skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> an evolving medium with lots of potential

That one. Don't worry about commercializing for now; in the worst case you can always make money by applying the same skills to program webapps and other things people will pay for.
Do you lag in developing social skills?

I have met very social people that moved to a new place, had 0 friends and you know what? they made new friends on weeks time(I'm talking from Spain). Do they have so good "social skills", no. The reason they made new friends quickly is because they love people and enjoyed being with other people instead of staying home thinking about excuses.

Your laptop, CS class is no excuse. Just remember, no excuses, just go out and meet people. If your brain stops you, refuse to think and do it, experience, don't plan. People is going to see you are alone,face it like a man, but it will change fast as you make new friends.
Excellent post. Take responsibility for your own intellectual development and you will do much better than if someone were to show you the exact solution to a problem you're working on.

I see this a lot with students in introductory physics. If they come to me and say "I don't get it" or "I can't get started" I actually invest less time than if I get a good student who has hit a wall and can't get through. The student who won't/can't start will get sent to the tutoring center and I will spend the time with the kid who works hard. There's only so much of me to go around and I want to make it count.
It's probably someone the author doesn't like

And remember the internet it's not your personal army
Extremely cool, thanks for the heads up!
Good stuff!

A similar thing happened to me recently. About a year or two ago I broke up with my girlfriend of eleven years and started to think what a waste everything had been during that time. We weren't married, no children etc and so when she left all ties were pretty much cut. Bam, there goes eleven years!

I went on holiday with a friend a few months later to cheer me up, and I met a new lady, and just last week I moved to Prague with her after spending some time travelling in the Middle East.

I gave up a decent job, sold all my possessions, left all my old friends behind and just went for it. I made up my mind on a wet rainy evening in Sheffield after watching another crap episode of regional news. I don't know what clicked that evening but it was sudden.

It's the best decision I have ever made. The alternative was to just sit around and carry on doing the same old stuff that I wasn't really excited about. Giving everything up is really tough, selling all your possessions is even harder but it's very cathartic.

The saying Life's what happens when you're busy making other plans comes to mind. If you have something you want to do but aren't sure about whether the hassle is worth it - it probably is :)
But the OP was complaining that public tweets serve no purpose. That's one of the reasons he prefers Facebook.
One of my favorite CV's is that of Physics Professor Lyman Page, who researches experimental cosmology at Princeton. (I worked in his lab for a couple of summers. He earned his world-renowned reputation for working on the WMAP satellite and the ACT experiment.) In between interning for the Bartol Research Foundation at the South Pole (1978-80) and getting his PhD (1983-89), he has this entry:

> Self employed February 1980 - September 1983

> Rebuilt a 37’ wooden ketch and sailed about the Caribbean and East Coast of the United States. To support myself and my boat, I worked as a painter, carpenter, rigger, and cabinet maker in various ports of call. In the nine months before graduate school, I was based in Boston.
Drôle de Paix I – Lisbon’s Occident
I don't know about others, but the fact that Twitter has a single API (as compared to RSS1 vs. RSS2 vs. Atom, etc.) is an advantage. The fact that Twitter is JSON whereas RSS is XML is also a benefit.
Strip any PDF of it's meta (and digital signature)

http://www.becyhome.de/becypdfmetaedit/description_eng.htm
This simply makes no sense in a Ruby idiom (and I'm not really sure this is the best way to think of it in Java either -- I can make an API public and well-documented with or without interfaces.)

I've used dozens of Ruby gems, plugins and classes over the years that have well-documented shared APIs and none of them (obviously) have had interfaces. Interfaces are good in certain environments for hiding implementation details where class-level contracts are enforced, but in Ruby this would provide no benefit at all.

