skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Perhaps it's that people who bought the more expensive model thought they were buying higher quality components, but now realise they paid to have a piece of foam not be put where a piece of foam should not be?
That consumers in general are happy to pay premium for premium features, but not for nothing?

I mean, to me this practice is practically fraudulent when it comes to consumer goods. Yes, it makes business sense to offer product at different price points. You could argue that the higher priced model pays for the R&D that went into developing the headphones. That doesn't change the fact that these are the exact same headphones with a $150 price difference.

Comparing to the software case where you pay more to have features put in that may be disabled in the cheaper version, there is a big difference there. When you buy the more expensive version you know what was taken out, and getting that is what you are paying for. Would anyone buy the more expensive headphones if the box said "unnecessary foam not added"?
I'd recommend taking the scrolling "who I am" box and making it be fixed relative to the page or fixed relative to the screen. Its movement makes reading really annoying and it isn't convenient or anything.
Not instantaneously, SAD really relates to circadian rythms and while the sun coming back out with fix it eventually you can fix it much faster by changing your habits and/or using the right lights.
Tobacco has nothing to do with controlled substances in the first place! Are you out of your mind?

Tobacco is regulated by the federal government. The only reason tobacco and alcohol aren't scheduled is because they are -explicitly designated in the Controlled Substances Act- to be regulated by existing commerce laws. To say tobacco has nothing to do with controlled substances is objectively false.

I won't even address the assertion that "addiction has nothing to do with the molecule". Since a drug consists entirely of molecules, your claim doesn't make semantic sense.

I'll address this for you. When people refer to something as addictive, they either mean a psychologically habit forming activity (psychological addiction) or a substance that causes withdrawal symptoms when the body abruptly stops receiving it (physical addiction).

Most of US drug policy, in particular the Controlled Substances Act, is designed to curb the abuse of recreational drugs. Does this sound like its addressing psychological addiction or physical addiction? Keep in mind that not only tobacco, but also alcohol, the only recreational drug those withdrawal symptoms are lethal, are deferred to other policies in the Controlled Substances Act.

So clearly, the statement "addiction has nothing to do with the molecule" is referring to psychological addiction. You assert this statement is false. You are saying that psychological addiction is directly related to the composition of the elements used in the addictive activity. To be consistent with this logic, you must also reject the following claims:

"gambling addiction has nothing to do with decks of playing cards"

"video game addiction has nothing to do with executable code"

"sex addiction has nothing to do with penises or vaginas"

Surely you must realize that the majority of people who try physically addictive substances do not end up addicted. It does not make sense to say the chemicals involved cause the addiction.
In this case it might be exactly same as with chips, with headphones failing some QC test being labeled as cheaper and getting additional piece of foam to partially fix whatever badness was discovered in such test (like unintended resonance caused by manufacturing tolerances).
"You could (theoretically) get a graduate degree in C.S. without ever opening your text editor, if you're into proofs and the like."

Other than to edit your LaTeX document files, or course! :-)
At first I wanted to say true dat. I am now going to say, True that.
It is also a fallacy that one should make ambitious choices because some well-known few have succeeded.

In either case you are making a decision out of emotion (fear or hope).

edit: better noun.
Well... At least IE wasn't an integral part of MacOS...
I know goto is not necessarily a sign of bad code and there are situations where they are needed. That being said even though I am not the most experienced, I have never needed to use a goto (except QuickBasic maybe).

The linux kernel works very well but does "just working" necessarily mean that that is the only way have it function. "It works" doesn't mean its good code.

I did not look at the code very closely but one goto I saw seemed to point from the main loop into a function. Which to me seems like an odd use, a use that can easily be avoided.
How does coworking work? Is that someplace where you could leave your desktop, or do people just bring laptops in?
By definition, the position that there are significant differences between different races is racism. Likewise, Sailer appears to be a racist and VDARE appears to be a racist web site. I don't know where either Sailer or VDARE has ever expressed actual outright hatred, per se, but "hate group" seems to be one of those non-literal political buzzwords nowadays. I think it would be better if everyone were to speak plainly and literally rather than using ill-fitting political cliches. (See: Orwell, "Politics and the English Language": http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm)

I hope all people everywhere know better than to accept anyone's conclusions without serious corroboration or fact-checking. Yes, Sailer's conclusions are racist--but the question is whether they're true or not. And if you're willing to stop short at identifying them as racist without even asking that question, perhaps Sailer isn't the only one with a clear, ideological bias.

Ideological biases usually manifest themselves as flawed arguments that some conclusion or other is true. This is the type of bias you accuse Sailer of; I think your accusation is perfectly reasonable. Sometimes, though, ideological biases manifest themselves as social taboos. When that happens, everyone comfortably forgets about the question of truth or falsity and dismisses ideas out of hand simply for broaching the taboo. (See: pg, "What You Can't Say": http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

I'm not arguing for or against anyone's conclusions here, just suggesting some reasonable ground rules for rational conversation.
The added piece of foam has to cost them something. So, really, the "broken" headphones should be more expensive, right?

