skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Prof. Hawking is probably one of three thinkers that have had the greatest influence on me, the other two being Prof. Richard Dawkins and Charles Darwin.

And for what it is worth, personally, I agree with his 2005 solution to the black hole information paradox, in non-technical terms, that universes (euclidean metrics) with no black hole solutions essentially cancel out those with black hole solutions in the quantum gravity path integral, so from the point of view of the path integral, there effectively are "no black holes", and therefore no information paradox. Cute I know, but if somebody has a better answer I'd like to hear it! (I like it because for example in string theory I have read there are dualities involved by virtue of which one can grab information back out of black holes, which may well be true, but Hawking's solution does not depend on string theory being true, which I like because it is more conservative, i.e., it is in the world of ordinary quantum gravity and not in the world of string theory which for my money the jury is still out on.)

Anyway, my personal best wishes to Prof. Hawking!!
The Top Paid Apps on the iTunes App Store
Users are the blank buffer of the god Emacs. Tremble before the Gnu!

M-x clone-buffer

and if you're against cloning...

M-x man
M-x woman

I think you will see a sharp increase in the number of emacs users soon :D
Awesome nonetheless.
Make sure you tell us about your company when this blows over, I love businesses that insult powerful people ;)
Russian watchdog rejects Google bid for ad firm
I had a quick look. Are any actually useful?
Time to buy dividend issuing stocks at massive discounts (compared to historical averages).
Would you care to share any of those sources? I'm just curious. I've been trying to get away from the Reuters/AP stuff myself and discovered The Christian Science Monitor a while back. Despite the name it's not a religious paper. Anyway, they employ their own staff of investigative reporters around the world and do not rely on AP or Reuters. Their news is not updated as frequently, but the content selection and writing is top notch. I was very impressed.

Now to my point... I read up a little bit on the history of the paper. It was founded in 1907 by a woman who had been targeted by the owner of the New York World. By the way, this man goes by the name Joseph Pulitzer. She started the paper so that she would have a forum to fight back. The lesson here is that there is no such thing as a media outlet without some agenda. Sure, they may not be conspiring with governments, but there is an agenda. It's important to keep that in mind.
Half of US Doctors Routinely Prescribe Placebos
Ask YC:  Will I be be notified about unsuccessful application?
HI
I applied for YC , however i haven't heard back from YC yet. Will YC inform to unsuccessful candidates, or if i dont hear from YC i should consider myself not-selected.
New Type of Camera Offers Pro Quality Without Reflex Lens
This was a little disappointing. I don't see any mention of background jobs, which they've been promising for a while. And, second, the date to launch billing looks like it might not happen before the end of the year.
But, overall, my experience so far has been positive with four apps running there, so I'm going to continue using it.
Having worked as a EE, I can assure you that 99.9% of software is NOT engineered. It's not even close. Truth is, if you actually took the time to properly engineer software odds are your company would fail, because basically no one knows how to actually manage it. On top of that, people have grown to accept buggy software (unless it's an embedded system, and even that's eroding).
VC Fund Lifecycle:  Growing
We'll email everyone on Oct 29.
Woman in jail over virtual murder
Don’t Mistake Ambition for Entitlement
Ask HN: iPhone? Blackberry? Android? Prayer? - How do you remotely monitor your startup?
In the next week or two I plan to update my cell phone.

Besides the usual requirements, I want to use my new phone to monitor and tweak servers remotely via web and ssh.

I'm leaning toward an iPhone because I'm a huge fan of Apple, but I previously owned a Blackberry and was happy.

