skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

Completely agree, the name dropping around here can get tiresome quick. There was a great article on Mint vs. Wesabe posted here recently - in my opinion we need more articles like that and less Jobs is a design master/Zuckerberg is a genius/etc.
Time to Move On From The Desktop?
So chatting up clients as "class peers" often ruins this fantasy for them.

I hadn't thought of it that way till now, but now when I think back, it does make a chunk of sense. I might even have unwilling intimidated some, by talking about stuff they didn't know (they, as in customers)

The point about "sensitive positions are weary..." thats another good one.

Who knows, may be HN (and the contributors on it) would be the perfect educators for me to get out my social awkwardness!!
if FB started selling products using my name based on me liking producst; I won't be happy.

i.e. don't try to sell my mom a playboy cause I 'fan'd' their page.
If you want regular credit card processing, have a look at WorldPay. If you want alternative payment processing, PayPal or Google might be good options.
You don't seem to realize that "with your permission" was nothing but a distraction, just like mentioning "improving the quality of searches".

In case you didn't notice, he then proceeded to tell you that they know everything about you already.
The next best alternative to a PhD in english lit is proofreader, copy editor or barista.

Although this is a popular idea on Hacker News, it isn't really true: there are loads of people with English degrees in law, consulting, teaching, and business.

Still, even the third choice -- teaching -- will probably pay more over a lifetime than someone who takes eight or more years to get through grad school but fails to find a tenure track job.
If you're intending to follow this advice, don't start with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It's a great story, but doesn't really capture gonzo journalism. Gonzo, perhaps, but not journalism. Hell's Angels or Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail (1972) are much better starting points.
I like that idea, habits as the basis of improvisation, and visa versa.

But, I believe it does pay to have some constants in life. Perhaps not a habit per se, but common theme to habits.
In Germany you must by law have front and rear lights with reflectors on your bike, and most are sold with generators to power them. Blinking lights of any kind aren't even legal for sale, much less use. Headlights with round beams are only legal for MTB use, all lights sold have shaped reflectors that place the beam entirely on the road with the brightest portion at the horizon, and a sharp cutoff above that.

None of these things are normally sold at all in the US. All red LED rear lights blink violently by default, and even fancy expensive headlights have idiotic round flashlight beams. One man has a US monopoly on importing the German products: http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/lightingsystems.htm — but you can import for less than the wholesale price he gives to shops by buying direct from Germany: http://www.starbike.com/php/product_list.php?prodcatid=37...

I own both generations of battery-powerd IXON lights, and a generator-powered IQ Cyo senso plus without reflector. They are amazing — these (and the Schmidt Edelux) are the best lights available by orders of magnitude. Everything else is a piece of shit for road use, even at 5x the price and with brief runtimes on proprietary batteries.

They are the best consumer products I own, and I own some fancy fucking shit. I am dead serious. I've ridden 2500+ miles in pitch black darkness in the last year — and these lights have saved my life dozens of times where nothing else would have.
What you are looking at is a false understanding of reality. There is no two areas in the world, one marked "can only be solved by high-tech" and one marked "can only be solved by low tech". You can use high-tech to solve all kinds of problems.

In your current situation, get a Romba and stop feeling guilty. That does nobody any good.
I'd like to see multiple humans powering a gyrocopter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY8SmllLcIU
Somewhat related, one wish of mine is to be lifted by a balloon to the degree that I can still walk and run, but I can also jump 20 feet if needed.
It's not just a collection of people, though - almost all of its power is concentrated in the hands of an extremely small number of people, who can force everyone to act in concert according to their own will.
Play WinX Coloring Book online at y3 Games club
Choose one of the images of WInx and color it just as you like!
Some good tips here.

http://calnewport.com/blog/category/tips-notetaking/
I'd just leave it at everything is negotiable. Agree with your sentiments 100%. Also, if something like that isn't negotiable then it's probably not a place you'd want to work anyway. It's very indicative of a "seat in chair = productivity" mentality.
I read his book "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason". I thought it was incredibly well written and presented some awesome points in favor of doing away with religion (however, I'm obviously biased as an atheist).

I haven't watched his TED talk yet, but I'll be checking it out asap.

The idea of "evolutionary morality" is covered in depth by Richard Dawkins quite often and really makes sense when you look at it. A society that avoids immoral behavior (moral meaning there is a victim, not religious-based moral ideals) benefits mutually. It's basically a moral version of the prisoners dilemma. I personally would rather have a society that bases morality on logic, reason, and thought than on fear of retribution from an angry man in the sky :)
Google will probably continue to stay on top (if they don't keep putting out Google Instants)

Google Instant only gains Google dominance. You may not like it, but some people do. That adds to Google's stickiness; those people are now much less likely to switch search engines. If the $.12/query rate is to be believed, that stickiness is extremely valuable in the long run. As for those that do no prefer Instant, I suspect they didn't have any trouble disabling it.