Think of it this way: since Ruby has no class-level contracts, to some extent everything is already an interface. Everything is abstract. Every Ruby object has the opportunity to re-implement functionality in an abstract way.
Qi is very interesting. However, Mark Traver is now working on Shen which is a successor to Qi II.
Here is a post by Mark on Shen.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1921347
I get what you're saying, but Ruby already allows you to do this. If you like an API/design, then go ahead and reimplement it however you like. There are no class-level contracts anywhere in Ruby that would prevent this, and therefore interfaces provide no additional level of abstraction that Ruby doesn't already have.
D'oh I am somewhat embarrassed that my rants land up on HN.

On HN I try to have a measured tone. On my personal blog,I just write(rant!) without regard to "voice" and so on. It doesn't help that, while I enjoy meeting people and parties and such, I am equally content to stay in the shadows and don't care about "personal brand" or building a group to bring change and so on.

I just got frustrated at receiving the nth "please mentor me and send me some code so I can do a cool AI project for my bachelor's degree requirements. I need this next week." email.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=670453 is the original thread , with many nice comments.
being un lonely all starts with your own operations ...

first decide what you'll do ... ONLY THEN .. who to bring along

and theres MUCH subcontext that gets conveyed through communications

if you believe you're lonely .. thats going to seep out into your interactions

so find hobbies to unlone yourself ! lol

im also a big fan of IRC ... ive added tons of Facebook friends from IRC channels ... AND they're got really quality topics to talk about
Potential. Here's a typical path:

1. Make some awesome visualisations. Put them online. Get known.

2. Get job offers or add these things to your resume.

3. Land jobs where you can (somewhat) use these (quite unique) skills.

I wouldn't worry too much about making money directly from this. That's a whole other ballgame.
They go through the security checkpoint though - have you ever seen an xray machine and metal detector at the road entrance that all the tankers, food trucks, fedex and baggage arrives through?
That seems to sum it up rather well.
Pfft. Don't be embarrassed. It was a great post. Fwiw, every other place I've lived was also full of people who want to talk instead of doing; I don't think it's Bangalore in specific.
I think the This American Life episode popularized it:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/389/f...
cure for aspergers?
That's ideally what I'd like to do. Thanks, I'll be working towards that.
Snap, hoist with his own petard. :)
Yeah exactly! 'raise "not implemented"' is how I imitate abstract classes (on the rare occasion that I need them).
Anonymous did try to DDoS amazon, it had no effect.
It's all the editor. If the editor accepts stuff like this, then it happens. Sometimes you luck out and get a writer who really understands, usually you do not.
So much for political freedom
Really, what part?

GPL doesn't force you you to publish, just to distribute source with all binaries.
This is the biggish pile of rubbish I've seen in a while.

"Intellectual Ventures" has patents, but has never made anything tangible, or even written a progam embodying something intangible.

Every single one of the "infringements" is almost certainly due to independent invention, or perhaps "Intellectual Ventures" got a patent due to sloppy research by the Patent Office.

"Intellectual Ventures" is making a large fortune by gaming the courts, plain and simple. They need to be legally punished for this. They also need to be socially ostracized and mocked for this.
I generally do a preview release for techie friends, but I've never had a formal beta for BCC or AR. If the software is stable enough to provide value, then I release it and start charging money. You get much better feedback when someone is invested in your software and wants to use it to get their work done, versus someone who is not invested in your software and for whom using it is uncompensated work.

(My conscience is totally clear about doing this: I give refunds for any reason as a matter of policy, and if people didn't sell buggy software then there would be no software on the market. In return for higher than average suffering compared to later users, they get me at their beck and call for the first few weeks. In the very unlikely event that AR failed to phone the customers' customers, I am more than capable of calling Lucinda Smith to tell her that her appointment with Mindy's Hair Salon is on Tuesday at 3 PM.)

BCC 1.0 was terrible software. Somebody bought it anyhow. (He got a refund.) 1.02 was heavily influenced by his comments, and sucked a little less.

AR 1.0 is not terrible. It is bare-bones, and it certainly isn't right for all customers, but it does what it says on the tin. It will probably improve fairly rapidly with customer feedback.