Anyone else using their phone to be a one-man IT army? Any recommendations? What is the ideal setup?
Gmail Gets Graphic: When ;) just won't cut it
REST API: Invent Media Types, Not Protocols and Understand the Importance of Hyperlinks
Some Thoughts on OpenID vs. Facebook Connect
Checking In On Facebook Connect: Where Are All The Partners?
Don't forget about automotive and real estate ads...
Bravo Matt Maroon! Bravo! That was the PERFECT rebuttle to the WSJ article in every way, strong, accurate and pointed. I felt great reading this, every sentence or two I found myself nodding my head in agreement.
I think you have the right plan, the only thing I would change is big moves like 50% in a few weeks.
Go slow, then you don't have to worry about picking bottoms.
Did the CD Baby sale include Film Baby?
You still have a single point of failure with the haproxy though. i.e. if the Data Centre with the proxy is taken out (same probability as the prod site), then the service would stop.

That's why I said a true multi-homed datacenter. Reduces the chances of a single-point failure taking everything out. It is going to be somewhere in cost and resiliency between relying on DNS and "doing it right".

In all reality (and my own experiences) data-center outages to various "natural/random disasters" are far less common than outages due to just basic employee stupidity. While I was building up my org/website, I would spend more time worrying about resiliency against stupidity vs. plane crashes.
I wonder if Slashdot will enter the same market.

Could we see competing moderation and meta-moderation products in social media?

It seems to me like that could be a hot market.
What Shortage of Scientists and Engineers?
Personally I like Salon. They don't publish very often, but unlike newspapers I don't find blatant errors in all the subjects I know anything about. Their investigative journalism is pretty good too; they've covered everything from NetHack to what really happened at Columbine HS. IIRC they even broke the bridge to nowhere story and were the first to publish the Abu Ghraib photos. It doesn't really have any agenda. The columnists tend to be socially liberal, but it's clear the beliefs they're expressing are their own and not just what they're told to write about. Think of it like Jon Stewart in newspaper form.

Anyway I don't think they are really ready to be a suitable replacement to the NYT quite yet, but if the NYT goes bust and Salon were to scoop up some of the talent and merge with a couple other independent outlets they might be able to put together something good.
I like the the "hand-on-mouse-hand-on-keyboard dance" because in web programming you're often typing just a few lines into a file and then switching to another file. Using a mouse with a GUI file tree is a hell of a lot easier than anything the ancient text editors offer.
No One Programs Any More
This idea is related and hilarious http://inventedbyamother.com/
Much of the online world still uses stupid forum and comment software that sorts topics and comments in the order they were received. This enables trolls and makes conversation difficult. I look forward to the day that we see the last "bump"
Cable company uses email spam filter to ignore pottymouthed customers
How about: Be careful of who you work with
God, the current version manages to inflict damage on itself with ease, not to mention all the "fatal" errors. If this isn't an emo operating system, I don't know what is.
Hahaha, this is so true. Contractors owned by minorities get preferential treatment on bids, so there are tons of tiny minority-owned subcontracting companies which happen to be owned by larger conglomerates. I personally know some folks here in St. Louis (there is a lot of defense contracting here) who work for such companies.
Trophy Kids: Entitled to a Fair Assessment
Transplanted cornea still sees after 123 years
As usual, Seth has an incredible grasp of the obvious.
E-voting machines disturbingly easy to hack
Princeton research on E-voting machine's vulnerabilities
http://shoooes.net/ comes to mind.

If he's learning to read, there's http://scratch.mit.edu/. Scratch doesn't really have a native version for Linux though - you can wine it, or you can try the (somewhat unofficial) build at the following link. I've tried both, and they work alright.

http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=305
...and the ones that don't are doing their patients a disservice. Placebos are safe, and can be surprisingly effective.
I am doing the same thing. I increased my monthly 401(k) contributions and am holding for the long term - 30 years or so I guess. Hopefully we will have recovered by then ;)
I respectfully disagree with the other posters here. I feel that you need to judge each and every investments on its merits. The market does not move exactly in lockstep. When Goldman Sachs was at 85, it was an effing steal. I would still invest in it today if I had the money, but I wouldn't totally pounce on it.

