skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Apples to oranges comparison.

We grow (among other things) our own wheat and spuds, which take a lot of hard work and can be bought for cheap. However, even the best "organic" (a term the USDA has diluted to the point of being almost a joke) versions from the best food stores in the area simply aren't in the same class as the stuff we grow.

The taste, texture, and flavor of organic home grown food can be so much better than the industrial food we're all mostly familiar with. You don't even have to be a "foodie" to notice. I can only eat about 1/2 of our home grown spuds when compared to store-bought ones, even if they're the same variety. Ours are so much more satiating than store spuds, that we eat far less per meal. I assume this is due to higher nutrition per unit weight/volume.

It's not really fair to compare home grown stuff with commercial agriculture, as they are two totally distinctly different products.
So did they file this patent, or were they awarded this patent? I'm not familiar enough with patent terminology to tease this info out of the article.
Oops, yes, just added that to the post.

alexis@ycombinator.com
I'd go with the people to be sure.

I don't really know what I'd be willing to sacrifice. It seems like most of the things I would be willing to sacrifice (my personal Social Security, Medicare, a high-paying job) have already been helpfully sacrificed for me by prior generations.

Time is a very fluid thing. What sort of time am I giving up? Money is time, as they say. I don't mind working for small wages if the work helps people (and doesn't enrich a chosen few to the exclusion of others.)

That last one is, I think, a mostly rhetorical question. Suffice it to say I think the relationship has become unquestionably dysfunctional. The concept of corporate personhood, and many things about the international corporate system have caused unprecedented growth, and certainly given me a very high standard of life.

But strolling down the streets of the town I grew up in, I can see I'm in the minority. So I guess the real question is, would I be willing to sacrifice my standard of living? Many things I live with, I've been conditioned to believe it would be a hardship to live without. Things that this corporate culture has given me. Would I give those up? It would take some convincing, but for the right value, sure. Mostly, I want to be sure I'm not living easy on someone else's labor.
You can download it by going to justin.tv from your android or here: http://www.justin.tv/p/android . Looking forward to seeing what people do with this live. Ammon flew his phone from a kite the other day http://www.justin.tv/ammonb/b/269125517 (it was better live ;)

Edit: or from the app store now. sweet.
Sure Enough, SkyFire Announces They’ve Submitted To The App Store
I guess "amount" could mean "lines of code" but my point stands.
Live blogging links (both auto refresh with pics, commentary etc.):

Gdgt: http://live.gdgt.com/2010/09/01/live-apple-fall-2010-event-c...

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/live-from-apples-fall-201...
The m3U8 file is working for me on the newest quicktime (which I think is only Snow Leopard). You need the newest quicktime for HLS Streaming to work.
for those on iphone... you can go to apple.com to find a link (This is too long to type for me)
Juggling. Cheap, great in both large and small slices, improves your hand-eye coordination, excellent gentle cardio-vascular - and surprisingly good for muscle tone.

For the techies/nerds/geeks/hackers there's also a theory of juggling (SiteSwap) that lets you experiment with creating new patterns (of certain types) of amazing complexity.

http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/SiteSwap.html?HackerNews
"The fact that skills involved in one area can be applied to another doesn't mean you shouldn't be acquiring skills in many areas"

I was referring to the skill of being able to focus. It's one I ended up learning the hard way.
Agreed. In fact I wonder what discipline it is not true in at the moment.
I was under the impression that it could help in getting people to take you seriously, although this might apply more to consulting than startups.
You seem to be quite dedicated to ignoring the point of the article. Again, if you want to be "broadly educated", go do something else. A PhD program is not the right place for personal exploration.

A doctorate is not about broad education, and the assumption of the author (all advisors, really) is that you want to get a PhD -- because if what you really want is an extended version of an undergraduate education, then the best advice is to put the PhD on hold, and go find yourself for a while. Otherwise, you're most definitely wasting something -- time, money, resources, etc. -- and a good advisor is going to redirect your mis-spent efforts as soon as they're aware. It's not about treating you like a "technician", so much as it's about trying to save you from a tremendously unpleasant experience.

"First, ask any tenured professor and they'll tell you they have the much less time for free thinking then they had in grad schools. Grant writing, committee siting, etc., soaks up most of their time. Second, the average age to get tenure is 39"

If you're unhappy about the life of a professor, then don't get a PhD. Sure, you can enter a PhD program, screw around for a few years to take some classes and gain "broad" knowledge -- but don't be surprised when you get kicked out. And then, don't be surprised when you have a multi-year gap on your resume with nothing to show for it but some bad recommendations.
Why would one need a git server? I am somewhat unclear on this... any good reads on this topic?

I am using git because I hate svn (so I use git-svn), so I am curious how a pure git setup would work...
No, but grad school is a fantastic place for it.

