skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The US system is closely based on the "democracy" as practiced in the city-state Athens. The following quote is from Lords of the Sea: The epic story of the Athenian navy and the birth of democracy; p.95

----------------

The oar and rowing pad of the common citizen of Athens might seem less poetical and glorious than the hoplite's shield and spear, but all the world now knew that the city's power rested on swift triremes and strong crews.

Abroad, the Athenian commoner ruled the seas. At home, he was still a second-class citizen. The law allowed to him a vote in the Assembly, but he was barred from holding public office.

The pressure of his daily work often kept him away from Assembly meetings. Athens was in fact less a democracy than a commonwealth governed by the richest citizens.

All archons and generals came from the ranks of the wealthy, and the bar of property qualification was set so high that even the ten thousand hoplites were excluded. The common citizen could do no more than choose his leaders: leadership itself was denied him.

-----------------

I believe the state of the average voter has not changed since then. And the system is eternal; human life finite. It is a waste of time to try to change the system.
I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with SMART Goal setting. The basis behind SMART Goal setting is to set Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic goals that can be met within a certain Timeframe.

You, and only you, should control whether or not you attain your goal. That is the only way to ensure that success is wholly dependent on your actions. I'm a big fan of goal setting as I truly believe that my life would be a chaotic mess even without a simple to do list. I get easily distract, and without goals would never actually finish what I started.
Card payments system crash disrupts shoppers
Unfortunately, it's this mentality which makes it pretty painful to actually use the Microsoft products that are done well. I like my Xbox 360, a lot. Can I play videos on it from my Mac? Not without third-party hacked software!

The WP7 looks pretty good too. I like the integration with my Xbox Live persona. I like that it's not locked down to AT&T. I like that Microsoft aren't looking like they're going to let carriers munge with it. Yet, I'm a Mac user that's fully bought into Google's online products. Will WP7 sync to my Mac? Nope. Chances it plays nicely with Google (or Microsoft even allow Google apps in the store)? Minimal. Likelihood I buy a WP7 just because of that bloody-mindedness? High.
Ask HN: Is Business == Management?
Should schools offering MBA degrees be called Business school or Management school?

Can any book teach you how to do Business? Isn't it something that you learn by experience and not from book.
"Computer Codes"? Please, at least talk to a programmer when writing an article about programming.
Yes, I am aware of these projects. They, however, don't have the advantages that things like apt have. For example you cannot use them to update your entire OS. Instead you must order DVD's from Apple, and then boot from them. Yes, installing certain software this way is easier, but it is not nearly as convenient as having the entire OS built around it.

On the other hand, existence of these projects indicates that Mac users are dissatisfied with how installing/updating/maintaining software is done in Mac OS X and are looking for something better.

Lastly, I don't necessarily think that apt is end-all be-all silver bullet answer to all questions. I just think that out of the available technologies today, OS's that are built around package management work better and are easier to use than anything else out there.
How about statically-linked builds? Hard drives and memory are cheap compared to the annoyances of having to manage dependencies on the user's system.

Package management is a solution to a problem that doesn't need to exist in the first place.
Curved mirrors. So not movie holograms; you can't put anything behind the projections. That makes the illusion very fragile at some touch surfaces. The sensation technology has the same projective limitation, so you can't have anything else opposite to your hand.

Together, they could give a reasonable hemisphere of touch and sight. However, the touch technology is separate and will work with any hologram in a controlled space.
I think my favorite departure comes from Half Baked: "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, and fuck you, I'm out!"

That said, you can keep an account without ever visiting the site, for those not-that-close friends.
Facebook is an excellent tool, despite its many privacy concerns.

I hear people talking about leaving facebook entirely and that seems a bit short-sighted and draconian in measure. Little do I hear discussed changing the way that we use Facebook.

Last month, I went from 250+ friends to 40. Instead of using Facebook as a mean to accumulate every acquaintance I've ever made, I decided to only keep the friends to which I am close and comfortable sharing parts of my life. I changed most of my privacy settings to the most restrictive possible.

Yes, Facebook may change its privacy settings again. If the privacy becomes such an issue to warrant me leaving, I will leave. However, keeping up with the privacy changes and settings is a price I am willing to pay. Facebook is not free.

Being an entrepreneur, I do want an easy way to announce things I do. I want a way to keep in touch with those closest to me. That number of people is 40 right now, and still seems a bit high. Still, since I have cut most of my friends I have found myself more open and willing to use Facebook.
Interesting. Maybe thats another reason why garage-style startups trump their glamorous colleagues with all the press coverage?
Pick something you dislike about something you consume, and imagine how you would fix it.
Your compare shell apps to cmdlets, which indeed are single function apps (like get-proces aka ps).
Wha? Microsoft are a bunch of hypocrites!

