skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You won't type faster than you think. Typing fast - apart from the manual ability to do it - requires thinking fluently. Maybe you're inhibiting yourself by self-editing while you're forming the sentences in your mind as you're typing. Try free-writing: writing anything, as long as it's English (not random letters), not censoring anything, nonsense or sense welcome indifferently. What's the fastest you can write without putting on the brakes to judge? That would be the upper limit of your dexterity. (It's also a good exercise.)

Practice is a huge factor in dexterity. I think my typing speed increased linearly from the 40s to the 70-80 wpm range during the four years or so when time I was typing 3,000-10,000 words (10-20) pages every day. It has plateaued there for the last 10 years, because I just don't type as much.

Your gear counts. For me the ultimate feel was the IBM Selectric II, the one with the ball. The whirr and strike of when you hit a key, the hum of the machine waiting if you paused to ponder, encouraged typing. Most computer keyboards today make dispiriting noises. Hackers and writers will prefer the Das Keyboard (http://www.daskeyboard.com/). They say the all-black one forces your brain to touch type since it's hopeless to hunt and peck. I like it mostly because of the feel - the force you need to type on an 'a' or a semi-colong is less than for an "f" or a "j". The Das has a real smooth ride. There's something in that racket that encourages fast typing, like the first few pings of metallic raindrops building to a sustained mechanical storm - all because of your awesome creativity and work ethic. You can even pack and play - take it on trips for you if you know you will have to use someone else's inferior desktop setup.

The fastest way to write is steno. Plover (http://plover.stenoknight.com/) has been mentioned on HN recently.

Practice is the most important - Gladwell's annoying 10,000 hours and all. Not only rack up the hours, but practice with your whole body and mind. What are you writing, anyway? Don't think for a second that Malmsteen played guitar to meet a metric. You gotta have a feel for what, and why you're doing, what you're doing.

In summary like what you write, like your gear, and use it intensely. If you don't improve then you might be limited genetically, which doesn't matter. Once the ink dries, nobody knows how long it took you.
Just had a thought on seeing your point 1): Part of the value some people buy is exclusivity. If others can get it for free, it reduces this aspect of its value.
> Pardon my coarseness, but so many kids who start out their college career are little shits who think they know everything about programming and that taking an introductory class is beneath them.

Unfortunately enough, most intro classes are beneath a lot of these "little shits". SICP, not so much.
The Super PIPA-SOPA Action/Info Flowchart Reference Guide
Symantec Admits to Being Hacked
Commodore mode.
> The whole construction of the network of theaters around the world wasn't designed to have thousands of movies playing at the same time

You're presupposing that the traditional movie theater is an enterprise that has an inalienable right to exist.

It doesn't :-)

Disruptive technology is called "disruptive" for this very reason.

Thanks to cheap big screen TVs and digital distribution, the movie business is being disrupted.

Near me, lots of theaters have gone out of business recently. Other new ones have popped up that are now selling beer and food during the film. Still others are showing fewer blockbusters, but more classics and inviting directors, actors, and other crew to hold QnA sessions after the screenings.

In the short term, damage is done, jobs are lost, businesses fail. In the long term, scar tissue forms and society rebuilds, better than it was before. It's all a bunch of grand experiments. Who knows what will stick?

> capitalism doesn't create monopolies

It most certainly does create monopolies AND oligarchies. Just look at history. Some other reply to me suggested it was government's fault. Yeah that too. Also see history :-)

> For example, it's not a very good idea to have 100 different power companies where you live because it is much more efficient and therefore better for society to have only one company

This is a pretty different discussion.

In terms of ideology, I'd consider myself a social libertarian. I believe that the government should do only really two categories of things:

1) Act as a check/balance on businesses (ie. make sure my food is safe to eat & that no one organization goes around destroying the greater good for personal gains)

2) Provide municipal services where there is either (A) conflict of interest (eg. health insurance) or (B) unsatisfiable constraints to sustain business (eg. no one will deliver mail to a 10 person town; or road construction)

However, the problem is that when technology changes, government needs to be able to rapidly evolve it's involvement in both areas. Sadly, it seems incapable of rethinking any idea without a full reboot (cough bloody revolution) or a fist full of lobbying dollars.

