skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Cyberpunk is largely an expression of fears about an Asian (Japanese more often than not) 'takeover' of Western society."

I would argue that this has largely already happened. There is sort of a battle between liberal jewish culture and fundamentalist christian culture for being the official US mythology, but on a day to day basis Japanese culture and values are largely what have filled the power void. I would argue that most of our mainstream institutions, from schools to jobs to pop culture, have become and are increasingly becoming largely Japanese in nature.
Ah, well I have a branch called "uuids" that should fix that across the board, but you could also upgrade to VirtualBox 4.1 if you can and that will fix it too. That branch should be merged this weekend too, I just have to test on older versions in Linux.
I was actually surprised that A Deepness in the Sky didn't make it to the list when A Fire Upon the Deep did. Deepness had a lot of themes that satisfy hacker tastes (not just in terms of the technology but also the socio-political ramifications of it).

I had first heard of it when DanielBMarkham highly praised it (http://www.hn-books.com/Books/A-Deepness-In-The-Sky.htm, HN discussion here at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2170579) and it's definitely one of the best sci-fi books I've read in years.
>For day-to-day work, the redundancy & reliability of something Google Docs is much greater than a client computer.

Of google docs, yes. Of always having a network connection to docs, no. Maybe its just the environments I've been in, but at every client, employer, or place I've visited, my devices were more reliable than the network connection. Hell, last year the level 3 uplink for most of my state was out for a day.

In both cases you need a working computer to edit a file, but only one of them also requires a network connection. The only advantages you have are that software deploys faster because you're using a 21-centurly terminal emulator and the file under work is stored on the network.

Just because we as developers haven't put the solutions to quick and easy deployment of software packages and file redundancy into the hands of users doesn't make the cloud a panacea. We have these tools for us already. If my desktop fails, my latest-version files were on its hard drive, the network drive and usb flash drive, all synced after every save. I can grab a laptop or my co-workers machine and in the time it takes me to plug in a flash drive or just hit up a lan repository I'll have the files as they were at time of failure. If the other computer doesn't have the software, if I could hit up google docs on the other machine, I can easily smack 1 command into the terminal and in 30 seconds be ready to roll (and that server could be local, too, not relying on internet uplink). I'm not against relying on the network at all, but doing so in a manner that doesn't demand an always-on connection to get work done.

A solution that relies on the availability of network OR local machine and can gracefully handle the fault of one or the other is orders of magnitude more reliable than a solution that relies on BOTH network and local machine.
I missed Huxley's Brave New World in the list, and I noticed that the list contained only English writers. I wonder why the crowd the list was sourced from hasn't been exposed to writers of other nationalities.
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Nice list John! Work at it!
24yo from London here too. The author's point was:

'Whats toxic is that this then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, teams get funding because they look/sound the part. This means that there are more teams that succeed that fit the stereotype and on we go creating Tigertailz instead of the Beatles.'

Morgan is using metaphors to show how UK startups need to be themselves. Instead of aping US startups as much as possible in every way they can (for example: dress sense and language), they need to be themselves, focus on developing their own styles whatever that may be.
So it is capable of immersive 3d and high resolution video of fluid flow. Not strange at all.
Agreed, and I don't want to just be a bore. Doesn't it seem odd to assume that UK people are talking with American accents just because of US startups too? How about TV, music & movies?

Being constructive, a better argument is that UK companies often seem to be waiting to grow to a certain point in order to move across to America. Or, to use the music analogy in the link, "make it big" in the States. Like many British bands, sometimes it's best just to be a big fish in a small pond rather than trying to crack America. That's my takeaway.
Let's just acknowledge that with 7 billion people needing food grown (not to mention living space), we as a race will not be replanting more forests than existed 800 (or even 100) years ago.

Growing forests and growing food is not mutually exclusive. See the organisation I link to at the bottom of the article. They plant trees as part of agro-forestry projects, which provides both trees and food for those who carry out the projects.

As far as living space for even 10 billion people... the trend is for people to move to cities, which almost by definition have a very high population density per unit area. Which is to say, the living space will take up a very small percentage of land.

Can we sequester all the carbon in the atmosphere that we release by replanting forests? I don't know. But I'm sure there have been studies done, with hard numbers on what kind of resources it would take.
Why Running Is the Best Exercise for Women
He's sending back html+js+css+images, not a static image.
It is not the same thing; it is a better thing.
The good bits (if any) were inspired by this HN discussion:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2976300

The bad bits are entirely my own invention.
Why do you want to do this, anyway? Linux already isolates processes' memory from each other. With cgroups you can ensure that resources are allocated fairly, and with chroot and namespaces you can ensure that they're securely isolated from each other. Why run a whole bunch of kernels on top of other kernels? It just adds inefficiency.
Y U No Join Startup?
+1 to the "WTF" comments. I don't seem to have these issues with new twitter being slow, or using 90% CPU, or failing, or any of these other complaints.
I had Common Lisp Conditions in mind when I wrote my message above. Have an upvote for knowing stuff. :)
What I noticed was what seemed to me a distinct space opera bias, combined with all the choices being the "obvious" ones. For example, two Asimov books are on there. Both are his two most famous books, and both are quite space opera-y. I would argue that End of Eternity was his best work and deserves a listing before either of those. Unfortunately, not as many people are aware of it.

