skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'm sick of this hand-wavey selective nonsense. Yes, healthy people with good diets probably shouldn't be taking any vitamins, but the people I know who are this healthy are a small minority, including myself.

Lets look at these cases specfically. Should women over the age of 50 take iron? Probably not, but why are they taking iron? Because they've been told their whole lives they're low on iron by their doctors, who were right to tell them so, but now know not to recommend iron pills past a certain age. Were they wrong for doing so?

Look at how foods are enriched with vitamins. Folic acid is everywhere because it helps pregnant women, but in men it can cause cancer, but it also might fight a different cancer, yet we still take it in. Its nearly impossible to buy bread from the store that doesn't have folic acid. Hell, half the things in the grocery store are enriched with folic acid. How about we pull that stuff and just tell pregnant women to take supplements and stop feeding men a carcinogen? I prefer the freedom to make my own decisions than having the government dictate folic acid supplementation via food and the other hand having the NYTimes telling me not to take anything.

For the record I take fiber, fish oil, and vitamin D + tryptophan. The latter being more or less a cure for my SAD (after several failed SSRIs). This combination makes me feel like a million dollars. With a little supplementation as well as good sleep, etc I'm about 10x as creative and have more energy. Quitting these would be foolish. If anything, we should be encouraging responsible and informed supplementation and pulling government mandated supplementation for things that harm us, folic acid especially.

Heck, I'm a big government kind of guy, and even I have a problem with folic acid in our food. The government, even under the best of circumstances, is biased towards pregnant women and families (population growth/family is seen as important) but really not interested in helping you achieve longevity or be happy. You're going to have to work those out on your own, hence my recommendation to look into potential supplements and lifestyle changes, as well as avoiding government supplementation that might hurt you (folic acid) but help others (pregnant women).

This article is so against the hacker ethos its not even funny. Sorry NYTimes, this issue is a lot more complex than "Vitamins bad, mmm'kay?"
Weren't they on Perl and Masonry in the beginning?
Brad Stolz Presenting at the NASP Annual Conference
A&R Team
Daily Kos: Occupy My Uterus. My Ass Fertilized Eggs Are Not People
Sweden has 5 weeks of vacation and a 40 hour standard work week, and pretty successful companies such as Spotify, Skype, Voddler, SoundCloud, Flattr, etc, were founded here. I doubt most of those founders only worked 40 hour work weeks though, as an entrepreneur you decide your own hours, and overtime for regular employees is not uncommon.

It probably varies a lot depending on company culture. A friend working at a startup recently got hi-5's from the bosses when he said he had worked 11 hours a day the entire previous week, no talk about taking compensation leave to rest or anything like that. At my company (not a startup) an 11 hour day would be pretty extreme, and if my boss was aware he would probably insist I come in late the following day.
> they are as subject to whim and fashion in their thinking as other professions

They are also subject to experiment, evidence and peer-review, perhaps more so than other professionals.
Agree. The only Yegge rant/essay I can remember getting all the way through without struggling to stay awake. It's amazing how much more effective a writer he is when he's not trying to construct an elaborate metaphor. Maybe it has something to do with his belief that he was writing to a smaller, more focused audience.
He deliberately took it down: https://plus.google.com/110981030061712822816/posts/bwJ7kAEL...

See my comment on that post for why I think his taking it down was a mistake.
Dude, wake up! If you are so unable to stand on your feet or find a new job what had you done if you would laid-off?

Isn't it a time for you to think a little deeper and stop being a loser?
Can it also print my email and place it in envelopes for me?
Well, you'll find business is not that simple. Consider this, In that time I may see an Android phone I like and jump ship. That's then a 2 year lock out during which I won't return to iPhone. Further, having finished my contract by the end of this month, that means they're not taking a cut of contract revenues from me until I get back on, if I ever do. They've effectively lost a customer, along with the cost endured to acquire said customer.
He claims his commute involves one hour per day walking and one hour per day riding on a train.

THIS IS NOT COMMUTING.

Commuting is getting in your car and sitting in traffic for two hours per day.
Apple Is Reportedly Working On A $250-$300 "iPad Mini"
What is this I don't even...

So, just to get this straight, the answer to "A 20 minute, 40 mile commute to work costs you $125.000 and 1.3 years of work, over 10 years" is "I take the train and I listen to podcasts" ?

I see how he's trying to show a most positive side, but what he's doing is both moving the goal posts and a strawman argument.

Plus, shameless self-promotion.
The notion that psychadelics affect a person's outlook is not that great a leap to make, and others have already posted links to studies supporting that. While I'm not asserting that LSD was the lynchpin to his success, I really don't see that it's the same as alternative medicine at all.
I think a long commute on public transport is very different than a long commute in the car. The first I could see doing when I was younger without a family. Driving a long commute though is, IMHO, a miserable way to spend your time and money.
It may have been a case of not wanting to embarrass his former employer, Amazon.
Its sounds like a spectacularly stupid idea, but it appears to be opt-in, so the title is pretty misleading here.
What's ironic is that Amazon is "so bad" yet they are one of my favorite companies.

