skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Based on my personal experiences, one thing I'd add to this conversation is that your level of introversion may be more mutable than you may think. People often talk about the trait like it's very stable and inborn, and I think it is to an extent, but it can change over time.

I give myself as an example. I'm 30 now, and up until my mid-twenties I could easily be considered introverted. I always got a strong 'I' on Myers-Briggs type tests. Other people told me I was introverted all the time as well,

I agreed. I loved my alone time, wasn't super motivated to socialize with others, and got drained by being with people.

I also happened to have weak social skills, and wasn't happy with that. As I improved my social skills, and gained the ability to better enjoy other people's company, I noticed a lot of my so-called inborn, introverted personality traits were lessening as the years went by:

-I wasn't getting drained by socializing any more, because it was easier, more fun, and didn't use up as much mental effort.

-I still appreciated my alone time, like everyone really, but I didn't crave it as intensely.

-My internal motivation to socialize and be around other people went way up.

-In time I started to want to hang around bigger groups of people and do louder, crazier things when I went out. It was almost like I got used to smaller events, and sometimes needed something more stimulating to get my social 'fix'

-I just got more chatty and outgoing in general.

Looking back, I feel a lot of my introverted tendencies were a result of a social skill/comfort deficit I had. They felt like a core part of my personality at the time, but looking back I don't know if they were.

That said, I still love spending some days all by myself doing nothing. But it's good to have the ability to switch into a social mode when I want to.
To get that A/B/C, demonstrate that you’re interested in the material, do all the reading, and show up to class every day. Go to the professor’s office hours to ask intelligent questions—like whether you’re on the right track regarding a paper—or what you could’ve done better on a quiz.

I never find myself doing this with a CS class. I always show up right before class starts, answer a few questions to show the professor I haven't zoned out in front of my laptop and leave once class ends. Talking to others in the class, they pretty much did the same. What we were covering always seemed pretty set in stone. The complexity of mergesort won't change and its rather easy to see how it differs from quicksort, for a contrived example.

However, when I had International Studies as my second major, I found myself in professors offices a lot more. The politics behind everything at the level we were looking at things on was much easier to find questions to explore than CS was. And even more so with the art classes that I'm in right now. I'll stay after class to work on something, show up before class to talk to others and see how their project is coming along (and theirs is usually in a completely different direction than mine). I'd ask the professors if they knew of any artists who had made similar works that I could look at, etc.
Most of those networks also evolved gateways to interconnect to each other. The history of technology is often one that starts out with proprietary interfaces that evolve under user pressure to standardized, open interfaces. We see that playing out yet again in the iPhone vs Android competition.

As soon as there were two computers, people tried to connect them. The more they got connected, the more universal people wanted those connections to be. If commercial companies wouldn't do it, non-commercial entities would (after all, look at linux and the enormous success of free software). Heck, even I worked on hooking computers together back in the 70's using ad-hoc parts and wires and (never having heard of arpanet at the time) even sketched out how a decentralized "web" might work.

The idea that a decentralized fault tolerant network is such a novel concept that it required a government to think of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even the telephone system is decentralized. There are decentralized fault tolerant systems all around us as examples.
Another possibility is that -- regardless of their technological level -- they'll have completely different values and won't be interested in earthlings at all.

For instance, in Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" the Martians ponder destroying the Earth "for aesthetic reasons".
Being an introvert is not directly related to poor social skills. It means that you get your energy from within, from being alone with yourself. Others drain that energy from you and that's why in settings where a lot of people are around, you feel uncomfortable, and wear out very quickly. Extraverted people get energized from being around people, which is completely the opposite.

You can succeed in life being either way. Actually, a recent study showed that now close to 50% of the Fortune 2000's CEOs did acknowledge to be introverted! All that it means, is really that you need to respect your needs, and keep yourself on a schedule where you have enough alone time to charge up, and then pick the place & time to unleash all that energy to others.

You are so lucky that being in 2010, you can now also interact and network with many people the electronic way ;) This is not a replacement for the real thing, but it can definitely help you improve your social skills in an environment that does not drain your energy, nor makes you feel uncomfortable.

The bottom line? Embrace yourself, be who you are and nurture your passions & what excites you. I personally know many very successful introverts, so don't let this be your excuse for not reaching out for the stars!

Cheers!
Chris Sacca Responds to Chris Sacca Responding to Ron Conway by...
Don't think of it as one coherent novel; instead, think of it as a collection of loosely-related DFW essays, untethered from reality, glued together with 3-4 major characters.

One thing he's doing earlier in the book is setting things up so that when he explains things, like the Concavity or why the assassins are in wheelchairs, there's capital built up in the ideas when they pay off. Which, for the first few hundred pages, is actually really annoying.

