skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Gregg Easterbrook proposes a thought experiment in The Progress Paradox, which went approximately like this: Would you agree to permanently trade places with a random person who lived X hundred years ago? Chances are: no you wouldn't.

(The book: http://www.amazon.com/Progress-Paradox-Better-While-People/d.... Related essay that I did almost 5 years ago: http://www.questioningchristian.com/2006/03/progress_hope_a....)

See also pg's 2004 comment: "… try living for a year using only the resources available to the average Frankish nobleman in 800, and report back to us. (I'll be generous and not send you back to the stone age.)" http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html
If you want to use scheme on any platform with JavaScript, check out WeScheme [http://www.wescheme.org]

The server uses the Java AppEngine API. Yes, we did run into issues with requests exceeding the AppEngine timeout. At one point (this may still be true) we were able to compile our compiler on AppEngine. Which brings us to Moby-Scheme, the heart of WeScheme! It's a self-hosting (Scheme -> JavaScript) compiler. [https://github.com/dyoo/moby-scheme]

WeScheme was written in support of BootStrap [http://www.bootstrapworld.org/] an educational initiative aimed at using computer science as a vehicle for teaching algebra to middle-school students.

There is a semi-working structured editor for WeScheme that is a pile of jQuery hooking interactions with content-editable. In retrospect we should have just gone for HTML5. There's also the inkling of a scratch-like interface which is works by swapping in a new style sheet. I'm afraid I can't find the latest version, in my younger days I was a bit sloppy about version control. An older version is available at http://ch4n.org/editor Your mileage may vary.

</shameless plug>
Interesting Research Topics Bring About Outstanding Written Works
The success of a research paper relies on many elements. One of these is the topic. If the topic of the research paper is interesting to the reader and the writer, it is guaranteed that the research paper will be an interesting one. Therefore, select topics based on interest value.
Liked the leverage bit. But it's tough getting it right. Guess the trick is to prevent them from taking you for granted, yet staying within reach so they don't give up on retaining you. Easier said than done.
Actually, the OP's argumetn is then point Gibson has been making for some years now: there future is here already.
Government Grants are Not as Free as You Think
The American Civil War Turns 150. Get Ready for the Fight
How many other free software projects are significantly hindered by the language used by the main developers? I found that the most fascinating aspect of this post. Software tends to be so very English-centric that the fact that Ruby is Japanese really stands out.
You don't have to have any duplication (with RVM and bundler) if you use the same ruby version on your projects.

Requiring an exact version of Ruby for a project is a practice that avoids rare issues of version inconsistency.
I think poster richcollins' definition of state socialism ("state socialism implies coercive sharing") is accurate and wonderfully succinct.

However, like it or not, we are born into a social contract. Those who want opt-out of that social contract are a bit like the child who, when faced with family responsibilities states: "I didn't ask to be born!"

Parent's response: "Sorry, thems the breaks kid, now go look after your brother and finish your chores."

While I enjoyed the Ayn Rand books I've read, I think it's a little naive to expect any large society to work on a strictly opt-in basis.
how is applying patches more difficult? I would think it is normally easier because one can RVM install a new release that has the patches applied.
(didn't see this post til after my other reply).

i'm missing the references here. see my other post as to what you perceive i'm not addressing.

what were the childish fantasies and insults you are referring to?

thnx for more mud slinging about calling this a "troll account" just because i disagree with you or am trying to shed some light to your original question. it really adds to the conversation. and i agree, childish insults and fantasies should best be ignored.
> Requiring an exact version of Ruby for a project is a practice that avoids rare issues of version inconsistency.

If they're rare, you ought to identify them, and, rather than require an exact version, say "this version or greater", and spell out exactly why in the comments, so that future users of your code will know precisely what code is affected and be able to reason about it themselves.
There's actually a dedicated Script menu available in the OS. Instead of deploying .apps and taking up space in the Dock, you can start up AppleScript Editor and check "Show Script menu in menu bar" in its Preferences. Then place your scripts in ~/Library/Scripts (or ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/<application name> to have them only appear while a certain application is active).
I live in an area with approx. 370,000 people and my only ISP choice is Comcast. Verizon will not provide FioS here or DSL, and the wireless ISP in our area says my neighbor's tree is too large and blocks LoS to their tower.
It's essentially pre-written agenda+minutes.

This is very insightful. Powerpoint is a prop for establishing the structure of a meeting. It is -- as pointed out by many -- a lousy tool for conveying actual content. (Of course, in a world with cheap printing, and now cheap email, cheap blogging, cheap e-text, cheap recorded audio, and cheap online video as well, live lectures in general are lousy tools for conveying content.)

