skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
An interesting idea. But, unfortunately, it's very open to abuse. There is no guarantee the flagged comment has been flagged correctly.

Really, you're stuck with the same problem: just as there could be mass upvotes of "poor" comments and mass downvotes of "good" comments, there could be mass flagging of "good" comments as "spam", "dumb", or "mean".
I find that web page deeply upsetting for reasons besides a small Chrome bug halfway down.
I think a government made of computers and algorithms has the same issue as A.I. What costs do you speak of? What sort of satisfaction?

As far as the "best and brightest", it sounds like you're spewing elitism. What should dictate best or brightest? IQ? That's not democracy. Democracy is a representative sampling of everyone's opinion and while not everyone has a high IQ they still deserve to get represented. What you speak of is the 21st century Electoral College.

Beneath your argument, I see your point that we all have a few core values that we want served by the government. Agreed. We might be better served by these zones based on voter attributes. I think if more power is handed to the states, our current government can achieve what you're looking for (cutting out middle man, drive down costs, and increase satisfaction). K well back to dynamics now...
All hail the Good King.
Since there are Mozilla devs here, let me ask a question: Why? Why not have the browser be really solid for strictly HTML/JS processing, provide a stable extension/plugin API, and have everything else be an optional add-on?

Why do I need a PDF viewer built into a browser? Why an RSS feed reader built in? Why bundle in "social" features? Why not leave these to user-selected, user-loadable options?
I hated Tron when I saw it, mostly because I had such high hopes and the story was just so piss poor.

But now I've come to an understanding. It's a gorgeous, technically and artfully masterful screensaver. You just have to ignore all the idiots who keep talking over it.
This is why god gave us Instapaper.
A couple of my friends were in a similar situation as you. After a lot of research, they realized that it's not terribly important to attend a web design course per se.

Both these guys are pursuing their college degrees in arts, and using the almost inexhaustible inspiration they receive from the art world.
Also, the name of the author isn't anywhere on the printer-friendly version of the page. I had to go to the full version to find it. I wonder if that's intentional? I can't see how it would be, but it seems like a huge oversight.
Back in the olden daze, I was taught in college with nothing more than a prof and a blackboard, and I took notes. It works fine. I learned a helluva lot in a very short time.

The thing is, it takes work to learn something. You have to make an effort. Labor saving machinery doesn't help any more than using a motorcycle to train for a marathon.

As they say in athletics, no pain = no gain.
From what I've seen, so far, when actual outcomes are measured for the whole 'computers in schools', rigorous studies tend to show negative or inconclusive effects.

I'm sure that surveys asking questions like "Was everything MOAR AWESUM in class today?" would have similarly suggested that everyone is more 'engaged' by the computers, but we don't go to school to be engaged, we go to school to learn. If we are 'engaged' by something irrelevant - for example, spending an hour dicking around with the fonts on a presentation - we might report wonderful levels of engagement while achieving zero outcomes.
Very well. From the HN guidelines, what to submit can be summed up in one line: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

First of all, you view the article in a very narrow view. You just see someone complaining about ethics committees. I see an article that is well-written (on par with PG's essays), and is talking about stuff that I wouldn't usually notice on my regular path on the Internet. Mice brain tumors? Academic research?

Second of all, an average "CS hacker" out there, back in high school/college, could take multiple paths - physics, math, bio, acting (yes, acting), painting, music, etc. - in fact, many of them during really bad coding moments (such as when you need to refactor a 1000-line java method) wish many times over that they stuck to biology, or music, or acting, or anything else back in college.

This article appeals to both wanting to read something well-written, and also to gratifying someone's intellectual curiosity about something that they could've ended up doing, but didn't; and, it explains in great detail what problems they would've encountered if they had actually gone down that route.

HN needs more of exactly this kind of content.
This wouldn't be an alternative to a real instrument, because beginners wouldn't be able to practice correct posture, and professionals don't get the flexibility they need.

However, this would be really useful for people who play music as a hobby. I play the violin, and I've wanted to try using an electric violin, but costs were a little prohibitive. A $10 app to simulate the experience would be a pretty good deal to me.
Very well. From the HN guidelines, what to submit can be summed up in one line: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

First of all, you view the article in a very narrow view. You just see someone complaining about ethics committees. I see an article that is well-written (on par with PG's essays), and talks about stuff that I wouldn't usually notice on my regular path on the Internet. Mice brain tumors? Academic research?

Second of all, an average "CS hacker" out there, back in high school/college, could take multiple paths - physics, math, bio, acting (yes, acting), painting, music, etc. - in fact, many of them during really bad coding moments (such as when you need to refactor a 1000-line java method) wish many times over that they stuck to biology, or music, or acting, or anything else back in college.