As a nice little bonus, Google gained notoriety for their Instant search. This means anyone else who implements it in the future will be riding in Google's coattails, and will be much less likely to realize the positive effects that Google did.

If it were up to me, I'd have Google churning out more of these features. I believe it's already the case that "search" is a commodity, and it's now the bells and whistles that are the point of competition. Google already has a huge head start, and they now need to maintain it.
They might not want someone to build a large database of pageranks.
I'm not sure if this is non-fiction enough for you but, Tony Robbins, "Awaken the Giant Within" is one of my favorites. It is a good self help type book. It comes in Kindle too. http://www.amazon.com/Awaken-Giant-Within-Immediate-Emotiona...
Tax liability is not the sole metric of electoral interest.
Nice list! Several of those were on my "to read" list or I've already read.

You should consider signing up at shelfari. It's a cool site for tracking the books you've read, own, want to read, etc. You can also maintain a nice list and share with others. From a developers standpoint, it's pretty cool too, with a nice UI, some cool features, and a decent revenue model (Amazon affiliate).
sorry - I create a new account each day. Too much traceable info online for the industry I work in.
Clickable: http://shelfari.com/herms
Web designer from Argentina realigns new Twitter.
I agree. If we decouple diagnosis with medication, the patient will have the option to choose medication based on his savings. For e.g http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_artery_bypass_surgery is done for $1000 in India. Check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism
You also didn't found (or get in early) on facebook, popular with coeds. Start the next facebook, and I lines might be in order!
As much as I can, I try not to compare my life to other people's, especially developers. I'm not sure how it will pan out for me, but I'll either be very successful, or get a well-paying and gratifying web development job. I'm ok with both options, so what should I care what other people think? Everyday I see headlines about exceptional people, exceptional technology, and exceptional stories of success. I'm almost positive the people behind all of those stories were at one point in your position. No need to worry. Of course it is impossible to never compare yourself to others, in fact it's often helpful, but if it ever starts to impact your life negatively, then you should really evaluate why that is and come to terms with it.

As a wise person once said: Discipline is doing what you don't want to do, when you don't want to do it. You should either gain more discipline, make yourself want to do things that need to be done, or set aside a time to do things you don't want to do.
> IF you put any group of people together for an experiment, and give them nothing else to do, they are going to trade. especially fake money because there's no real risk. Unnecessary trading is going to result in abberant activity.

The implication is that it's not fake money:

The difference between a good trading performance and a bad one is about $80
for a three-hour session, enough to motivate cash-strapped students to
do their best.

Now, there's an argument to be explored there about whether the behaviour of a cash-strapped student accurately represents that of an institutional investor, but I think it's probably as close as it's reasonable to expect.
How do you find your clients, and is your consulting/contracting work something a mere mortal could pull off too?
All news is biased and newspapers aren't only about news, so learning about the author that wrote that article or clearly seeing the bias (unmasked) gives you much more context than the simple facts.

Plus, gonzo journalism gives birth to some pretty entertaining articles.
I agree, the goal of goals for me is to set them slightly beyond what I can realistically achieve. Then, when whatever skill I'm developing actually matters, it is more than adequate. This is the strategy I am using to train for my next marathon.
I absolutely agree. Most people are not interested in developer tools or productivity tools, they just want TV quality stuff. Unfortunately, there is little software supplying this to them.
I understand the sentiment expressed here. One thing I've recently done to mediate this is purchase a Kindle: transferring my once isolated consumption of copious content to a social activity around friends and loved ones. Far from a distraction, I find the ability to converse over coffee adds to my understanding and meliorates my memory.

I have thus far resisted smart phones and the like as I find ubiquitous connectivity distracting.
You didn't read my comment. The point is that in a big org I don't have CPAN. Not without a big fight. And the perl language comes with do-it-yourself OO (they're not packaging Moose with the distro now are they?) and a bunch of other problems that you have to have CPAN to fix.
Start by floating the idea by the people paying you. Your situation and the people in your life (clients, partners, etc) are not going to be the same as everyone else so it's not going to be very relevant to your specific situation. Try transitioning rather than starting from scratch. Perhaps it's better that instead of working 2 to 3 days a week, you're working 6 months out of the year. Try going down to 4 days a week, then 3, then 2, etc. The less drastic the change the more receptive people will be to it. It's also going to be better for you as you'll adjust to the new work schedule and income over a longer period of time. You mentioned cutting expenses, just do that, you don't have to ask anyone, less expenses will make the transition easier and is never a bad idea.

You should be prepared with the concessions you're willing to make to make this happen and this will likely be asked when you float the idea.

