skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
My grandparents and other elders were "food pushers," too, and I sometimes wonder whether it all stemmed from them spending their formative years in the Great Depression. It seems like those of us raised by them, unless we reject it, could still be experiencing a ripple effect from a time when there was never enough food, and the consequences of still acting like there's not enough when there's in fact way too much.
The Anarchist FAQ covers this point in great detail.

http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionF
Of course another possible explanation for this is that MBAs are all taught to value things the same (crazy) way and he is simply running the same valuation calculation as the MBAs at eBay and coming up with an equally crazy answer.
Sleep deprivation for treating depression
So, you're either Keynesian or Austrian? Doesn't that simplify a bit too much or is current economic science really that easy to put into different camps?

Other than that, debates about that issue always remind me of debates about food. Some people seem to have simple models, but can't explain a lot. Some people (Pollan et al.) say that it's too complicated anyway, so here's my personal wisdom. And while some people in white labcoats might know a bit more, people just listen to those selling the hamburgers or the organic tofu.
10 ways data is changing how we live
If it's a shared multiplayer persistent board, there is no "your game".
If someone can take a big, complex problem and disseminate the root causes then they can learn how to program.

I would start with something that she is familar with like the design and work backwards into the code. Use as many analogies as possible, try and find similar relationships to things that she is used to.
Well.. I do that and I also code.
Sometimes the shock value is gone but it really has to do with context.

The song is rather light and poppy but the way 'fuck you' is put in there is meant to be offensive and that is when the shock value still exists.

If you stub your toe and curse it really isn't shocking but when you fight with someone and start yelling expletives it can be shocking and offensive. However I don't see context based censorship happening anytime soon and it is easier just to police a list of banned words and let the new media shine otherwise.
I'm teaching someone Python on the side, and this is a great help! Thanks!
Some of Sirius' content is still censored. Hits 1 (their Top 40 channeL) definitely is, and I'm guessing some of their other contemporary channels are as well. The R&B / Hip Hop channels are not.
The idea of a code stepper is pretty cool. Two other projects that come to mind after seeing this: http://jonnytran.com/machina/ and the Macro Stepper in Racket: http://docs.racket-lang.org/macro-debugger/index.html
Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Ask For Money
I'm a big fan of Austrians (I'm a complete Hayek groupie). But I don't think this is quite correct. It seems to me that Austrians really do stay away from mathematical models, at least. But they do have very strong logical models. The praxeology you refer to is really rooted in inductive logical reasoning.

The difficulty is that these logical arguments depend on the rationality of the actors in the economy. And while Mises acknowledges that the real reasons for a person's actions may not even be known to one's self, more recent experimentation seems to show that at least in some situations, people really do not behave rationally.

Anyway, if you're concerned about a lack of mathematical rigor, but are interested in Austrian ideas, you should look at the Chicago school, with luminaries such as Milton Friedman. The Chicagoans started from Austrian roots, but if anything, their attitude toward mathematical models is the opposite of the Austrians: they virtually invented much of the mathematical techniques that are employed by modern economists.
Sure, but it's not like censoring radio and television will keep children from hearing and/or using them. In fact, I'd wager to say they don't even play a role. Back when I was a little kid, swearwords came from older children, and were often far worse than the ones mentioned here.

I'm with you on not finding people who can't speak without using swearwords to be intolerable, but when used to express emotion (such as in this song), I don't mind it at all.
Don't just make assumptions, there really isn't a risk from running pirated games that you get from torrents. People tend not to be malicious when seeding.
GNU Hackers Meeting in the Hague 2010 (video of talks)
Seems like you have 18,000 more upvotes than downvotes, so maybe you are just in a bad mood today. Deep breath and smile!
Do you have to be a 'hacker' to do a startup?
I have a killer idea for a start-up. I truly believe it has potential to make millions in either revenue or acquisition. The problem is... I don't have a programming bone in my body. So, at this point I'm on a path to locate someone who wants to partner with me in this venture.

From your experiences, is this possible? Should I just say screw it and give up (if you say yes to this, I'll just ignore you).

What is some advice you could offer a non-hacker in starting a very technical start-up?

Thanks in advance.
Rules for running events
The title seems to be a bit of misnomer. The article provides a nice explanation of how to monetize your office space but it doesn't seem to uncover any real estate secrets!
Boys rules, Girls lose? Do these theories still hold true? This year, for the first time in the US, the number of women in the workforce surpassed the number of men.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-...
I don't believe this majority exists in blue collar jobs, but I could be mistaken.
The World’s Largest Economies
You're assuming that every thing that people work on actually needs the potential to become "big".

