skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>It's not alarmism, what I'm saying is that this civilization is unsustainable by any metric you care to throw at it

That sounds like alarmism to me.

You can find examples of writers worrying about running out of the specific resources industry used at the time running back to the 19th century. The modern environmentalist movement has predicted apocalypse like clockwork every ten years dating back to 1960.

The current environmentalist movement is much more well-funded and professional. I guess time will tell if that means they are more accurate.

I'm not familiar with Diamond's book, but it's worth pointing out that the civilizations he examines are at a much earlier phase of technology. Individual differences often confound authors who try to paint historical trends with a broad pen.
How a person prepares for erratic transportation schedules is an indicator for professionalism.

This as someone who as walked 2 miles in drizzling day-after-Thanksgiving rain to a job interview 25 miles south of Boston by train (they hired me, job did not last, couldn't pay me enough).

EDIT: For tone and and clarity.
Funny to see this. I'm releasing a vector drawing app for android this week. Code is almost done but I need to come up with a good name for it...
Offer HN: Will Work For Karma
Hi,

HN has always been there for me when I needed advice, and for a long time I have pondered about a way to give back to this wonderful community. Today, I've finally figured out how to do that.

One thing that I've consistently noticed is that most hackers struggle a great deal to write/refine pitches, blog posts, documentation, support emails and their ilk. Further, I really do think that the founders should worry more about their code and customers than figuring out the site content.

At the same time compelling insights into the product are important. If the writer doesn't get your vision, then it really doesn't matter which side of greatness they fall into. After all how can you communicate, when you don't know what you're communicating about?

So, I'm willing to do this for you. I'm willing to write whatever you throw at me and I am desperate to give you hard feedback. Moreover, I don't want money for it. Good karma in ever sense of the word will do.

Thank you for reading this.

P.S. - I'm perfectly willing to do stuff even if it doesn't involve writing. Just email me at yesthisisananonymousid@gmail.com and let me know.
There are two senses of the word "professional" here. Some people are professional like doctors or engineers. They will not always do exactly what is asked of them, because there are real-world consequences. Sometimes they will educate the client instead. Some people are "professional" like prostitutes. They will pretty much do anything enthusiastically, so long as they are paid.

More value is created by the first sense of the word, IMO.
Go is deep. So deep that you could spend a lifetime studying only to yourself on your deathbed still discovering new techniques and concepts.

The first ability people tend to lose after not playing is reading. That is, visualising a sequence of moves (without playing them) on the board and judging the positional value (similar to chess, but with astronomically more possibilities). Reading requires concentration, pattern matching (shape, tesuji, vital points), and guesswork.

After reading -- the tactical part -- some higher-level concepts get lost. Forcing plays (kikashi), inducing moves, estimating the value of thickness, obscure joseki, fuseki theory, and more.

There are /so/ many concepts and techniques to Go that unless you are actively studying and playing, it is nearly impossible to keep everything at the forefront of your mind.
Could you elaborate on #3? In particular, the "good taste" part.
The point is the identification of Budvar as "original" is misleading at best. A better word would be "authentic".
If you tie your success to only how well a company is going to do, you are setting up for fail (And feeling unlucky, and so slightly pissed off at work.). There are too many external factors deciding that.

I measure my success in many ways.

1. Do I havea loving family. Check.

2. Do I have fulfilling hobbies. Check.

3. Do I have enough money to fulfill my responsibilities and hobby, doing things I love. Check.

4. Do I have as much money as I would want to call myself successful. Not yet.

Tying my success to many parameters I can feel a little successful everyday, and continue to feel lucky, and continue to work toward what I would call a successful startup.
I find Laphroaigh a bit too smoky for my tastes. Haven't tried Lagavulin but I'll keep my eye out for it.
I sometimes hop on KGS, but I'm very rusty. Probably ~17k. Wonderful game. I teach it to the kids in my programming class whenever we have a few moments of free time (usually day before Thanksgiving, etc).
I've herd about you some where. Are you working with L-pad?
Professionalism is the practice of getting things done in a respectful manner. That's going to be hard to detect with an indicator.
If someone is late, ask him how he built his estimate to be on time, and which assumptions he made; you'll learn a bit of the person.
On one hand you could say that they got the message after the protests, on the other, you could also say that the protests failed and twitter had no effect so it's unnecessary to bother with this huge infrastructure plan.
Most large open source projects have a 'design' or 'artwork' team, who actively seek contributions, for example:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Design

http://art.gnome.org/

become a design ninja by completing one of the fedora bounties:

http://mairin.wordpress.com/

Try googling for <favourite project>+design, or <favourite project>+artwork.