I also highly recommend reading it on a Kindle or iBooks, where the footnotes and dictionary is hyperlinked.
Just curious, what university are you at?

I am in the exact same situation. I just moved in to my dorm 3 weeks ago and I don't have any good friends yet. I tend to just play guitar in my room, and when I get a stir crazy I head to the library and read some math books or do some programming.

For me, it is a conscious choice that has fluctuating results. I choose to be introverted because I am not intelligent enough to socialize frequently and accomplish what I desperately want to accomplish. I am an average guy trying to work at a level far above my own, and doing so requires every second of my time (Sunday is my recharge day, if any of you were wondering).

But I have been getting lonely lately. It's strange, because I've always been this way and it has never affected me before. Maybe it's because I'm in New York City and surrounded by people doing things with other people. I remember there being an article recently about people feeling alone in New York City - I am starting to feel like that article had it all wrong, that it is very possible to feel alone here.

I do wish I could find people with similar interests though. I had a lot of friends back in high school who listened to metal. I haven't found anyone here yet. I know there are people here who are passionate about math, but I am not even close to their skill level. And I think all the programmers are hiding in their rooms as well.

It is difficult to be in this mindset though. When I am socializing, I desperately want to be alone, and when I'm alone, theres that tiny thought in the back of my mind that says I should be meeting people. Back home it was overwhelmed with my obsession with learning and practicing, and I thought it would be the same here... I don't know. I'm rambling.

Know why you like to be alone, and do it for the right reasons. But don't think that it doesn't come at a price. I know I'm going to have to find someone with similar interests soon, as I'm starting to feel like I'm living in a sea of people who don't interest me at all. And that is a bad feeling to have, especially when you know its not true.
> Being an introvert has nothing to do with having bad social skills, mate.

Well, they aren't the same thing but they're definitely related.

I don't agree. Last I checked I match most of the points describing an introvert and I consider myself one. Some of my friends from IT field I know very well also match the description. None of us has problems socializing, partying, meeting people, picking up girls or maintaining relationships.

For me, the key points of being an introvert is feeling comfortable being alone with yourself (not to confuse with lonely), living your way and not being very concerned about acceptance of other people (opposed to extravert). None of that means that you have a disability to socialize, you just perceive social relations in a different way, and as long as you are happy with that, there's nothing wrong. As you stated, if one feels that has issues, he should probably change that, but IMO it's not the 'being introvert' part to change, just their social skills maybe need some improvement. Extravert people also can have social problems, that can lead to even stronger issues as they seek acceptance of outside world.

For these you'd probably need to see a therapist.

Social skills are things you just can learn, as any other skill. Therapy states that sth is wrong, there's nothing wrong in lack of knowledge.
There is no reason for news aggregators to link to other news aggregators that find interesting content. This is "blog spam." I wonder how many levels of indirection would be needed before the content disappears entirely.
Ask HN: Recommendations for inexpensive startup accountant in Silicon Valley?
I have a small hobby business set up as an LLC in California (no revenue yet). Since this is treated as a sole proprietorship, as far as I know the only tax filing requirements are the annual $800 on Form 568, and there should be no other federal or state tax requirements.

Just to be sure, though, I was thinking of consulting an accountant, and asking them to file the annual taxes, 568 etc. Since I'm not yet generating any income and will not be for a while (this is a part-time organic endeavour), I want to keep my costs down as much as possible.

This is turning into a two-part question:
a. Does anyone see any flaws in the reasoning? Are there any CA/Fed tax filing requirements anyway even if you don't earn any income, and only have expenses?
b. Does anyone have recommendations for an accountant who will do the minimal work required for a very low fee (ideally flat fee)?

A google search of Hacker News and general web sites didn't turn up the answer to the above question, so I thought I'd ask.

In the spirit of giving back, I found that Simplicity Law (based in CO and CA) provided exactly what I needed on the legal side: low flat-fee pricing and understanding lawyers who're willing to work with newbie-personal-startups, mainly via email. [I'm not affiliated with them in any way, email me if you want more info about my interaction with them.] I'm looking for someone exactly analogous for tax/accounting purposes.
It's like the 4chan version of Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies cards.

Someone needs to make one of these that generates new fucking ideas for new fucking sites. "Make a fucking restaurant recommendations fucking site." "Recommend a fucking book."
Yeah, Chrome on my Mac always feels a little off (although I still use it most of the time). Hopefully Google and Microsoft can get that fixed soon :)

Any chance you can test it out with Firefox or Safari?
Check out FidoNet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet, a hobbyist produced global decentralized fault tolerant network, controlled by nobody.

