skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The note is the debt, like a check.

20 € bill = currency (debt in paper)
20 € on your account = money
Does the education system in Singapore stifle entrepreneurship?
IMO Apple's removal of VLC has only to do with honoring a complaint issued by a copyright holder. Nothing more, nothing less.
no. there is no hope for windows tablets.

whenever a new category of device emerges -- phones, game consoles, tablets, whatever -- microsoft's default response is "hey, let's put windows on it." windows is designed for interaction via large screens, keyboards, and mice. it does not work in any other milieu. witness decades of failed windows-on-tablet devices.

the only time this ever worked for microsoft was game consoles (xbox is finally a success), but even they seem to finally realize that this one case was a fluke, and not a good overall strategy. the evidence is that ms phone 7 is their first product in years that isn't just "slap windows on the new hot thing."

the fact that the author is not a big ipad user makes him the exception, not the rule. sales figures tell the obvious story there.
Isn't a proton the hydrogen ion H+?
Any insight to whether this would be rolled into a Google Apps for your domain offering?

We're using yourls.org currently for our short domain name and would welcome ($) the opportunity of offloading the traffic to Google's servers.
Cleantech-oriented Beneq receives 9 million euro investment
(Parenting anecdote warning)

From my kids, I demand that they do their share of work (at home and later, in life), that they be kind and respect other people (but it's okay that other people may not always like it when someone sets their limits), and that they don't continue to do things for wrong reasons without thinking about it first (like doing stuff to mostly impress other people).

I listen to what they want and try to hear what's true. I give them few things only: kids always want a lot of things but I do force them to prioritize and think it over a couple of times, so that they will learn to listen themselves to what they really want. And that they will learn to appreciate the value of what they have. You can't have everything in life or everything will lose its value.

I let them make choices themselves, given that some final limitations are followed. For example, they can wear what they like as long as I've checked they've got enough clothing so that they'll be warm. When they're spending their money, they can do whatever they want with it. For example, they can invest all their money in candy; however, I don't let them eat candy every day all over the week as we have specific days for goodies.

That's pretty much it. I don't have any vocational or educational goals or hobby-wise demands for them. I trust that they will eventually do what they simply can't not do. Long idle periods may precede but that's okay. As long as you're alive, time is indefinite.

I don't claim to have—or gain—control over their lives and choices, barring some rules they as kids need require and with regard to the physical world. I consider it good to be humble enough to understand that I have no idea whatsoever of what's best for them in their lives. I might have an idea or two about what I would do and I sometimes talk about that but I don't dare suggest they had to follow.

I don't always know how to do all that. But most of the time I think I get it right eventhough I'm still learning myself. I'll just mostly try to be there when they need support. And that's hard and demanding too, and I think that too often I can't do that either.

But I'm pretty confident that when a couple of kids live with me for about 18 years in a rather intimate living arragement, something will stick and that imprint will be close to what I wanted to say. Time only will tell if I turn out to be right or wrong but I merely hope they'll find it valuable, one way or another.
Yes, i've been rather successful at getting reviews for the project on some travel blogs, which did produce some results, but died out over time.
Well, I didn't mean to imply that it was a certainty that MNT would exist, and of course it's possible for it to exist but only in some limited form, with limits we can't easily predict today. So you are correct: everything about it is uncertain.

On the other hand, it seems very likely that at some point we'll have flexibly programmable universal assemblers capable of relatively rapid self-reproduction (say, less than three months) and of making materials at least as strong as the cheap thermoplastics we use in injection molding out of relatively common elements. There are a lot of different avenues that could get us to that goal.

The intrinsic cost of making something consists, as I understand it, of amortized capital costs, marginal raw material costs, marginal energy costs, and marginal labor. Self-reproducing assemblers eliminate the physical part of the capital costs; automated manufacturing of any kind eliminates marginal labor, leaving only the labor component of the capital costs; and the raw material and energy costs probably will be about the same for artificial molecular assemblers as they are for natural ones such as potatoes.

The labor component of the capital cost is simply the R&D required to automate the making of the thing. It seems very likely to me that this will be similar to what we do today for injection molding, a guy building 3-D models in a CAD/CAM system, but with much less in the way of concerns about taper and the like.

I recognize that you know a great deal more about modern manufacturing than I do, so if I am wrong about something, please do not hesitate to correct me.
I know someone is going to post something like: "Max is such a jerk for writing this post directly at his friend. Why should he rag on Gary's style? Just leave the poor guy alone."

My pre-emptive response: "Sure, Gary might be pretty pissed at Max for a while. But he'll probably decide one of two things - either he DOES need to make a change in his life/projects or he really DOESN'T care about actually starting something and is content to tinker. Either way, Gary's life is going to improve due to these realizations, and he's lucky to have a friend like Max."
I've read a book by Niel Postman where he points out that the medium your working in changes how you craft a message. I believe he was right in stating that a text-based medium promotes reasoning to a greater degree.

