skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think it's best to find a balance. I'm both introverted and extroverted, extroverted just takes more energy but also results in more energy being given back to you from other people.
I think that's a fair characterization of my point in your first three paragraphs. There's just not a history of being able to take on the unions and "win", regardless of the labor laws. So let's stop trying to fight the unions and characterize them as devil spawn since that isn't going to work.

I'd rather focus on the areas where there aren't necessarily entrenched interests so we can focus on experimentation and trying to change the anti-education sentiment[1]. Schools like the KIPP Academies have exceptional outcomes over and over again. We need to find a way to get their techniques wider distribution.

I believe that fighting a war of words with the teachers unions is both a waste of time and counterproductive from a policy/results perspective. Public sector unions just aren't going anywhere. Furthermore, we're going to have a shortage of teachers - estimated to be as high as a million teachers [2] - once the Boomer generation retires. Demeaning the remaining teachers (who are generally union-affiliated) strikes me as ridiculously counterproductive. The experiences in NYC and DC are proof that there are ways to make teachers more accountable, reward better teachers, remove crappier teachers, and generally change the culture in our schools without taking tactical nukes to the NEA and AFT.

[1] Read Bissinger's Friday Night Lights for the best-written example of what I'm talking about.

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/education/07teacher.html
That's really interesting. What qualifies you for expert witness work? How'd you get into it?
Yes, it's ok. If you accept that in yourself. But ever go to a party and not talk to anyone and have a miserable time? And gone to a party and talked to people and had a better time? My advice is pick a non-computer related hobby. The hard part is that it has to be something you are generally interested in and would like to become better at. For me, a hobby was Salsa dancing. I was enthralled by the instructor dancing with his sexy partner at my very first lesson. I was hooked before the lesson even commenced (demo was first). The sooner you push yourself willingly, the better. And remember, showing up is 50% of the struggle when it comes to situations where you push yourself out of your comfort zone. Today, I hung out with three female friends and went to an art show and had lunch with them. I just finished studying a couple chapters of a textbook on computer graphics. I'd like to say that hanging out with friends was more fun but it wasn't - I prefer my own company to that of others. Good luck, think of talking about technical topics like talking about the weather. As other posters have said - find out about what people like, what people feel. Share the experience of being insecure. Go up to a woman that you feel drawn to and stand there and say "I have to say. I'm very nervous to talk to you but I had to walk over and say hi."
I don't think anyone writing these e-mails expects them not to end up on TechCrunch.
the recipients

Or the senders, encryption being equally useless in that case, as well.
Mark my words: all of Silicon Valley will regret it if the federal government gets involved in angel financing, "collusion" or no colllusion. It is not easy to build a Silicon Valley, but choking off deal flow with red tape could well destroy it.

When the government enters an area on the basis of negative press coverage, it does not have an informed opinion or a light touch. Think about it: years later, we are still taking off our shoes and surrendering our liquids at the airport. Policies written in haste after a media event are almost never revisited or changed, no matter how much economic damage they do.

I don't want to paint a mental picture by giving too many details, but you can imagine what any government assault on angels would do to the financing environment. This is exactly the kind of premise that a broke California (or federal) government can use to impose new taxes, just like police officers are ordered to increase ticketing when the city needs revenue.

Bottom line: the cure would be far, far, FAR worse than the disease.
Absolutely. I spent a lot of life thinking I was an introvert. Turns out I was just spending a lot of time focusing on math and physics and computing, and the state of concentrating fiercely on something and trying to tune out distractions -- especially distracting humans -- is nigh-indistinguishable from "introversion".

I actually rather like interacting with people, but I also like to think deeply, and I can't talk and think deeply at the same time. So I have to alternate if I want to stay happy.
"educational outcomes in right to work states aren't any better than outcomes in states where teachers unions have collectively bargained contracts"

Do you have a reference that compares states and controls for outcomes with respect to income, general educational levels, and other confounding factors?

Using state-level averages for comparisons can be misleading, due to Simpson's Paradox. For example, people in wealthier states are more likely to vote Democratic. But if you used that to determine that wealthier people are more likely to vote Democratic, you'd be wrong. In each state individually, and nationwide, wealthier people are less likely to vote Democratic than poorer people (until you get to a small number of the very-rich).

Also, I don't think any reformer is obsessed with collective bargaining and right-to-work laws as the root of the problem. Rather, reformers want accountability, choice, experimentation, and competition. Public teachers' unions consistently and effectively oppose those, even in right-to-work states. Unless their power is reduced, even in right-to-work states, many of the most promising reforms and experiments can't even be tried.
> You know what has never once happened as a result of a Predator drone strike? A live prisoner in US custody.