For example: Today, I support the government's control of road construction. If teleporters are invented tomorrow, I would demand that the government immediately develop a plan for reducing and ultimately eliminating their involvement in transportation.
There isn't a ban on independent expenditures by corporations because such a ban would unconstitutionally abridge of the right of freedom of speech and of the press. It would abridge the rights of (1) the individuals who jointly own the corporation and (2) the individuals who may wish to hear the speech whose dissemination is being restricted.

Corporations don't have a constitutional right to even exist, but provided that they do exist, Congress cannot enact a content-discriminatory restriction on speech funded by corporations.
A theoretical parsing of the sentence does not matter. When tested in court, a reasonable reading of the law would not find YouTube in violation. The clear intention of the Act is to burn down sites whose primary purpose is theft of U.S. property, like The Pirate Bay.

The problem is that is YouTube today. A lot of people forget that YouTube built its initial audience by "primarily" being flooded with pirated anime clips. Even if YouTube did not want to be a haven of copyright infringement, it users did. It would be easily arguable that YouTube would violate the law when it first started.
In post-SOPA/PIPA follow-through, Calfornians should write Dianne Feinstein's office (no written statement, no co-sponsor movement) and mention her upcoming reelection bid next November. If she doesn't get with the program, perhaps a vigorous primary challenge is needed.
Now that is good stuff. I mean, it seems obvious in a sense, and arguably it distills down to "grow by offering a continually expanding portfolio of complementary products." But for folks who haven't spent a lot of time thinking about growth strategies, or who have tunnel vision over their current product, this article could be a real eye-opening.

At Fogbeam Labs, we use the analogy of an onion, with it's many layers, instead of a cake analogy... but the point is the same. Know exactly what you're doing, and have great focus; but also have a strong awareness of what your complements as a good leading indicator of where you can grow.

BTW, on that note... for the hackers in the crowd, who are doing startups but have never cracked open a marketing book or anything "business related," I'd like to offer a suggestion. Pony up the couple of hundred bucks or so that it'll cost, and commit 1 semester to taking a "Marketing 101" class at the local community college. Or at least buy the book and read it. Despite what you might believe, marketing isn't all about hucksterism and selling snake-oil to unsuspecting rubes.
I like the bit where TPB didn't mention what they really do .... line their pockets with the revenue from billions of ad impressions a month.
Open Act Introduced: Alternative To SOPA & PIPA
Yep sorry, fixing
I personally vote every chance I get. I emailed Mark Rubio a co-sponsor on SOPA as well as mutual contacts of his and mine to voice my displeasure and to try to leverage my influence to get a meeting (before he changed his mind), I had an effect he changed his position (I along with a lot of other people, I don't want it to appear that I am taking sole credit for his change of position). I don't know what else one can expect, but for many of us, we just live here now. We are outnumbered and outgunned. Short of leaving our entire life and more importantly family to move away from it, there is not much we can do other than rage against the machine. Part of that rage is to say I don't support it and it is the governments position and not mine. I am not going to hold a position just because a group of people think it is valid nor should we be held accountable for the action of the collective. I believe in sovereignty all the way down.
Today I lost a customer | LinkPeek.com
"[H]e who lights his [candle] at mine, receives light without darkening me."

http://movingtofreedom.org/2006/10/06/thomas-jefferson-on-pa...
Not CSI: LA but CSI, the one set in Las Vegas.
Of course? The article, while focusing its attack Manpower is more an indication of systemic problems of the large-scale staffing firms. Race to the bottom, wage squeezing, etc.
Does anyone know if there's a commercial database using quadtrees or hilbert curves? (Aside from the libraries mentioned in the comments, I mean something more productized)
That's interesting; I'll have to think about that. However, I'm not sure it holds except to the extent that the copying is slow and the buyers impatient. Then, the first batch captures enough of the market to incent the author.