In the case of Necromancer though I have to disagree with you. I think that it has held up incredibly well, the parts that were weak when it was released (totally screwy view of technology) are still the weak parts, but the strong parts (the vivid imagery for one) continue to be quite effective.

Then again, I have a strong cyberpunk/modern bias, I'd also recommend a few of Charles Stross's works :)
I have the same issue with one of my domains and I get all types of emails including highly confidential ones including banking emails.
You would still need an app that could translates the MMS back into a page and open it in a browser on your end.
does twitter still use mostly ruby? i remember hearing something about scaling problems that were supposedly caused by ruby.
I don't get how Old Man's War makes all these best of lists either. It's simple, and not in a good way. It's the literary equivalent of Red Dawn—awesome to 14 year olds, but lacking in anything deeper than "Old man gets new body and has lots of sex."
Oh sorry, I didn't even really consider that part of the deal. Call it a habit I guess for being so unhappy with their mobile division.

That said, Windows Phone 7 is much more interesting to me than Android. Honestly, if I had the choice between Android and a WP7 device, I'd pick the WP7 device. I am a Mac guy so it makes the most sense to be on the iPhone. But if things change I am quite glad that Microsoft rethought their mobile strategy.

My only hope is that they don't get bypassed by other consumers so much that they can't maintain keeping the OS moving forward. I truly honestly believe that WP7 is a better choice than Android in the long run.

From what I've seen it is a really interesting experience. I've seen enough videos to see how it functions from a user standpoint and I have to say it is a really unique way of thinking things. I see features on it that I wish the iPhone had.

So while I dismissed the mobile unit from my original comment, I should ammend it to state that I really do like the way the mobile unit in Microsoft is going.
I shamelessly clicked away as soon as I realized it was Java. Well, not completely shamelessly. I kind of feel like a "rassa-frackin' whippersnapper" disgustedly changing the radio station when stumbling on classical orchestral music.

Then again I also feel a little dirty for comparing the likes of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven to Java...
Thanks for the book Eric. I've already read several sections that have made the lightbulb turn on over my head :) Awesome of you to share it with me.
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I feel like an important part of my comment still stands: I don't think Twitter itself is particularly well positioned to lead a market like this. It's nearly as easy for a 3rd party to scrape from Twitter and do the same type of analysis you're talking about so I'm not seeing real competitive advantage there.
Beautiful and really impressive use of technology. There are times when I'm outside the data network range of T-Mobile, I would make use of this. The app crashed while attempting to receive my first request, does Google send you the crash info when I submit that through the Android reporting system?
I only read Dune last year (I'm in my thirties), and really disliked it. Your comment, however, emphasizes a virtue I did not sufficiently acknowledge at the time. It _is_ true that Dune was able to weave a lot of background into the story without resorting to technical infodumps. And at the time it was a rare and impressive achievement in SF, deserving of praise. But I don't think I'd agree that things haven't changed since; nowadays careful weaving of background isn't rare. The first two examples that pop into my mind are Banks' books (the Culture series or _Fearsum Enjinn_) in SF and Martin's _A Song of Ice and Fire_ novels in fantasy. It may be reasonable to say, however, that Dune has been foundational in teaching later authors the necessity of doing this.

(Ultimately, I just couldn't handle how bad the writing was. All the characters are utterly cardboard flat. Cliched tags follow them around the book. One character has an inkvine scar on his jaw that eventually ripples in any scene he's in... and then again in the next scene... and again... I felt like instituting a drinking game based on the rippling of the scar. The main hero's mind is filled with a _terrible purpose_ whenever the author feels the need to emphasize a clue or a plot point. And the author just can't handle the flow of information (who knows what how, and whether the reader also knows that and how). This leads to the I'm-going-to-spell-out-precisely-what-I'm-about-to-do syndrome you mention, but goes deeper than that, creating plot holes and distortions, and causing most of the characters to learn most of the important knowledge they need basically by staring into space and having a revelation).
So hackernews is having a discussion about a blog post about sci-fi books that were recommended by a reddit discussion?
Indeed, I've been enjoying "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever" (an anthology of Tiptree's short stories). I'm short on free time lately, so the short story format makes them feel more accessible.
Did anyone every work for a reasonably small company (i.e. where you still feel somewhat familiar with the rest of the staff) that was

a) distributed amongst the globe

b) where just the local labor laws for vacation time applied

(Note that I'm talking about operations where you still know your colleagues in Europe/Asia/America, not bigger outsourcing operations)

Even considering the different attitudes about vacation time(^1), I'd guess that something like this would breed more envy than it's worth it. If there's a slight disparity (even 5-10 days), it would probably work out, but if one team is working in Texas, have almost no holidays, don't get any vacation time, whereas the other team is in Germany where you'll get your 4+2 weeks of holidays/vacation, this won't go down that well.