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1748220
I deleted my account. They still store your data and your photos on their server for 14 days. They say 'in case you reactivate it'. Just tell your CORE friends/family you are leaving for greener pastures. Just leave a status for everyone else, if they care, they care. If they don't, who cares.
Must read : Geoffrey Moore crossing the chasm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
I use a program I created called ClueMe (http://www.clueme.no). If I want to remember something I create a question or a note and add it to a list. Every day I repeat five to ten questions/notes. Works for me. I havent done a complete english translation, but will some day.
Lithon - a toy compiler from Scheme to Python
Certainly looks promising. For some reason it reminds me of Portable Apps.

As for Dropbox, yes, I recently went through installing it. Terrible experience on Ubuntu. I think the reason is mostly that it is using a proprietary daemon. A FUSE driver seems like a much better idea, and if they released it under an open license, it would be as easy as apt-get install dropbox.
Google can have credit for building the first search engine and the first webmail that were done right. Their real innovation is not in the end-user side, but under the hood. Just making it work required a couple leaps in understanding how thousands of servers have to be managed.

And Apple pretty much invented the personal computer as we know it. Unless Woz is wrong, the Apple I had a very innovative feature: a keyboard.
I disagree with this post, and think it's bad and incorrect advice for most people. Spending lots of time thinking about what you want, writing and rewriting how you could get there and the details, planning on how to get there, etc, etc, etc - much of it is fruitless, but eventually you build some large overarching themes for what you want for your life.

At that point, yes, you could abandon formal goal setting and still do things mostly correctly. But it's terrible advice for most people.

Then some of it is wrong:

> The idea of having concrete, achievable goals seem to be deeply ingrained in our culture.

Something silly like 90% of people don't have concrete, achievable goals. If you don't, I'd strongly encourage you to start thinking about what you want, and writing it down, and occasionally revisiting/rewriting what you want. It'll do wonders for you.

Yes, you won't follow the plan to the letter, but you will live a more meaningful life and get more of what you want.

Eisenhower quote: "Plans are useless, but planning is invaluable."
Reminds me of the scene from the movie "American Beauty". After he gets laid off from his soul-sucking office job, Kevin Spacey's character applies at a fast-food burger joint saying "I want a job with the least amount of responsibility."
I keep a set of hardcover notebooks. When I start a new book, my notes always begin on the third page. The first two pages are my table of contents. When ever I take note of something that might be important later, I add it to the table of contents for easy reference.

I've actually tried many different software applications, but I've found that when I write something down, I'm forced to think about it a bit, and I remember/learn better. With software, its too easy to just copy, paste, and forget. I'm also a very visual learner. My notebooks are full of diagrams, pictures, arrows and other text annotations. I've yet to find a piece of software that easily lets me do that.
Not quite a real BitTorrent app, but still a nice move forward.

I doubt it's any coincidence that Apple started relaxing their grip on the App Store with the release of the iOS AppleTV.

This is too many platforms and markets to leave vulnerable to competition by a more open solutions.

For example: BitTorrent for a TV device is a killer feature for me. Will AppleTV ever offer this or should I wait to see if Google TV will?
Then some central library has a security hole and half your system has to get updated, instead of just one thing.

Also, you might like http://sta.li/ ;)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03...

"As long as the problem of landownership is not solved, conflicts on unfair land seizure cannot be avoided. Since land is in the hand of the government, a developer can bribe an official and make the official claim that the land is seized for public use," said Liu Xiaobo, a leading political dissident. "If the developer could get the approval from the official, he is legally entitled to seize the land."
I have a script that simply touches a file with filename <timestamp> in a directory and cracks it open in vi. I hashtag things in the files so I can grep them later, and keep all the files in a private repo on github. I used to be about pen and paper, but after filling out eighteen moleskins with semi-useful info in them, keeping them in a searchable format on the computer starts to make a lot more sense.

For actually remembering information, note taking is a good first step, but I usually don't keep those notes. To actually assimilate knowledge you've got to to take it in, put it in the context of the rest of your knowledge, contrast it with other things, and ultimately use it to produce something.
Totally right - the other astonishing thing is just how cheaply regulators and congress can be bought. A congressional race costs between 1-5 million for all but the most expensive media markets. That's all they need to raise, total. If you're a multi-billion industry player, what's a few million to set up a PAC? It's nothing, compared to the return you get. Run a few ads claiming that the non-bought person in the race is going to restrict your freedom or let terrorists into the country or some bombastic nonsense. Huge ROI.
MIT Video lectures - Introduction to Algorithms
Hey, don't sweat it man, I'm in the same boat with a lack of "apparent" readers, due to nearly zero comments.

Great name, that's fine! Just keep blogging, on a predictably regular basis (this is very important, because your readers want fresh, _original_ content), leave comments open, watch your logs to really see who's coming around, drop your URL here and there as you see fit, and wait.

