skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Maybe we're lucky in Pittsburgh, but we have the best of both worlds at the main branch of the Carnegie Library. You can take a tour of where I work 2 or 3 days per week:

http://www.clpgh.org/locations/main/tours/virtualtour/

It's fantastic. It was built by Andrew Carnegie in 1895 and most of it is original. I get inspiration from the 20 foot ceilings and hand made ornamentation everywhere you look. They simply don't build things like this any more. There are quiet reading rooms, large tables, plenty of light, and oh yeah, a Crazy Mocha coffee shop in the building. I use a cell phone dongle on my laptop and most people know that email is my preferred communication method.

If I need a break, I can look at priceless artifacts in the Carnegie museum through the windows in the open stacks. Or just get the world's most disgusting hot dog at the "O" a block away. If I need inspiration, that'll either make me or break me.

One of these days, I'd like to make the claim that some incredible technology of the 21st century was conceived in an edifice borne out of the some of the best technology of the 19th century.

"My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth." - Andrew Carnegie at the Dedication of Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, November 5, 1895.
How are any of these Infographics?

They're three Information Architecture workflow diagrams.

People who bandy the term Infographic around in this manner might as well just use "graphic" or "diagram".
On the one hand, I agree with the commenters on that post that it's too early to be cutting off updates for the Kindle 2 and DX, if that is indeed what is happening.

On the other hand, I think this issue is almost exclusively principle-of-the-matter for said commenters, as I highly doubt many of them will have any real use for "real" page numbers. I can imagine it being occasionally useful with reference material, but nobody's Dan Brown reading marathon is going to be ruined without it.

I especially look forward to someone being mad because a book's page numbers don't match the particular printing that person has. What page numbers are canonical? Hardcover, 1st edition?
For the record, this is only illegal in the US if the applicant is over 40.
Your share of the coverage is $100. The cost of that coverage is most certainly not $100. Odds are your employer is paying $400 (given the standard 80/20 split at smaller companies).
Are you Kidding, Court Corruption STOPS the Real Inventors of the MPEG LA video Decoding - iViewit Technology invented it and has no rights.. DeniedPatent.com
I came here to post this very thing. When I was working downtown I decided to go to the library during my lunch break. To my surprise there was almost nobody in the library actually reading. However, there were people on every single computer workstation. Glancing over the screens I could see a variety of pornographic images, facebook and myspace pages, and youtube. The library is a great resource, but I was completely pissed off that my tax dollars go to support that.
Wouldn't technological development also need to be static in this scenario, as well?

It sounds like you're describing a completely static economy. The money supply doesn't change; the market doesn't expand or shrink; the utility value of goods doesn't improve. Has such an economy ever existed?
...once. Just show that even you aren't too good to do the hard stuff. Don't waste your time washing dishes when you actually need to be doing other things.
At that point, you might as well find co-working space with decent coffee.
Thanks for the explanation. I think he's totally wrong though, and could have just overridden whatever setting he was unhappy with in his own program. It seems crazy to pessimize every other program for the sake of one solution though, especially when the approach taken is considered cheating and the solution marked as "interesting alternative".

And no criticism implied on the Shootout maintainers, I'm sure that dealing with the submitters is like herding cats :-)
I have occasionally brought my laptop to the library near my office to work. However if I'm at home and want to head out, the nearest coffee shop is 4 blocks away and the nearest library is 20.
Airline profits for 2010 were $2.5b in the black.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2010/06/airline_prof...
I wouldn't guess that. My company is four people, and it's my first full time job. When I hired a contractor for a few weeks, who I'd guess is in his mid 30's (I'm 24), he couldn't handle it when I made a decision he didn't agree with. Totally destroyed the relationship.
Yeah as soon as I wrote that I realized the fallacy in the first paragraph...oops!
Unfortunately, the jobs paid for a much lower standard of living than today, the health insurance would pay a doctor to tell you "you have terminal cancer", and all of this was only available to white males.

(Meanwhile, a terrorist group with millions of members was setting off about 20 bombs a year plus assorted lynchings and other acts of violence. The response by law enforcement was mainly gun control targeted at the victims of the terrorist group.)

The world of Mad Men is awesome if you get to be Don Draper. For everyone else, it sucked.
Where you look for trickery you will find trickery. Look for the wisdom and you will find that instead.

What you actually mean by "excessive love of gain" is that some people either do not see or do not count the externalities of their activities - they see only the gain for themselves and not the loss for others, for example.

For example, a thief doesn't care that you lose $1000 for every $100 he makes, so he is happy to go about this wholesale destruction of wealth for his own gain. But then he is not evil because he loves gain, but because he disregards other people's losses.