What about the people that study klingon? Or Esperanto? Or Elvish?

You assume that a person cannot gain something by simply learning something that has no practical purpose. This isn't the case. By working on BF, someone might make some neuron connections that help them with logical thought with other projects, by breaking down logical thinking into very simplistic, basic symbols--completely removing "language" out of the equation.

You just don't know. :P
:)
Thanks for pointing that out.
Forgive me, if I don't understand this market but why not reformulate while the FDA investigation is going on? Or at least provide a reformulation contingency prospectus and it's effect on revenue to prospective investors / purchasers.

This is my first exposure to this story so it may have been done, but the story read like "oh well, can't get money lets close shop".

I guess my question is, is caffeine that important to these drinks that the brand would not have survived it's removal?

They seemed to have attractive packaging and a solid network, am I missing something here. I mean it's vodka, a couple of trips through activated charcoal and it's the good stuff. What else is there to this. Could they not compete on Vodka alone?
To my surprise, a lot of people don't know there exist things called debuggers. Debuggers are tools that let you step through code, see variables, set break points. Debuggers are common for compiled languages, less common for scripting languages. For example, you can debug Java code from most IDEs, or C++/C# code from Xcode or Visual Studio.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debugger
It's not a novel name - Lily Allen, for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFE6qQ3ySXE&ob=av3n

Personally, though I'm not generally one for profanity I quite like it. I'd be unhappy to hear it playing in public though.
Signaling:Does sharing a public resume conflict with fund raising for a Startup?
Great list. Just a few more items I wish I'd realized at 17.

1. When you go to college study something you're interested in. I studied math and found it a challenge but I wasn't passionate about it. If I had a do-over, I'd double in computer science and music.

2. Keep in mind that whatever you choose to study has a "business" side to it. The business side is how you earn a living in that industry. Go into your chosen field understanding how you will earn a living. Reaching out to established people is the best way to learn about it and develop a network to help you.

3. My parents have their own issues but they are "normal", meaning not systematic abusers of any kind. They did understand what I was going through at 17 - I just felt I was unique.

PG wrote a fantastic essay that I wish my 17 yo self had read. (http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html) Of particular note is the following paragraph.

"Teenage kids used to have a more active role in society. In pre-industrial times, they were all apprentices of one sort or another, whether in shops or on farms or even on warships. They weren't left to create their own societies. They were junior members of adult societies."
This is probably firstly business porn for people to read and imagine the success. I think it's one of the 37 Signals. Isn't 37 Signals all about training and teaching people? So isn't this actually a really central part of their business model and not something anyone can really do?

It's also strange that they were doing well making classes, and then didn't do that for 7-years! Then they did it again? Was there a reason it didn't matter to them so much to generate 3x their months rent so they could share with another company?

"We built a theater-style classroom, with 37 seats..."

Haha.
It tells you the truth, not secrets ;)
Cisco makes a lot of money on high-margin equipment to deal with IP traffic. If an inter-operable VoIP solution becomes the future of communications (or just raises the level of internet traffic in general) Cisco wins as people have to buy more network equipment (of which a bunch will probably be their equipment).

Skype's current business model is non-interoperability. If people are locked into Skype for Skype to Skype calling, then they'll pay Skype Out rates to dial phones. However, there can be a limit to how pervasive you can get with a closed network model. Cisco might calculate out that increased hardware sales would do them better. Likewise, they might feel that the Skype brand has enough clout to stand on its own.

I'm not saying that it's likely, just that there is a potential benefit. More internet traffic is probably a very desirable thing for Cisco.
It sounds like you already know the answer, considering you said you'd ignore anyone who says you should give up. :)

Of course you should forge ahead with it. Your best bet is to probably to go with your gut. Look for a programmer to partner with and in the meantime, maybe grab a few books on programming so you could help (even if its with menial stuff).

Good luck!
What Should You Do When Your Web Service Blows Up?
The UK is a bit more of a mix between Europe and US when it comes to food and restaurants etiquette.

In France, I've seen myself denied the extra cutlery before (after leaving for some years in Asia, I was used to share food...)
What is causing your feeling of wasted potential? Why do you feel your potential needs to be fulfilled anymore than anyone else's? Why make yourself so unhappy because you haven't achieved greatness? One of the crazy things about the age we live in is that you're no longer just competing against the most successful person in your little neck of the wood. Because of how incredible our ability for mass communication is, we now compare ourselves to the luckiest, most beautiful and most gifted people of our age. It's almost like the media is quickening the pace of social evolution...and it's causing more social anxiety than you can poke a stick at.

