skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Neither I, nor you, have any way of knowing how he lived life. I wasn't with him all the time and neither was you. He could have been a jerk-royale for all we know.

People sometimes think nihilism is a bad thing but I think it's actually very liberating. IT's up to me to decide what "life to the fullest" is. I'm not even sure that phrase has any real meaning, though. Besides, I think what "makes us live" is cellular respiration.

How else should I judge him? His viral video? All of this media coverage, appearances, etc was to sell his book. I'm sure that's now he thought of it but the corporation that published his book sure did. His suffering is a gold mine for them ... which bothers me immensely and no one else seems to see this.
I also liked this one: "Don't complain; just work harder."
That would be great because it would ensure the must-have mods like Rocket Arena get in, but not let every-mod-and-his-brother fragment the neat community they have going.
Welcome to the new Reddit. Please enjoy your stay.

I wonder how onilne communities begin to deteriorate? Could it be the slow introduction of overtly political material?
What, Exactly, Did Jerry Yang Tell Yahoos Yesterday?
I might have been a bit too broad in stating that the turbojet is the best at what it does, but "speed" is a design characteristic just like any other and alternatives will need to come close on the speed side or else anything they may provide on the economy side of the equation will be ignored.

Turbojets fly as fast as is practical given the market demand they are serving. If airlines offered people the choice of flying half as fast for a lower price the fast flight would still win (up to a certain point, as the supersonic option showed when Concorde was still flying.)

You could do even better by putting your turbofan onto a rigid airship, but that isn't going to happen either :)
Surfing the Universe
I just think that it's gonna be hard for anyone who can do something about this to give a sh*t. Anti-trust instead of false advertising? Now I know for a fact nothing's gonna happen. Anti-trust cases are about the hardest to do.

Anti-trust... Why would that be anti-trust anyway? Where do monopolies come into play?
You just don't get it. And I'm sorry that you don't, because someone like you wouldn't understand it if someone else tried to take the time to explain it.

Your attitude is like a cancer that feeds off apathy. Do this forum a favor and remove yourself from its discussion.
What a piece of crap. There is this thing called emotions. Human beings tend to get attached to each other. I will cry even if I will see a dead dog walking. Hell, he was a human facing all this without fear. He will be missed by many, at least I will remember him in my lifetime.
How about abstraction? Draw a clean line between the API you're trying to document and the code that implements it, and make sure that comments for either don't cross-pollute. This is a good idea anyway.

I can't tell you how many automatically generated documentation trees I've seen that are utterly worthless. Documentation of public interfaces gets mixed in with usage notes on internal structures, and you don't know what you're supposed to use.
Roll Your Own Digg: Coming in Six Months
There are millions of people dying from cancer, disease. THey also have heart-warming things to say but no one pays any attention to them.

I think this is a similar phenomena that occurs when people will give money to Cripple Cat on the internet but not the real life injured animal. Or person for that matter.
If nothing matters, why are you still posting here?

People are finding their own meaning here; let them be. Randy Pausch said that the best lecture he did was his Time Management lecture. Try judging him by that instead of his book deal (which has provided for his family just as much as his publisher).
It's called the 'circle of life', or the circle of poo depending on your preference.
Blind Taste Test Shows XP Users Love Vista
Clearly you have never worked in a situation with a looming deadline.

I've made my living writing code for the last 12 years. How likely do you really think that is?

There's a deep streak of passivity among a lot of programmers. That's part of why they (we) tend to be downtrodden. The belief that one must do shoddy work unless "given the go-ahead" to do good work is as much a part of the problem as anything else.
> Meanwhile, East Africans routinely monopolize gold medals in the long distance events ( 10,000 meters, marathons). Can you think of any non-genetic explanation for this?

Elevation, and sheer numbers. Kenya is at elevation, and people are poor, so there are thousands upon thousands who get into long-distance running hoping it will be a way "out". Of course living at elevation does lead to genetic changes as well (e.g. Tibetans), but you can't discount the effect of much larger numbers of people to choose from for a given discipline.

Jet Li is representative of the best in China, not of the average Chinese person. African-Americans enroll in sport at a very high rate. Combine widespread economic disadvantage with a "cultural" push toward sport or entertainment and there's a bigger talent pool to choose from.

As for sprinting vs. long-distance running, sprinting requires more muscle and hence a more concentrated diet. And, generally, steroids. Kostas Kenteris didn't break 10 seconds for the 100m (10.15) but did do the 200m in 19.85 which means he ran 100m of it in less than 10s. The West African link is a cultural artifact of U.S. slavery. "Blacks" of West African descent are also of "white" descent. (Note that modern West Africans are not setting sprinting records.) Greater physical capabilities are a byproduct of an inhumane "sorting" or "filtering" system that killed large numbers of slaves through physical hardship. Not to mention the distasteful but real application of selective breeding to slaves by slaveowners.