That makes a lot of sense. It is the optimal way of disposing of people on hidden black lists.

The other upside for them -- Americans don't put their lives in danger, unless we consider driving to Langley in DC traffic every day as "danger". So they never have to deal with that PR aspect of the operation.
This is a little rosy. Some issues with bars include: (1) 90% of your revenue comes from two nights a week; (2) Given all the cash, employee theft is a real problem; (3) Lose-it-all liability. Think about all the ways drunks can die/seriously injure themselves... and about how you'll get blamed every time. I'm not saying it wouldn't be a good investment, but it's hardly a license to print money.
Someone, a person who was at the meeting informed Arrington about the negative purpose of the conversations. So either that person was lying to Arrington and Arrignton to the readers or Sacca is telling half truths. Even as he wasn't at the second meeting anyway.

It's rather obvious that for Sacca his relationship with Conway is more valuable than anything he does for the startups or his freaking charities. The purpose of his long, very long essay is the damage control of the relationship with Conway, nothing else.
Owning a bar and being a bartender are two different things. Bartending is a service industry job, while owning a bar is about managing people.
I think that a better title for this post would be "What non-coding skills are in demand in the Bay area?"
In doing my CompE degree, my favorite part of any of my junior- and senior-year classes were the last two weeks - which was when they'd connect what you'd spent all semester learning with what you'd learned in previous classes.

"This transform is actually just a low-pass filter (which you can now derive in two different ways","All that matrix algebra can be used to simplify calculating how two transmission cables interact", "If you add in complex variables, all those calculations you've been doing just got a whole lot easier", etc.; for me, that was always the golden moment when it became clear that someone had put some thought into what I was learning, as opposed to just hitting a course catalog with a shotgun.

Only one professor - one of the signals guys - made this point at the start of the semester. I don't remember the exact problem, but he started the first lecture (after giving out the syllabus) working out on the board a relatively complex problem from another course. Took him about ten minutes and three or four blackboards, and he made a few mistakes along the way. Then he erased all his work, solved the same problem in about four lines using a bunch of symbols/variables/calculations that we hadn't yet been exposed to, and said "in three months, you will understand what these four lines mean, and why they're so much more powerful that what you're used to writing out." Come the end of the semester three months later, he was right - the solution he showed us (he wrote it out again) made perfect sense, and applied in a whole bunch of places.

Having said all that, I'm still not clear why I had to take analytical mechanics/statics in my second semester.
Astrophysicist Neil Tyson makes a great point on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-uZZ7RdL5E

Essentially: chimpanzees share ~98% of our DNA, yet we don't view them as having anything near our intelligence. If it only takes a 2% difference for this to happen, imagine how more advanced alien species might view us.
Sadly, there's very little research controlling for these factors. http://www.hepg.org/hep/Book/5 has a collection of papers that addresses some of this on the periphery.
" the correspondence between everyday physics and (something like) elementary number theory"

Can you give an example where he is talking about 'number theory'?
> 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 think the title question isn't very good. It's a sort of leading question. Why, of course it's OK to be an introvert. By any reasonable definition a large part of the world's population are introverts, and introversion itself isn't a mental disorder.

So most people (especially on HN) will say that's OK to be an introvert, but the more interesting question is how good are your social skills and how they affect your life. I think there are two interpretations for the post:

A) I have such and such issues, and maybe I'd be happier if I changed this. I assume there are people who have been in a similar situation, please advice. Examples of this kind of issues:

"I have anxiety when speaking in front of a large group of people."

"I haven't had a serious relationship for the past year."

"I wish I could be more assertive."

"I wish I could do better in parties / I wish I had more friends."

You probably don't need a therapist to solve these.

B) I have such and such issues, do they indicate psychological problems? Should I consult a therapist? Examples:

"I have anxiety when talking to people in general/I can't talk to strangers even when it's expected (asking for information, having a job interview, etc)."

"I've never had a girlfriend / I have problems talking to women."

"I have low self-esteem / I'm not assertive at all and people take advantage of me."

"I don't have any friends".

For these you'd probably need to see a therapist.
> This whole conversation is way off-topic.

I think not when software is used to kill people. I refuse to sanitize and rationalize that fact away and happily discuss UAV realtime software development patterns.
Those buttons are just a small bit of HTML form code. The button re-directs to their site. You can include some call back features on your site, such as a thank you page.

Using the buttons is the easiest way of integrating. If you are selling a number of products, then you will most likely need to eihter integrate an existing shopping cart or create your own.
I don't think it's fair to say he did nothing. He did two very important things:

1) Analysed the available information and determined that it was a false alert.

2) Actively passed on his assessment that it was a false alert to his superiors.