I get users for software four weeks old the same way I get users for software four years old: organic search. (There is a reason I got AR's website up and some links pointed at it six months before I actually had software to sell: I now get a couple hundred searches a month "for free", which gives me a small trickle of brave souls to try it out on.)
A stutter concerns kings and commoners alike
:) In that sense some of my activities on the startup scene are pretty practical:

http://garage48.org/ - we organize weekend startup bootcamps in Europe and Africa, hopefully having 6+ events in 2011 across Africa. Our goal is to get people into weekend projects, then into startups, then growing out from that "lifestyle" into large world-changing companies.

http://hub.garage48.org/ - co-working space for startups in Estonia.

http://opencoffeetallinn.com/ - OpenCoffee Club Tallinn.

http://startupleadersclub.com/ - Estonian Startup Leaders Club.

They all share the same goal: more startups means more developing economy. The lifestyle is just the patch of reaching that.
Lots of people donated to Wikileaks. Did they all get locked out? Or is something else going on here? We can't possibly know from this, can we?
Thanks for this very interesting report of the conference. The positions and arguments are well and shortly exposed.
The boundary between diagram and geographical map is in question with subway "maps", and the graphic design is still a challenge.

I'm glad to see that the subject of map design is alive and expanding with new media. However, i'd like to see more references to semiology and perception psychology :-)
Wow, that makes sense. But isn't "asking users questions" the rationale for UAC in Vista and Windows 7?
Apps cost so little compared to a phone + 2 year contract that I doubt this is the reason. You are certainly locked in if iOS has an app that $foo doesn't, but you are not locked in by having to pay $1 to re-buy it for the other platform.
The same applies to job applications. Some companies don't know that they could use your service - so prove it to them!
Actually, people here try to be funny all the time -- and not everyone agrees on what's funny. But we try to keep things civil. I encourage you to be more civil as well.
Companies That Haven't Wussed Out of Working with WikiLeaks
I had this happen to me several weeks ago, it turned out the blocking list I had subscribed to (EasyList) got switched with the new default "Fanboy's List". I had switched back and haven't been plagued by video ads since.
I'm in a similar situation. Although I got it pretty much under control.

----Long story alert----

Back in high school, in-class socialising with little out-of-school chit chats was enough for me. Few meetups here or there and the rest of time knees-deep in code and/or listening to music.

After high school I went freelancing and traveling way (2 foreign countries in different continents in 2 years, back in my home country now). Living 10k kilometers away from everybody you know is quite a loneliness :) I handled it quite well the first time, but got stuck quite worse the next time (too rural area). Also had same problems when moved back home - some old friends went abroad, some are quite different people now.

----Long story alert----

tl;dr been lonely badly in foreign places, managed to fix that

Few things that didn't work:

- Be dragged into parties I didn't like (theme or people) - there's nothing worse than mandatory socialising

- Locking myself in and working all around the clock

- Choosing money/savings over going out/socialising/traveling - you can't work unless you're sane. Saving in this area causes lower productivity and even less food on the table in the long run. Although it's always possible to go out cheaper :)

Few things that did work (works best when you use few of them!):

- Get out of town. Cycling and hiking works best for me. It's a nice way to keep yourself busy, while enjoying new experiences. Also, it's easy to socialize this way. Just say Hi! to anyone on the trial. Small chit chat will follow naturally. And health benefits is a nice bonus!

- Go to public parks, squares etc. Take a book or whatever (no headphones, this will cut your off from outside world) and just hang out there. Even if you're not lucky to score some random conversions, being around other people gives that warm socialising feeling

- Hit the streets. Just go for a walk. Better hit busy downtown streets - more possibilities for conversations, more being-around-other-people feeling. Again, without headphones/music works better.

- Pick up an indoor hobby. Reading, building models... Whatever works for you (although for me PC-based hobbies didnt work well..) Just enjoy yourself.

- Rock shows. Enjoy music, get a few drinks, talk to random people, party.. Evening well spent + maybe new friends or at least socialising/being in a crowd feeling :) Not sure about non-rock music based events, never been there.