Meetings need agendas. Otherwise every meeting ends up being about whatever the best schmoozer at the meeting wants it to be about.

Of course, as with many tools, the use of Powerpoint is most noticeable when it is being terribly abused. People use it to force incredibly boring agendas. People use it as an excuse to lecture.
WATER DAMAGE RPAIR - Slashdot
UX: The Enemy Within
Sorry I misspoke. Canada works too.
Its also when you'll "need" those higher levels to improve in order to feel good.
I have found out that meditation does even more for me. I started noticing the little seductive impulses ("Hey buddy, it won't hurt to browse HN for five minutes!") without automatically following through on them.

The little moment after noticing the impulse is where I can wait for it to subside instead of yielding to it.
Teeth Caring | Your Classified Articles
It's yet another way of installing software on my system. Currently I:

* Use apt-get for pretty much everything.

* Locally install a few project specific things. These often are installed locally, not system-wide, and have nothing to do with root.

* Use rubygems. It's nice, but I don't have the same level of confidence in it regarding security that I do about Debian and Ubuntu. It seems to just give me 'updates' to gems, without much of a way of knowing which updates are security fixes and which are simply improved versions of the packages in question.

RVM adds one more thing. And for each Ruby instance in there, I might have various versions of gems floating around. This does not make me happy from a security point of view.
I was actually talking about a relative level of effectiveness - surely doing some shoveling even without snow melting, etc. would have resulted in something better (not "completely fixed") ...
Adylitica is hiring software development interns for iOS, web apps, WP7, or Android development. We do contract and boutique mobile app development.

We're based in Beijing, and will help you take care of everything you need to come out and work with us. It's a super fun city with tonnes to do and great food to boot.

Our website's pretty bland, but feel free to get in touch with us:

http://adylitica.com/work_with_us.html
RVM has been a boon.
1. Easy to test my library/app against multiple ruby versions.

2. Easy to run an app which requires an older version of ruby (I typically use 1.9.2).

Advanced features like gemsets allow finer grained control but only if needed.
I do see your point but still if you have an otherwise good web developer I'm sure he can learn grep.

I've been meaning to make a web comic where software companies end up with Exactly the employees they interview for. Eg the boss asks "why the does the guy we hired keep solving project Euler problems all day?"
I have never flown AA on any of my flights, so I guess I don't care in that regard; as long as it doesn't result in less competition and thus higher prices, I don't suppose I will be effected.
This might be true, but it does depend on how the release management is done. What else is part of that new release? Is it guaranteed to be a set of minimalist patches to fix security issues, or do the developers also take the opportunity to "tidy up" the API, or take out some of those "deprecated" features, or (god help us) introduce new functionality? [1]

Much of what we see here is a dev/ops culture clash. Sysadmins like well-established system-level packaging systems like .deb and .rpm. They like them because they have well-established semantics ("this thing is obviously a security patch; that thing is probably a feature upgrade"), and they like them because these systems abstract away the need for the admin to understand the details of the release model of five or ten or a hundred different open-source ecosystems.

Part of OP's complaint is that (from his perspective) the Ruby community has release semantics that he doesn't understand. Is that patch to Ruby 1.8.7 really just a "security fix"? Can it probably be safely applied to 1,000 production servers without causing downtime?

---

[1] I should note: I'm not accusing Ruby developers, or any other developers, of ever having done any of these things. But these are the dark thoughts that keep engineers up at night. Especially when managing codebases built on ecosystems that they don't intimately understand.
The Bayesian meets Monty Hall
I agree that it's not likely, as Apple seems basically happy with the market the way it is, rather than pursuing the market for cheaper phones. If they were everywhere, they might not have the same cachet...
Sorry it's taken so long to notice your comment. It definitely deserves a reply.

Here's what I'm really interested in:

Languages: I've put a great deal of time into Japanese and Mandarin, some into Taiwanese, Cantonese and Spanish and a little into several others. I love language learning and I'm pretty confident in getting started with new ones, but I'm still not that confident in bridging the gap from very advanced to near-native. I don't come to HN looking for help with this.

Drawing: I've recently gotten really into sketching, but HN isn't for that either.

Programming: I've done bits on an off for 10 years, but have no real experience beyond simple scripts, a FF plugin and a couple of simple flash games. Resources for various programming things come up on here on occasion and I love them.

Business: I was partner in a small business in Taiwan for a few years. This whet my entrepreneurial appetite, and I'm very interested in stories about how founders or managers of successful business got started, overcame obstacles, etc. Mixergy is one of my favorite sites that comes up on here. Maybe this is something you could share (if you haven't already). I seem to remember you mentioning in passing that you ran a company. Personal stories (rather than opinions about things not so related to tech or business) would be interesting to me.