The same sort of idea is present in the receiving of a message as well. Your input is going to be processed differently based on the medium your in. Think of ebooks versus paper based books. When you use ebooks you have a better searching and storing experience, but paper based books have an edge when taking notes.

What I'm trying to get across here is that switching from one medium to another doesn't mean were going to be put at an advantage or disadvantage necessarily. We could be putting everyone at a disadvantage by switching to a medium that isn't as good, which means those of us who weren't using the new medium from birth are at advantage over those of us who were.

To make this point in another way, imagine Hacker News in a futuristic video world. Note that now that your dealing with video you have new biases being put in. For example, you might not be able to hear all the comments at the same time or the pretty girl is being upvoted despite a not so compelling content contribution. It becomes a pretty different site. So different that I would say, "I'm glad I got to have the text-based Hacker News" instead of "I think those of us who aren't use to video comments are at a disadvantage."
Charlie Munger's speech to the USC Business School on mental models
I was raised like this. My mom showed me no real love, nor did my family. I buckled under the pressure and when the time came for any real emotional support, they abandoned me in an attempt to get me to "try harder." I never forgave them and I don't talk to them any more.

In the end, regardless of how they felt or their intentions, I was made out to be nothing more than an ornament, a product for the glory of the family name.

I get the impression you were not on the receiving end of this sort of treatment, and I mean the real receiving end. The constant drumbeat of criticism, the cutting remarks, the dread of never living up to the horizon of expectation, never catching it.

I hate my family for what they did, and frankly, I hate you for advocating it, for encouraging a parent to make some other child's life miserable beyond imagining so you can placate your ideal about overachieving.

I am a real god damned human being. I am not "just one of those cases" that didn't work out.

PS: The real shit-kicker is that eventually I did get it together on my own terms, with just OK grades by even my own standards and graduated from some out-of-state land grant university. Some of those other kids who got straight As or whatever, some whom went to Cal or Stanford, whom spent their youth jumping through hoops for their parents' affections, work at the same place I do, writing shitty enterprise code.
As previously seen ;-)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1779280

Be sure to check out the parent article, which was inspired by this HN post:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1725592
Most people I know prefer texting to talking on the phone. It's easier to multitask or defer your response. Video communication is even more invasive than audio. I seriously doubt that communicating with your peers by text is now considered archaic will hold true (at least compared to video).
I start to think that we are alone here with you ;).
My absolute favorite in terms of updating is Calibre; an otherwise excellent app (albeit with a fairly "experimental" UI).

Calibre tells me about a new release every single time I open it, they seem to release almost daily.

Sadly the "update" button on that dialog merely opens the web-browser, where you have to manually download and install the new version. Oh, and that is a 60MB(!) download every time.

The procedure is so absurd that it's actually amusing again. That's why I'm still doing it, I guess, even though after 20 or 30 updates I still haven't noticed any visible change to the software.
While I agree that bash and Co. are somewhat unintuitive and their syntax a little bit weird, the examples of commands Rush is supposed to make easier are intentionally made complex. That prevents me, as a potential user, from seeing how exactly would Rush appeal to me for administration and everyday tasks..
Object BSON Mapper? Since it is mapping from objects to MongoDB's BSON format.
Oversold flights: how low can you go?
Meth dealers use technology meant to curb epidemic
People OK with Murdering Assange
We've already shown that remote and non-present communication works, but the difference between delayed and instant communication is huge. It's not so much text vs. video but that text gives you the ability to think and write/rewrite, while audio or video forces you to be real-time. IM, text, email, letters, and comments have more in common with each other than the issues of presence or remoteness, as do telephony and video.

Text-based communication won't disappear. Video may replace audio-only, but they're intrinsically different and each has their advantages and purposes. The medium or means may change, but we'll always have a delayed and an instant method of communication.
Maybe they would if they knew it would result in them getting better results in future. If I could ban certain websites from appearing in my results, I would.
Indeed, SRAM layouts are very regular (it's a lot of the same), so the lithography process is easier to get right. This is also why new, less-nm processes will first be used to produce Flash/RAM and only later for complex CPU logic.
Then you can pull the money from Berkeley, I guess. Other than that, the large majority of the very-top-tier schools are private. Yes, they receive public money for research, but the undergraduate "experience" is funded by tuition, endowment, and donations.