Taking a less evil example, a man buying a cheap pair of shoes from walmart does so for the gain of what he perceives to be a good-value-for-money pair of shoes. He either does not care, or more likely does not realise that these cheap shoes will probably fall apart soon (thus costing him more to buy a new pair of shoes) and that some people on the other side of the world were exploited to make those shoes, and that this caused them suffering, and could be a direct cost to him too in this inter-connected world, both in opportunity cost of some perhaps smart people being exploited to make shoes, and in the losses caused by a possible war somewhere else. This man is also not evil because of his love of gain, but simply because of his ignorance, or perhaps stupidity.

All men do love gain. And, as Socrates argues, all men should love gain. But some men are evil (unrelated to their very healthy and natural love of gain), and some men are fools (so they do not know how to pick things which will provide them actual gains).

The classic "loves gain too much" example of the last couple of years, investment bankers, might fall into either category. But whichever the case, they are not evil because of their natural love of gain, but because of either their short-sightedness ("Prices will keep rising forever!"), or their lack of caring for the externalities of their actions ("I don't care if the economy loses $100m so long as I get a $1m bonus").

Gain is good.

Greed is good.

Stupidity, ignorance and lack of compassion are evil.

tl;dr; :: The point that Socrates successfully makes is that it's not love of gain (excessive or not) which is the problem, but the fundamental nature of the person expressing that love. Everyone loves gain, but some people don't give a shit who they hurt to get it.
I'll echo the same as most other posters: Internet is the limiting factor.

I love working there. No distractions is a great way to shut out the world and focus. My local libraries limited internet access to an hour a day. If 3g was cheaper in Canada, I'd just man up and get a stick or tether to my cell, but I'd need a line of credit to make that happen.
What's your (and others') two cents on the following two provisions:

1. Small business tax credit (35% of healthcare premium is given as a tax credit) http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=223666,00.html

2. Tax credit for individuals. http://www.healthcare.gov/foryou/healthy/index.html

I strongly suspect that neither of these will be available to any financially responsible adult, since my soundbite version of the healthcare bill was it was geared towards the poor (many other aid programs such as food stamps dont kick in until you deplete you assets to ridiculous levels like $2500 in TOTAL including your car).
If companies dropped everything when a handful of people whined about an interface change in an application, website, or anything of the like, there would never be any updates. This isn't a ringing endorsement of Skype 5 for Mac, but companies can't be held hostage by a few people who don't like change.
‘A Mans Desk’ — Tips for building a desk.
Best thing I've ever done. I work for a university and happen to live a few blocks away, so I will go to their library to work on my side projects. They close at 2AM and I've found a nice room there where undergrads don't seem to want to wander, so it's a perfect place to work.

It's quiet, and I've been conditioned from years of schooling that when I'm sitting at a table at the library, I ought to be working and not slacking. And, I can access journals, news archives, Safari/O'Reilly books, and all sorts of other useful resources while on the library wireless network.

I can still even get a cup of coffee at the coffee shop in the library for cheaper than Starbucks, and it comes right out of my paycheck.
...while they still exist.
It doesn't have to be either Starbucks or a library. It can be both.
And before "Mainframe" we called it "Time Sharing"
The main branch of the public library in Christchurch explicitly offers free wifi even when it's closed ... that's hard to beat (if you can find anywhere to sit).
You're right. I fixed it.
Git-revisioned protocols and sharing is nice, and is one step up from the current situation in sharing and developing lab protocols. DIYbio as a group has been eyeballing more programmatic ways of specifying protocols, either through structured document formats (like XML) or parsed languages like in Microsoft's Biocoder project:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/india/projects/biocod...
or xml: http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/irc/pcr.xml

Still, I think this isn't a solved problem. The API for Biocoder feels all wrong for numerous reasons; on top of that, nobody is going to learn a new API, library or programming language just to write down a protocol, unless they are being paid, or there's some really compelling reason to do so (which, there isn't). Without something changing here, you just end up with a giant corpus of protocols like we presently have, without metadata and basically useless unless you already know what you want or need, or have the time to manually check and double check everything in each protocol you might be using.

One of the advantages of machine parsable protocols is being able to query against your lab inventory...
http://diyhpl.us/cgit/skdb/plain/doc/BOMs/diybio-equipment.y...

I should also point out that Jonathan Cline was working on parsing plaintext protocols a while back:

Don’t Train the Biology Robot: Have the Machine Read the Protocol and Automate Itself
http://88proof.com/synthetic_biology/blog/archives/290

So it's just unclear how you plan to fix or assist in some of these dynamics, at this point, or which specific problems you're solving.

I also posted this to the diybio people:
http://groups.google.com/group/diybio/browse_thread/thread/1...
And coffee shops of all forms are almost sure-fire money losers.