So, yes, there are genetic differences -- but there always are between different people. The biggest factor IS environmental. For proof of that, consider how strong and muscular you COULD be if you dedicated your life to it instead of sitting at a computer all day. For most sedentary people you can easily be in better shape at 40 than you were at 20 simply by working at it instead of playing video games. Your genetics determine certain kinds of potential, but when it comes to brain genetics, it's not clear what potential really means; you may create something incredible even though your numbers on a test weren't as good as someone else's. Interest and enthusiasm that lead to sheer dedication get you farther than mere intelligence, because there's always so much work to be done.

And then there's the ever-popular, "if you're so smart, how come your life sucks?"
I don't think so. I think it is tolerance of inanity.

Once you get used to it (as Reddit has), vapid comments and submissions begin to look normal, and so does the lowered overall level of thought.
This place has held up pretty well though, because it isn't so tolerant. Tell too many jokes and watch the downmods pile... down.
Nothing Facebook has ever done has been game changing, ever; that'll likely continue to be the case. Email was game changing, the web was game changing, chat was game changing. "Game changing" is a big phrase, it shouldn't be thrown around so lightly.
Having checked out the top five, I have to say I found the knol to be most useful in actually teaching someone to read Russian. The current #1 may have been there for a long time, but it is a very poor resource. The knol certainly has the right to be ranked among these pages, if not higher.

Objective or not, Google is giving me the information I am looking for, hence it is behaving exactly as I would want it to.
I'm also a little personally offended about your insinuation that I don't have emotions.

I acted as primary care giver for an elderly relative with alzheimer's, broken hip, and a few other problems as well as losing my father to brain cancer. Of course I care, but I just think that everyone focusing on Dr. Pausch's issue while ignoring everyone else's is ... bad.

Besides, I'm sorry, but if you think that life is some how a beautiful thing or that there is some sort of divine purpose to it all, see if you feel the same way when you have to watch a person you've known and loved your whole life shit themselves or scream at people who aren't there to show their spouse who died twenty years ago.

Nature's a bitch, god's an asshole, then you turn into worm food.

Fortunately, though people don't know it, we are free to make our own way, and don't have to be held up to anyone's dogma about how to live life. Or buy their books.
The last statement,
"As software and hardware engineers, if our defaults put users in an unsafe situation, where their credit and savings are placed at risk, then we’ve failed them, and we’ve acted unethically."

is excellent.

Unfortunately, it's not easy to get people out of the mindset described [plug it in, download porn, rinse, repeat].

Part of the issue is making it easy to initially connect, and as a corollary - easy to reconnect once you've changed settings. This seems to be the big issue.

There is however a standard established for doing this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Setup

My newish dlink router supports it. There's a button on the side that you push to put it in setup mode [I think you probably need Windows for the "easy" parts]. By DEFAULT it is setup secure, and requires you to change the password.

The trick of course is getting this pushed across the board.
How Google Looks for the Colorblind
Google Chubby and the Paxos Algorithm
Dictionary - I presume having a really good dictionary bundled with the OS requires paying licensing fees, such as for OS X's included OED.

Hopefully, someone out there is working on a system-wide spell checking framework for Linux.

Ispell or aspell, perhaps? Integrating with them is not difficult (for developers...), and you can add words to the shared dictionary.
Interestingly enough though...

FoxConn says in the email replies that they DONT SUPPORT Linux.

However, they have code specifically written for it.

Strange, even if it isn't deliberate sabotage.
Why The Establishment Needs Change or We All Purge
Yes, but it is one thing to recognize and correct mistakes made in the course of practice -- allowing performance mistakes to haunt you is quite another. A player who derives less pleasure from his successes than disappointment from his failures has little reason to continue playing. Successful players focus on the positive.
"It's amazing how many people don't know the very basics of it like, for instance, how multiplication is just a compact way of expressing a repetitive sum."

You mean to say, of course, that many people usually think this is so, while it being obviously wrong... right?

Otherwise, my friend, I think you should forget all about what your elementary school teacher said and re-examine say multiplication of fractions for starters.
Exactly, stop seeking permission and just do good work all the time. It takes how long it takes and those people making up deadlines will be forced to adjust to the speed at which you work. They don't know whether you're doing it right or wrong or clean or ugly, they don't know what the fuck you do anyway, so do it how you like to please yourself.
I think it is more accurate to say "facing all this bravely" than "facing all this without fear". I am sure he was afraid as we all are, but he decided to face it with strength and courage.
Y Combinator Challenge #5 - Enterprise Software 2.0
Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and the American Worker | ServiceLive Blog
From the Erotic Domain, an Aerobic Trend in China
If you think this is "political material", then you need to read more broadly.
"Except it'd be a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many roads and intersections..."