Still, I agree. This seems like a fantastically inefficient way to meet people with different backgrounds.
I posted this to the feature requests a long time ago. I don't know how much pg and the other maintainers actually look at the feature requests (especially given that the same request for google.com, which seems like a nobrainer, has been near the top for >a year), but it's worth a try: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1239752
Yeah, I would have skipped the startups and taken the job at Google.
Narrowing the path of design
Video communication would also solve the biggest issue with tablet computers: text production is just too cumbersome.
Google Goggles Now Includes Sudoku Puzzle Solving
I've had plenty of classes that worked that way. CS228 at Stanford has weekly quizzes; CS148 has weekly projects (and two exams). 154 has weekly problem sets (as well as two exams). 221 has 4 projects and 4 problem sets and a midterm. And so on.
You and the article are saying the same thing. But the author of the article is presenting the same kinds of ideas in the form of a metaphor that's easy to understand for his intended audience. That's ok, right? It's the same kind of thing discussed in this article from HN the other day http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2079473 .
The anatomy of a WordPress theme (Infographic)
$16 million? I'd be happy with a $50k investment...
I don't know much about photo editing, but I've used Gimp for a little while along with Inkscape for editing. I use it for simple stuff- drop shadows, minor logo work, etc. Is there a noticeable difference vs. photoshop on that level?
Personally, I dislike the "more" way of viewing comments. I like to scroll with the arrow keys or page up/down (well, fn + arrow). If I have to move the mouse over to "show more," I'm just as likely to hit cmd + w. Especially if its "more" for different levels of comments and to get more comments. The button won't even be in the same place!
What?!! VB6 is still alive?!!
Aha! Thanks for letting me know! Fwiw, Enlive looks brilliant, seriously.
I am no authority to talk about it, but usually I do not require an authority to talk about most of the things. The point is that I evaluate a comment on the basis of the content and not the author. This is why I learned that many of my favourite comments are written by patio11 only after some article were written about him. And even now I usually have no idea who I answered to. If someone is providing a nice line of logic and some good proof who cares who said it.
Maybe there should be a question: How long is your typical visit to HN? to complement this one.

Poll Added: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2091261
I am not a gamer but that was really fun and had to force myself to close the tab to get back to work.

ps. maybe make an option for the font to be slightly larger for those with high-res monitors and/or bad eyesight
Google Goggles Solves Sudoku Puzzles
To use your line of reasoning, let's take another anomaly: Steve Jobs. The dude was adopted, was a community college dropout and did a ton of drugs. He woke up one day at 42 and found himself back at the CEO position of the company he co-founded and now he's considered by many the most successful CEO of our time. His company has a market cap of $300 billion+ and has created a whole lot of other intangibles by surrounding himself by other great people who love what they do.

Creativity and passion is not something you can teach your child--much less beat into them (this actually achieves the contrary). But yes, that doesn't mean some discipline and other blahs aren't important.
Pfffft. Dunedin is where it's at!
Seriously, right?!
> I'm generally an admirer of the school of parenting laid out by Chua

Do you have any reply to this?
http://fallibleideas.com/parenting-and-tradition
The bumping gimmick and the rest of the app has a learning curve. It's not particularly steep, but it is steep enough to prevent me from ever trying it with anyone new.

I've tried to use Bump on a few occasions and every time I encountered two problems:

1) App says: "Please bump again". People tend to not want to physically smack two expensive objects together, so they shake em at one another. Timing issues, connectivity issues, and just general coordination issues make this particularly awkward.

2) Other bumper says: "Wait? I didn't actually share anything?" The sharing selection UI was needlessly confusing. Granted, it only shared contacts when I tried it.

Seeing as I had no idea I could share anything other than contacts, I just downloaded the latest version and looked through it. The whole concept of checking off a bunch of boxes before bumping seems strange. I don't have anyone to bump with right this moment, but it would seem preferable to bump first, send/receive data one bit at a time, then disconnect. Rather than make a big bundle of selections and issue a transaction.

EDIT: And regarding contact sharing in particular, I actually really like business cards. I almost always carry a pen and having a physical token in my wallet is a great follow up reminder for later. However, I get annoyed when people don't have any whitespace on their cards for notes!
Every year this phenomenon that you identified gets worse, and the rate of that change is getting worse, too. Don't be too hard on yourself, though. Just finish something, and keep going. Because it'd be even slower if you tried to keep 100% "current" on all the new ideas, because then you'd never finish anything at all. And how slow would that be? Don't sweat it. Work hard, do your best.

But in general the days of big mega frameworks seem to be numbered, and nimble micro-frameworks is the way of the future. Or at very least it's a very powerful fad right now. Play! is a great thing to be working with.
Or the viola, an underappreciated sibling to the violin?

Thank you! I consider it the great mistake of Western music that the exquisitely-toned viola lost out to the squeaky fiddle. The Russians got it right: they call the violin skripka, which is exactly how it sounds, halfway between screeching and scraping. I actually have trouble listening to orchestral music because of this. That high-pitched squeaking gets in the way. It's as if the leading wind instrument had been the piccolo.