Hey it doesn't matter that you're not Steve Jobs or Bob Dylan or Mahatma Gandhi...Those guys lived the jackpot of the human lottery (in terms of making a difference to the rest of us).

something I've learn't over the years is that you rarely make headway against a problem by struggling against it, in the way that you will be engulfed in quicksand the more you thrash. Generally acceptance and relaxation will bring quicker resolution...a lesson that is at odds with the modern hollywood fairy tale of one person struggling against improbable odds.

The universe is massive, we are microscopic...our achievements are ephemeral and our lifetimes are over in the blink of an eye. There are thousands of forgotten civilisations, vanished into the fog of history, taking with them the endeavours of their citizens...Happiness and inspiration come when you're not looking for them. They are not the sole domain of Hollywood or silicon valley. They really are found in everyday moments, that if you're always focusing too far in the future, or on things you don't currently have, you walk right past them.

Also, surely the image of the phantoms wandering the earth, chained to their safes is meant to convey a similar message to the article??
does it make sense to find a cheap outsourced (money is tight) programmer to help start on some of the very basic features?
Motorola Droid X Does Custom Roms?
1. A swarm could probably cover more area?

2. Chemical oil dispersants aren't effective at cleaning up the oil. http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/88/8824cover.html
DTrace, node.js and the Robinson Projection
How a startup should leverage a personal assistant
So, what’s the status of hardware acceleration, really?
In a wonderful illustration of the article's thesis, the song is also unnameable in the New York Times -- even as a matter of record. Fortunately Wikipedia has no such inhibition, so historians won't need to guess at the song title. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Profanity
That works, in fact that use is going to be fine.

For your size, you probably would benefit from just applying skimlinks as they would give you a slice of revenue that you're not tapping into.

Once you go beyond a certain amount of traffic, ditch skimlinks and do it yourself. They take too much revenue.
You need - as a matter of urgency - to find a programmer you trust enough not to screw you, and simply sketch your idea to them. They can then give you a ROM (rough order of magnitude) estimate of the work/complexity/trickiness involved. It won't be accurate, but at least you'll have an idea of the size of the task.

They might be able to wire-frame a static, non-functioning web site to give you an idea, and that might only take an hour. You need data, and you need someone to bounce the idea off.

And soon, while you have the enthusiasm.

I also note that you haven't told us your skills, haven't told us what you can do other than just having an idea, and haven't put contact details in your profile. It might sound harsh, but that tells me you're not really serious.
I'm about to learn Rails 3, please, which parts of it you think are complex, over-designed and over-engineered?
Requiring mining/drilling companies to contribute anything to clean-up and response R&D would, apparently, be a huge step forward by itself.

I agree BP shouldn't themselves be obligated to directly support this kind of testing right now. But if they had been contributing to research groups along the way, wouldn't we expect those groups would:
1. very much like to try their latest on a real problem 'in the wild'
2. be given latitude by to do exactly that by BP ?

Granted, no-one should/would rely on technology in testing to do the cleanup, but it appears the alternative to letting researchers have-at deep-sea slicks is to do nothing. So why not let researchers have at it?

And wouldn't the net result of all that be pretty much exactly what was advocated, just with a few layers of indirection?
I think I submitted this with the same url 6 days ago ? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629588
tl;dr - We learnt early on that we can make a ton of money holding 'workshops' rather than making software.

Whilst still an interesting study in how you can generate a 'following' religion etc, if you're writing software, there's nothing much here. If you have a large office, and want to monetize it, there's nothing much here unless you're sure you can/want to replicate 37singles cultish following.

As for the title "The truth about real estate"... Blatant linkspam. There are no 'truths' exposed.

"We also believe we'll be able to charge closer to $1,000 a seat." WTF pays $1k to go to some 'workshop'? Is this Scientology or something?
<joke>Well, you need to delegate the coding part then.</joke>
Bill Gates Enrolls His Kids In Khan Academy
Top N Reasons #Subject Is Dead.
Arcade Fire interactive HTML5 music experience
That's a reasonable suggestion if you're willing to wait a couple of generations (or potentially forever) for any improvement in the situation.

The first complication with this suggestion is that in cases of exploitation of information asymmetries like this, you don't know what you don't know. It's nice that this issue is getting a little public scrutiny here now, but one has to wonder how long it's been going on? And getting an issue like this more widely recognized, to a point where demand for transparency would be self-sustaining, is likely to require a lot of someone's time an effort to bootstrap. If a subset of buyer/leasers were to take this on openly, real estate owners would almost certainly seek to punish them directly, in addition to mounting their own counter-education campaign >>> politicization. Alternately, some third party might sense a commercial opportunity here, e.g., to provide public education and neutral measurement services -- but that's the same sort of business model that makes "trial lawyers" so popular...