If the internet never existed, it's quite probable FidoNet would have grown up and fit into the same ecological niche.
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I have some insights into this topic that I'd be happy to share privately. Email tom.howard/gmail.
> Wikipedia has a helpful timeline of life on Earth:

Err, I had no idea that flowers appeared later than mammals and birds. Is that a well-known fact that I should've learned in high school?
Applause to the LearnBoost team for making a great number of node.js open source contributions.
Ask HN: Great resources to learn software deployment
Dear gurus,

I have just developed a .NET desktop application and looking forward to allow people to download the application and install.

I am particularly worried that the software might (most likely) contain bugs, and I need push patches etc. I dont know how to do this.

Also I need to do piracy prevention using serial key/activation which I dont know how to begin with. I know this is not a popular opinion here, but I'd love to know how to do it.

All books in my local bookstores are about software development/testing/management. None on deployment. Searching with Google brings me to some short articles, but I prefer materials that I can seriously study and gain strong foundation of.

Please share good resources or advices related to deployment, and does not have to be limited to .NET platform.

Thanks.
The biggest difference I see is in the monospace font. Courier is serif and Cousine is not. Serif fonts are good for coding but my guess is that anybody coding has a better font than Courier.
E-Books Are Still Waiting for Their Avant-Garde
Rule number 1: write every email As though it will appear on the front page of the New York Times. If you aren't comfortable with that, then make a phone call or talk in person.
The idea that a decentralized fault tolerant network is such a novel concept that it required a government to think of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Even the telephone system is decentralized. There are decentralized fault tolerant systems all around us as examples.

It doesn't require the government to think of it, it requires the government to implement it. It would be a massively stupid decision from a business point of view to implement the Internet as it exists today. There's much more money in centralized networks. I think this should be obvious from the fact that (1) at the time all commercial companies were building centralized networks and (2) today text messages cost upwards of $1k per megabyte. The only reason why the Internet is architected the way it is today is because of government funding. One the government set the Internet in motion towards a decentralized, packet switched network, it could not be overcome by commercial companies.
The point is that our next relatives on the tree of life are very similar to us in many ways but we would nevertheless consider them pretty stupid. Pretty much all impressive human achievements will be forever inaccessible to them. DNA is just a very striking way of illustrating that similarity with the one big difference.

It is similarly imaginable that evolution could, without breaking a sweat, spit out intelligence that would consider us stupid the same way we consider chimpanzees stupid. They can do some cute tricks but that’s about it.

He basically wants to open our eyes to the idea of a vast scale of intelligence, not between village idiot and Einstein but spanning much wider. Meeting someone that is just as intelligent as we are seems unlikely.
In other words, you have a ton of stuff permanently in your car?

Both "permanently" and "ton" are exaggerations, but, aside from that, yes. I value preparedness and independence.

It's not stuff that you need to transport from A to B

I'm not sure what you're trying to assert here, but "to each according to need" echos a bit of socialism. I may not, strictly, need, but I most certainly want. Telling people just to "do without" doesn't, historically, seem to be an effective solution.

I don't understand what you were carrying. Can you elaborate on this?

I think you understand the nature of what I was carrying, but we merely disagree on the necessity or desirability of carrying it and, perhaps, definition, such as where it's carried (paniers, backpack, or mounted[1]).

[1] None of which even remotely approach the privacy and security of an automobile. Is a firearm part of ones disaster preparedness kit? Nothing doing if the kit has to be in a backpack carried with one everywhere.
I like Kevin Rose's "Hacking the Press" comment. Basically, he says that you target junior bloggers. That seems like a decent strategy too, as they'll be eager for stories more so than the experienced bloggers. http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/02/kevin-rose-10-tips...
I'm not sure what you're trying to get across here, since the cargo also doesn't drive the vehicles, nor otherwise transport itself. It wouldn't exist without the people.
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Flowers are complicated, their late arrival is not really surprising. 130 million years is also not exactly recent. It’s not like some cavemen lived in a world without flowers.
I had a similar experience: I tend to the introvert side of the spectrum, but when I got stuck in a job booth I was suddenly calling people across to talk to me. If anyone made eye contact with me, they were doomed. :)

And the really funny thing was, in contrast to normal situations where "being social" exhausted me, I found I gained energy from the interactions. Yet I was still my normal introverted self after it was over.

Funny how a situation can change your effective personality. :)
"Hits" implies the worm did something. All this article mentions is that a few personal computers at the plant are infected (implying possibly more).

But, then again, shock-and-awe that WSJ would sink to linkbait titles.
I was really disappointed when they bought Mint.com.

Now they will have solid gold toilets too?