Great! So now, all you have to do is give some sort of a comparison that lets people visualise exactly how big an area 50,000 times the size of U.S. is. May I suggest a metric based on whales?
It looks to me as if there is an inverse correlation between IQ and the running speed necessary in a position.

The chart doesn't really support this. Cornerbacks are normally required to be a bit faster than receivers, who in turn are normally faster than tailbacks. In those cases, the Wonderlic scores are proportional to the foot speeds. Also, there are different kinds of running speed (e.g. quickness, lateral speed, straigh-away speed) which this doesn't take into account.
1. Spend less than you earn
2. When there's blood on the streets, invest
3. Use other people's money
4. Class is dismissed
> You can build a house out of straw, sticks, bricks, or titanium. But these have different advantages, drawbacks, and costs.

Obviously the first two are susceptible to the huffing and puffing of wolves.
To echo rms:

If nothing matters, why are you so insistent on letting us know that nothing matters?
the publisher got the lion's share of the revenue. ask anyone. i highly doubt that they would "let this one go" out of the good of it's heart. there's a profit edge, always.

besides, i'm not judging him. i just don't like being bullied into "living life to the fullest". It's like some kind of secular evangelism. Am I going to go to hell now?
I don't think Randy would ask you to buy his book or hold his beliefs above others. He'd ask you to think about things critically and take a bite out of life knowing it's not going to last.

Randy was a decent, intelligent guy who got dealt a bad hand and made the best of it. He was more like one of us than your random celebrity. He was a hacker who had time to look back on his life through a different lens and share his thoughts. That's one reason I read his book -- a shared background. And remember, a significant part of his drive to leave his thoughts was a parting gift to his children who are too young to know him now. Doesn't take anything away from all the other people with things to say.
Very applicable point. I keep on noticing this happen and I would prefer no comments to outdated comments.
De-Risking Your Business Model: A How To Guide
Colorblind Web page filter
I think many vendors may now use encrypted Wifi by default, but I wonder if doing something as simple as creating a "random" password and printing it on the user's manual would have done the job?
I like the idea of them running the colorblind web logo.

Google has (perhaps unintentionally) done a lot for making the web accessible to the blind, too -- sites designed for their crawlers are going to be vastly more accessible to the blind as well.
As a solution to PG's idea #13 (Online learning), this is something I would definitely use. And with an API it would also integrate well with idea #2 I posted on the list of stuff I want:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250749
"The problem with Grand Unified Login Theory is that it often goes against the primary goal of having your own web service which is to build your own user base. In the long run your user base is worth more if it is uniquely yours as opposed to just being a subset of someone else's user base"

Why? The value of your "userbase" is not in your DB table, it's the users who interact with your service and arguably find it useful or fun. For many types of apps, allowing the user to interact with their friends is extremely important in achieving the above.

I don't really get your "flu" analogy, maybe you can say what you mean, are you literally worried about FB's downtime affecting your web service? that could be a valid concern for some web apps, I guess, realistically not for most.
1024x768 is around 14% of our users.
Can anybody recommend a web-traffic service?
I recently for fun signed up for google adsense for my blog, and so wondered about how to increase traffic. I know there are lots of "web traffic generating" services out there, but also google doesn't allow adsense blogs to be run in popups. Anyone know of a good service to use for that sort of thing?
Mullenweg on Wine Library TV
I'm sorry. But I never said that "you don't have emotions". But, dude get a grip. The man is dead, show him some respect now. What if 5 years later his kid Googles his Dad and read your post?
This was an actual question. I guess the downvotes mean no?
This would be news without "The last lecture." He was a prominent, well-respected computer science whose research in computing education and virtual worlds will be missed. He was also, by all accounts, a great teacher at CMU.
Until we get complete TV line up streamed in real time, in sizes other than 640x480, I'll stick to cable
There's no such thing as information overload
It's running on TextMarks probably until they can spring for a shortcode.
I feel the same way about Y Combinator. People like me are self-excluded because of our current life parameters/priorities, most notably family. I also completely understand why it is set up the way it is, but nevertheless I have a hunch that there are significant missed opportunities on both sides (i.e., good investments passed up and good startups less successful because of it).

Additionally, some of the structure seems more geared towards first time entrepreneurs. In the case of a more experienced entrepreneur, it would seem that a more relaxed structure might be acceptable (and in some cases even appropriate). I don't need to get more material about the legal aspects of how companies work, for example. But I'm sure I would benefit from focused conversations about my product offerings.
Which means, you probably never really needed C++.

No doubt, Visual Studio shines and is probably unbeatable as an IDE. No doubt, .NET will become more and more solid as they are trying to catch up with Java VM in performance and robustness.