Yeah, it is, and it's a great way to add years onto a career move that is paying you subsistence wages.

You can attend other classes once you're a post-doc (unlucky) or a professor (better). Then, the university is paying you to be there, rather than someone else trying to find a salary for you in their limited grant funding.
Is there any point in putting obvious things that anyone can google when he need them on HN main page?
My beliefs about upmods as a currency and as a compensation are 100% in accordance with my beliefs about money as a currency and as a compensation.
Interview with Monster.com founder on his social dating site for adults over 40
> Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

Nowhere does this say "take my money and give it to other people." For example, anarchism is a socialist political philosophy, but abhors the state, and all forms of hierarchical control.
Awarded. Link: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
The key quotation from this piece is "the most important function of human language is to protect the smart from the strong". He's talking (in a very tongue-in-cheek manner) about how ethics very often override self-interest. Seriously, I think you're over-analyzing.
This is going in my "Great Articles" web site for future reference.
Agreed, which is why I tried to couch it in 'philosophical' argument. Discussing the various factions of socialism, anarchism, libertarianism, etc is always fun, but rarely leads to anything productive.

I am just glad that we currently can organize rather freely (even if we are forced to give over nearly half of our labor to war, health and retirement ponzi schemes, subsidizing heterosexual marriage, or whatever it is that you disagree with personally), and think that everyone should spend energy on making that more possible, and more neutral within our current framework(s) rather than trying to decide how people should organize themselves in the end.
lsyncd does the brunt of the work. it uses inotify, which is a facility of the linux kernel, to tell which files should be copied. but i think there is a problem.

inotify is not guaranteed to see every file system access. in fact, it often misses them when the file system is busy because there is an upper bound upon the number of inotify events that can be queued, set in /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_queued_events.

i.e., you could get data loss using this mechanism alone. you need to also run rsync every so often, i think.

the lsyncd guys are aware of this: http://code.google.com/p/lsyncd/

(maybe this is how dropbox works under linux too, if so it presumably has the same problem..)
Get a head start ruining a second planet because we're going to finish ruining our first pretty soon..? ;)
I don't really see any substantive distinction between this concept of "libertarian socialism" and ordinary libertarianism.

If people are free to pursue their economic goals by voluntary cooperation, it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights. In the absence of external control, many would exercise their rights by monetizing their participation in the economy in order to earn a profit. Many others would adopt a broad "open source" ethos. Most would probably engage in a mix of both, in varying circumstances, and at all levels of formalization.

Freedom and openness lead to healthy variation. It's the philosophies that pursue the universal adoption of a single doctrine that are unnatural and destructive, no matter whether they go by the name of "socialism", "capitalism", or otherwise.
I liked Alexis' retweet, actually :)

http://twitter.com/kn0thing/status/22654109600
I don't understand why dropbox doesn't open source their client. Their business isn't built off of their technology, which, while nice, isn't exactly novel. They make their money from selling storage. Open sourcing their client doesn't change the fundamental fact people need the space to store stuff.
Since Congress can and has retroactively changed the length of copyright repeatedly, I don't think that there's any presumption that you are buying a right to copy after a given time, or at all. Since I'm against copyright in the first place, this argument about textbook copyright is rather academic to me. So to speak.
I second this one. especially since its so easy to get into all you need is a decent pair of shoes and a water bottle.

Nothing like eating lunch on top of a mountain!
Oh yes I did. But I admit I put the emphasis on Google because of their "Big Brother" aura. From there, it's easy to talk about the dangers of centralized e-mail in general.
Ahh, I parsed it wrong. My mistake.
‘Do-it-Yourself’ Botnet Kits Gain Momentum
Constraints will make you Awesome
Saying "really finishing ASAP isn't a good idea" is an advisor fail. Much of these points are advisor fails: it's your advisor who should be pushing you through grad school. They've seen it multiple times. You've seen it once.

If your advisor has recommended you should finish your PhD, you should finish your PhD. If he/she is saying "I don't think you have the wide knowledge base to properly understand this subject", then you start taking more classes. My advisor is talking to me about taking philosophy of science and software studies. They aren't critical path by any stretch of the imagination. But he thinks I need it.
I just went throught gitolite's readme, and I don't see any reason why a lone dev might want to use it, since it seems to be built for managing teams with access control needs.

Doing it manually for me just means (on the server):

mkdir project_name
cd project_name
git init --bare

Hardy difficult.

I already have ssh keys set up from long back, so that's all I have to do really. Then I just add the remote repository on my local machine.
More discussion on the other thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653134
I hope that is the case, but I'm not convinced it will be. It really seems like most people are using the internet to connect with more people like themselves, which seems to be leading to an overall reduction in the amount of tolerance people have for differences.

There are certainly pockets of increased respect and caring, but I'm afraid those are the exception and not the rule.