Fully agree about barbaric parenting practices as well. :)
The article says they are going to put physical stations in venues that people can "bump." I love that idea. Making it a physical act that other people can see is really smart. The activity isn't just happening on the phone, it's happening in the real world, people are literally bumping into things.
Exclusive Interview, Streakly & Forrst founder, Kyle Bragger
Good work but just shy of being 3 years old (I posted about it on Ruby Inside in Feb 2008). A lot of old stuff resurfacing on HN recently it seems - perhaps we should be dropping the "N"? ;-)
Becoming a Team of Individual Specialists
Yes, the noticeable difference is Gimp sucks!!

Hats off to the Gimp development team for pulling off so many features and above all having an open-source product out there. But the problem is PhotoShop has set the expectations way too high. And I'm afraid, a non-commercial product will never be able reach that level.
5+ times a day
I wouldn't say that's true, "Jewish mother stereotype" has a full length Wikipedia article of its own, although it's an old stereotype.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_mother
Poll: How long is your typical visit to HN?
The top comment on the current poll "How often do you visit HN?" suggests that there might be a big variation in how much time people spend on HN on each visit. This should help shed light on that.
Less than a minute
1-3 minutes
4-10 minutes
11-30 minutes
31-60 minutes
61-120 minutes
more than 120 minutes
This is valuable feedback from an artist who actually bothered to try to use the software. Ultimately, for a highly-paid artist, learning a new interface is itself costly.
As a young person in the West, almost all the unhappy other young people I know just want a girlfriend. Perhaps you should find some young people and see if teaching them duty gets them one.
I think that for small stuff like that the difference won't be very noticeable,especially to the end user. If you get some designers to really look at it they might notice a difference, but I wouldn't want to pay for a Photoshop license for minor stuff like that.
I said to myself, whatever, DuckDuck's the shit. Then I searched a keyword relevant to my industry, the first five results:

niche.gr
niche-factory.fr
cn-niche.com
myspace.com/russianniche
niche.kz

Right, then. Guess the problem isn't specific to Google...
Mostly just to scoure the first page (maybe the second) and grab some new content, which I then Instapaper for reading later.
Atoms have neutral charge.
You're assuming that the people who want access to your data don't already work at Google:

http://gawker.com/5637234/
The only time it's a productivity hit to me is when I'm procrastinating anyway. I wouldn't worry about that. Focus on making the conversation as interesting as you can.
A well reasoned response. An area where the focus on rote memorization and lack of creativity/risk taking starts to show in the educational realm is in US grad schools. I've known of individuals coming to the US from China at the top of their class, but thrown into an environment where they need to think critically and strive for the unique idea upon which to base their dissertation on, they struggle.

That is not to say that in grad school situations, finding an idea / area of study leading to a PhD is easy, but those with a background based in rote have struggled more in my experience.
How exactly do you get into this network? Is his network closely connected to the PG/YC network?
>Sometimes the main reasons said out loud - "well, I just want to be happy" - seem to mask other darker reasons, like fear of failure or inertia or feeling ill-equipped to make a difference.

Sometimes obsession with external validation masks the same things.

There are no easy answers as to what is best for any given human, but there's definitely a market for those looking for the kind of easy answers that Amy Chua is selling.
What StarCraft Can Teach You about Being Productive
> The aim of my thesis is to discover why proprietary tools like Maple, Mathlab, and Mathematica have flourished within the mathematics world given that theorem proving and calculating seem to require access to the algorithms for verification processes.

We don't have access to the algorithms that a human mathematician working unaided uses to do things like evaluate a tricky integral, simplify a complicated expression, and so on, yet we can still verify their proofs.

I don't see why him using a computer program, proprietary or not, would make a difference. We verify the proof by checking the result, not the thought processes or computational processes that were used behind the scenes to come up with it.
@samdk: Plupload is separated into a core API and a jQuery widget that has the UI. So if you don't like the UI you can just change it anyway you like. Also I think you should buy a bigger screen if you think it's to large. 800x600 isn't the default screen size these days. :)

@xcvd: HTML5 upload is far from ready yet. Since only the absolutely latest browsers support it and some of them have pretty serious bugs or limitations. Also IE has still like 50% of the market so unless that changes soon there is a need for fallbacks to Flash, Silverlight etc. We just wanted to develop an uploader that would work regardless of what technology the user has.
I don't quite understand the downvotes, anyone care to comment?

I just meant that time is a valuable commodity which artists can rarely afford, unless they have a really good reason to. I applaud this reviewer for having the time.
A more interesting question is, to me: is The GIMP an adequate replacement for Photoshop Elements? I believe they have the same target market—people who are "adding drop shadows, doing minor logo work, etc."
I don't think his main problem is with the interface.