For smaller projects, just do something and then show it to the dev's - explain _why_ it's good and _why_ it's better for the project - just looking nice often isn't enough; Open Source is a functioning meritocracy, mostly, so you'll have to convince people of the merits of what you've done and get them on board. If you're open minded, articulate and willing to help, I'm sure lots of projects will love to have you!
Digg: A Cautionary Tale
OS X Server is a pretty good counterpoint for me. Hard to have a Server version that runs software that complies with the app store guidelines.
TY, but it was meant with a tone of finality the up arrow lacks.
[If anybody is reading this...]

The Orbited team released Hookbox, and it looks amazing.
http://hookbox.org/

Also there's an nginx push module by Leo aka "shell".
http://pushmodule.slact.net/

I doubt I can add to the conversation now.
A very professional answer! You'd be surprised at the number of organizations and individuals that don't have some sort of backup solution in place, so the question will also filter out those. Even if you have backups or the data isn't 'irreparably' lost I'd imagine you agonized a bit from causing your coworkers a few days of pain, or if you need to restore from backups, perhaps a few hours of downtime? I guess I should change my question from using the word irreparably.
Sage advice.
Demonstrated Performance

(the only indicator that really matters)
At http://www.satchmoproject.com we could really use a designed to help spruce up the default layout. If you're interested, post on the list or email me and we can discuss.
Cable isn't totally out of the loop on IP. I've seen some demos of Cisco's IPTV solution for cable operators (vDoc) and it's a really good solution. I would expect to see it start replacing a lot of traditional linear video services within 3-5 years. So what will most likely happen is Comcast Cable TV will become another IPTV video service delivered via your cable modem. This will give the providers an opportunity to continue bundling packages in a mostly anti-competitive way. So for example data service + Comcast IPTV is $100/month but data service alone without Comcast IPTV is $90/month. Part of this strategy includes data caps. Comcast IPTV won't count against your 250GB/month in the same way PacketCable voice traffic doesn't count against your cap today. This won't kill off other IPTV solutions entirely but cable operators are going to have a big competitive advantage.
Lately it has been hard to tell when someone is using the term 'brick' in the strict sense, or to mean that they've just lost interest in resolving the problem. Not much here to help the reader decide which sense the word was used in.
Oh yeah! These are potential replacements for Photoshop, Illustrator etc. right?

Is it like if I use them they get better? Or do I report some problems or request features? How exactly will the communication go on between the developers and designers?
> Flask is really great. But, especially given how beautiful the Flask docs are, ...

Which are generated with sphinx, which is a doc tool he created ...

I am smelling a bit of Knuth here. (No good typesetting, so lets create Tex.) :)
Hookbox: Pluggable comet server/MQ with REST
Apple listens. They don't always react but they do listen. The time to complain is now. And besides, this is a very even-handed text about things Apple itself announced under the heading of Mac OS X Lion.
No, buying Lion (or any other product for that matter) means you find THAT product of value. Not buying it based on conspiracy theories about future directions doesn't tell the company what the delta was that actually made you mad and provided no/less value.
Apple makes money selling hardware. The money they make from iOS developers is a drop in the ocean — the App Store is merely a means to an end; to provide users with lots of great apps, so more people buy Apple hardware.
And I would wonder if the cross-discipline of knowledge didn't also assist...
Interesting! Thanks for the tips man!
I really love the idea of "Why" it's a designer's dream I tell you! I am excited!!
I'm sure she wants to remain anonymous judging by her email.

It's a great offer, btw. I'd feel way too guilty for her like that though.

Edited: Sorry!
I prefer to stay anonymous due to personal reasons. Yes, I talk extremely openly and honestly, but it's a bit too hard to trace it all down to me.

On the other hand, who I am has little or nothing to do with how I can help you, and I want to keep it that way, for now. I know that this might seem foolish, but there are compelling, practical reasons behind it.

I request anyone reading this not to breach my privacy. I've made that offer in good faith and it would be heart breaking to face something like that.

Thank you.
Very amusing site!

I liked in particular the tiny paragraph numbers running down the left column.
Oh and don't feel guilty at all. I've gotten my share out of this equation and this offer is my way of paying back.

edit: no worries. That's a side effect of anonymity.
I'm a little slow to update my belief weightings compared to your average right-thinking liberal, mainly because I read "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and its striking history of past disasters predicted by the environmentalist movement that failed to come true. But I do update my belief weightings eventually and I find myself becoming more convinced that CAGW is a problem over time.