I'd never heard that before. Is Starbucks an exception? Does their volume make the difference?
To be fair, they did address some of these concerns in the latest update of 5. The text is smaller and spacing is much tighter. Definitely an improvement. My biggest concern is that 5 doesn't allow flash apps to access your web cam when it's running.
I have a 3G/4G modem with unlimited use (from Clear), and no longer consider WiFi availability as an important part of the decision making process of where to work. I'm currently camped in the desert in Southern California, 35 miles from the nearest "big" city (Brawley, which is not very big, but it does have a Walmart).

But, I never have been able to work in coffee shops. I can't think long enough with all the distractions to do anything of real value. Email, sure. Browsing reddit, no problem. But, actual work? No way. Library would probably work, though I've only tried it a few times when I was in Canada and didn't have 3G; it didn't work very well, as the Internet was always too slow or broken.
That's why my first order of business when opening a new computer is to flatten and reinstall. Usually manufacturers seem to include their bloatware on a separate recovery disc, leaving the OS disc fresh.

I always offer to do this for my family members too as soon as they buy laptops, because if I don't, I'll inevitably be on the receiving end of calls like, "acabal, why is my laptop so slow, I only just bought it last month, does it have a virus?!?!"
Reads exactly how much Facebook wall sounds when Facebook update their UI. The temptation is always to listen to your most vocal unhappy customers while the vast majority carry on happy.
Value of their stock? http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/apple-and-google-vs-the-pc-industry...
I am not aware of a significant number of Ruby developers who jump back to Perl instead of writing Ruby libraries. I'm not sure where you got that impression from.
> In my (biased, but well-founded) experience, it comes down to a question of whether I'd rather be distracted by a cute girl or an old man getting reprimanded for looking at dirty pictures.

Ha! Reminds me of my Brooklyn Public Library experience. The building looks fantastic on the outside, but on the inside it is a dreary, institutional wasteland. I had to pick my inspiration up off the floor when I walked in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Public_Library_by...

After I located the one room with outlets, I crammed my way onto the folding table and connected to the flaky wifi, which needs to be reauthorized every hour. While answering emails, I could not help but notice the hardcore anime porn viewing session at the bank of workstations across from the table. I doubt I'll be back.
Also, you the Mighty Developer of Mightiness, need to spend some time on the scut work so you can figure how to reduce the need for it.
@ioerror will be thrilled that you're throwing an unconference in his honor.
Actually slavak, inner loop C performance is all that's necessarily to make many of these tools viable.

If I can write my entire program in LANGUAGEX and just compile the inner loop a magic way and voila, the program runs at 85% C speed, we have a winner. We can use it in long-running programs which have a fierce compute time bounding.

This is an article explaining the magic way for a flavor of lisp.
This - the article title is frankly linkbait given that it doesn't connect to the core statistic they're citing. But I doubt entitling it "Why won't anyone hire 55+ geeks?" would get half as many clicks...

Also, at 55+, someone went to college 30+ years ago. There are lots of amazing, smart folks in that category but I doubt many of them majored in comp sci in the 70s. To make this statistic valid you'd have to normalize for their academic background vs. younger engineers, who are probably more likely to have a formal computer science degree.
I'm a non-smoking 31 year old half-marathon runner, and I'm paying $110/month in PA.

I would assume you'd also save hundreds of dollars a month on rent and other living expenses in PA (or MA, though I can't speak directly for Boston). I don't think moving 2 hours away to save $1k or more per month is a bad move for a startup.
Great point. For the less mature, I think the library helps strip away the pretense a bit too. Sipping lattes and being on Twitter seem to go together. Being at the library and doing real work seem to go together too.
Health insurance has become much less of an issue for startup founders, provided you are under 26 and your parents have healthcare.

That's one thing that will make it much easier for me to found.
Then what kind of work do you ask your employee to do in the last 30 days?
...or even college. Same issue.
This is really cool. The only problem i saw is that you could sort of trick it by singing a few wrong notes around the correct one.
Capital can solve the health care problem, along with many others.
The joy of ebooks is that the page number set you choose can be configured. Have a friend with the Hardcover Second Edition? Click that one.
Aren't these accounts precisely what generate Facebook's revenue?

There appears to be a large number of people who don't want to associate their public identity with their 'social gaming' profile - does this really cause any harm?
Right. Or if consumers do care, they care about the subsidy more. If consumers preferred paying more to buying bloatware-subsidized machines, there would be more on the market. Consumers increasingly care about one thing only: price. See Wal-Mart.
Sample is massively skewed - southern poor states. Other variables absolutely wash out "collective bargaining" as an important factor.
Not always true--the Dell I bought just last month came with the OS and the bloatware on separate discs. I formatted the computer using the OS disc and it was a totally fresh version of Windows 7 with not a trace of bloatware in sight.

Though I'm pretty sure they used to do what you described in the past, so I wouldn't put it past other manufacturers to still do it!
They have already bought a license, use any old install DVD with the license they already own.
Ruby developers I've worked with who've done exactly what the guy in the article did?

