skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I really like the link you've made between consulting and psychotherapy. You've touched on something that fascinates me, and that is the how an individual acts differently at home and at work.

An example is the difference between how different types of salesmen operate. Those that sell to individuals (or families) must navigate through a very personal and emotional process, whereas salesmen that sell to corporations (aka: "sales professionals") must balance corporate bureaucracy and personal one-on-one relationships.

In all the cases, it is a fascinating dynamic to observe and learn from.
Yea, I am more interested in the sense of the question of when board of directors are going to stop hiring these "legacy" MBAs as CEOs.
> Under your logic, running on a treadmill is a bad idea because you're not actually going anywhere.

I find this style of debating tedious in the same way. Why run on a treadmill when you can run outside?
I came here to make the same recommendation. I wasn't too surprised to find it was already made :)

I read it about 6 months ago. Still haven't found the kitchen scale I want, but I'm looking....
But that 'Stream' page used to be useful until I added Scoble.

I want muted circles, which don't show up in the Stream. That way I can make 'Following' a muted circle and my Stream page remains useable.
Go Rocks - How Can We Avoid Something This Bad In The Future?
I feel compelled to recommend Cooks Illustrated to any culinary-minded engineers. It's not just good recipes, it's some of the best science writing done in any periodical.
"Although much of the research into intelligence and fertility has been restricted to individuals within a single nation (usually the United States), Steven Shatz (2008) extended the research internationally; he finds that "There is a strong tendency for countries with lower national IQ scores to have higher fertility rates and for countries with higher national IQ scores to have lower fertility rates."[23]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence

"At present rates of fertility and mortality and in the absence of changes within countries, the average IQ of the young world population would decline by 1.34 points per decade and the average per capita income would decline by 0.79% per year."[25]"

[23] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.intell.2007.03.002

[25] http://dx.doi.org/10.1017%2FS0021932009003344
Yes, no permanent damage, but it can be something like every 24 hours after the 48 hours you don't refresh, one point less until you refresh and the malus disappear.
A Go programmer forced to use the JVM might.
95% of the time, debugging in the browser will get you what you need. Of course, the 5% of time that it doesn't can be really painful.
Building faster horses
You're making the assumption that a consultant can step aside with only a minor financial hiccup.

Unfortunately, the 80/20 rule applies to consulting too, so you often find yourself in the situation where 80% of your revenue comes from the guy with the beans.
Engineering school if I could have it my way. ;)
For the same reason why nothing kills suspension of disbelief in a movie like someone dialing a number that contains "555."
Ask HN: How much did it cost to build Google+ from concept thru production?
I'm astounded by the awesomeness that is Google+. How much did it cost to build Google+ from concept through to launch?
I whole-heartedly agree with this. Especially the sandbagging estimates. Software Development is extremely difficult to accurately estimate, and I have found if I don't sandbag estimates, I almost always go back and explain that something took longer than expected. If I don't, I almost always have someone knocking on my door asking where something is at.

My person rule of thumb for this is to take the time I originally estimated, double it, then add a little more, especially if it's 8 hours or greater.
I actually did this for exipe.com in node.js/mongodb let me look it up.
The Poker Analogy
Invite sent :)
Yep, its the artificial markets.

People have no way of investing outside of Earth either, but that doesn't mean investment bubbles have to happen.

Instead of building things people don't need, in a natural market, things are made that people are willing to pay for with their own money.

The building boom in China has been directed by government. Banks were told to loan.

The government also created the housing boom in the US, through cheap money and loosening lending standards.

In both cases, the government created incentives to do stupid things. And the markets responded as markets do to incentives.
Can someone send me one too? Thanks.
What to do if you see Lord Vader walking the street in your town
Flight 93,The Crater was there in 1995(Video)
> Is there any meaningful way to engage in activism or civil disobedience related to software patents? I support the FSF and EFF with donations, but I want to do more.

You can boycott companies that abuse the patent system the most. Patent trolls don't have anything to boycott of course, but Microsoft definitely does.

I refuse to use Windows, XBOX, Windows Phone, etc., and I do my best to influence my non-techie friends and family to do the same. If enough people that understand the dangers of software patents do that, it will have an impact on Microsoft's bottom line, and potentially make it change its ways.

For those that say "Microsoft is just playing the game, we need to get lawmakers to change the rules," the fact is that software patents exist because major companies like Microsoft support them. If Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Google went to Washington DC tomorrow and opposed software patents, they would be undone.
Every year they need regular maintenance is a year a few more people have jobs within their capacity. In a lot of areas I think high level decisions are made to keep people busy. I'm fairly positive they give huge subsidies for hiring employees, because if you walk in a grocery store every aisle has a couple idle employees. By our standards that can't make sense but for them right now I think the main goal is keeping unemployment low.
First: a time / value mismatch; students don't want to spend more time doing something, then waiting before they get feedback, and your PhD students are taking longer to crit, annotate, explain their reasoning etc. through an interface than they would take vocally. In fact, a paid telephonic [ VOIPic? - Ed. ] mentorship service would probably do better.