But if most of the market is patient enough to await the arrival of slow-copycats, the initial investment in the 'first batch' (by not just the creator but the publisher/wholesaler/retailer is in danger, and thus deterred without copyright. In fact, large losses could be incurred being stuck with an inventory that's later undercut. Fears of such losses could cut off a gradual build to popularity before it starts.

Digital reproduction/dissemination eliminates the need for most of that 'first batch' investment and all the downside risk of production/inventory; only the creation itself must be incentivized. All the other once-necessary costs no longer need a legal hack (statutory monopoly) as a sort of subsidy.

I'll have to look at the Breyer reasoning to know what factors dominate under which assumptions.
This is:

(a) unimpressive, because it's obvious that you went and registered a bunch of domains with a version of their name that they don't use (christopher, benjamin, melvin, middle initial, etc), and

(b) a bad idea, because at best it's lulz for geeks in the know, but at worst it's "SOPA opponents have gone too far: they hacked web sites of the U.S. government!"

Lose it.
Attendly - the "Campaign Monitor" of event registration
hrm.. how are you guys on hackernews looking to approach this? mainly by building an extension to your current apps to suit timeline? what are the psychological ticks that you guys find important and different and that we should tap on with the new timeline? LOL.. sorry.. kinda loaded.. :p
But somehow the fact that all major labels ended up with CDs at $13.99 retail for several years was mere coincidence.
violating property rights and free speech is certainly overstepping
Facebook often advertises products related to user information (merchandise from a movie for example). If it's something the user may be interested in buying they hadn't thought about but noticed from that ad, I see that as a benefit of targeted advertising. I'm not sure I understand your point about this.

As far as Google and Facebook I think they recognize that they're better off taking care of their users for long term success. I suppose you could argue this is only a temporary stance based on company culture, but I don't know if I'd agree with it.

Facebook takes a lot of heat and is often talked about on HN as this malevolent advertising company (privacy be damned), but to me this criticism always seemed overblown. I've always personally viewed them as actually trying to do what they say they're trying to accomplish. As far as the last point about Facebook being dominant, just because a company is dominant doesn't mean they're entirely about perpetuating their own existence. Facebook still rapidly makes changes and improves their platform, they also didn't do anything anti-competitive to try and destroy Google+ or Diaspora (I think Mark even donated to Diaspora).

This is all background to why I think the OP's article is unlikely. I think these companies build new features to keep their users happy and using their site, not design new features with the main purpose of secretly tricking them into more advertising. It isn't all about profit.
I can't possibly imagine a better introductory Computer Science class

MIT student here. My year was the first to have to do the new curriculum. Here's my understanding of it.

The replacement courses (6.01 and 6.02) are not supposed to be intro CS courses. They are meant to expose people to broadly applicable engineering principles in both electrical engineering and computer science. And like SICP, they are not about programming.

What used to happen with the old curriculum is that everyone --- both electrical engineering and computer science students --- would take 6.001, circuits, signals & systems, and architecture. With the current curriculum you get broad exposure in the beginning with 6.01 and 6.02 and have a bit more flexibility in your other requirements (if you're into pure CS, you can avoid sitting through a semester of circuit theory, if you want).

How was it in Berkeley? Are the EE and CS departments separate?
If I'm guessing correctly what you mean by spoiler effect, I guess a 2-stage election does minimize its effects. For instance, in Brazil, a presidential (or gubernatorial, etc) candidate must have a majority (that is, more than 50% of the votes) to win. Suppose in the first-stage we have candidate A with 30%, B with 20%, C with 15%, etc. Then a couple of months later we have a second-stage with candidates A and B. So it's possible that B wins.

I believe in the approval voting that you mention, there's a situation where candidate C would be able to win, which is also interesting.
Sounds like these guys wouldn't sign most such treaties.