But unfortunately C#, the language itself, is restrictive and is trying to protect the programmer from him/herself, same way as Java and Python.
Thanks! This has a lot of interest to me as well since I'm also not prepared to structure my life around a YC session.

I have some interest in a venture to build an app that would be specifically used for promoting products. Half product, half consultancy. Are there any fbFund recipients doing anything similar or unusual like that, or are they all building straight-ahead apps?
I never really new about him until his last lecture was posted on google video. His speech is truly inspiring and it is very sad to hear of passing.

If you haven't seen that video you need to watch it. links are above.
And Someday We’ll Have Ads on Every Single One of Them
Best advice I ever got: all money does is give you freedom (to do what you want and to get what you want). Therefore, it is absolutely pointless to give up freedom for money.
EBay help wanted listings: Is cloud computing in the company's future?
Bad title on my part, really, since most of the entry is about pattern-matching.
Bug? Or can you downvote stories on Hacker News?
Go to the new page and see the entry in question: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=257108
As a developer with some spare time and an idea, this certainly won't be stopping me.
Peak Oil: A utopia for startups?
I am as well.
This guy gave some of the best lectures I've ever watched. It is a sad day when someone like this dies.
Are you being a tease?
Johnathan Rees' T project page has a list of errata to Shivers' article.

http://mumble.net/~jar/tproject/
Wow. They rerated GTA to 18+ because it contains a sex minigame? Violence is ok, sex is bad!?
I'd take that bet. I'd wager that there are slightly more unhappy rich guys that non-rich guys.

Not sure how you would prove that, but I figure you take average happiness rates and add a bit because of the increased stress the money brings.
TV programming is junk, it's anti-Internet, it's old. What's the point of watching whatever someone else pre-selected for you? Netflix is obsolete too: these funky plastic disks are so last century.

If I can't download a video, I don't care for it. iTunes HD rentals are ok, but selection is small. Amazon's offering is Windows-only... What a weird choice of a target market... I thought only unemployed still use Windows at home since it comes standard on $299 laptops.
I'm battling the temptation of upvoting it :)
Well, most LED products aren't top of the line at 131lumens/watt, mostly because it's expensive. They know OLEDs can be cheaper, that's why I was saying that getting the manufacturing right is key to making them have a place in the high efficiency lighting market. Did you have any other point to make?
No, it definitely earned that zero.
You shouldn't be going into debt to fund a computer purchase.

That's the kind of stupid debt the quote is talking about. If you can't save up $1500 to buy a good computer, you probably don't want it bad enough.
Somebody couldn't resist, now it has 1 :(
Yeah, shadows.com tried the same thing, and they had plugins for IE/FF, are they still around?
Is Taurine really bad for you? | My Philly Network
Then I guess we'd better hope that ntoshev was right!
You could try writing interesting content and growing organically rather than paying for traffic. The kind of traffic you are likely to get from a lot of these traffic services is of dubious quality.
What subject area is your blog about?
Very nice, and out of Vietnam no less.
I expect MS sees this as a cunning blow against the GPL.
Not enron, but close:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Sykes
Me. Wondering what's the real motivation behind that question though.
SAP significantly boosts service costs, angering customers
Excellent effort, as elegant as the language. Page on top should be card stock. Q&D method is to print all as instructed then take pile to Kinko's. The have both coil binding, folders and saddle style staplers. Run you about 5 bucks. Some thing(sadly out of print) for Mathematica would be more like 35 bucks so think yourself fortunate...
I agree. I think that's why so people ( including me once upon a time) want to avoid talking about genetic explanations for the IQ gap as long as there is any possibility of it being environmental.

But I also think a lot of damage can be done by avoiding talk of genetic differences. The media, politicians, and educational institutions have been telling black people that the problems in the black community are all a result of racism. This has created a hostility towards whites that only harms the cause of economic advancement.
This reminded my of the recent post by Paul Graham, where he mentioned enterprise software companies charging excessive rates for horrible software. Is anyone taking advantage of this to compete against SAP?
Code commenting? Try Business Commenting
You could argue that. But it's not necessarily true. Neither is what I speculated, of course.
I can't believe this kind of comments get upmoded here.
well i sort of write about different stuff, depending on mood, lol! I like politics so alot of stuff about Obama, McCain, all those guys. Also a bit in there about AI since I am rather into the whole "robot" thing - probably too much 'Terminator' as a kid! Link is http://blogkinnetic.blogspot.com. So no real one "theme", but probably politics is a big one. One thing I know is some pay-for-traffic loads sites into popups which google doesn't allow so I'd want to avoid that.
"[H]e said he has switched his primary focus to business software and services." As would I, if I spent 23 years at IBM and a dozen or so years as a VP at Microsoft. You have nearly four decades of experience in the field, why give that up?