Second: you didn't understand the market, not just your customers. The market is _everyone_ you have to deal with, not just those that buy the bread.

Third: I'd place PG's #5 (Obstinacy) covers both your 'knowing how to code' problem, and the fixated / obliviousness.

Knowing how to do something is just knowledge. Knowing why, when, and when not to is wisdom. In the end, it sounds like you're glad that you could afford the lessons.
I remember reading a J.K. Rowling quote from one of the Potter books that goes something like "...people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right." I've learned that "they" probably won't come to you the "next time around".

I've also learned to appreciate some further advice I received and desperately needed to hear: convincing someone of something takes a lot more than emphatically stating a logical argument.
Im so happy now :) Thank you!
D3.js powers all of the visualizations at Metamarkets, thanks to Vadim Ogievetsky, who got an early look at the D3 code base. It's a powerful framework that extends beyond visualizations: it can be used to attach data to any part of the DOM, not just SVG elements.

Here's one example that weaves together both data and graphics: http://labs.metamx.com/.
To which address? I couldn't find one in your profile.
This will turn out to being a strong argument for Apple that they pioneered the use of App Store to describe a store for mobile applications. If someone can find prior at least one prior instance of the phrase App Store being used in the context of software, GetJar, Amazon, and other users of the phrase might have a case of it being a common term. (standard disclaimer: IANAL)
Store a "score" to rank by in the database and then use some sort of time dependent function. AKA when you search the mongo for posts sort by "score."

Our score was calculated by something like this:

var gravity = 1.5;
var score = num_votes / Math.pow(t+2,gravity);

Gravity being how quickly a post would fall. Notice the t+2 ... it added 2 hours to all posts in order to eliminate things that were recently posted with like one vote sitting at the top.

Then we'd just run this function through the whole database periodically (every 5 minutes or something).
The Fallacy of the Misean Vision
Yeah, there's an app called open a new browser window.

Your response is both sad and quite funny. I'm not even sure that you know what an adjective is. Normally, it's rude to make fun of someone for having poor English grammar skills, but it's completely justified against spammers. On that note, your attempt to defend your spamming and the grammar it used was complete bullshit.
I want to get your input as to where distributed social networks like your appleseed (and the now completely off the radar diaspora) stand now. Google has been really wonderful about letting us use our data any way we like, such as to the point that I would not describe them as a silo or walled garden.

Do you think Google's entry into social networking helps or hurts the case for and adoption of decentralized systems? What's your take on all of this, and where do you go from here?
I work full-time building custom Google Maps-based projects, so my first thought was to compare them. While this seems very nicely done, there's little in it that you couldn't do with the Google Maps API. Some of the default settings are more nicely chosen, though.

BTW, if you need a freelancer to help on your project, feel free to contact me.
The notion of firing the MBAs overlaps substantially with my thinking, except I don't think there should be any MBAs in the first place.

http://www.quora.com/Aaron-Greenspan/Shut-Down-the-Business-...

Also, anyone who thinks the FedEx network is "ultra-efficient" (as the article claims) hasn't shipped anything FedEx lately. More than ten years ago, FedEx bought RPS for FedEx Ground but never bothered integrating any of the systems. There are still two types of tracking numbers. Shipping something overnight from San Francisco to Los Angeles via FedEx Express routes the package through Nashville, while it could be sent just as quickly over FedEx Ground at lower cost and without using jet fuel. Also, their web site is just about the biggest piece of junk Oracle has ever produced. When you deal with their executive support team, as I unfortunately have, they give you FedEx coupons that the FedEx Office (formerly Kinko's) cashiers have absolutely no idea how to scan. I think what they need is engineers.
Good question. I was thinking they should go to finance when I first thought of this issue.
They presumably started calling it an App Store after people started referring to mobile software as "Apps" (which seems to have started with the iPhone). If a piece of mobile software is called an "App", then calling the place you got it an "App Store" is pretty natural.

So if Apple want to own "App Store", they also ought to go after everyone calling them "Apps". If "App" is generic, so should "App Store".
When people start sending linkjuice back to Google, you know linkjuice isn't what it used to be.
1. It's raining
2. It's cold
3. Poor air quality
4. Running surfaces are all paved
5. Lack of water
6. High temperature
7. UV exposure
8. Desire to watch a movie much higher than desire to exercise.
9. Required proximity to person, for example taking care of a sick loved one.
10. Uncertainty about the amount of time available to run
I've noticed this form of anti-intellectualism is becoming more prominent in recent years. It is almost as if people are being taught it.