This article appeals to both wanting to read something well-written, and also to gratifying someone's intellectual curiosity about something that they could've ended up doing, but didn't; and, it explains in great detail what problems they would've encountered if they had actually gone down that route.

HN needs more of exactly this kind of content.
Allow autonomy to product groups. They should be run like little startups: choose whatever tech stack they want, hire their own PM's, do their own hiring (Google recruiting is a complete wasteland), and live or die by their scucess/failure.

It'll never happen, because it's diametrically opposed to the founding ideology, which is that every problem has a rational solution. Without getting too Ayn Rand on this, it's the classic mistake of central planning vs personal initiative.
I haven´t read that book, looks interesting.

On the topic of moderation I would suggest the ability to somewhat "follow" good commenters, and even perhaps block bad submitters.
This way, reputation is not only karma, but quality of followers.
So this basically reads as someone who's taken a couple of Org Design courses in college arguing that it's actually significant whether the top level of an organization is "product" or "function" ("geography" is another alternative), and as a result he basically comes across as someone who could use a little "experience" so that he understands that scaling an organization isn't just about some analytical framework that he learned in school, but about people, dynamics, history, politics, egos, a lot of stuff that is really "hard."

And that almost every fast growing company gets it, in some form or another.. "wrong." But they also find success despite their failure.

Whereas the guy who took the couple of Org Design courses probably ends up working for a VC running innumerable other companies straight into the ground.
What prevents the WHOIS database operator from doing the same query logging?
Wow, such a good question.

First things first, specific to design, almost no one cares about your degree in design. Almost everyone cares about your portfolio. Very, very few clients that I've done design work for even asked for a resume. Almost all ask for a portfolio right after the "hello".

I think if you do a real study of the best designers, you'll find that very few have a degree that has "web design" in it. A lot of the designers I know from school had a journalism/ad degree with a media concentration.

About pay - your average web designer does not make much. I do a lot of contract work for design and programming and when I quote the same rate for design as programming, clients balk at it. One prospective client said how he is paying about 20/hr to a local designer. I simply cannot compete with that and probably wasn't a best fit for his project.

Now, what do I mean? I think the designers who do pull dough transition into UX/product. Now you are no longer being hired to convert psds into html but figure out what you can do to the design to increase conversion or engagement etc. Some may argue that doing that job is no longer design. May be or may be not...it's mostly semantics.

So if you are into design, also play with the idea of learning programming(jquery?) and marketing(seth godin, ab testing etc.). The two complement design very well and make you stand out from the run of the mill designers.

Also, a warning about simply picking a program based on your hobby. My hobby was programming all through high school but I hated comp sci-related stuff in college. That says more about me - I enjoyed the freedom that came from self-learning programming on projects I enjoyed. I did not enjoy programming in a specific textbook order full of theory. Note, I do believe if you do want to pursue a serious programming career, a degree in comp sci can help you more than hurt you. But just know what you are signing up for by reading through the curriculum and talking to alums!

Similarly, most design programs would want you to develop drawing and other artistic skills that may have little to do with your interest in design. Be sure you can slog through it and not let that make you hate design(the worst case scenario).
I am about to defend my Ph.D. thesis in a few weeks. I'm in the area of comp/elec engineering, VLSI chip design stuff. Here is my advice from my personal experience. I typically tell people to not go for a Ph.D. unless they are convinced that it is required in whatever career path they want (for example, becoming a tenured professor, or specific type of research position in industry).

From the way you phrased your question, it depend on what you deem as a "good job offer". In terms of salary, the typical wage difference between Ph.D. and MS is not that big (in my field). You are also not earning for the time in which you pursue the Ph.D. (5 years maybe). As an example, most of my friends that did their M.S. with me went straight into industry. They are all in some form of technical lead/managerial role (higher pay) and had been earning a good salary the whole time.
Also being a post-doc is not something you would want to aim for. It's more of a limbo position with poor pay. If you are talking about "interesting" work, then Ph.D. can open doors but it depends on your specialized area.

That being said, completing a Ph.D. will make you an expert in your field. If that field has strong industry ties, you will likely come out with many contacts through networking at conferences and events, possibly collaborating with industry members, possible research internships, etc. This will lead to job opportunities.