Also, consider that you've moved up Maslow's hierarchy of needs and re-evaluate a lot of things in your life that may no longer be relevant. I'd bet you're transitioning from esteem to self-actualization. This could make cutting expenses much easier than you think it is because you no longer derive much happiness from materialism.
"... Donald Graham, the chairman of the Washington Post Company, who once tried to hire Ms. Sandberg, says that in the last two years a lot of questions about Facebook’s viability have been put to rest. ..."

I'd argue that Zucks most valuable friend post Sean is Graham. Graham helped set the company up so control falls to the owner and not the board. The Washington Post is set up the same way. Facebook isn't going away till the founder wants it to.
The best lifehacks I have I develop myself. Perhaps not as good as someone else's lifehack, but since I developed it, it is most effective for me.

However, reading lifehacking blogs is useful in retrospect. If I identify a hack I've already developed, I now have a frame of reference from which I can learn something useful from their hack.
Generally there is a bounce.
For a generation after women get the chance of a career, education etc the birth rate plumnets - this is the position Italy is in.

Then 20-30 years later those same women have reached positions in politics, industry, education etc where they can influence policy on childcare, maternity leave etc. Then the number of children goes back up - this is the state Scandanavia is in.

Germany is a little odd, remember that less than 20years ago it absorbed a 3rd world country which rather screws up it's stats.
If I'm understanding correctly, it's what every surviving media outlet does - validate a demand. People magazine gives middle aged women something to dream about, Maxim does the same thing for guys, reading signal vs. noise does the same for aspiring founders. Because the audience is actively seeking something, there's a good chance they will follow whatever they're being fed by the media outlet. Some of these audiences are less receptive than others, but I understand how it's helpful to understand that market.

Also, I think it blows air but not sure. :)
I had heard much about this book earlier :Guns, Germs and Steel ,

But only recently did I watch a documentary (hmm, probably on hulu.com) which was completely based on that book.

VERY GOOD.
Or rather, nothing ever came west. Modern "spirituality" is just repackaged, and somewhat shallower old fashioned Western spirituality.

Otherwise, show me the western buddhist who really denies the law of excluded middle while programming. Or the western hindu who lets pests and parasites infest his property and body because "all life is sacred."
For the most part, schema changes can be done without breaking the existing code base (add columns, add tables, etc.) These schema changes can just be run on the databases before the code depending on it is pushed. Much more rarely though, there might be code that depends on a certain schema (the kind that say, alter table might do). In this case we can push out code that is compatible with both versions (at the very worst case, using table descriptions to differentiate between the two), run the schema change, and then eliminate the backwards compatibility.

There's not that much different in terms of operating procedure between continuous code deployment and scheduled code deployments; it's just much faster and less prone to merge errors.
Ouch, we didn't know that :/ Thank you, I'll block robots from the cache right away!
If you're looking for a list of books with an entrepreneur focus, there's a good list over on Quora: http://www.quora.com/What-books-should-entrepreneurs-read
Do you mean the "base" tag? We already do set that (admittedly, after this happened and because of it).
I liken it to a global search algorithm, such as simulated annealing. At a certain point the search entropy should be high, so as to avoid getting stuck in a local minima. However, at other times the search entropy should be low so the actual optimum can be found.

Yes, most of life can be explained with computer science analogies. There should be a book about this.
The mathematician in you should be very suspicious of any algorithm leading to optimal attainment in life.
What Steve Jobs Learned in the Wilderness
Did you get many applications from people who hadn't read your instructions?
If time seems to pass quickly while you surf the web, you're probably making a habit of wasting time.

Use technology as a tool without allowing it to interfere with your focus.
Your actions have placed all of us in great danger.
Do other people see "Appleâ€™s" on this page?
One night riding back in my military uniform someone threw a drink cup filled with ice at me. Since it was CA, I'm thinking it was some sort of anti-war thing.
Easily said, not done. :-)
Last resume I wrote was in html (not on a site, I'd just attach a html file). It served two purposes; gave people a chance to see what my html crafting was like, and allowed me to include a number of links to previous sites, projects etc

I've always included a pdf version, and I don't think I've ever submitted a resume in .doc format
I've been following you for a while on Twitter, and I think it's a shame that you don't tweet/blog about your thoughts more often. I think there's a group of very intelligent, experienced hackers on HN who should share their thoughts/ideas more often as it would benefit the whole community. I would much prefer to read something by them than some the submissions that make it to the front page which is obviously link-bait with meaningless content.
They open it and get inspired. They know...he "just bought" a clone advertised in there.

I'm inspired to buy a clone; sign me up! :)

More seriously, I understand that we are among people here for whom it is fashionable to reject popular culture. Or, if not strictly being fashionable, are certainly not overly concerned with some of the more commercial aspects of culture.