The result may be that nothing changes, or you finally gain some traction and comments take off. If having readers matters to you, you also have to promo the thing, so people will actually become aware of it.

Here're a couple of issues. One, the amount of blogs I can read is practically doubling every month. It's insane, because it's never been easier for every single person alive to do it.

And two, you have to provide some kind of real value, however you do it, so that I'll read your blog and maybe comment on it, out of the 10-gazillion I have to choose from.
I joined FB in late 2004. My main objections to today's Facebook are:

* It's boring.
* It's a waste of time.
* I don't trust it.

The new Places app is a great case study. Here you can check yourself in anywhere, tag your friends (whether they're there or not), and see where others are checking in. But my checkin history is clearly of more benefit to retailers and advertisers than it is to my friends. I want to use this app to meet up with people, to organize events, to see where my friends' favorite places are. It's just not very good for that, and it reeks of poor design -- for example, enough people checking in at your house will force it to be a public location, and there is no process to privatize it again.

For many years I was north of FB's average of 55 minutes per user per day on the site. Several months ago I stopped reading the news feed, and that more than anything else has helped me keep my usage under 2 minutes per day.

I don't regret effectively deactivating my account, and like others have noted, I doubt anyone noticed I'm gone. My main reason for joining in the first place was basic social planning -- today, I still think their photo and event apps are very well executed and among the most valuable parts of the site. There's just too much baggage that comes with their use.
Schmidt compares China to a business but then shies away and says he doesn't mean it literally. This analogy/truth is far more important than he admits. Anyone interested might enjoy:

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/rotary-... (what a corporation would be like if run like the U.S. government)

http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/landsca... (follow-up)
What do you propose instead? So far package management solves these problems for me:

1. Upgrading the entire OS at once.
2. Easy updates.
3. Almost never having any issues with incompatible software. When issues arise I can easily roll things back or wait until they are fixed.
4. Never having to hunt for software on the web.
5. Ability to script server/workstation deploys.
6. Never having to spend more than 5 minutes on maintaining my workstation.

That last point is huge. How long would it take you to update Java, Flash Player, Adobe Reader, IE and install SP# on Windows?

If there is an alternative way of approaching it I'd be very happy, since it can only be an improvement upon already stellar apt/yum/BSD ports, etc.
Wow, non half-assed comments from Eric Schmidt.
Just as Google has gone into markets that are far beyond search engines (like phones), Facebook will. I think there is a high likelyhood that five years from now people will look back at this time and realize now was just the beginning for Facebook.
Seriously? Would you run a web-app on a Mac or Windows server?
Finnancial lobbying should be outlawed. It's very equivalent to the ability to buying votes and we know that buying power is very unequally spread across the country. I find it shocking that anyone would doubt that. BTW, financial lobbying is outlawed in most other democracies.

I am sure that there will be loopholes to exploit.
Might want to read that again. http://www.paulgraham.com/judgement.html
Roku is a really nice open player that already has Netflix and will have Hulu support later this Fall. Price is the same or cheaper.
Have you considered Zotero? (oss addon for Firefox)
John Gruber (noted Apple fan) recently had an opportunity to play with a prototype Windows Phone 7 phone for 5 minutes. He felt that in many respects the UI/UX was as good as an iPhone, substantially better than Android.

Listen at: http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10 starting about 55:00

7 may be their magic number.
Styrofoam helmets. That made me laugh.

I'm not talking theory but facts. Metal helmets increased head injuries substantially, and reduced bullet and shrapnel to-the-head fatalities substantially.

Also, you've evidently never seen a real metal helmet, which has plenty of damping. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Helmet

The M1's predecessor, the Brodie also had a padded lining: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0036C0MXY/ref=dp_ot...
Nothing beats pen and paper for speed, efficiency, portability , usability, economy, and ease of use.

Having said that my backup tool for more complex information, that is shareable, backed-up, and potentially contributable by others is my own personal wiki hosted on my own domain. Dokuwiki I recommend for ease of installation and use.
As a generally rule be careful of long term advice. If you can't see the result of an advice sufficiently in two weeks and you don't know a lot of people who have succeed with such advice don't take it.
I'm normally open to zen habits articles, but when advice can side track you from your objectives for months it should be taken with great care.
Microsoft: the Nikita Khrushchev of the software industry.
As a cyclist I am familiar with the unbelievable outpouring of bile in newspaper commets whenever a cyclist is killed.

Thank you to the St. Petersburg Times for publishing this article.
My Grandma will love Qwiki
Seems ironic that he dismisses MongoDB for being "over-featured," and then start listing problems with Redis that these extra features solve.
Blinking lights are used because they focus your attention on the changing light. So it is working as intended.
I would agree that in a university lecture, taking notes isn't the most constructive use of your time.