So it would be fairer to say "Man Who Saved the World by Using His Smarts and Responding Decisively."
It was always intended to be used by vendors for browser-specific features … HTML5

That's a pretty short time span for the definition of "always".
Looks great from what I see from the homepage. (Silverlight doesn't work well with Chrome on Mac)
Whether or not he is a good programmer or not is sort of irrelevant. I think he exaggerates his position as "spokesperson of hackers everywhere", and it is occasionally annoying (although more often I do enjoy his writing).
Being an introverted personality is perfectly fine. You don't need to be an extrovert to become a founder or CEO of a company. Don't compare yourself with someone you see in univ or try to become one. I know there will some difficulties when it comes to relationships but it is just a matter of time.
Ask HN: Rate my startup MyRunningMate
http://myrunningmate.com

An app that provides political campaigns the means to run and manage a virtual phone bank. Once setup, volunteers call a provided phone number which automatically connects them to voters one after another. An accompanying web page allows the volunteer to monitor their calls and report on the outcome of those calls.

Please poke around and try it out. You can test it out without actually contacting voters. No need to fill in real contact info, just make it all up.

Building this app took 16 days. The last three weekends and nights after my day job. Now comes the hard part for me, marketing it. I am going to aim for downballot campaigns. For a few reasons, no one below federal level campaigns use my main competition. I am also hoping the name MyRunningMate will be a container company for several services directed at political campaigns.
Clickable: http://myrunningmate.com
Sounds like the ultimate do-nothing job for which you get paid well.
The FBI is investigating AngelGate: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2010/09/fbi_rep...
بلاك بيري
There's nothing about getting laid in there. What's up with that?
This is not so much about privacy so much as being a douche bag. This type of bullshit behavior makes it impossible for real photographers attempting to capture 21st century life the way Garry Winogrand might have impossible. There can never be trust between subjects and photographers. Just try getting model releases if this shit keeps happening.

Let John Kubera know how you feel about his efforts to help photography: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RRba28d...

John is the one on the left with the mustache.
Yes! Try http://www.pearanalytics.com - the easiest tool you'll find.
Killing the iPad killers
This is not so much about privacy so much as being a douche bag. This type of bullshit behavior makes it impossible for real photographers attempting to capture 21st century life the way Garry Winogrand might have impossible. There can never be trust between subjects and photographers. Just try getting model releases if this shit keeps happening.
Let John Kubera know how you feel about his efforts to help photography: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RRba28d....
John is the one on the left with the mustache.
The National Association of Realtors has a formidable marketing presence. Their competition, like BuyOwner is no slouch either.

The market for "How to buy a House" is flooded with free sites and a full of noise.

Given that home buying is in a downward cycle, the war chests of the competition and the maturity of the market, I don't think there's much opportunity.
There are some in the real estate brokerage community who are trying to change the system. Check out http://bloodhoundblog.com. You may not agree with their aims (keeping agents in the middle, for instance) but they are fighting the good fight against the National Association of Realtors and, as they call it, Rotarian Socialism. :-)

Boil it all down though and they are committed to using tech tools to give their clients a better result. Any movement in that general direction is praiseworthy.

One of the reasons that home buying is such a shit experience is frankly because of government intervention. The quantity of useless paperwork required in California is staggering and grows each year. I am not convinced that it helps anyone involved in a transaction.

Information asymmetry and transaction costs. There are probably a zillion little MVPs in real estate that can slowly attack one or both of these problems.
True, encryption probably wouldn't help, but you could probably come up with a scheme to watermark the messages. You could make it look like the same thing was sent a large CC list, but be able to determine the source of the leak by a changed word or two. Makes you wonder if some of these smart people are already doing it.
If you're introverted, you NEED time alone. It's how your body, mind, and soul replenish themselves. It can feel like a hindrance sometimes, but it's how you're wired. The good news is that it's not inherently an obstacle to a fulfilling social life.

My advice is to determine how much "me time" you need every day. Give it to yourself, but be careful not to succumb to any anti-social tendencies. The fact is, people are important, and good social skills will serve you as well as, if not better, than good hacking skills. (For one thing, the more people you know, the more opportunities come your way.)

I think the main problem introverts have is we have trouble "just hangin'". This is because it's physically draining to just idly fritter the day away with others. Unfortunately, that's where a lot of social bonding comes from. The way I've gotten around this is to limit my time in group settings -- but when I'm with people, I make sure I'm "on". A party, a dinner, a night out, a meeting, whatever. As long as I've had time alone to charge up, I'm good to go.

Some other posters have mentioned public speaking. I've noticed that introverts are often GREAT performers. I know this is true for myself. Public speaking, acting, music, introverts seem to really come alive on stage. I think the reason is twofold.