- Hit the bars. Go to bars alone and start talking to strangers. Although this is one of the hardest things, requires a lot of courage :) But results are quite good.

edit: messed up smth with formatting, looks ok now...
Hiya, thanks, great suggestion! The bounce rate currently hovers between 40 and 50%, so there's definitely some testing to be done on the design :)

If you have any other suggestions, I'm all ears :)
This is something that I dream about doing.

Unfortunately, buying a boat is expensive, and I have no knowledge of sailing.

So I've found something that is the same concept, but might work even better: bicycle touring. A world class touring bike (a Surly Long Haul Trucker) can be had for $1200. Much cheaper than a sailboat. A good tent can be had for ~$300.

I've made a deal with myself that I have 2011 to either get back into school, get an interesting, fulfilling job, or have founded a site that is producing enough money for me to work on it fulltime. If I don't accomplish this, I'm selling everything, loading the dog into a trailer, and riding across the country.
It’s still a niche market. There’s been some success for Algorithmic art, but it’s not as if Jared Tarbell will be in MoMA tomorrow. It still needs to prove itself. The best place if you want to sell out and make money would be to do something dumb and fun for an iPhone. Brian Eno’s Bloom and Justin Oulette’s Sharps are good examples of what you can do with a touchscreen and a basketful of APIs.

More importantly I would suggest the Arduino, it can interact with Processing and allows you to control physical objects with your code. Carlos Amorales, the mexican artist, works primarily in digital forms, but only sells his work printed intaglio; the art world still prizes physical originals. Hopefully this isn’t a disappointment to you.

If you’re willing to use your code as part of an installation, you’ll have much more success than just trying to sell the digital files. I’m an experienced lithographer, and can give some advice if you’re interested in printing your creations. (Remember, physical originals.)

But, remember. You’re a sophomore and thinking of your future, that’s amazingly precocious (in the best way). Don’t get too worried yet!
Ask HN:  How do companies weed out perfectionist programmers in job interviews?
Do companies like Google and Facebook do anything specifically to weed out perfectionists in the interview process?
When I was a sophomore in high school, I was so focused on making money that I let several passions slip through my fingers. I could have learned to speak French fluently. Or, I could have spent my time studying physics simply for the love of it. Rather, I devoted myself to becoming the best young accountant I could because at that point, I thought getting my CA/MBA was a sure fire path to the corner office and the mythical big bonuses.

Nearly 20 years later and I am not an accountant. I didn't have any passion for the field, so my career fizzled out during University. Looking back, I wish I would have focused on what I was passionate about because I would have gained solid skills doing something I thought was fun.

Sorry this doesn't really answer your question, but if I could be in your shoes again, I would blindly follow my passion. Making money often flows naturally from passion. But even if it doesn't, you won't be sitting in your mid-30s asking, "what if?"
There's some Western philosophical precedents for this tack as well. Heraclitus comes to mind, later Nietzsche, Kierkegaard. William of Occam I suppose would never allow 'classes' at all, only radically individual one-off objects.

Two modern philosophers that I think may provide a better conceptual foundation for a less reified/Platonic/Aristotelian/Formalist view would be Alfred North Whitehead and Henri Bergson, both of whom described the ingression or duration of individual substances into other substances. Rather than hard borders (interfaces?) that interact in static and unchangeable ways, substances actually change each other at these borders. Bergson in particular I think would be interesting at many levels of the SDLC -- from emergent design (he advocated an 'emergent' fingertip-feel, intuitive approach to Science) to the nature of objects and hierachies.

What about the notion that an interface can change/morph according to the client that consumes it? This would move towards a more Heraclitean/Whiteheadean/Bergsonian paradigm.
I've been living in a motorhome and travelling full-time since January, so I've been on the road for close to a year. I'd originally planned to do this for a year, maybe 18 months, but now that I'm a year into it, I don't see any reason to stop. I'm going to Mexico, and Central and South America next fall and plan to spend all the cold months way down south. When I've done all the driving on the American continent I want to do, I plan to buy a sailboat and keep travelling (buying or renting a van or motorhome when I get to various countries I want to spend some time in).