However, I haven't heard of any new good cost/benefit analysis that makes the case for drastic action. Most economic studies I have heard of recommend only modest action, certainly nothing like what is proposed at UN climate conferences. The Kyoto Protocol, for example, easily fails any cost/benefit analysis.

Studying Economics in University again ruined my chances of being a "good person". I can never get on board the "Act Now!" train, I can only think "is the cost of acting worth the benefit it provides?", and that manner of thinking is doomed to make you unpopular at cocktail parties.
Nice project. Would be perfect in combination with GoogleTV.
"Chance favors the prepared mind." - Louis Pasteur
Joomla! is also a great CMS (Content Management System) with huge user base you could help to improve and is in constant development so you will definitely have a lot to contribute with there.

Have a look at http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewgroup/119-Joomla+UX.html and one of the group admins there will definitely help you to get on track.
Slight bit of pedantry (not to detract from the overall content of your post): dec (n + 1) is not a view pattern, it's an n+k pattern, and Haskellers have mostly decided that they were a bad idea. However, you've gotten the point of real view patterns (foo (someFunc -> x)) spot on: they encourage better data abstraction, which is helpful if you've got an imperative .net library that you want to interface with.
In your opinion, what are Joomla's greatest weaknesses?
Nurturing leads is more efficient than filling the funnel
Right, but en_UK dictates that this is plural, and hence you say "Manchester United are going to win."
An Indian project Alan Kay would love
I think the first one is slightingly less opinionated, more rational then this one. However, that makes this one much more fun to read.
At Atalasoft, we decided to make F# an allowed language for development (in addition to C/C++, C++/CLI, and C#). We make imaging toolkits for .NET. There aren't many downsides compared to C# -- it's totally interoperable with our code, can be used to implement OO interfaces quite well, and it has some nice advantages (terser syntax, inlining, asynch blocks, etc). The main downside is in dealing with anything that uses Visual Studio Design support.

We don't use it for everything, but it has its place.
Being part of the social web is not an indicator of professionalism. However, you may learn about someone's professionalism based on what they have online if they participate. Keep in mind many good professionals have life outside of their work and don't have the time or interest in open source projects or giving free advice on sites like stack overflow.
Discovery: Taste receptors found in lungs
Spot-on criticism of the App Store.

The App Store is peerless as far as purchasing and installing go, but it's nearly useless for discovery unless you're looking for something on the order Angry Birds or Facebook. Calling the Mac version "the best place to find apps" wouldn't ring so hollow if the same were remotely true on iOS.
The problem is that I value my own time more than I value other people's time.
If you don't work the system, the system will work you!
It's not possible.

No matter how professional someone appears there's always a chance they're a complete flake in reality.

The best you can do is determine quickly that someone is not a professional, and the basis for that is going to have to be a variety of factors.

There's no one thing that will serve as an accurate litmus test all around.

Punctuality is a good start, but I wouldn't put too much stock in it. Personally, I think it's way over-rated.

For something like an interview, punctuality is important as a sign of respect and for practical reasons...

If you interview someone, you should consider punctuality but also bear in mind that crap happens. I once had an interview and I got stuck in the subway, where there are no phone signals.

Who's to say if you are writing off a brilliant worker due to bad luck.

In terms of normal punctuality for work, I think it's vastly over-rated.

Places generally expect you to be slightly early for work, so I don't see anything wrong with the assumption that you will sometimes be a little late. As long as everyone gets to work around the same time, everyone does their work,everyone works their hours, and people are on time for the truly important stuff....I don't see the problem with even regular "lateness".

Anyway. I digress...

If anything I think how they are dressed is a better indication than punctuality, but that also has problems.

You have to look at a lot of things...I would worry less about whether they are a fit for some hypothetical objective mold of "professional" and worry more about how they fit with what you think is important, and how they fit with your culture.

All that matters to me is competence, work ethic, and how they fit in with the group....I'll take that over some nebulous concept of "professionalism" any day.
I see huge opportunity in coming up with a parallel app store for Mac. Even a 5% cut would a significant slice of revenue!!!
There are a few situations where getting accepted into YC is really the only chance a founding team has. A combination of young kids with financial hardship and being new to the tech market. They have no connections to work, no contracting jobs to support themselves with, and taking a full-time job is a 1-2 two year commitment.

Other seed funding providers are popping up, sure but if you're short on money you might not have time to wait for their next deadline.
I used Joomla! for over a year and loved it! Only because I knew nothing better. Not playing fav here but Joomla ain't the way to go.

Security flaws, buggy core, bad performance, paid plugins. WordPress knows better man!