Inconceivable!
"Thinking meat. Dreaming meat."
Asocial? People watching and making fun of everyone not in your ingroup is not exactly one of humanity's more recent inventions.

Neither is being a dick.

Neither is being upset when a photo of you shows up somewhere.

The only insight here is how slow of a news day today must be.
I think what people are up in arms about, is that ESR calls himself a hacker—and most hackers, being programmers as well, think of hacking as referring to a particular kind of programming. These hackers, thus, form their meritocratic scale of "hackerlyness" around programming ability.

However, as ESR himself writes: http://catb.org/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html

> Hacking might be characterized as 'an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it. An important secondary meaning of hack is 'a creative practical joke'. This kind of hack is easier to explain to non-hackers than the programming kind. Of course, some hacks have both natures.

If this is how ESR defines "hacking", then his claim to be a hacker is not, also, an implicit claim that he is a good programmer (that one must then refute.) He simply claims to "apply ingenuity" and "joke around"—which, it's pretty clear from the OP link, he does, in the medium of prose.
Your work day will be easy, but your commute and all your private time will be spent dodging hordes of cranks and wack-jobs trying to make "contact".
As a fellow introvert, I recommend forcing yourself outside of your comfort zone. I highly recommend learning to partner dance (swing dance, country western, or salsa). Dancing is great practice for social interaction + girls!

Yes, it's exhausting to socialize, but you'll grow your social skills, and you can use those skills when you really need them in the future.

Some skills come naturally to people, other people have to practice to get good at them. Social skills are no exception.
Well - maybe it was, but it was created by Kakigarden, not Techcrunch.
The whole "tradeoff" series of this blog in general is really good for decision making.

It includes:

Some now vs More later

Random vs Determined

Proximity vs Scale

Training vs Battling

Loyalty vs Universality

Sure Bet vs Shot in the Dark

Switching Costs vs Change Gains

Offense vs Defense

*Efficiency vs Predicatability
Hey there. I just finished off a year in residence, so I think I can offer a few pointers. Especially regarding metal. First of all, if possible, play your favourite metal really loud. A metal head (or RA) will knock on your door. Second of all, if you have a band shirt, wear it sometime. A fellow metalhead will find you. This works.

During your first few weeks/couple months at residence, you gotta try to force yourself to meet people. This is when people will be the most open and ready to make friends, and blow off stupid mistakes. Keep your door open when you play guitar. Likely, someone will drop by, if even to see where the guitar sound is coming from. If anyone else has their door open, drop by and try to get a hook into their interests.

That said, it is a common enough situation. I can easily count off a lot of my friends in my programs as being in your situation. I've found myself in those situations as well. Part of it is simply not being comfortable in a particular group. When you're hanging, you want to be alone cause you're not comfortable, but when you're alone, you remember the comfort that you use to get when with your group of ESTABLISHED friends.

Unfortunately, there is no easy "fix". I really don't want to say that being introverted is a problem, but finding yourself in the situation in university (especially first year) where you have no one else to turn to when crunch time rolls around, or some shit hits the fan can be deeply troubling.

That said, if you're in a challenging program, it's likely that you'll get another opportunity to bond whenever midterms/projects/finals rolls around. Bitching and toiling through work can do some wonders to getting to know people/building relationships. I think that's the entire mentality of how engineering programs are put together. Just pile on the work, and they'll unify in their bitching.
You'd be surprised how much government money goes into marketing agricultural products in general, including various flavors of meat. Strangely, nobody ever talks about cutting any of these programs.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?tem...
What's so fucked up is that there's no intellectual property protection for typefaces — in the eyes of the law they're just goddamn shapes. You hold copyright over the exact contents of the distributed file, and you can trademark the name, but you can't stop someone from making an exact clone independently.

Microsoft licensed the original "Core Fonts" from Monotype, who had already made Arial as a metrically equivalent clone of Linotype's Helvetica, but slightly different because they would otherwise get yelled at by their dork friends, and it was just one more in a large pool of other very similar fonts. Then later generations of dorks curse them for making it slightly different. Now Google has commissioned a new set of pointlessly-different fonts, which they will be yelled at for. It would have been better if they'd just made direct clones — they'd still get yelled at by the same people, but at least shit wouldn't look fucked up. The only problem would be finding someone willing to make them.

Pretty much all of the bullshit surrounding fonts on the web stems from FUD from the handful of type foundries and their fanboys. Maybe Google should buy Monotype to free fonts the way they bought On2 to free video codecs: http://www.google.com/finance?q=TYPE (as an added bonus they'd get Helvetica since Monotype now owns Linotype)
You tell me who owns 5% of the PC market and let's work from there.