Fitness: Have you ever run a sub 3 hour marathon? Maybe gotten your bench over 350? Limbered to the point where you can do the splits? Trained to where you can dunk a basketball (if you're under 185cm). All those kind of things would be interesting to read about.

Resources: Found a great FF (or Chrome) plugin? A useful reference for something programming related? Share them!

News: First and foremost, I come to this site for news. It probably wouldn't fit well with your blog, but if there's something you've created or you want to share your progress on something, that might be interesting. Even something like the 250k/month goal would be interesting and possibly educational if you've made progress towards it that surpasses the norm.

Hope the feedback is constructive, even if it's not the most pleasant thing to see!
Insta-Headaches. The Health Risks Of Engaging Smartphone Apps
This uses cryptoloop, which SHOULD NOT BE USED IF YOU WANT STRONG SECURITY. See: http://mareichelt.de/pub/texts.cryptoloop.php

You can do better with LUKS or Truecrypt. LUKS comes with most distributions. It comes with a handy wrapper called "cryptsetup" which does the setup for you.
Can anyone recommend a Android alternative? It has to be free and must not require my data to be available to the provider (ie store it locally).
Whoa... Even though the developers of Ruby are Japanese, he's demanding that they start speaking fluent English instead? And he thinks others are being assholes?

Granted, he only said 'English' in his rant, but if it's typical Japanese English then he won't understand it half the time anyhow, so it'd have to be fluent English.

Here's a novel idea: FORK IT. If you don't like how a project is being run, that's your option. Telling others how to do their work doesn't work with open source. They don't have to listen to you, and calling them assholes certainly doesn't help.
It's still pretty easy.

$ rvm install ruby-head-r29837 --patch refinements.diff

For example. Bam! You're done.
While working there I realized I wasn't really happy 100% of the time

If that is the metric you are measuring things against, you are in for a really miserable life.

Your four factors are all undoubtedly true: you are not a genius, EE is hard, you need to work on what you are handed, and you need to get accustomed to working long shifts.

That's about the size of it.
I have been using the package manager and it is a much better way to install programs in emacs than the old way of modifying your .emacs and specifying a load path. It works very well. I wish more people would upload packages to the main repository but putting this in emacs 24 will probably accelerate this.
There is a book called Incompetence, by Rob Grant of Red Dwarf fame, set slightly in the future where it is now illegal to discriminate on race, age, gender... or competence.

Highly recommended reading, both as entertainment and as preparation for the inevitable.
I don't know, but here's the link: http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
Continuations in C
A big experiment in big science
They deserve it. This is capitalism: evolve or die. I won't shed a tear.

New media will make it work anyway. IP is not needed for content producers to survive and even thrive.
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No, I'm using an Excel Sheet. I'm considering an App. and a system to save the data online, once I get a smartphone and some free time ;)
You are the one who used the word "asshole", not Lucas, who isn't a native English speaker either.
I am torn. Why bother CC licensing if they didn't want you to do this, you know? My first instinct is "What a jerk!" but they're also spreading more knowledge around, which is something I can't really fault.
>the top 20 stories for yesterday ...

you can use : http://hckrnews.com/

and check "top 20%"
> Maybe Rubinius VM does what Parrot was originally intended to. ( Running many dynamic languages )

This is the most interesting part, to me. Especially given that Ruby has pretty much been my personal successor to Perl...

I wonder if we'll see more of this in the future, as rbx matures.
> Software tends to be so very English-centric

I'm not sure software is "english-centric" so much as english being the linga franca of computing, much like diplomacy used to be mostly (if not solely) in french. You need a common language to share, and english was as good as any (better, in fact, since most early research [Church, Turing, Von Neumann, McCarthy] in CS was in english as were pretty much all the early implementations (Colossus, ENIAC, FORTRAN, ALGOL, BASIC, …)
ScienceLeaks
With one command, apt-get, I can use the same command line to install security updates for the Ubuntu versions of Ruby, Python, Java, Lua, Perl, Tcl, PHP, Erlang, Haskell, Ocaml and whatever else I happen to use. If you have to learn a separate "pretty easy" command to get security updates for the various systems on your computer, you are screwed. I think having one or two extra routes for systems that you use heavily (you're a Ruby dev or a Java dev or something like that) is probably ok, but it's still nothing I'm thrilled about.
say "this version or greater"

That only works if all future versions are guaranteed to be backwards-compatible with the current version. A guarantee that does not exist.

See here:

http://yehudakatz.com/2010/08/21/using-considered-harmful-or...