I'm happy to be a good neighbor, but policy should happen as close to the local level as possible. I don't think that is a shocking insight.
"Corporatism" as a concept has existed since the 19th century (identified by that term) and so did exist in the 1920s for Mussolini. Corporatism has similar aims as corporativismo, which is the Italian for corporatism.
> The problem is that the creators are not the copyright owners any more.

I'm not sure.

A singer and songwriter aren't the only people involved in a music product. Likewise a song isn't the only thing involved in a music track. It involves production, for example, investment, the confluence of a variety of artistic, technical, management and manufacturing skills. Why shouldn't a music company have some claim over the copyright of the finished product?
Why didn’t anyone call Will Ferrell and Adam McKay to post a hilarious, viral video that would make the point?

I dunno, maybe someone tried, but they couldn't convince Ferrell and/or McKay to do such a self-defeating thing? That is, the article assumes that the MPAA has it's artists' best interests at heart, when it demonstrably doesn't.
Like a "Kickstarter for public policy"?
Hollywood fights Internet protests with... TV ad, billboard, radio spot
I'm not sure that's true, because they will still have to appease their other constituents in the existing base by making compromises (that will make you not want to vote for them again)
Nations Convene to Decide the Fate of a Second
Depends on what you find morally correct. If I don't agree with the GPL, why should I bother sharing my modified GPL code? I don't find it immoral.
You want your company to succeed, Politician XYZ generally supports ideas that are beneficial to your company, so you support that candidate financially so he stays in office.

I think that qualifies as corruption, it is promoting a specific agenda that is beneficial to you over others and using insider influence to do so. It is just pre-issue as opposed to post-issue. It's kind of like the Mob paying off the cops just in case they need them. They are still in the pocket of the influence.
I was hoping for a Lonely Island SOPA/PIPA song (http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/01/the-lonely-i...)
The Lonely Island gets off its boat to oppose SOPA
The OPEN Act (SOPA/PIPA alternative) needs more discussion time
It may also be that The Economist is more interesting to read than Esquire. Esquire is better if you focus on the pictures.
Excellent article to bring up with recent events. This rant happens time and time again, the record companies double dip and screw over the artists and their customers repeatedly. When is enough going to be enough?

To whomever can revolutionize the music/media industry with stewardship for the arts you deserve these profits for your work.
That is not true. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "no typing system" so I'll go ahead and assume what you likely meant - no static type system.

Optimizing code written in a dynamically typed language is a pretty well understood problem (now) thanks to the SELF research at SUN and more recently the V8 Javascript engine. Both VMs employ type profiling at runtime to figure out what the compiler should assume the type of a dynamically typed variable should be. It can then emit code that treats a variable like it always has the profiled type - like a C++ compiler would. When such an assumption is broken at runtime, implementations typically fallback to an unoptimized version of the code (V8) to execute the rest of the continuation. Well written code is expected to achieve type stability pretty fast making the fallback overhead insignificant.
Thanks for posting this, Bill!
Stop SOPA | mcgvr
Here's one argument for allowing corporate money in politics:

Money can always find a way to affect power in a democracy. For this reason it's better to make the process straightforward and aboveboard than opaque and indirect.
Meh. When I create software and someone "takes away" my ability to earn income from it, it feels like stealing.

The "IP infringement is not stealing" line is just what people say when they want something for nothing and they don't want to feel bad about inflicting financial damage upon the original author.
Steve Albini said it in the early 90s.
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
I think he realized how ridiculous Sen.Harry Reid is saying that this bill is all about jobs when in fact the one sector that will mostly affected by this is tech. which is known for creating jobs
They also raise a disproportionate amount of funding from the entertainment industry.
Why should he/she approve of the system that makes his legally licensed software not work just because it's 5 years old? If it didn't have the license activation anti-feature, it would work just as well now as it did 5 years ago.
W3.org SOPA
Money, power, and Congress: how lobbyists will determine the fate of SOPA
Smarter people own shares, study finds
Any recommendations for books that are less "quaint"?
You won't type faster than you think. Are you inhibiting yourself, judging the worth of your output, shaping your sentences as you’re laying them down? Try free-writing: writing anything, as long as it's English (not random letters), not censoring anything, nonsense or sense welcome indifferently. What's the fastest you can write without putting on the brakes to judge? That would be the upper limit of your dexterity.