^1: We "socialists" are a pampered bunch
Instead of making new languages to run in the browser, why not make an assembly language for the browser and then we can use what ever language we like and compile to that?

It's a pain to develop in one language and then have to use JS. Of course you can use coffee script and such things but if it breaks you're going to have to debug JS code.
You don't need to love risk-taking to start your own business
Amazon's Dynamic Messaging INSIDE their Navigation Menu = Awesome.
Wait, wasn’t Twitter supposed to be dead by now?
Obviously with any list there's going to be quite a lot of nits to pick... At any rate, here are mine.

Sad to see Stanislaw Lem completely left out in favor of some obviously inferior books (Anathem!?). Also a curious choice for the obligatory Atwood novel. Surprised that Gravity's Rainbow was not on there- I'd put it near the top (maybe it wasn't "Sci-Fi" enough?)

Good to see Canticle for Leibowitz as well as a fair amount of Asimov and Dick.
Support for git's fast-import format in Veracity
Your Clever Business Model
I have a feeling the reason more folks shut their whole computer down in windows is because sleep / resume is "untrustworthy". I've tried using sleep/resume over multiple windows laptops , and half the time it either didn't turn the display on, or worse, the wifi wouldn't enable which caused me to reboot anyways.

I haven't had the same problems since I switched to mac, aside from occasionally having the screen not come up immediately. This lets me run many things and not feel fearful about it all getting lost when I resume.

* that said, I did watch a non-techie guy always shut down his imac when he didn't use it, seemed awkward to me but eh.
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> The problem is that errors can and will happen, and exceptions make the control flow of error handle unpredictably convoluted.

I take it you never have seen the "leaning Eiffel tower of nested if's in C/Pro-C? As I wrote, in a language with exception handling you code as if errors never would happen. And then you put using/try+finally/block-exit clauses around your statements to assure cleanup will happen no matter what.

How is that convoluted? Good such code looks almost naïve to me.

>Callers that do not have any of the real context in which the error happened, and that often can't do anything particularly smart about it other than throw their hands in the air.

Well, exactly how smart a caller can be is decided by the protocol between caller and callee. It's no different than what return-values would have given you IMHO.
Where are you? I want to go to there.
Not sure if these are small enough for you, but they are appliance based:

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/
Proportional fonts in code
Ask HN: 2 factor authentication for cars
Can car manufacturers implement a 2 factor authentication for cars so that in addition to only the key you will also need something like a fingerprint scan or a password to start the car.This will dramatically increase security for the cars and prevent car thefts.In 2009 about 800,000 cars were stolen with losses amounting to 5.2 billion dollars just in USA. Maybe some startup can implement such a software based system on top of existing car security systems.
Because of soft porn censorship in magazines or TV, where the female genitals have to look "nice and tidy" and not too "offensive" (they photoshop them), now a lot of women in Australia are surgically removing the labia minora, and many more feel ashamed with their bodies if they don't do that.
I think the author is trying to adress what he sees as almost a cargo cult mentality. Dressing and looking like Steve Jobs is cool for aesthetic reasons, the man has a distinctive look. Steve Jobs isn't successful because of how he dresses, though.
Wow, apparently they matched the 150k Yuri/SV Angel deal now. Will be interesting to see how well they do. Vancouver is a bit of a disadvantaged market compared to SV, so I wonder if they will have enough large exits.
If it was "do you have the time" then as long as they had the time, people would feel fine taking sick time, even if they weren't sick.

Or even worse, the policy at my employer - within a given year you may take up to five of your accrued sick days no questions asked (assuming you have the sick days banked), but to use any other sick time you have, you must submit a doctors note as verification. As an incentive intended to reduce absenteeism, if you take no sick days in a given year, you're given an extra "free" vacation day usable during the following year.

What this means is that if you end up taking even one sick day during a year, you've lost your bonus vacation day. So now you may as well burn down the remainder of your five unverified days by calling in sick when you really aren't.
What's ugly about BGP? It's very elegant. Yes, the regex thing is a bit odd but just consider it a DSL.
I recommend The Black Mirror, an anthology of German and Austrian science fiction: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Mirror-Other-Stories-Anthology/d...