For one, we're already pretty comfortable inside our own skins, and for another, it's an outlet to express whatever it is we need to express without the draining meandering of ordinary dialogue. If you're having trouble branching out you might try an acting class. I've found these to be awesomely rewarding.

After many years I've come to think of my introversion as a glorified speech impediment. If you let it get in the way, it will, but if you put a little effort into it, it's something people won't even notice after a while.

And oh yeah, on campus you'll likely come across some "cool loner" types from time to time. Most likely they'll be on a motorcycle. These, my friend, are introverts. Careful observation of how they navigate social situations could prove valuable.
What Not to do when leaving a company
Aversion to interacting with people who seem dissimilar to yourself is a behaviour worth changing.
From an accessibility perspective, having the text available to a screen reader is a very good thing. Hope this becomes commonplace for web comics.
Being a generalist requires more sleep than specialists
The point of being a bartender is to get a small glimpse at the inner-workings of a bar.
1- Our revenue was a little more spread out than that. We did certain promotions that boosted us on otherwise off night- Wednesday was about 80% of Friday, and Sunday was our biggest night of the week. It just took a little planning. 2- Yes, which is why I made a good manager, being blood related to the owners. And the employees were watched carefully. 3- I can't recall hearing of a bar losing it all in liability unless they were extremely irresponsible.
Live Demo link not working on Chrome on Mac. Quickly just wanted to see how the data (and phone numbers get in). Down ballot races can buy voter lists, but not easily obtain phone-numbers. Do you do lookup?
Best jwz story:

http://jwz.livejournal.com/94645.html
This article is missing some key facts.

Netezza appliance has nothing to do with controlling drones. The tenuous link in the article is established by a failure to understand the intel use of the word targeting (gathering info on a target), as opposed to the aiming a missile military sense. Why would a drone use a data warehouse plugin to control anything operational? It wouldn't. Could a coordinate come out of the system- sure, but just a coordinate that someone else put in there.

Netezza sued IISi in 2009 for failing to deliver the port of their software. It looks like they didn't seem to get much traction with that, made some surprisingly clumsy document releases, showing where they laid down some stupid spy BS to try and push IISi to deliver or give up, or at least hand over the code so the customer could get it working.
http://www.thestreet.com/print/story/10810646.html

Now, we're at the third stage, where the countersuit is claiming reverse engineering (considering that Netezza probably wrote the specs, hard to prove) and Netezza is getting bought by IBM, perhaps to get their legal team aimed at the issue...meanwhile, it gives everyone a good excuse to talk about drones.
Out of curiosity, what was your initial capital investment?
100 Best First Lines from Novels
>To take a high-profile recent case: this would do nothing to prevent padding oracle attacks. Or future crypto attacks using techniques unknown to us now

I don't think it is good argument against preventing known errors.

>Your DB could hold people's credit cards in clear-text; how will this language prevent that from happening?

You should specify that credit card information should be encrypted. For example, you define type "data CText value = ..." and two functions: "encrypt :: Key -> value -> CText value" and "decrypt :: Key -> CText value -> value". By requiring that certain table contains column of type "CText CreditCardInfo" you will be certain that you used "encrypt" and you won't mix your data with "CText Password".

Actually, TDD acronym can stand for Type Driven Design. And as you design your code around tests, you can design your code around types. The main difference is that logic errors will show up earlier and these typed invariants are proven, not tested.

So if you add another parameter to your cipertext data type, make it "CText algorithm value", change encrypt and decrypt to "encrypt :: Key algorithm -> value -> CText algorithm value" and "decrypt :: Key algorithm -> CText algorithm value -> value", you can require that that credit card info column should be "CText AES CreditCardInfo". You or your fellow programmer will be forced to provide that. And you won't succeed with ROT13 here.
Same reason they bought it, an opportunity too good to pass up presented itself. They bought the bar because the previous owner got himself into trouble with the IRS and had to raise cash in a matter of weeks. So they got a deal. They sold when a well-heeled regular customer of the bar offered them considerably more than anyone else would have. Besides, I was about to graduate college and they would have had to have been more hands-on then. They also had used the contacts they made in the bar industry to set up a network of ATMs that generated a good deal of cash floow with very little work. They make good money from that network to this day.
This technique has been used for a while, and it's widely known. It's "easy" to defeat, you need to ask someone else for a copy, and match its contents/changes with the copy from the original leaker.

I don't mean to say it's a bad idea, and it's standard practice in enterprise environments, but it's no silver bullet either.

Plus, to align with parent messages, it won't prevent leaking, it just helps to identify the person.