(I fully admit to being cynical and pessimistic, so it may just be my muddled worldview showing through.)
Alexis is one of the most positive and helpful people in the startup community I know. He drew the original logo for Justin.tv, helped us on numerous occasions, and has even tried to launch my voice acting career (a long time dream of mine). Why is he so helpful? Because at heart, Alexis is a great guy who is genuinely interested in helping others.

This is a huge win for YC!
He has one problem with his argument, he brought Germany into the equation which is a bad example. Germany has some of the most stringent manufacturing protection policies in the first world. Not to long ago they went after Nokia for "caravan capitalism" for moving manufacturing bases from Germany to Romania. Germany is probably the most piss poor example one could use to strengthen their anti-protectionism argument. They are protectionist (in actions not in words) and they are doing the best through this whole mess.
Are you presenting this as an argument with my article? I am confused, as you seem to be arguing most of the time with other people's words and not my own.

I will respond to one thing you wrote, That does not mean I agree with or even understand anything else in your comment.

How are workers being "exploited" just based on the fact that they working for someone else? We all have choices in this world. If you feel you aren't getting paid enough, leave.

Is exploitation incompatible with freedom? You seem to be saying that exploitation does not exist since people appear to have choices.

That isn't my understanding of what the word "exploitation" means. If I'm wrong, please suggest the word that describes what I am thinking, and I'll update the essay.
Let us resist flashing the patio11 signal for this.
Ask HN: Any interest in a Salt Lake City or Provo, UT Hackers/Founders meetup?
I'm thinking about spearheading a Salt Lake or Provo Hackers/Founders meetup (depending on feedback from both areas) and wanted to gauge interest here first. If you are interested in coming to or helping to organize such a thing, shoot me an email (in my profile).
I don't see that differently from what other graphical OS do; of course there are minor differences but both macosx and gnome (didn't check other linux GUIs) have something similar.

I'm not saying that they didn't copy it from windows, but I think the features were there before microsoft filed this patent (2005).
From the experiences of people I know, it helps if your startup is either capital-intensive (think building a chip) or is solving a really hard technical problem (think Google, DNA sequencing, or auto-parallelizing compilers). In those cases, the fact that you ostensibly advanced human knowledge in some small way serves as a predictor that you might be able to do it again, which inspires confidence. If your startup doesn't fall into either category -- and most don't -- it's less helpful.
The converse:

"How to Succeed as a Graduate Student in the Sciences"

http://www.chemistry-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Gas...

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1504679
Yes, personally while reading the comments, I sometimes just think "This person is using conventional pro-capitalist arguments" and move on. Similar thoughts might occur if I were reading technical communications as a mathematician in Soviet Russia, a developer of early computers for the US government, or engineer of weapons systems under feudalism.

That doesn't necessarily mean I reject those arguments; but it doesn't mean I accept them either. Given the state of the world, it makes sense that the ideology here reflects the capitalist, masculine perspectives in the Californian software industry.
It's certainly interesting, but the article itself could be better written.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Mountain implies that it wasn't really Darwin's efforts, nor is it a true example of an artificial ecosystem.
No wonder we're headed to a future with less privacy.
I used slimstat (w/ PHP) a while back, and it was pretty decent. I wonder how they compare...
Pity that they're incapable of actually implementing this properly.
When I first appeared on the Internet (with my Geocities account!) I created an alias very close to the one I'm using now. My alias and my real name never appeared in the same place for years, and I don't think my now-self could have penetrated my then-self's anonymity.

Eventually I stopped caring, but my decision to drop the cloak was a conscious one. I think it may have coincided with the creation of my Google (then just GMail) account, where it became obvious that my alias and my True Name would be appearing together on (at the very least) mailing list posts.

It became more useful to me to have one reputation, rather than two (or more). The methods I employed then would not work for me now; I've become accustomed to a certain level of service and community, and creating a new identity for every site would break some of what makes the modern Internet interesting.

I think it's much more useful if people just get used to the idea that we change over time. Checking the date stamp needs to become automatic behavior. Permanent data storage is a new thing for humans, but we can learn to adapt.
Neither of those works in the nightly build of VLC I just compiled on Ubuntu.
> it presumes a recognition of underlying property rights

There's your difference. Libertarian Socialists don't believe in private property.
Hackers also read everything way too literally. A consumer is someone who mostly consumes and mostly doesn't create.

Everyone creates, be it an email to their friend, or a picture for their photo album. Everyone consumes, perhaps reading a book from time to time or watching a movie.

But some devices push you in one direction, and others push you in the other. Log into a Linux box with xmonad, emacs, and rxvt-unicode, and you have no choice but to create. That makes you a hacker.