In any case, my friends and I have long held the belief that "If you can't open it, you don't really own it". If my toaster breaks, you can be sure I'll open it up and try to fix it before I think of buying a new one.

Though before anyone thinks of flaming, I'm ok with my iPad. I can make an exception for this type of tech!
Good to great.

Blue ocean strategy
On the flip side - whenever I see stuff which is so easily modded to its full version I usually imagine an engineer inside a large corporation grinning because he knows some kid somewhere will figure this out and get an early christmas present. Case in point - the amd 6950 radeons that can be flashed to radeon 6970's, earlier nvidia cards that could be softmodded to quadros etc . I mean the product differentiation could be actually a lot more involved and sometimes it just feels like the product was designed to be unlocked by the hackers and tinkerers.
At YAPC 2001 (Montréal), he introduced programming in Klingon. (Yes, it really worked.)

As I recall, it tended to emphasis imperative constructs.
So the plastic bag that supposedly contains the driver is labeled, "System with resonator left side". Is "System" what they call the driver?

I'm interested in seeing what Sennheiser's justification for this is. It seems odd to piss off buyers of high-end products, because they're the ones that do the research. You can't just go to Target and buy some HD5*5 cans; you have to order them from an audiophile-y place (or Amazon).

(The processor manufacturers make their price structure clear. They make the good ones, part of it is broken, so they turn off the broken part and sell it to you as a lower-end model. And if there is no demand for the fully-working ones, and they don't have enough broken ones to meet the demand for them, they just cripple the good ones. But like unscrewing the headphone and taking out foam, you can just change the multiplier and enjoy the increased performance. So why complain unless you already bought the high-end product?)
Could you expand on what the in-school pilot programs are? In what way are the encouraging? What types of schools are you piloting in? Public?

I haven't yet seen much effective use of technology in the learning environment that touches anything but the periphery of the formal educational experience. I'd be excited to hear about something better going on!
Yea, it was nothing compared with the attempt to integrate IE with the Windows shell and make it's renderer a core system component. BTW, WebKit is also a core system component on Mac OS X now, yet it is updated as part of Safari.
I think the t-shirt case is a great example of where Amazon/Walmart type of purchasing power _won't_ always win.

I don't want the t-shirt with he witty slogan or amusing image that Amazon or Walmart are selling by the thousands, I want to be the only guy in my city wearing that gag.

I'm also never going to buy coffee beans from Walmart, I'm going to buy them from one of my local roasters, who can often tell me the names of the farmers who produced it as well as the level of roast used and the reasoning behind choosing that roast level for this particular bean.

Commodities will end up being bought/sold as commodities, but not all purchases are commodities. And some peoples commodities (like coffee and t-shirts) are other peoples "specialty goods".
At the moment, you're stuck in the burnout. It's draining your energy and enthusiasm, so you're not going to have the cool ideas to go off and do something better because your brain just isn't in the right place. If you can afford to get away, do so, try new possibilities and see what they bring to your mind. Getting out of the current self-fulfilling pit of despair sounds like it'll do you good.

The only caveat I'd say is that 'travel the world while you're free and single with no-one to tie you down might sound great, but.... In personality tests I tend to come out as an introvert but I'm fairly sure I'm actually an extrovert with poor social skills (and hey, self awareness is the first step to improvement...) - I know I need others around me and that that takes more time in a new environment than for some. For me, the 'travel the world, see the sights' advice would make me lonely and miserable in all these beautiful places I'd spent a fortune to see. Make the most of the opportunity to do things you wouldn't otherwise get a chance to, but be honest with yourself about what it takes to make you happy; don't press on regardless with the 'opportunity of a lifetime' if taking it will cause you greater pain elsewhere.
I did. I just don't see how this is any different than intentionally removing features from software in order to sell it at lower prices.
Thanks for visiting my site and for all the comments and suggestions. I don't take criticism personally, so I appreciate the honest feedback. I think the contrast probably was a bit light, so I tried to tweak it a bit without losing the spirit of the site. To address a couple points:

Gojomo - I was thinking the same thing about there being an app running in the background that records taps and swipes. That would be pretty cool.

Pyre - This study wasn't meant to be more of a brief survey than a comprehensive study. The Safari image was just light browsing and no typing. If you use any two apps long enough and the smudges they leave behind will look similar, so I limited the amount of time I used each app. I would like to pursue this further and dig a little deeper though, and a few people have suggested other apps to try.
If the source started as disreputable then it is wise to weigh its conclusions lighter than more reputable sources. It's not an ad hominem attack, it's inductive reasoning.
Seems like very good advice to get a raise. Please don't take it too far, though: Always going for the high-visibility stuff can be quite annoying to your co-workers.