As for timing the bottom, yea that's kinda hard. I would watch more experienced players call it cough Buffett cough, instead of listening to random people (yes I know, random ppl like me) on the internetz. ;)
I'm not the one going around claiming to have done certain things that are rather ridiculous to believe without seeing a legit degree and a student record. Forgive my skepticism.

There are a lot of snake-oil salesmen out there that are going to sucker you in with their smooth words. Hey, if he writes about things and it helps you, that's great. Still doesn't convince me he graduated with 2 degrees in 3 semesters. It does convince me he knows how to make some money, though.

Even if you had nothing better to do in your life at that time, taking on 30-40 units is beyond a full time job. You'd litterally be looking at something like 60-80 hours of work a week. That's unreasonable by any standard. It's just like some other articles posted on here saying, working super long hours and little sleep isn't something that is productive or something worth bragging about.

Also, after reading through some of his articles he doesn't sound like a very logical person. I won't argue with results, but some things said on their don't exactly vibe with reason imo.
Does it have FDA approval?
If the AdSense was something, as he says on his site, that made him feel uncomfortable about his own website and his self-image, then that suggestion is dumb.

It's a bit like telling someone who's trying to stop being a prostitute: "Keep whoring, donate the proceeds to charity."

You're the asshat, my friend.
Majoring in video games
iPHone. :)
Yet another reason I love HN. Some company founder gets mentioned in a news story, then they show up HERE to discuss it. Congrats and thanks for stopping by, Derek!
I found Steve's site about three or four years ago, I don't read it anymore though but he got me into this personal development. I'm not attending any crazy seminars or spend all of my time on self-help books, but he shifted my thinking to that I can change and control myself and my life general. Which is quite rare here in Europe or in Finland at least.
Scratch runs on Squeak Smalltalk apart from some features that require a Scratch-specific native extension to Squeak. Scratch is not free software, so no wonder distros don't package it. The Scratch guys have a package for the OLPC though.

Here's the best guide I've seen this far for installing Scratch on Ubuntu: http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=52179#p52179
OK, it's not "who you work for" it's "WHOM you work for". Pet peeve of mine, people saying "who" when they mean "whom" - if the "who" is the object of the action "work for" then it is "whom", like "To whom are you speaking?" NOT "Who are you speaking to?" Irks me no end.
As someone at the older end of the Millenial generation, and someone who grew up in Europe and now lives in North America, I could only read the WSJ article - and all the comments - with some amusement.

What I really read - underneath the "durn kids" feeling - was a generation waking up to the fact that having some of the lowest vacation time in the industrialized world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_statutory_minimum_emplo...) might not be such a great idea, and a generation of older employers not being happy about it.
Massachusetts encryption law even stricter than Nevada’s
I'm not sure about the details. I would imagine because it contains no narcotics, it wouldn't be necessary to test responses. But considering how fucked the FDA approval process is, my intuition doesn't mean much.
Well I guess my logic is that if you have each site either multi-homed, or at least on different networks (a given anyway), then you can have a LB at each site with the same net result - this is basically your vanilla active-active scenario.

In either case - Unless you go for a high-end solution, the catastrophic-scenario-DNS-juggling doesn't really go away.

As for the relative risk, I agree. The problem is the risk approaches companies use tend to make this kind of thing compulsory for them.

All the raw calcs I've seen rarely justify this kind of expense - the cost-benefit, against, say, a 1 day turnaround to configure a new site (two sites is usually a lot more than double the cost as there is all the other factors e.g. additional/routine testing that's introduced).

... but then companies will factor in less tangible risks, like reputational damage, etc, which can be a bit of black magic... Of course, if you're a bank, or a hospital this might be right, but I suspect in most cases it's off-base.
2.5 bad ways to implement a server load balancing architecture
Virus Cracks Open Email Scam
While I definitely agree with the general sentiment in the post and here on HN (in fact, I recently tried to quit my job and they had to entice me with better work and more money, and the CFO actually tried on a few lines like the ones in the WSJ article), but I'm afraid we might be looking at this through the lens of privilege.