It's unrealistic to assume that commercial renters are going to be broadly responsive to individual demands for transparency before the overwhelming majority of real estate seekers permanently embrace transparency as a make-or-break requirement for buy/lease decisions.
I couldn't get past the first "sentence". Don't write the way you speak.
That's kind of like saying that Bill Nye the Science Guy delves as deep into science as 99% of the population can appreciate, so any scientist going deeper than that is a self-important blowhard. And as for your second sentence to the end of your comment, I believe that is a statement of an axiom with which Armond White would adamantly disagree. If you're entering into this discussion with different axioms, the discussion is pointless.
All the cool kids use Ruby
Ask HN: Can I be sued for using patented algorithms for in-house stuff?
I have been working on some software and hardware tools for a potential future startup. None of these would ever be shipped to the public, but would instead be used to make the final product. My first intention was to avoid the hassle of patents et al and just release all tools as open source/free stuff (à la Rails).

Nevertheless, I am increasingly concerned with the current crazy patent system in the US and Europe, particularly in this very bellicose industry (medical). I have fully adhered to HN philosophy and completely disregarded the patent system at all. Currently, I don't know if I am infringing anything but that is quite likely.

So, has anyone experience in this scenario? Should I just proceed as planned (release everything), or maybe turn 180 degrees and just hide it under trade secrecy? Or even maybe just man up and deal with all the patent hassle?

In the end, I am just interested in building some cool stuff and benefitting patients (a nice exit in the end would be OK as well). But I just don't want to waste my time tilting at windmills.

<edit>One of the main benefits of the open-sourcing route to me is to characterize prior art if any trolls would come later and try to sue me.</edit>
Yeah but mine's better!

(bug?)
Let me put it this way. Suppose you use the methods of mathematics to determine that 7 x 8 = 56, and you decide to test this by arranging physical things in 7 rows of 8 and then counting them up. Suppose you try this, and you end up counting some other number, like 55. Why could this be? It could be that 7 x 8 is actually not 56, or it could be that your physical experiment was badly suited to test the principle (or badly executed). For example, perhaps you were putting drops of water in rows, and two of them combined into a single drop while you were putting down the rest of the drops.

There are two things to say here. First, if the materials you have are highly volatile and it is incredibly difficult to rule out "things happening that you didn't account for" as the explanation when the results of an experiment appear to disagree with your theory, then it's efforts to advance the theory by empirical investigation are likely to be doubtful and fruitless. Note that if your materials are free human beings and you're observing their responses to various stimuli, then the condition in the preceding sentence applies very thoroughly.

Second, even if [the reason the results of a physical experiment appear to disagree with the conclusions of a theory] is that the theory is incorrect, then it is always possible to confirm that the theory is incorrect by theoretical analysis. If you find that arranging physical objects in 3 rows of 4 and counting them up never yields 16, then you can verify by the methods of mathematics that 3 x 4 is not 16. And it is only once you've done this that you actually feel sure that the theory was wrong; until then, you always have the doubt that your experiment was badly designed, executed, or interpreted.

(Imagine telling mathematicians that you were going to test one of their theorems by physical experiment. Or announcing that you had disproven a theorem by physical experiment. I think you would be laughed at. At any rate, they would want you to turn your results into a mathematical argument, with no reference to your experiment.)

I believe it is with these things in mind that Mises and others say things to the effect that economic theory is not subject to empirical verification or falsification.
At the ILC 2009, Bill Lewis showed his Omniscient Debugger, which is a proof-of-concept debugger that allows you to navigate backwards in time to find a problem.

http://www.lambdacs.com/debugger/
And it is, for some reason, maybe higher barrier to entrance, embedded seems to foster an older alumni it is also far more rewarding to those who stay on a technical tract.

The way I see it, in pure play software dev, it up or out or freelance (which is really management but you get to sling some code). I chose the latter after doing a stint in embedded and later executive management. The problem with embedded is that there just are not a lot of opportunities in the states outside of some concentrated areas.
I don't give a shit about karma, I do intensely dislike the idea of "piling on" downvotes, for myself or others, as I have expressed many times in the past with regards to others' postings.

It's a great way of discouraging the expression of dissenting ideas. You're correct that I have the 'reserves' to express any number of actual crockpot ideas, but not everyone does.
Culturally food quality is considered more important than quality. Also, higher quality ingredients cost significantly more. So basically it costs them more to do so, and their customers don't care.
Dan Pink interview on Drive, Motivation, and Incentives