At my former job, I asked for a salary based on a statistic on programmer salaries. I was certain not to be underpaid, as well as never getting an astronomical salary. It was totally worth it to me. It meant spending time on the things I though were right, and not worrying about how it would look to management. YMMV
> The anger comes from essentially paying for air, or just adding profit for the company. If two parts are almost essentially the same, why am I paying more just for a different label?

I think this question is rooted in a flawed "cost-based" perception of product pricing, which is intuitive and seemingly "fair", but not how the world works. In reality businesses should charge based on the value (perceived or actual) their product brings to their customers.
> There is huge, unmet demand in the world for a phone that does nothing but make calls.

The Nokia 1100 [...] is a very simple GSM mobile phone produced by Nokia [...] the world's best selling phone handset as well as the best selling consumer electronics device in the world. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_1100)

IMO the author has a point about the smartphones, but completely misses the mark here.

It's very possible that low-end smartphones will take over the dumphone market soon and/or that cheap Chinese phones will overrun it, but what the author proposes doesn't address that either.
Or a paper clip to open an old Mac's CD tray. "Who has a paper clip? Anyone?" So, the lack of a CD open/close button made it more "luxurious".
>There is nothing new to see here.

Has anyone suggested using Github as a social space to work on decompiling malware before? Github has some potential to be a unique space to work on this sort of problem in a collaborative setting. The story is that someone thought of that.

As for the title, I'll forgive it just as I'd forgive any other nascent Github project stating its goal rather than its present state in the link. The point is to get interested people working on it together.
>Find your next project, like so much faster!

Drop the "like so much" bit.
It most certainly isn't the same. It doesn't work like that with defective speakers.
Negotiation, especially in introverted geek circles of people too afraid to ask for a raise / figure out what their contributions to the company are.

I like negotiating because I know how to dig through the financial reports and figure out how I'm contributing to the bottom line, and with out a bunch of other people claiming the same thing it makes it easier to negotiate raises.

It's especially good to ask for a raise right after the CEO gives one of those our employees are our most valuable asset talks, and after they say something like "the way i look at it is if a employee who has been paid 250K in 3 years walks out the door, it's like 250K of knowledge walking out the door". Then you use their figures and put in place a financial model where you walking out the door with 5 years of experience costs them 500K. The best part about these models is the more you increase your pay the more the financial models suggest your pay should be increased.

The point is to negotiate at the right time, usually when the CEO is trying to keep people from leaving and there is spare cash floating around. My BANTA has always been show the rest of the team the financial models and how they could be making more, and then find something else to do. Business is a contact sport. If you can't get yourself a raise , go get the rest of your team a raise and voila now you're being underpaid and your raise is justified.

Also, I'd go fight for anyone's raise a) so they'd back me up for mine and b) so it would increase the avg salary in the company making your own raise seem fair.
The FBI, most especially under GWB, lies for a living. EFF tells the truth for a living.

The EFF is run by people just like the FBI is; like most things, this is not black and white good versus evil.

The FBI has an incentive to under-report numbers so their practices aren't as scrutinized. The EFF has an incentive to over-inflate numbers so they can get media attention, bringing them more donations. I would think the numbers lie somewhere in between.
English is nothing more than another vehicle humans use to communicate. For you to claim using proper grammar and well formed sentences of the english language is just a cop out to the point the OP was trying to make. Let me paraphrase in a grammar that is perhaps closer to on par with the level you seek:

"I have spent a long time on hacker news. In fact I used to communicate with others on a regular basis but that ceased awhile ago. My views are probably considered extreme to most in the community and thus I chose not to comment due to the "instant karma" I would receive based on my view that the community would most likely as a whole disagree with. Additionally, I know some who are much more intelligent than myself and yet they never comment. They merely troll (troll is a non-negative attribute here) the site soaking up information and leaving nothing in return. "

My opinion: the community is here to get down to business. Humor is pushed aside in most cases and discussions focus much more on the topic at hand. (No I am not claiming hacker news users do not have a sense of humor, I am trying to say that this community is driven by information and not jokes.) For those who would like this clarified: If you want jokes, digg, reddit, etc all exist, if you want information and perhaps a chance to learn a thing or two than hacker news is for you.

Personally, this is why I regularly browse the site. I view hacker news as a geek's fantasy show and tell.
Direct Nickel Company Contact Details
"While Qt held that promise, it was a long way from the maturity (10+ years) that .NET provides."

What? Qt 3.0 is even older than .NET.
The good news is that you don't have to compete with Amazon. You can sell your own things through Amazon and you will always be able to attract traffic via informational portals and link to Amazon to sell products which are the subject of those portals and make money via the affiliate program.