They always seem to do right by the customer.

Where as google, it's behavior isn't always customer friendly (disclaimer: this is my opinion/perception).

To an outsider like me, Google seems almost schizophrenic...adding features, removing them, and then Gmail on android is just "not good". Customer service is non existent. Have a problem with Google product, good luck buddy.

Contrast that to Amazon where customer service is prompt and courteous and they always give the customer the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe it's the focus of the companies? Google is focused on engineering for engineering's sake. The focus on developers and algorithms.

Amazon is focused on customer service/satisfaction. Keeping the customers coming back.

Google is a monopoly in many of it's services (search, ad[sense|words]) whereas you can get a lot of Amazon's products somewhere else.
Thanks, I've put that on my reading list.
Posting a link to a web based copy is one thing, copying the text integral to HN is probably not ok.
Oil Cleanup X Chalenge: Winner triples previous record
VeriSign Wants the Authority to Close Websites
He took it down for a reason. I can't help but feel reposting it is bad online etiquette
2013 - The Year of Cloud database?
The youngest self made billionaire was 23 when it happened for him, and that was with a ton of connections. Relax, you still have 3 more years before you're a failure.

When I was 21 I tried to do what you tried to do here, and I ended up living with my sister with -$83 in the bank by the time it was all said and done. I am 24 now and doing much better in life, but it was a long road to get here. I can promise you that it will get better, but you will have to work for it.

My suggestions:

- Start filling out applications for any and every job. Get a job. It doesn't matter if it's cleaning toilets or flipping burgers. Right now there are people with PHD's who are riding on the back of a garbage truck. Put your pride and passions behind you, and take any job you can get.

- Until you get that job, do anything you can to get money. Go door to door with a lawn mower and cut grass. Troll the free section on craigslist and find a way to sell the items listed there. Walk into the small mom and pop shops in your area and ask if they need any help involving IT whether it be building a website, designing a flyer, setting up a wireless network, fixing a computer, anything. Ask if you can leave your number with them if anything should come up in the future.

There's always a way to make a few extra dollars, and you'd be surprised how much small businesses are willing to help out someone down on their luck who actually wants to work. Swallow your pride, get out of the house, and get face to face with people who have succeeded where you have failed.

Best of luck to you.
Ask HN: Regarding Steve's rant
Hello All,

I was an intern at Amazon this summer and they extended a full time offer. I read Steve's rant with great interest. Since many people in comments have confirmed the points raised by him about Amazon, I am not feeling good right now :( I still have 18 days to accept the offer. I am currently interviewing with Microsoft. I have applied to Facebook just now. Sadly, I screwed up my Google phone screening last week. It was just not my day :( I am confident of getting MS offer. Do you people suggest I reject the Amazon offer? Or should I work at Amazon and form my own opinion? Internship experience was quite good.
I use Compass(http://compass-style.org) but that pretty much runs on SASS.
I'd argue that you should abuse your young age for press though. Press loves a story about how a young person is succeeding, it's a USP to them. Use it whilst you can!
What "marketing hype"? Being announced last on a keynote?

People attribute special powers to Apple's "marketing hype" but 99% is web generated --articles, posts, comments, user anticipation etc, not from some Apple's marketing campaign.

Except if showing the Facetime and Siri features in its tv ads qualifies as "marketing hype".

In any case, Facetime is an iOS/Mac feature. Noone expected it to catch as much as Skype, if only because there are like 80% more Skype-capable devices out there (like, say, all Windows boxes).

And Apple even made some bad decisions IMHO in promoting it: no OSX client from the beginning, not integrated with other apps (say, iChat), not promoted for PCs bundled with iTunes, etc.
> At one point, my expenses were literally: food, and gas for the car. And that was it. I had no bank account, I got my checks cashed at the grocery store

How much were you paying to cash your checks at the grocery store? This is more expensive than depositing the check in a bank or credit union (I think it's on the level of payday loans, gouging lower income because they don't understand the relative size of the fee).

> So, if your friends are giving you a hard time, tell 'em to knock it the hell off. Or find new friends

Knock it off, maybe. Find new friends? That seems silly. Grow a thicker skin and joke right back at them.
keep your friends close, your enemies closer :-)

Seriously though, his experience at Apple seems to have left him somewhat jaded: http://worrydream.com/#!/Apple
"On the contrary, the way Amazon treats their employees does harm them substantially, they just haven't paid the price visibly to the public (or quite as hard as they will, eventually)."