A lot of our peers, whether through lack of work, ability, ambition etc, don't have the same options we do (lots of money, lots of jobs, interesting work), but are still very much stuck in the old-style world.

This doesn't mean you didn't work hard to be in this position, just that our sentiments are probably limited to the top end of our generation and wouldn't make much sense to a lot of other people.
I would like to share with you some comments from a friend of mine, living in the so-called second world:

(I've edited out quite a lot, mostly offensive words)

I am unable to comprehend what is happening at the moment. Some argue that the neoliberal capitalist system is collapsing, others that is another way to turn public funds into private funds. I am very confused.

You know that 400 americans own 1.7 trillon USD? (the GDP of Argentina is 250 Billon USD). You know that 50% of the world population has 1% of the GDP.

And then they want me to believe that there is a financial crisis. There is a crisis, one that nobody mentions, people are starving and dying, and nobody gives a shit, they only care about themselves. Well I would love to believe that they are really losing money in the big casino ...
I believe it, having done something similar. I got 2 degrees after spending 2 years at a 4 year college (plus 1 year at community college, I assume this is similar to his AP credit). It's not as hard as you think.

Math and computer science (or math and physics, in my case) have a lot of overlap. Intro courses (Calc 1-4, Physics 1-2, Chem 1-2, English 1-2, etc) are identical. Do a couple of course substitutions (Functional Analysis and Complex Variables == Math Methods for Physics Pt 1&2), and the work might only be 25% more. For me, 1 degree was 120 credits, 2 degrees was 150.

Another trick is to jump right into advanced courses. Quantum mechanics + organic chemistry (8 credits) is a lot of work. Quantum mechanics + organic chemistry + Chem 101 + Intro to Probability (16 credits) not double the work. In QM you derive energy levels for the Bohr atom, in Chem 101 you memorize them. 40 credits probably means 12 credits worth of difficult classes, and a bunch more where he shows up for tests and maybe crams for an hour beforehand.
WTF Does Open Source Have To Do With Business Models?
The way so many people blindly adhere to him is unbelievable. He's like the Joseph McCarthy or Emperor's New Clothes of marketing.
Bret on Social Games: The Art of Gifting, Challenges, and Notifications
More people should demand placebos from their doctor...

cough Anyway. I found this line from the article amusing:
Only 5 percent described the treatment to patients as “a placebo.”
That's my top choice so far, but it's for emotional reasons more than anything. :)

Can you elaborate on your reasons for suggesting the iPhone?
"Antibiotics and sedatives" don't sound like placebos to me.
true. However the title seems stronger than the post.
Algorithms to replace editors, gadgets instead of paper
The point that they're making is that we should all expand our perspective on what constitutes possible (or even "reasonably likely") outcomes from this. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but I'm not sure if your statement about finding ways to "eke by" includes eating beans in your apartment for 5 years or trying to survive getting drafted and serving in the China-Taiwan war.

Not just "getting store credit".

Anyways, that's how I'm reading it. Definitely thought provoking. Taleb's piece on Edge.org last month is insanely detailed for anyone looking for more:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html
Even better. It doesn't have FDA disapproval.
Amazon battens down the hatches before Microsoft’s cloud launch next week
I wonder if this is a Java problem. My impression is that most intro comp sci classes now teach Java. Meanwhile, all the scientists I know work in Python, Perl, C, Matlab, Mathematica, or LabVIEW. Last I knew, there were even quite a few FORTRAN holdouts.

Why should scientists respect a comp sci intro class built on a language and a set of design patterns that reek of the cube farm, when all of their actual work is done using languages and systems that they will inevitably have to teach to themselves because nobody offers a formal course?

Surely the need to impress the math department is a great use case for an introductory course in Lisp or Scheme. Not that this is an original idea or anything.
I thought I made my point clear: including Goto in this supposedly minimalistic language doesn't guide learners in the right direction (and using it in the examples even less so). Goto is not used in modern programming style even though some specific constructs can be expressed succinctly with it.