And as others have said, Ph.D.s are not for the faint of heart. For me, Ph.D. was similar to M.S., but with a longer term, slightly more risky project. So think about how you liked your M.S. experience. Your overall experience will also depend highly on your supervisor's personality, and how disciplined and motivated you are. I tend to think that I am a bit on the un-disciplined side, but I am very fortunate to have an extremely good mentor/supervisor. :)

If you want to chat further, feel free to post here or send me an email. :)
It's not even true from a GUI perspective. The Alto workstation, developed at Xerox PARC in 1973, was the first computer to use a GUI with a desktop metaphor and a mouse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto

Xerox's GUI later influenced Apple's Lisa machine (development started in 1978), which was a precursor to the Macintosh.
Meet fellow developers at a StackOverflow meetup this Wednesday
> Imagine how algorithms can be used to implement real-time, direct democracy.

It's like you have never read a single dystopian sci-fi classic. What you're describing sounds like GOogle writ large.

Count me out! (of course opt-out is not allowed in a system like this)
the list is here ~ http://twitter.com/bootload/hackernews/members
I'll admit, I read the first couple pages' worth then skipped towards the ends. This bothered me:

"An ATF agent posing as an arms dealer spent weeks trying to wheedle Diveroli into selling arms. Diveroli refused, but he couldn't resist bragging about his exploits; as agents recorded his every word, he talked about hunting alligators and hogs in the Everglades with a .50-caliber rifle. Finally, the ATF agent lured Diveroli to a meeting, asking him to bring along a gun so they could go shooting together. Diveroli didn't bring a weapon — he knew that would constitute a felony. But the ATF agent, who had thoughtfully brought along a gun of his own, handed Diveroli a Glock to try out."

Sounds exactly like entrapment to me. Guy didn't want to break the law, but the LEO brought along an extra gun just to incriminate him.
http://imgur.com/QcXaD

10.0.648.151 beta on Ubuntu Linux 10.10

[edit] Chrome version numbers weird me out. Am I really that far behind?
I've never experienced name poaching firsthand. Has anyone else?
I think the closest you're going to come to a web design degree is a graphic design degree. Some art institutes (KCAI is the only one I'm familiar with) offer a web design track for graphic design majors; I'd look at individual departments and find one that suits you.

That's for design, though. If you're interested in development, information technology degrees are going to be the most substantial, although you can learn most web development on your own (it took me about 6-8 months to become comfortable enough with html/css/javascript to do freelance work, although I am taking computer science courses).

In the end, most of what you need for web development you can find online.
It shouldn't be too hard to limit abuse. Set appropriate thresholds, give less weight to new accounts with low karma, ignore flags from users who frequently flag inappropriately (this last one could be automated by comparing upvotes from a list of "known good voters" against the flags. For example, if you flag stuff that pg upvotes, you're probably flagging inappropriately).
This. I know a few people who have done this -- and have done something similar myself.

Most colleges have an Art department that offers something like Graphic Design. I would personally suggest concentrating in something like Studio Art, rather than Graphic Design specifically. You'll still pick up the same tools, but it will come from a different angle.

Also, Communications departments (and/or Journalism, specifically,) are very good at being up to date at technology; advertising relies on technology to work nowadays.
Reminds me of Wired magazine - made by designers so disdainful of their readers that they decide to make it unreadable (like setting pink text on a green background).

When I see a site like this I get the message - GO AWAY - and comply.
What makes you think that Democracy is the best system? I think the reason why the 1st world nations are successful is not due to Democracy but due to capitalism.

I realize that the two go hand in hand (capitalism/free market requires a hands off/light regulatory approach), something that so far only a Democracy has been able to deliver (although it will be interesting to see how the Chinese model evolves).
FYI: your layout breaks completely when resized less than 1024px...
http://d.pr/i615
Kind of a high lower bound for such hard breakage IMO. Increasing your min-width on #page should help with that ;)

Also adding to the data: everything looks fine here on chrome 11 (OSX)
I would encourage you to talk to some people who you trust who have worked on a few different projects at google (especially anything not related to search or ads) and see if they think this answer is theoretical.

If you don't have people there you can ask, take a close look at what has happened to the products and teams that google has acquired.
I think it depends on whether you want to be more of a "design-y" designer or a "UX-y" designer.

If you want to be a "design-y" web designer, I would say go for a degree in graphic design, take as many web development courses as you can get, learn a lot of stuff online, and start building sites in your spare time (after the first few, you can probably get paid for it).

If you want to be a "UX-y" web designer, I would say get a liberal arts degree (or even a CS degree if you're feeling bold), take as many CS and web development classes as you can get, learn a lot of stuff online, and team up with a programmer buddy to start building web applications in your spare time (after the first few, you can either get paid to make them or you can get people to pay you to use them).
It's an interesting question. While at University we had an exercise in my Comparative Politics class (I majored in Int'l Relations) in which we were provide with a description of a fictional country and asked to write a constitution that we felt would best unify the country and address all the political needs of the various demographics and social groups within the country.