When presented with an argument that they cannot debate, people will demand a "citation" or "credentials". In both cases, they are pretending like you have made a logical fallacy.

Saying "I've got a degree in auto-body repair from West Alameda Tech, therefore, java is a terrible language" is obviously pointless. You can see how the degree has no bearing on computer science.

But if the degree were in computer science, the argument would still be argument from authority. But the debators then switch to debating whose degree is better.

You find this a lot in political debates whereby somehow, politicians (who often do not have very useful degrees, as they tend to be lawyers rather than engineers or scientists) somewow are magically transmorgrified into "authorities" on whatever subject they have an opinion about.

And you-- as an engineer, or scientist or economist, are expected to somehow cite credentials that are superior to theirs.... as a politician? Any credential would be superior to what amounts to being a paid liar, but of course this is letting your debate opponent set the terms anyway, and thus your PhD in computer science with Donald Knuth as your thesis advisor means nothing compared to the authority of some ex-TV comedian who managed to parlay that fame into a senate position.

Another variation of this is the demand for a "citation", invariably from opponents whose citations, if you can drag one out of them, are to blog posts, which are themselves essentially another variation of the argument from authority.

The real problem here is, these are tactics whose effect, of not their purpose, is to eliminate reasoning and thought from debate.

They are excuses to ignore the quality of an argument and thus ignore the need to address that argument, or make a counter argument. Instead, they jump to the position of arguing from a logical fallacy, which precludes from possibility the idea that their opponent might be making a good, logical, rational argument.

If you find yourself asking people for citations or for their credentials, check to see if you've narrowed your objection to a particular fact, or if you can argue against the logic they are using.

Otherwise, they should rightly consider you to have conceded by trying to move the debate onto a false basis, where, at best your position rests on a logical fallacy.
At the risk of sounding overly snarky, I don't think that GM's leadership is in any position to make recommendations on how to run a car company.

And to get to his point, it's fluff. Which engineers, exactly, will run the show? The ones with the marketing skills, the social influence, and business knowledge to get the job done. I wonder if he knows that about 1/3 of MBA's are engineers.
How is suggesting a C# implementation that you know will not work realistic?

Programmers run their programs with implementations not with languages - so what makes you think programmers are confused about that? When they say C they probably just mean the usual well known C compilers.

Today, we can only use the programming language implementations that are available today.
Another troubling fact is that the advice given in the demo also suffers from numerous grammatical errors. This is unlikely to give a potential customer much confidence in the quality of the advice.
Most of the job postings use stuff like "MS in CS" as a filter.

Since I don't have a degree, I've learned that you need to bypass this nonsense with personal contact. The only time I ever had a problem was in an interview with a guy who had /two/ PhDs, who handed me his biz card (with two degrees on it) and who said that he had two degrees several times while introducing himself, and who the company jettisoned a few months later (because he was obnoxious and impossible to work with).

Build your network and don't sweat the paperwork.
I wonder why the pnathan was able to see the post then?
Why did't you suggest the quad-core x64 measurements?

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=al...
The problem with this sort of response is that, somewhere down the road, someone else using that open-source project will be working on an entirely different problem and actually have a legitimate need to make that same jump from point a to point b.

Naturally they'll hit up the googles and get excited when they see that someone else had that exact problem before. But then, instead of a solution, they are presented with 15 answers that all say "you're doing it wrong".

This is why my favorite answers are those that say something along the lines of, "technically, the answer to your question is... but the fact that you're having this problem may be an indicator that there's a better way."
Engineers aren't making doctor or lawyer salaries yet, so what makes you think we don't have enough engineers?
I actually work for a church management software provider, Icon Systems (http://iconcmo.com). I think our aim is rather different than yours, though: we intentionally aim at management tools, where I get the feeling you are aiming more at engagement tools for ministry. Is that a fair statement?

If so, you might take a look at the Table Project (http://tableproject.org/). I think there might be some parallels between your thoughts and theirs—plus, it is a free product, to boot!
Seemed interesting so I started reading a bit of it to check whether it was worth committing real time to read the whole book :-)

Not sure yet, but you can check it for yourself.
The beginning is available online on http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/31631/9/the-secrets...
Aha! I came here about to ask "Why is this better than polymaps?" -- thank you! Any other reasons you know of? (or anyone else?)
Agreed. If that's not an example of YAGNI I don't know what is.
Benchmarking C# on any platform other than Windows with Microsoft's stack, then pretending you are being honest.... that's just nuts.
WordPress disable editors and plugin modifications entirely
Shutting down nuclear power plants
David, you've nailed it.