Regarding Turing-completeness: Perhaps you can write maintainable code in Intercal or Whitespace, but most people can't or at least don't want to write maintainable code without functions and static scoping.
Design Patterns
http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~schmidt/tutorials-patterns.html
CSSHttpRequest: cross-domain Ajax using CSS for transport.
Tragically, antibiotics are often used as a placebo. For example, prescribing an antibiotic is a good way to get the flu patient to leave your office in a happy mood, secure in the knowledge that Something Is Being Done, even though antibiotics are useless against flu.

That's a big problem, because sugar pills don't breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria. There's a serious argument to be made for homeopathy here: homeopathic treatments don't have side effects.
Thanks to you both for your help. Scratch does seem to be free-as-in-beer.....
Mass Technology Leadership Council Announces 2008 Technology Leadership Award Winners
facts, hope, hype
I haven't read "The Wealth Of Nations", but I thought it was an economics book, not a libertarians manifesto.
I've found his posts have been getting better. This one in particular qualifies as the elusive obvious.
I see this all the time. (I'm an ER nurse by night, computer nerd by day).

The problem is that patients frequently demand antibiotics for infections that don't require them and patients demand XRays for injuries that are obviously not fractures.

If someone is going to take little Jonny to the ER at 3 in the morning because the child has a fever and a cough, the last thing that the parents want to hear is "give him Tylenol, push fluids, plenty of rest..." Plain and simple, if they're going through the trouble to see the doctor, they want a prescription. So, instead of spending 20 minutes explaining to the parents why little Jonny doesn't need a prescription, they spend 5 minutes with them, prescribe an antibiotic that they _might_ but probably don't need, and run off to see the next patient.
Computer circuit built from brain cells
True, but "compay" doesn't. :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compay_Segundo
As the curmudgeons say: pride goeth before the fall.

I'm not saying that Matt is wrong, or that the WSJ is right, but this essay was just a bit too...precious...for my tastes.

I don't have the answers, and I don't have much confidence in anything, outside of myself. That said, if I know one fact about the world, it's that very few of the self-confident 22-year-olds that I meet are going to get rich from their big brains and hard work. If history teaches us anything, it's that most smart people will fail -- repeatedly and painfully. So, while it's not the right time for the adults to shake their walkers at the children for running on the lawn, perhaps it would be prudent for the kids to hold back on the self-congratulatory essays, in anticipation of the day when it all goes pear-shaped?

I'm not much older than Matt, but even I can detect a distinct generational shift in attitude toward work; I know where the WSJ editorial is coming from, even if I don't agree with its conclusions. And while I'm sure that the brash 20-somethings that I know believe that self-investment and autonomy are the keys to avoiding their parents' fate, that probably has more to do with the abject failure of all previous models of work, than the proven success of this one.

In ten years, some of you will be rich, successful and powerful. Most of you -- despite all of your hard work and independence -- won't be. Which brings me to another thing that the curmudgeons say: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Youth and arrogance are eternal companions.
homeopathic treatments don't have side effects.

Indeed. Most of us could stand to drink more water anyways.
Well, that seems to have been a big deal about nothing (as of just before noon, New York time). It opened about 4% down, but crept back up and is now 3.5% down, at 8,387.
With its mountain of cash, Apple could buy…
how about keeping adsense and give the entire amount to charity? sheesh.
markets are random, probably better off investing in yourself at this point.

Very well put.
Sometimes people take bad jobs out of blinding need and over promising executives. At least that is what happened in my case.

It is my fault for staying for so long though. At least I have something to blog about now.
A number one ranking on a Google SERP will get you far more than 60% click through. It's usually 90%+. Even if its clearly something different than you were searching for (in the description, etc.) a lot of people just click the first link reflexively. <-- Obviously, that traffic doesn't convert well, but it's interesting.