It's just a bunch of ads with enough wrapped around for it to be read by its target demographic. It's easy to read more into this than it really merits. Yes, so-called "ordinary people" read such magazines and see the ads, and perhaps want the stuff. That's what it's designed to do.

There is a lot of money thrown into trying to get people to buy stuff. This is not news. Nor is it news that most of us are trying to improve our financial position, whether as means or end.

I don't I'm quite expressing well what I'm trying to say here. It's not that I don't understand what you mean when you seem a bit bewildered at some of the advertisements (that incidentally probably weren't targeted for you). But it doesn't seem like it would be a huge surprise to realize that advertising really works pretty well, generally speaking.

It's unfortunately one reason I fear for the U.S. political future; it seems distressingly easy to change people's minds simply by throwing enough money at the problem.
Sometimes the reason jobs pay more is because they are less enjoyable.
Exactly this. Zuck, in the movie, wasn't the one snorting cocaine or sleeping with everyone — he was the last one in the office working. It was inspiring how driven they portrayed him. Hot women at the party who want to bang him? Hell no, he has to run home and work on some new code.
Hong Kong is a quite different place. It differs from Mainland China. It preserves Chinese traditional values while accepts Western values.

Traditionally, Chinese manages themselves according Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist views. Riches are encouraged to donate in order to secure better later life, reincarnation, lives of offsprings. Sometimes it was rewarded with some good "titles" from mandarin. Communist in Mainland Chines destroyed all the traditions while Hong Kong preserves it.

In Hong Kong, there are many international non-government organisation. Western type of charities can establish in Hong Kong. Some of them extends their charity services into China based in Hong Kong. Charity fund-raising happens all round the years.
As jaquesm said, with your expected visits, you will probably see no load at all, so don't worry about it. You definitely don't need to give it more power, unless you're running it on a cellphone...
"Will to Power" by Friedrich Nietzsche, who you'll probably love if you like Rand.

"A Thousand Plateaus" by Deleuze & Guattari. A psychedelic philosophy of complexity. Not exactly an airtight philosophical system, but it will blow your mind several times per page.

"Being & Time" by Martin Heidegger. An intense, logical investigation of individual existence. A deeply nuanced philosophical take on death, being, and temporality. This is the book to grapple with your inevitable annihilation.
Alan Kay's reading list: http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp. I think you can find what you are looking for. :)
One way to learn from the repeated "why is this HN?" is to explain, nothing helps us learn like teaching.
No, he meant the rel="canonical" links.
Pure academic achievement is no doubt worthy of appreciation. And on other days, the Nobel Laureates and Fields Medalists and Booker Prize winners will get their due.

But let's be clear: our modern day Fords and Edisons also deserve their due. Self-made billionaires have served society in the ultimate sense: they made something that millions upon untold millions of people want.

Those in the ivory tower, god bless them, are scratching their own itch. Sometimes, some of them produce something which benefits humanity, but it's not their primary goal. Their goal is to indulge their curiosity and make a name for themselves. And their world is generally far less stressful than if they'd taken the plunge into actually creating wealth and building things for other people.

As for your children, well, there's a couple billion people in China and India who've endured a 20th century replete with attacks on industrial ambition. Something tells me many of them would be just fine with their son or daughter growing up to be the next Gates, Jobs, or Zuckerberg.
One way I've come up with some of my best ideas is at school working on a boring, hard project with a major deadline looming. Those tend to be the best times to start day dreaming and procrastinating.
If you're looking for something different then check out The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It's is an eye-opening book in a very nontraditional sense.

You may remember Pausch as the computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who was told that he had but a few months left to live (cancer). This book doesn't stray from its topic: "What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?" If you're looking for motivation and an "out of the box" approach to analyzing daily life then this is it.

Here's the book: http://www.amazon.com/Last-Lecture-Randy-Pausch/dp/140132325...

Here's the famous speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
Not to sound "rebellious" to the tech community, but simply going camping one time completely changed my outlook. I realized I felt the most accomplished and satisfied when I was nowhere near my work whatsoever. Good way to really take a complete step back from the tech world to reevaluate everything.

Give it a shot, go camping!
When was the last time anyone here used facebook to get something done and I really mean get something done and create something of value? Anyone? As long as facebook caters to teen type activities like gossip and displays of vanity it can not compete with google in any serious way. The best it can do in the long run is become a glorified dating site where your friends recommend and vote on your dates and that is all.
With the appearance of "mezzanine" investors like DST, there is much less pressure to go public. So Facebook's IPO can be deferred by a few years. Google was not having this opportunity.
Try to scan your spam folder and google ads in gmail. You will be surprised even more. ^_^