> I think it's in your best interest to learn instead of memorize

This doesn't necessarily make sense. Memorization is a first step to learning, nothing more. I don't believe you can learn the higher level concepts of any subject without memorizing the details of its primitives at some stage of your study.

Also, I would add that in my experience note-taking is one of the worst possible ways to memorize anything.

> My goal when learning is building my own, real mind maps. Every thing I ingest has to be processed, extended, applied, and connected to other things. You have to act, not just listen and listen more than notate.

Agree 100%. I've found this to be true in pretty much anything I've applied myself to, specifically language study, martial arts and programming.

I think note-taking still has its place. For me its ultimately production. When I need to get my thinking clear on a given subject or problem, I fire up a terminal, write down what I know, what the problem is, and what I need to know to solve it.
Ask HN: What is the best way to sell the source code for an iPhone app?
Can anyone recommend the best way to sell the source code for an iPhone app?

I know I can use eBay or another general auction site but are there any iPhone specific sites that people here have had success using?
This is an essay in The New Republic, not an up-or-down from the local Ebert-alike. Real reviews, like any real essays, make an argument.

Go look at http://www.nybooks.com/ – every piece in there is like this.
Yeah, this reminded me of Blackberry putting buttons behind their touchscreens to make them click, or the cheap touchscreen feature phones that vibrate whenever you tap something. Still very cool in this application though.
Why Tumblr Sucks Part II
yeah agreed, they have a subscriber base of 500 million. there are plenty of ways to monetize that with products.

i.e. the rumored facebook phone
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى والترجى  بث مباشر
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى والترجى بث مباشر http://forum.egyteams.net/showthread.php?t=44406
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى والترجى بث مباشر http://forum.egyteams.net/showthread.php?t=44406
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى والترجى بث مباشر http://forum.egyteams.net/showthread.php?t=44406
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى والترجى بث مباشر http://forum.egyteams.net/showthread.php?t=44406
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى والترجى بث مباشر http://forum.egyteams.net/showthread.php?t=44406
مشاهدة مباراة الاهلى والترجى بث مباشر http://forum.egyteams.net/showthread.php?t=44406
> If you want to stop having bubbles, remove the power to set interest rates from the federal reserve / government. Then the market has a chance to self regulate.

The article's assertion is that the problem is people themselves, so removing the Federal Reserve would make no difference. Anyway, we've already done that experiment. The Federal Reserve was not created until 1913 (as a result of the Panic of 1907). Prior to that, the unregulated U.S. economy had regular boom-bust cycles about every 10-20 years: The Panic of 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1907.

Of those, speculation was part of the Panic of 1819, and directly responsible for the Panic of 1837. The Panic of 1857 was caused by banks lending too much (arguably a bubble in something). The Panic of 1893 was caused by speculation in railroads (it sounds similar to the recent speculation in housing). The Panic of 1907 was precipated by a failed short squeeze on United Copper, causing a quick mini-bubble where its price doubled in a day and then halved a few days later when it the squeeze failed. This left the Otto Heinze unable to pay his loans that he used to buy United Copper shares, causing a chain reaction in the banking system. The negotiations of J.P. Morgan in NY described in the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907) sounds very reminiscent of what happened with the banks in the Panic of 2009.

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1819, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1837, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1857, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893)

I think it is very clear that, left to themselves, financial markets cannot regulate themselves.

I don't know if the Federal Reserve has reduced bubbles, since we had the Panic of 1929 (too much borrowing), the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, the Savings and Loans bankruptcies that may have resulted from that, the dot-com bubble of 2001, and the Panic of 2009 (housing). I'm not sure that the Federal Reserve has reduced bubbles (that being a function of human greed), but it has reduced the aftermath. Read how long the recession/depressions lasted in the 1800s. I'll take the Federal Reserve.
I am not sure why people wants to burden the voters with the hard decisions in life.

Nobody in the world knows how to make all parts of the pencil. The graphite have to be mined. Somebody have to make coffee for the miners. Somebody have to truck the graphite to pencil making factory. Somebody have to chop down the wood.

Even programmers specialized. There's somebody who work on deploy tools, and there are some who are trying to make ruby faster.

Voters now have to decide between a wide range of policy stance that they probably don't know anything about. There are foreign policies, economic problems, etc. All of which are subjects that probably required lot of studying to get right. Than, those politicians, as generalist probably don't know these issue as well as they need to, or they are compromised by their own interests.

Programmers, doctors, etc are busy with their own profession trying to keep themselves competitive on the market and make decisions for their own lives. Sometime, they got it wrong.

If a lot of people can't make the right decisions for themselves, why do they expect them to make decisions concerning the leadership of a nation?