I guess the problem is that ChMSs are notoriously bad with interoperability in my experience and want to keep the data within their black box. A separate engagement tool would be fairly impotent if it was separate and had no way of accessing the membership database.

Viable solutions for churches tend to be afterthought bolt-on modules for their existing ChMS, which is a shame.

My dream would be for ChMS vendors to agree on a standard API for exchanging member information. But I'm afraid hell might freeze over before I see something like that.

Out of necessity, a good church engagement tool may have to be also a ChMS as well.
For the past quarter-century, the American Medical Association and other industry groups have predicted a glut of doctors and worked to limit the number of new physicians. [1]

The problem is that the supply for doctors is artificially constrained leading to better salaries for them. If anything let's have more doctors so that the salaries are in parity with engineers.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association
I'd quite like one too, thanks.
Iris Van Herpen Haute Couture Autumn/Winter 2011-12
What position do you hold in Amazon's shill branch?
Disco, Google’s Hushed Messaging App, Continues To Improve
The title is misspelled on HN. (It's Leaflet.)
I don't have the time to, nor do I care to, evaluate the legitimacy of their benchmarking suite.

But, are you honestly suggesting that Java hasn't had dramatically more corporate funding than Go? Don't be absurd.
What kind of work do you do? I'm in college (CS major) now and am planning to start freelancing on the internet soon and continue that as my permanent job after I graduate. If I relocate abroad to a developing country but pretend to be located in America (just use my parents' address or something), I could make a killing off of this sort of thing and have a relatively high standard of living in a country like Cambodia.

Is the internet there fast/reliable (censorship isn't important because I can just use a US VPN)? How's the weather?
No, because the lead-gen -> piece-work business model disincentivizes the people who actually do the work from being honest, and almost completely shields them from the downside risk of trying to rip people off.
You're presuming that you need to develop expertise in a particular area in order to sort out "correct" ideas. This presumption is falling into the trap that is being pointed out.

Put me in a room with an expert in a topical area and a professionally trained liar. If I know nothing about the area, and these two people are having a debate, I will be able to tell which one is the expert, not by knowing his qualifications -- he may not have any-- but by being able to evaluate the quality of the arguments.

Even if the liar is equally qualified to the expert but is lying, you can tell.

It is not that they are lying that gives them away, it is that they must, inevitably, make poorer arguments.

The very idea of "Expertise" is a renunciation of intellectual thought.

I have spent most of my adult life believing that most people were as smart as me, and that they might just not be as well informed as me.

I cannot say whether it is stupidity that is the problem, and I certainly never went looking for the evidence of it, but I have been, at long last, forced to conclude that most people are trained not to think and spend much of their lives avoiding it. This reliance on credentials is a crutch and an excuse for not thinking. Credentials are useful to know the basis for debate, or someone's background, not for determining whether they are correct or not.

I believe people are being taught not to think, and this is one of the methods.
Because she's at home by herself and there's a scary guy demanding money and telling her a BS story about how she owes it. Read reviews for plumbers sometime (another trade that tends to get emergency calls) and you'll see the same stories.
When taking into consideration how much time an engineer has to spend educating himself and the salary he gets, it would take a while to match that from a doctor's perspective. For example, 4 yrs of undergrad and a starting job at Google can see you making close to over $100K in 3-4 years. As a medical student you have 4 yrs of undergrad and 4 yrs of medical school (that can be a tremendous amount of loans). Then throw in anywhere from 3-7 years of residency making $40K. Depending on the specialty you choose and how hard you wish to work the median salary can range from $120K to $450K.

They may not be equal, but I know developers pulling in $200K that are just turning 30. Not to mention their lifestyle is a lot less stressful.

I imagine that not a lot of people know what you can make as an engineer and too many people still don't give engineers the credit they deserve.
Exactly?

Wave, OpenSocial, OpenOffice: a bunch of great open ideas that never got support from their original corporate overlords. So they're dumped into the Apache Incubator, where they die a slow death.

It's really a shame. I remember investigating a project that would have solved a big need I had at the time, but was worried about a couple of bugs. I remember almost going with it, since I had faith that an Apache-backed product wouldn't langish. 18 months later still no commits.
"I won’t bore you with a long description, let me just say that it sucks. I means really sucks. I mean sucks like a collapsing star sucks."

No, please, bore us with a long description. I migrated my family business's 5 company accounts from Quickbooks Desktop (Win) to Quickbooks Online this past March. I use it every day, as does my mom (who is not very computer savvy). We're both in agreement that it is much better than Desktop, at least for what we do (entering sales receipts, bank reconciliations, running reports). For us, one key benefit of using Quickbooks Online is the ability to switch between companies very quickly.