Get an iPad, and with easily-available movie downloads and an infinite supply of blogs and no way to enter text efficiently, and you aren't going to be doing much creating. That makes you a consumer.
I liked this quote a lot too: "Perfection cannot be attained. It is approached in the limit."
Congrats to both Alexis and YC!
Look at the factors that made America prosperous in the post-war period: most industrialized nations in ruins, huge land and natural resources, long-term instability in latin america, big demand for semi-skilled labor, etc.

We were living in a fairy tale scenario. No wonder a factory worker could buy a nice house in the 'burbs for his wife and 3 kids and drink scotch every night.

All this hand-wringing about how to get back to that is fundamentally misguided. We're not slipping, it's just that our most significant advantages have evaporated, and we are used to a certain standard of living that is an order of magnitude above what the developing world expects. We still have cards to play, but eventually we will have to compete with developing countries and accept the devaluation of our work.
This is both hilarious and incredibly sad. If they stopped playing these things they might have more luck getting a partner for real.

Also I can't help wondering if they get jealous when they notice the guy two tables over has the exact same imaginary girlfriend.
China has been extremely protectionist from 1970 to now and their economy has steadily grown thought that time period.
I once saw a slogan on a T-shirt that said “Labor creates all wealth”. I would suggest that if your first reaction to that slogan is anywhere in the range from “that’s an exaggeration, but yeah, it’s mostly true” to “HELL YEAH!”, then you are (should be?) a socialist.

The various flavors of socialism, from anarcho-syndicalism to Marxism to Scandinavian-style social democracy, represent different answers to the question of “OK, granted that labor creates the wealth, but in a country with one iron mine, five steel plants, and twenty steel-consuming factories, who decides how resources get distributed from the mines to the steel plants to the factories?”
Without fail, every time I need to use QuickTime on a Windows box it doesn't work.
I didnt say that git's power features get in my way. I said I don't need most of them and I find other DCVSs easier to work with. Git can fit in with my workflow just fine except for one thing... I find it overly complicated. I find fossil, bazaar and mercurial all easier to work with. And part of my workflow is 'not overly complicated'. For me, git is a constant battle to remember how to do things.
Showing it doesn't necessarily hurt Dropbox isn't enough. You have to show that it actually helps Dropbox to open-source the client. Otherwise, why should they?
My own 2p worth is that these notions of socialism or capitalism or liberalism are 19th/20th century inventions, and that the sorts of issues which are going to be arising in future are not going to fit well into any of these existing boxes. Probably it's not a good idea to become too fixated upon these ideologies from the past. As evidence I'd cite the declining public interest in party politics and the rise of single issue pressure groups.

Also, Americans often confuse socialism for communism, and don't realize that more moderate non-tyrannical centre left forms of socialism are possible, with plenty of examples existing in Europe.
Since people like to argue definitions, here's something to chalk on the board at the coffee house:

GIVEN: Libertarian socialism (sometimes called social anarchism, and sometimes left libertarianism) is a group of political philosophies which promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production.

RESOLVED: Belief in the abolition of software patents and the use of FOSS software to create start-ups is a Libertarian Socialist view.
I've described it as a research merit badge.
Welcome! You will make this place better.
What’s a Resume When You Have a Web Presence?
I'm in seoul and it has not frozen once... and the streaming quality is HD... sadly due to their streaming tech it only works on apple products
Yes. I've been working on version 2 of the iPhone app for the past few months. It is awesome and will be in your hands in a few weeks at most.
"Some devoted fans will go so far as to pay twice the rate"

Wow! I would hav enever tought it would go this far. I have a hard time not seeing this as living in denial... Does that mean I am getting old?
Apple announces iTunes 10 with Ping Social Network
That's awesome news. I've always been impressed with Alexis - particularly his sense of humor and genuine friendliness.

For example, a few years ago I ran into Alexis and Steve in an Italian restaurant when my Mom was visiting me in San Francisco. They were sitting a couple of tables over in the mostly empty restaurant and I took a moment to go over and say hi to them since I recognized them from Startup School. In the conversation I mentioned my Mom was visiting me and when I gestured towards our table Alexis excitedly declares "Hi Mom!!" to her. The funniest and most endearing part was how sincerely pleased he was about meeting my Mom. It was a great bonus to our evening to run into him.

Anyway, great news for a great guy.
To be fair to them, their easy listening music stream is lovely on the iPad. Watching the theatre fill up isn't really what I was hoping to watch though.
Their business isn't built off of their technology, which, while nice, isn't exactly novel.

well, be careful with such claims. many technologies don't seem novel at first glance, but i'm sure there are lots of novel tricks they play under-the-hood to get their system to run quickly and reliably.

e.g., google's pagerank is now well-known and public, but i'm sure that they have lots of 'secret sauce' internal algorithms to make their search index work even better, and they definitely don't want to share those secrets
I am prepared to confess to composing a link-baitish title. Shall I pay my upmod to the bailiff on my way out?

;)