If it hasn't hit them yet, it might after the rant.

Given the Dilbert Employer From Hell publicity generated by the rant and the subsequent discussion, I'd say that they might have trouble filling in for the people that leave. Heck, even some of their current employees might read the rant and realize how crappy their current situation is.

Off on a tangent:

"I couldn't even run multiple dev environments on it, like I had to for my JOB, and building my code took 12 full minutes, instead of, say, 3."

Local dev environments? My current workstation has a mere 2GB memory and an Athlon X2 which was all the rage in 2005 :) The builds fly, because they are delegated to a compile farm. The added benefit is that I don't have to muck with the build tools settings.
Some of the humor and personality people detect in Siri may be grandfathered in from Wolfram Alpha, which has stock responses to certain queries. It's particularly good at joining in with movie quotes.
Moral of the story: don't come to HN for advice on life decisions.
Hello All,

I was an intern at Amazon this summer and they extended a full time offer. I read Steve's rant with great interest. Since many people in comments have confirmed the points raised by him about Amazon, I am not feeling good right now :( I still have 18 days to accept the offer. I am currently interviewing with Microsoft. I have applied to Facebook just now. Sadly, I screwed up my Google phone screening last week. It was just not my day :( I am confident of getting MS offer. Do you people suggest I reject the Amazon offer? Or should I work at Amazon and form my own opinion? I can always change jobs.

EDIT: I am not able to reply to comments at all! It gives me dead link message. I have been trying for almost 30 mins now. Frustrating.
It's probably really hard to run a company with tens of thousands of employees and achieve market success while also having everyone inside like and respect you. From a systems standpoint, it's hard to argue with Amazon's recent successes (AWS, Kindle Fire). If they aren't an A company in tech then no one is.

This is not to dispute your observations in any way, shape, or form. Just that it's a huge T-Rex from the outside in terms of objective metrics like products shipped, even if it does have dysfunctional internal organs.
I'm getting the most profound headache trying to create a small instance of the magical thinking necessary to generate the comments you've made here.

I don't even know where to start.

Like, how do you think this works? They have a magical golden goose shitting out new, feature complete design verification test models and they just decided not to "show" you the next one behind the curtain?

Apple is successful because they take their time creating their hits. The 3GS didn't imperil the company and neither will this.
So, let me make sure I get this straight...

In a world where almost everyone is trying to go paperless...

And where ink is ridiculously expensive...

And in a world where damn near anything can be had online...

You want to (opt-in, thank gawd) automatically print something that could be read online, using up paper and expensive ink that isn't yours?

More surprising, is that someone suggested this at a meeting, and nobody had the balls to point out the problems with this plan.
To recap, you haven't tried Siri.

> You mentioned yourself that it might be useful in the car, where you are alone and nobody can hear you.

And what if people can hear you, in the street say? It's not like we don't already TALK to our phones all the time while walking in the street. You think it matters to passers-by if you talk to your boss or Siri?

> It's literally shouting, when you really should only be whispering.

Huh? What do you mean with this bizzaro comparison?
Prepainted steel coil
looks like he had diss at Amazon to blunt his dissing of Google
What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger.

I live in a third world country. I make less than half of what you do on your suckiest freelancing gig. The government here just passed a law against planking and is about to declare masturbation to be equal with abortion. The smartest here already left.

Last 2008 our house was demolished by the government without any compensation. Good thing I saved some and managed to build slowly with the small lot my parents saved up since they got married in the early 80's.

Come 2009 what we rebuilt (I live with my parents and I'm the only son; it's a norm here don't worry) was destroyed by the Typhoon Ondoy. Mostly due to flooding. Most of our stuff was soaking wet and unusable. Right now I have this little phobia thing going on when it rains hard. I usually love the rain.

At the end of 2010 the company I work for closed down. I was jobless. Unemployment rate here is not so bad, but still... I switched from PHP to Python and went with Django development. Started freelancing at the most ridiculous hourly rate but I have to start somewhere.

Now I got my house rebuilt from the floods. I work at home in a full time gig that pays the bills. I might get married in less than a year. I saved enough and still saving. I am still contemplating on creating my own business so I don't have to work as an employee anymore. I pay for everything in the house with my two parents as they are already retired.

It's not a spectacular success story (yet), but all I want to tell you is that some people had it worse. The storm will pass away. Don't lose hope. You are on the verge of poverty. Some people are WAY past poverty.
http://nml.ru.ac.za/files/carterimage.jpg
Novacut delivers distributed collaboration in HD-SLR video editing
It's generated code... Who cares what it looks like?