Also German, and 50 years old this year (!): the Perry Rhodan series.[0] It was being translated into English but I'm not sure if it still is. The earlier 1960s American English publications were very popular, I believe.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Rhodan
To be fair, Google's updater doesn't run until the computer is idle for a certain amount of time.
A free song and would love your feedback
The first half of "Stranger in a Strange Land" is wonderful, but the second... God in that novel actually exists.

For a truly atheist like me, sometimes I want to read a fanfiction of the Stranger, but without god and the religion bullshit. Centered in the economics and the power.

In science fiction, the sole purpose of God is to be mocked, criticized or denied.
Several of the authors on the list are American (e.g. Orson Scott Card, Asimov, etc.). Or do you mean "english-langauage" only.
In the 90s they had services that would send you HTTP pages and FTP files via email, for the poor schmocks that had email (e.g. via UUCP) but no FTP or WWW.

You'll be surprised about all the boxes that have been erected for people to think in, as soon as you have discovered the world outside the particular box you've grown up in.
This is true at all major commercial banks as well, for important enough employees. The vacation is required to pass over the end of the fiscal month, just to be sure.
yeah really, bizarre word choice
The easiest thing to do would be to plant trees in areas that have been denuded, instead of expending energy and time (e.g. money) to cut down existing trees.

Assuming there is no more (cheap) space to plant trees, replacing mature trees still accomplishes something: you have a multi-ton tree with ~half the content being carbon. As long as you don't convert the carbon back to CO2, you can use it for economic gain and keep the stored carbon out of the atmosphere: use it to make houses, furniture, bury it so it eventually becomes topsoil (where the carbon stays in the soil), etc.

I'm sure there are people experimenting with various plants that have the highest rates of CO2 removal. Besides kudzu, there's bamboo, and probably other plants. In fact, it would be a neat software algorithm that calculates a group of plants that would remove the maximum amount of CO2 for the given area.
Can schools mint entrepreneurs?
Currently, Google Spreadsheet and Lazy Meter are working best for me.

I use Google Spreadsheets to share "to do's" with my co-founder. We have a column for priorities and my co founder set it up such that items are colored coded according to priority level.

And I recently started using lazy meter for my day to day to do list. I try to put down at least 5 to do's at the start of the day and try to get though them. This has been working well for me.
In my opinion, trading needs to be put on a stepped clock and draw from a randomized queue.

A position should be a position and not a matter of beating the other guy to a momentary, transitory state.
You can already bypass the first factor through hot-wiring, so how will adding another factor help?
I'm really surprised Charles Stross didn't get into the list. One of the best futurists currently writing, IMHO.

I also highly recommend M. John Harrison's 'Light'
http://www.amazon.com/Light-M-John-Harrison/dp/0553382950.
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I dont think it's fair to dismiss OLPC and talk about how this will be better for third world children. Yes this is $25 but you still need to connect it to an input as well as HDMI output. Your Raspberry Pi and monitor needs to be connected to a reliable and constant electricity source where as the OLPC is battery powered with an integrated screen. I know that all these things can be solved but then you have to take into account that the $25 cost will start to increase.
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The Power of TV: From The Kennedy Assassination to 9/11
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Agreed. "intercepted" seems the most appropriate.
A good "cut through the crap" view of business.
Peldi, I think you're trying to do the right thing by treating people with respect and allowing them the freedom to make their own choices, BUT I think you are ignoring simple human nature and actually making their vacation time worse for them.

As others have said in the comments, in systems like this, people will take less vacation than if there were a defined plan. Because there is no defined plan, one is set by example. They look to you and to their peers. I suspect strongly that you will take less vacation than them being the CEO of the company. I also suspect that their peers will gravitate toward taking less vacation, and human guilt will be the guide.

I urge you to reconsider. Instead give them a very generous vacation policy (20 days! a whole month!) and then MAKE THEM TAKE IT! You can do that by simply telling them 'You need to take a vacation' or just have a max cap on vacation (say 40 days) or have vacation expire after 2 years (time enough to build up a nice sabbatical).
I'm surprised Slaugher House Five wasn't on the list.
Maybe this article is just highlighting one of the effects of the internet. Easier long-distance communication means more people are exposed to foreign language and ideas, especially between technologically literate English speakers. How long did it take for the phrase 'epic win' to spread across the globe?

I'm not sure this guy understands how much of the English-speaking internet is produced by Americans, especially relating to technology. I'm from the UK, and a huge proportion of my media comes from the US (hasn't this been the case for a really long time anyway?) Even programming language tutorials have words like 'awesome'. The Brits aren't faking it, they've adopted that language because they've heard it so often.

It's silly to tell people to stick to one set of social norms because of their place of birth. Every culture is a mishmash. And anyway, the internet is making culture less dependent on geographical location.
Hear, hear. Any "Best of Sci-Fi" list that omits Solaris and includes Ender's Game is worthless.
The User Experience Of F1 Telemetry