I highly recommend it. All of it, or any part of it.

Selling and giving away all my accumulated crap was liberating beyond what I could have ever imagined. Getting out of the rut of daily life in one place and going to see lots of new places breeds a zen-like state of peace over the minutiae of everyday life (I guess your comfort zone just expands to be really wide). Living smaller means you can focus on the things that really matter. Cost of living can be as high or low as you want it to; I'm currently parked in an RV park that is home to formerly homeless people who've been placed in RVs by a charity organization, as well as retired couples living in $250,000 rigs, and everything in between.

Living on a sailboat is pretty much the same idea, with a few additional logistical challenges, if you need to keep working (I've been running Virtualmin from the road, and I just had to solve the Internet and power problem; on a boat, the Internet problem is much more expensive to solve). It seems to attract the same sorts of people, and I've met a lot of RVers who have lived on boats in the past, or live on boats some of the time.
I found it via search and modified it based on the returned href. I'm not on the list.
Yay thanks, that fixed it! Okay now I just sound like a stupid douchebag :) Hopefully this helps some other people too.
A group famous for an ongoing DDOS attack and previous hacking incidents sends me a pdf document.

I:

a) Open it

-or-

b) wtf are you crazy?

I'm not saying there was anything in it, but I sure hope people don't open things like that up with reader.
3D? :) That is a nice metaphor.
I've had them do the same to me, it seems that if you come close to making use of your allocated resources, they'll come up with any excuse to terminate your contract.
Ron Paul’s Defense Of WikiLeaks On House Floor
because of offensive vs. defensive purpose?
Ie 'The Law'?
The OP is correct. http://mashable.com/2010/03/10/twitter-follow-stats/
Storage has become cheap, CPU speeds fast. People are acquire larger and larger data sets, but the increase in size and greater diversity in what can be stored makes it harder to get a grip on what, exactly, is there, and what does it (possibly) mean.

Data visualization can make the difference. Using R and Processing, for example, you can turn a bazillion spreadsheet numbers into a compelling visual (or audio) experience that provides insight and discoveries.

There's real commercial value in that. Is it art? Well, if not, it's damn close, and what you learn providing a commercial service can be applied to creating purely aesthetic work.

As for what art buyer might think of computer art?

http://artport.whitney.org/

It's real and it's big time.

Go for it.
People look at the phone + contract costs as fixed: "I'm going to have a contract with somebody" so if they have an investment in iPhone apps that they like they are going to be more likely to stay with iPhone/ATT then move to Android. Even if it only amounts to a few tens of dollars, there's also simple inertia at work here.
!Anon != Anon.
Thanks. That's what I thought, but I'm fairly new to PHP, and wasn't entirely sure.
I missed it... :(

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /article.php on this server.
Apache/2 Server at www.groklaw.net Port 80
My plan too, although I took a detour through Berlin and New York. Are you going to try to earn some kind of income while you're there or just travel on savings?
How to do small talk.

Small talk is NOT about making statements about stuff. Small talk means evoking an associative function which is part of every person. To activate this function in your system, please set the importance flagg for said function to <> 0, because chances are, if you are a nerd it is set to 0 by default.

Let's illustrate with the classic example.

Person A: "Nice weather, huh?"

Geek: "" Well, geek starts to think: "Oh is it? Wtf is nice weather anyway? The sky is a little bit cloudy but it is not raining. Mhm, how could we define 'nice' in this context? And even if I define 'nice' how do I synchronize this value with...

BUM! Half a second is gone, awkward silence is there already.

Now, let's stop trying to make statements of truth about the weather. Let's activate small talk association function.

Person A: "Nice weather, huh?"

Geek: "The weather-widget sucks because it is to hard for the end-user two switch location settings for when visiting places."

A: "Haha, lol, you do that computer stuff?"

G: "Only when my boss sees me."

Or something. Just keep going. Laugh about the situation and keep talking. Nobody takes this stuff serious anyway.