Your gear counts. I remember the IBM Selectric II, the one with the ball. The whirr and strike, the hum of the machine waiting if you paused to ponder, encouraged typing. Most computer keyboards today make an annoying noise, even thought it might be quiet. Hackers and writers will prefer the Das Keyboard (http://www.daskeyboard.com/). They say the all-black one (nothing printed on the keys, like a piano) trains your brain to touch type like a Pro. I like it mostly because of the feel - the force you need to type an 'a' or a ‘;’ is less than for an ‘f’ or a ‘j’. The Das has a real smooth ride. There's something in that racket that encourages fast typing, like the first few pings of metallic raindrops building to a sustained mechanical storm - all because of your awesome creativity and work ethic. It reminds me of the IBM Selectric II, the one with the metal ball whirring and striking.

Practice is a huge factor in dexterity. I think my typing speed increased linearly from the 40s to the 70-80 wpm range during the four years or so when time I was typing 3,000-10,000 words (10-20) pages every day. It has plateaued there for the last 10 years, because I just don't type as much. The fastest way to write is steno. Plover (http://plover.stenoknight.com/) has been mentioned on HN recently. But practice is the most important - Gladwell's annoying 10,000 hours, yes. The hours. Not only rack ‘em up but practice with your body and soul. What are you writing, anyway? Don't think for a second that Malmsteen played guitar to a metric, so many notes per minute. You gotta have a feel for it. Maybe you’re not meant to type fast, eh - maybe the world needs something else out of you?

In summary: like what you write, like your gear, and use it intensely. If you don't improve then you might be limited genetically, which doesn't matter. Once the ink dries, nobody knows how long it took you.
Why 'post-PC' is a far bigger threat to Microsoft than Mac or Linux ever was
What's stopping us from raising money on Kickstarter to buy up tons of billboard inventory on AdStruc.com? (the Airbnb of billboards - kind of awesome btw)
What is a better use of time for communicating with Congress? Most people don't have time to set up an appointment and go to their offices. Writing a paper letter takes a lot more time, and then you have to find an envelope, stamps and go mail it. I guess we should try to do it anyway.
Think About It rupertmurdoch
Wedge  Heel Boots Make Girls Look Hotter
High heel boots are shoes with long heels that provide support to the heels and provide an elevation to the feet. Though this form of shoe was introduced keeping in mind women with short heights, today these are popular among all women across the world. These sexy looking boots are among the hottest fashion items and are available in a variety of designs and sizes. In the world of fashion, trends do not last long and keeping that in mind.
If I work a day for you, it is a day that I am not able to work for someone else (possibly myself in my own business). So, yes, I have lost a workday. If I am not compensated for that workday, then I am that much poorer.
Optimus One P350 - Hot looking phone
What's more terrifying - Having no control over what your representatives vote on (except to vote them in or out) or having binding veto power?

Too many people confuse direct democracy with majoritarianism. The same checks and balances that exists with representative democracy can also exist with the direct kind. The constitution & the courts can still limit popular will.

One thing is for sure, there is no way SOPA like bills could pass with direct democracy or popular veto.
Klout's 5 Most Influential #SOPA Voices
World Bank - Google Map Deal: A Critique
I don't think Justin Bieber was being paid for the art which made him popular.

From what I hear he started out covering pop songs on YouTube. Exactly the type of infringement that SOPA/PIPA is trying to kill off.
When there’s so much conflicting startup advice, why even bother reading?
This is a neat workaround, but you can just hit "escape" on any page to do the same thing.
PhD Dilemma: Academic experience for working in the industry