Otherwise, I can't really argue with the article. I always look to Amazon first to buy things. Even if I'm buying locally I will look to Amazon first for reviews and pricing.
I dont have an aversion to programming...i 'm just unsatisfied with the job i have. And secondly dont want to program for the rest of my job. that is why would like to do something different.
Canadian cities have the same problem most cities in the US have: lack of angels.

I agree, but how do you account for it? Why do these places lack angels?
Because that's inNOvaTion.
Howard Lindzon » Blog Archive » ‘Blue Horshoe’ Loves the Activity Streams
I'm not even a programmer (writer who programs from time to time) and have gotten into extended (and karma-filled) discussions with people who make my little AAS degree look like a toy.

I think you might have misdiagnosed the problem.
You can see remnants of separable verbs in English:

"I passed the man in the red hat by." pass-by

"I threw all of my old, useless papers out." throw-out

In the case of pass-by, we still have the verb bypass, but its meaning has drifted slightly from pass-by.
Research and manufacturing are an ecosystem. Remove the latter, and you're pulling the legs out from under the former. (Money, career tracks, populations to keep educational institutions viable, etc., etc. Also, sanity checks for researchers, i.e. "will it fly".)
I not sure whether to thank you or write another post just talking about the graph I made.
I always felt that HN was a community for the dorm room startup but I may be mistaken about the average age of trolls on this site. I am personally in college and would like to know if my assumption was wrong about the average HN'er.
I would love to, but my twitter account will hate me. I will try and fix it so its not so distracting.
Thanks for the response, some really good points.

To answer your questions, the investor leads a group of high net-worth individuals.
A bit off topic, but it's a bit sad/melancholy to be reminded that Sun - who actually made real physical _stuff_ like all those Sparcs and Alphas - ended up selling for barely more than what Groupon apparently recently turned down...
DNA Posted to GitHub, Pull Request Made
I see a lot of Web 2.0 applications these days that have their own pieces of foam. It's really all the same code on the backend and theoretically it wouldn't cost them anymore to enable all features completely. They purposely disable features or put their own pieces of "digital" foam in between plans in order to provide different price points for users.
I agree. This seems like a reasonable thing to do if you want to have multiple price points for your product.

Would people feel a lot better if instead they just went and changed the circuitry to produce lower quality sound?
In the general human mindset, there's a huge difference between "they're adding extra for those who pay more" and "they're taking stuff away from those who pay less".

If the feature differentiation is achieved by taking the premium offering and adding a component to remove functionality, then that feels a lot worse than taking the mid-range offering and adding components to result in the premium one.
The Power Of Voice: A Conversation With The Head Of Google’s Speech Technology
It's sad, but not unexpected, to see Qt in trouble. Qt is an amazing development environment, and I was getting rather psyched for the prospect of being able to use it to develop for phones, tablets, netbooks, and the desktop. I only hope that if Nokia is done with it, they spin it off or drop it completely (thus activating the FreeQt agreement) rather than defunding it so they maintain control but starve it to death.

However, spinning it off (as some are suggesting in the comment thread) has major difficulties. In particular, since buying Trolltech, Nokia has LGPLed Qt. That seems to me to drastically change the situation for prospective commercial licensing, as companies can ship commercial, proprietary products with Qt without paying licensing fees. How would Trolltech 2.0 make money? Sure, there would be a number of companies that still pay the commercial licensing fee, particularly for embedded systems or for support, but would there be enough to continue funding Qt development?
> So the plastic bag that supposedly contains the driver is labeled, "System with resonator left side". Is "System" what they call the driver?

Well, the driver itself in those headphones is an integral part of a larger piece which includes some more acoustic parts. That's what you can see there, and it's not symmetrical, so it has left-hand and right-hand versions.

> I'm interested in seeing what Sennheiser's justification for this is. It seems odd to piss off buyers of high-end products, because they're the ones that do the research.

It's worth noting that the 595s have a better standard of finish and come with a few accessories such as a nifty desk-mounting hook. Not that that justifies it.
Yes, Global Warming Could Mean More Snow
The key point of the article is the kid has to want to do it, and do it without pressure. (example: Stephen King's sons taking saxophone lessons because he didn't want to disappoint the parents)

My father gave me a bunch of Turbo C diskettes when I was 8 or 9, and said nothing other than "give it a shot" and smiled. There was no pressure there.

And after I "broke" his computer a few times (one time, I installed some fighter pilot game which broke autoexec.bat, primarily the PATH and PROMPT variables, so I couldn't find anything), he got me a computer of my own, and left me to my own devices. Throughout the years, he would give me random IDE installers (Turbo Pascal, Visual Basic, etc) with no expectations.

He still smiles.