done with college, they are at the same point in life as the average (young) teenager a few generations ago. The invention of the modern consumer society called "childhood" is being extended further and further, and until someone does something about it, we'll see more of this.
Ah, gotcha. I like other types of ebooks though! :)
Scientists Suggest Fresh Look at Psychedelic Drugs
I think the first time you get laid off (or fired maybe) you change your plans dramatically too.
Sorry, but obligatory http://xkcd.com/150/

Edit: and the follow-up on the artist's blog, er, "blag": http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/ and http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/
Thank you for your suggestion. It's definitely an option that I'd like to implement at some point. I know that some people won't like receiving separate emails, so I'd prefer to provide the option.
Birds (and aircraft) need a left wing and a right wing to fly.
Command Line Audio: Simple as mpg123