"Yo Sam, what's the .pl file. Is that from a tool? Naw, the perl library is really nice...I'd have had to write the parser if I did it in Ruby"

Most of the Ruby developers I know are in their 30's and all but 2 know perl. That may be the difference.
Interesting. Is it much cheaper? Was it your idea to outsource yourself or was it your boss's? Did you choose Transylvania yourself? ;) Would love to pick your brain if you want to flip me an email: dave at rapin dot com
That thread was going since before the official release when in beta phase. Presumably the idea of beta testers is to help shape a better product?
Behind Todays Google Logo
> They no longer compete on quality but rather with cost.

I'm not certain that books ever competed on quality. A cursory glance at the NY Times best-seller list of the past few years seems to indicate that quality isn't a [major] factor. Unless you somehow consider Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, Twilight, and so on, to somehow be the paragon of quality literature.
I've used this extensively for generating spreadsheets, and it's pretty awesome.
This post is neglecting to list the most obvious reason of all to work at the library - a wealth of reference information (in...gasp!...something you can hold and read in any light!)
Again, my comment isn't about the article.
Discard it. Old computers are less than worthless.

Let's say you've got an old Pentium 4 machine that you want to make use of - nothing ancient, still perfectly capable of doing useful work. If you use it as BitTorrent machine, it'll easily suck up 150w. As a distributed computing node, more like 300w. Running 24/7 that's 1314 kW/h or 2628 kW/h a year.

In the UK, cheap electricity costs around 13 pence per kilowatt hour, meaning that this 'free' old machine will cost you £170 a year with a modest workload or £340 a year if working hard. An Atom-based nettop will consume around 30 watts under load, will have comparable performance to a fast Pentium 4[1] and can be bought for less than £200.

The only reasonable thing to do with an old computer is discard it, or recycle it if you don't mind the idea of a Chinese child stripping it for parts[2].

[1] http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+N2...
[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/world/2002/...
The pragmatic engineer versus the scientific designer.
The obvious issue for me is how to arrive to that list of potential problems in order to be able to later benchmark a solution/product idea. Randomly brainstorm? Focus on areas i am passionate about? Professional domain? All of the above?

Maybe a new term should be coined akin to writer's block: The entrepreneur's block!
In the UK it's free if you have a registered Starbucks card (which doesn't cost anything).
This is why, aside from programming ability, I judge programmers not by their age but by the conversations we have over beers.

And yes, I do have a slight bias against programmers who don't drink (unless they're recovering alcoholics or can't produce alcohol dehydrogenase or something like that).
160? Every time Facebook changes something they get a million people signing a petition and vowing to quit if Facebook doesn't change it back.
Older one, but honestly she hadn’t installed anything apart from Chrome and VLC.
yep, it is the catastrophic that gets most people.

I really wish the administration had tried to take some baby steps instead of going for something they are giving waivers to avoid and really not explaining how their thing would be different from the VA or IHS.

A "flood"-style insurance to protect against the catastrophic, and changing the Health savings accounts to be easier and inheritable probably would have been good first steps.
Yep, the $199 Nexus S (with contract) works great. Not locked. Not even any lame carrier apps pre-installed.
This was a very good explanation, a summary of Socrates's point that made it click much better for me.
Did you actually look at the article? It's just some random guy doing some scripting. He's not using any modern perl stuff so it's not interesting for perl fans. It's certainly not interesting for the rest of us who don't care about perl. What's the point?
Many academic libraries are open to the public and have better accommodations. I live in Boston so it's academic library heaven.
Debugging Tips
Groupon Has Called Every Business In The United States
Does anyone know if there's any sort of open source project for a modern Lisp OS that is ongoing?
Actually, it was an honest question. I've always assumed that metaphors were a good thing in UI, and was surprised to see an argument against them.

The best writing is often found where you can't tell if the author was being sarcastic, and to me, this read like that.
Sure, but what you get out of the process can vary widely. Enough bitching from users on a minority platform can cause companies to outright drop that platform (not that i think that's likely in this case). Other people only listen to the positive feedback (which can be useful).

But the outrageous tantrums being thrown on this thread are just ridiculous and counter productive. I doubt they were even cathartic from the poster's end.
This varies tremendously from location to location. Covered coffee mugs are often allowed.
I think the point here isn't just that the CEO was performing a mundane task, but that he was doing work that had to get done, even though it wasn't a desirable task. There was a giant pile of dishes - he cleaned them. The dishes were the thing that needed to get done.

If he does it just once, I question his motives. This repeated behavior shows his true conviction.
I once paid more for an overweight baggage fee than the cost for my entire ticket. (EasyJet) It literally would've been cheaper if they'd allowed me to buy a second seat and put my bag on that.

I don't mind that I get charged an appropriate amount of money, but the price obscurity is just one more nuisance in a mode of travel that is overflowing with nuisances.