What we learned from the experience is that it's the social structure of the country, its history and traditions, that are the driving factor behind how we, as a class, wrote the constitution.

In our case, the fictional country had various social groups of different sizes in tribal areas. Each member of the group was assigned to one of the groups based on the group's size.

We developed a constitution quite similar to the U.S. constitution with a federal system, though I believe we used a proportional representation system rather than a winner-takes-all voting system like the U.S. and U.K. use.

In short, I don't think that modern technology would have a significant impact on how a constitution would be written because, as you said, it's all driven by human emotion, ambition, morality, and ethics. While certain aspects of the implementation of a government may be different if modern technology were applied consistently, the overall structure, design, and operation of government would be still end up being a compromise of the various ideologies of the citizens (assuming a democracy, of course).
Site doesn't render in Android.
Last I looked, aima-python was quite incomplete. Good project for someone.
Like many others have said here, majority of the best designers I've personally had the pleasure of working with or encountering were all self-taught and had little to no formal design education. The few people I've known that did go to design school, weren't very good. Of course that's not to say that people who go to design school can't be extremely good. That's just personal observation from those I've work with (which isn't representative of designers everywhere).

Having said that, I've always been impressed with the Design School each time I've been there (don't actually know if its related to what you're looking for): http://dschool.stanford.edu/

Disclaimer: I am not a design major, my design skills are self-taught, and I'm a former Stanford student.
Do you have any studies that show these negative effects you keep mentioning? I'm curious to see why they failed. Obviously just tossing technology into a classroom won't do anything, which is what most schools with iPad programs are doing. It has to be adopted by the instructor and actually integrated into the learning process, which is a difficult thing to do.

I agree that surveys are not the most reliable or valid measure of success, but combined with the anecdotal evidence seen by the various experiments, there is a strong case to be made that technology has the potential to provide major positive changes once implemented properly. We have to start the search for the proper implementation somewhere.
Jailbreak for IOS 4.3.1
jailbreak (PwnageTool + redsn0w) for 4.3.1 is released currently works for all devices that support 4.3.1 except ipad2 ... http://blog.iphone-dev.org/post/4332841631/three-years-of-pwnage-tool
"you can write object-oriented code (useful for filesystems etc) in C, _without_ the crap that is C++.""

Exactly. A million times, exactly.
Poor man's SSL VPN

ssh -D 9050 yourbox.net

and set your system's SOCKS proxy to localhost:9050
"Think how the Bell Labs research engineer must have felt when he heard Cooper calling him from the noisy streets of Manhattan."

Getting a call from a noisy street could have hardly been rare at the time -- there used to be coin-operated phones all over Manhattan, and every other city. (In these days of cell phones, they're a bit harder to find, but still around.)
A friend of mine who has 800+ domains was searching for a name for his company on godaddy and found one he liked. He spoke to his business partner that evening and they agreed on the name.

The next day he went to register it and found that it was taken... by godaddy.

Godaddy then set it as a "premium domain" and changed the price to $500.

He was pissed.

He accepted the version of the domain with a '-' between the two words instead. He recently emailed godaddy and let them know that he has 800+ domains with them, explained what happened and said "I would like the domain that you took, unethically, for the regular domain registration price that all available domains go for or I will take my ~$9,000 in annual renewal fees to another registrar.

He has not heard back from godaddy. But he switched his searches aways from them.

I on the otherhand, typically only search for a domain if I am willing to spend the 10 right then to grab it.
We release many affordable dashboard applications at affordable price
I'm kind of disappointed, it lacks object patterns and closures furthermore: sometimes you need to create functionality and there is no plain HTML way out ie: when you want to 'backport' something to IE.
But that's the point. I'm not saying Sony is right but they aren't clearly wrong either. The way a civilized society deals with that type of situation is through the courts not through hackers launching DoS attacks.

As for your last statement I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the issue of the law automatically making something right or wrong. But if the law is wrong the entity you oppose is the government not the individual or company. Because individuals and companies are obligated to work within the system. Once you allow individuals to attack other individuals over disagreements its the beginning of the end for society itself.
After reading the other comments and yours, it looks like it might be better not to worry too much up front about "what ifs", especially considering that I'm technical and could learn on the fly if needed.
Though I agree with Linus' assessment both of the suitability of languages for kernel dev and for his take on C++, I want to point out that it's perfectly possible to write Linux kernel C++ code. The MIT PDOS Click Modular Router team did exactly that; they wrote their own IP forwarding system, down to the ethernet drivers, all kernel-resident, principally in C++. As an LKM.

The Linux people will look at you funny for doing it, but you can in fact write a kernel in C++.
I'm guessing my application will probably require lots of memory. I plan on eventually implementing memcached because of the number of database reads that I will require.