Lars Bak is on the Dart team. He knows what JavaScript VMs will optimize. Without some sort of "I tried this in my browser and it was too slow/took too long to load" I don't see the point of articles like these.
Hey mannicken,

Just wanted to share my story to maybe give you some encouragement. Between the ages of 16 and 20, I was doing freelance work. It was OK but not "amazing". An opportunity came up for a full-time job and I chose to take it. I was able to leverage what I had done freelance into demonstrating I had the resume and skills for the job I wanted. Hopefully you can do the same thing -- think "what have I achieved?" and make a resume based around that. Then, get out there and network! Tell everyone you meet what your skillset is and that you're doing a search for the perfect job. You'll find it!
Really? In my experience I have almost NEVER seen six weeks for any employee unless they were taking a sabbatical.
The Untold Secrets On How To Create Online Sales Funnels
Dropbox as "the Internet file system that everything will plug into"
You are not alone. I've given this advice to several 18-23 year old men:

Jobs are like girlfriends. I'm not trying to be sexist, I'm just speaking from my own perspective as a man. When I was in school, girls I was interested didn't seem interested in me. But then I got a girlfriend. All of a sudden, the girls who wouldn't talk to me started talking to me. It was weird. I'm not saying be a player, I firmly believe that when dating or buying gadgets, once you make a commitment, shopping around will only make you unhappy.

But not with Jobs. Just get a job. Any job. Work at a gas station or bus tables. Do something. You'll feel better about yourself and you take some of the pressure off yourself. And there is some magical aspect to having a job that makes you seem more interesting to employers, kind of like my analogy above with the girlfriend.

In addition to that, consider getting a degree. An AA would be great, a BA/BS would be better. It saddens me that a piece of paper is so important, but that's life. If you're not the type who excels in an institution then figure out ways to get real world experience. If you're a programmer I'd say do some open source development.

Do this in addition to getting a job. As the good book says, "Anyone not willing to work doesn't get to eat." (2 Thes 3:10)
Isn't that a risk Apple has taken ever since the first iPhones went off-contract in 2009? People have always had the choice to be disappointed in the latest model and jump to whatever they wanted, Android or not.

It looks like Apple has done pretty well in spite of itself. You're always going to disappoint a certain % of people (like yourself).
I don't get the impression that he was "forced" to back off, but rather that he accidentally posted something that was meant for internal consumption in public. I think it's perfectly within his rights to delete the post - most people don't talk the same way with their co-workers as they do in public, and it's perfectly understandable.
I hope you're trolling but on the assumption that you're not:

> No explanation is given why any supplement is unhealthy. That's the first thing.

An extreme example to illustrate the point: if you eat a random plant and drop dead, I'm not going to look for an explanation, I'm going to avoid eating that plant until I can prove that your death was caused by another factor. Likewise, if taking vitamin supplements appears to result in a negative effect on overall health rather than the expected positive, the smart thing to do is stop taking them until you can demonstrate otherwise, is it not?

> Secondly, the context in which this occurs is that various government agencies and professional guilds want to prohibit the sale of supplements, or impose ridiculous 'standards' on their manufacture and testing.

Source for this?

> However, it's very important that people remain free to choose which non-prescription chemicals to put in their bodies.

Indeed, it's also important that people are well educated in the effects of those non-prescription chemicals and are in full possession of the known facts about their effects. Such is the aim of studies like this.

> Medics and pharmacists don't always get it right, they are difficult to consult, and they are as subject to whim and fashion in their thinking as other professions.

Maybe so, but they know a lot more about the human body than those who don't study it, since that is by definition their job. Besides, the great thing about science is that anyone can dive in and have a go at proving or disproving something so if you disagree with the conclusions in this article, run some research of your own and prove them wrong.

> Meanwhile, only a handful of people die annually from vitamin overdose, whereas hundreds of thousands people die who take prescription drugs (yet we don't say that there's no justification for prescription drugs).

Sources for either of those statements?

Your issue with prescription drug-taking is entirely separate; you might as well argue that thousands of people die driving yet we don't say there's no justification for driving.
Please don't lump Go in with Dart. It is a totally different beast and a pretty nice language over all. Considering the people who are writing the Go language (eg. Pike, Cox, etc...) and the language itself it really doesn't have anything to do with Java.

tl;dr Dart looks stupid and isn't what I am looking for. Go is a pretty good language for the right use case.
Occupy Wall Street Ignites Political Hackathon
Well, that blows that theory out of the water!

So does the iPhone 4S have a different kind of DSP, too?
P2P update to Zeus Trojan spells more trouble
yes but we all figured this out earlier because EC2 and S3 downtime would never correspond with Amazon.com downtime - which made it obvious that the 'use the infrastructure we use' line was complete bullshit.
I'm thinking he wanted a new form factor to show that IT'S NOT AN IPHONE4. We're getting into the realm of tail fin marketing.
Puss in boots online
2 is a code smell