A version requirement is a statement that "I have tested this code with these versions of the dependencies and verified that it works." Yes, given sufficient time and energy one can also test the code against many older versions of the dependencies, find any bugs, and include explanatory comments, as you suggest. But one can't test against the dependencies as they will exist in the future.
Exactly. Everyone I know who isn't a tech-head has a droid. Every tech-head I know who isn't a mac user has a droid.
A better title is Ticket Spinaphores and Robin Hood Hashing.
in practice they lose the ability to easily compare/save on multi-flight itineraries across multiple unaffiliated carriers

Why? There's still Kayak and ITA Software, which I am a big fan of and who're not going anywhere any time soon.
I've no experience with AA flights within the USA, but if they're anything like AA's transatlantic services then I'd say this is a great change for Expedia's customers.

Thankfully I've never been on a single AA flight (Virgin Atlantic gets my custom), but I've seen photos taken by friends and heard their stories (UK-USA flights) and, unless they've all been very unlucky, seems a safe bet that AA's transatlantic staff, planes and services are all pretty shoddy.
If everything in Unix development is POSIX, what the hell does C library do?
YoutubeGet 5.9.0 Portable
I'm now seeing 'If everyone reading this donated £5, our fundraiser would be over today. Please donate to keep Wikipedia free.' banners.

If they've already hit the target, presumably they must have already set a new target in order to make that statement?
What specifically is "horrid" about the notification system? You don't say.

Here's my take on notifications on the iPhone: They work fine. If I get a text message, I get a (configurable) pop-up to tell me, and a (configurable) sound. If I get email, I get a (configurable) sound and a badge on the Mail icon; just right. If I get an IM from any of four different IM systems, I get a (configurable) pop-up and a (configurable) sound.

What's broken about this?

Moving on, what's "pathetic" about Sync? I can individually configure every possible element of what I sync and don't sync, independently on every device I use, and it works fine. If I want to put them in the cloud, I can do that, too. What's broken about this?

Auto correct? Ok, now it's becoming clear. You've never actually used iOS, have you?
I really hate to see Lucas burn out and I think the Ruby & Debian communities will both be negatively affected. I'm a Debian Ruby user whose contributed a tiny bit (first Redmine package) and I have watched Lucas and the rest of the team repeatedly bang their heads into a wall when trying to get agreement on something from either side.

My personal view is that the Ruby/GEM packages should be laid out like the Perl/CPAN, which seems to be doing just fine.

If you want to help, go to the Debian Ruby Team page (http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Ruby) and join us (http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Ruby/RubyExtras/JoiningTheTeam).
check china news..they are in fact lining up for Android in China..Gruber is wrong as usual..

There are 12 news reports this morning in Google News..about Chinese lining up for android devices..
This workflow would probably also benefit from a gitc script, for fast committing:

#!/bin/bash

git commit -a -m "$*"
2011: The Year You Weren’t Expecting
Suspecting A/B tests, I actually waited until I got one of the photos of Mr. Wales looking off in the distance before I donated (anything was better than the glaring full-on eyes). I didn't see any of the volunteer ads until after I donated.
> That only works if all future versions are guaranteed to be backwards-compatible with the current version. A guarantee that does not exist.

It's not the sort of thing that's easy to prove empirically one way or the other, but I get the feeling (despite being a heavy user and fan of Ruby) that other languages take that guarantee more seriously. It's a tradeoff: by not spending much effort on backwards compatibility, they can spend more time developing "cool new stuff". Users get more new stuff faster, at the expense of having to worry more about upgrades breaking things.
The best hack I ever learned to avoid the "pain of getting started" problem:

Never finish.

I always leave something easy, even trivial, undone when I knock off each day. So no matter what else I'm doing the next day, it's easy to change a format, add another data element, or change a few variable names. Then once I get going, it's much easier to keep going.

Things that don't work well with this method: debugging a nasty problem, reworking architecture, scaling, or major additions. Those are best left for later in the day.
RVM is great for some things and a bane for others. Like you, I use it all day, every day to build & test multiple Ruby projects on my MacBook. It has really increased my output and reduced my hair-pulling.

On the other hand, automating and managing a server install using RVM is a nightmare. I don't want/need compilers on my servers, I just want to push a package out and have it work (i.e. APT).
Truth. I'm not saying it's ideal, just that it's pretty easy compared to say, a source install.
How compilers work
A brief and great paper on how compilers work
Taubes may be wrong, but he has a very devoted following that apparently includes HN. It's popular to sell magic bullet ideas, like carb-cutting, and the anti-carb brigades have made an entire industry around this. It is far less popular to tell people that they need to get off their rears, and get active, since they'd rather stay on their rears and find a magic bullet that will let them remain sedentary, and still lose weight.