I can choose, right?
In most games of skill, some moves "feel right" or "look good" to good players, and part of becoming a better player is acquiring the instincts that make better moves feel better. This is certainly true in go; you need to feel "no, black shouldn't play there, because it makes his stones overconcentrated in that area" or "white should do that, because the shape it makes is beautiful" in a lot of situations. It's partly pattern recognition, and partly developing somewhat-quantitative strategic instincts.

(Be cautious about believing anything I say too much. I'm a pretty weak player.)
Underwater robot studying ice-covered Antarctic Ocean
Your heuristic will fail you when you are dealing with people who are smarter than you are. It is awfully hard to gauge what topics are actually new to someone during a discussion unless you ask them or they outright tell you.
I've been getting a little more back into go lately. Online games are hard for me for some reason and I like to play slower than most people on kgs.

Back when I was active I was an AGA 5dan (probably 6dan in japan). If anyone in SF wants an in-person game I'd love to play - shoot me an email at lukas@crowdflower.com. Our office has a couple learning go players and our janitor might be around 1 dan.
How does Clojure compare with these? It's time I learnt a functional language...
I'm surprised that I haven't read anyone that has connected the dots on the app store for Mac and the emphasis on the Macbook Air. The app store solves the problem for how does one get shrink-wrapped applications onto a Mac with no optical drive? In the future, they may remove optical drives from their laptops entirely.
Sorry, but that's not true at all. iTunes alone makes Apple over $1 billion in revenue per quarter. That's a lot of money and alone could almost vie for a Fortune 500 listing.
I recently completed a project using FParsec (http://bitbucket.org/fparsec/main), which is a parser combinator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parser_combinator) library based on Haskell's Parsec (http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Parsec).
There is a 'delete' link, you're still within the hour.
Wow, thank you so much for reviving that post! I had not seen that story before. It is a classic.
Perhaps because, though Sinatra is actually one of my favorite frameworks, it doesn't work very well for this. The author comments that it's limited to 10 seconds because each connection is handled by a blocking Thin. Eventmachine could also solve this problem, in a similar amount of code.

And I was just pointing out that this happened to be the official hello world for node.js.
But that doesn't tell you whether it's important. Statistical significance is a measure of trustworthiness, given assumptions about the generating process. It tells you nothing about whether the data is in any way meaningful, after assuming relibility.

What does tell you about that type significance of (rational) data is the delta, which requires the 0 in order for you to see the scale. Now, in many interesting cases this could be represented as error bars under H0, but that's usually not done in publications, because they only have room for one plot type.

The range of the plot is not arbitrary. To suggest otherwise is deceptive.
Slowpoke Comics: Search Engine Wars
That's true, but the OP said he's only planning to move here; hence, I imagine he's not tied to a particular job location yet. Also, I know plenty of people commuting to SF from Dublin/Pleasanton/Walnut Creek, which is comparable to getting from Berkeley to Palo Alto. But you're right, having to switch to Caltrain to go anywhere further south than Millbrae is a pain.
Yeah me too. Funny how the meaning of things changes in a different context and how the new speakers of these words neglect to check what the other meanings are.
For my work the things "missing" from other ML-family languages are a) rock-solid bindings to commercial RDBMSs and b) an easy way to make simple GUIs. The .NET platform gives me those "for free" and F# is sufficiently close to OCaml that it's an easy transition.

Learning my way around the .NET libraries (having never been a C# programmer) is the biggest hurdle. Last time I did this sort of thing on Windows, MFC and ATL were all the rage...
I'm sure the opposite also holds true: just because as an investor you can squeeze a low valuation, there can be such a thing as too low. So sure you may have won the round of negotiations, but you both lose when the founders lose interest and the co tanks.
If it's a superficial analysis (ie interview), then punctuality, dress and preparation on their part (investigation prior to the meeting) is valid. If they haven't inquired about the dress code, then they should assume it's formal. If you have a minute to do a slightly deeper analysis then Google is your friend: how do they present themselves on social networks, do they have a blog, have they commented in forums (do they troll) have they posted code (usually a goldmine). If the profession is technological and they have no web presence whatsoever, that's usually a red flag in itself.
So do I but,

1. I carry a Kindle with me. I read a lot and I can do it as well waiting in a office/lounge/Airport as at my bed.

2. I don't value my time more than collective time of four people waiting for me to start a meeting/meetup/lunch.
Adobe (and Macromedia before them) has always realized this, it is the talking heads who like to analyze the latest Apple vs Adobe spat that are "finally realizing" this.