skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I made the assumption based on the idea that industrialization has historically provided better living standards than an agricultural way of life. If that is not actually happening, please forgive me for my ignorance of the situation. Maybe "out of poverty" is the wrong wording and it should be stated as "making life a little less difficult".

I at least would like to hope that the current conditions are a temporary, intermediate step in bigger improvements.

You might be aware that there was a time when the US had pretty bad environmental conditions in many places. In 1969, the Cuyahoga river was so polluted that it caught on fire (http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2009/06/cuyahoga_...). In general, pollution had been bad for a long time, but it seems like a "tipping point" had to be reached where the problem was obvious to everyone. Reforms eventually came and succeeded in cleaning things up.

So hopefully, given enough time, the kinds of issues you've described can be solved.
Pinpointing the day from Ice Cube's "Today Was A Good Day"
What does it mean that they "NAT'ed the shares"?
Good points. To add a few from my own experience:

>I've come around to thinking that Zed Shaw (as just one example) is right about this. With his "Learn X the Hard Way" books he starts out by basically saying "just type this in" (and don't copy and paste). Don't worry what it does. You'll figure that out later.

That's basically the 10,000hr approach - the earlier you start programming, even at Zed's most basic level, the earler you start rewiring your neurons to do it more efficiently and effectively. For the natural born programmers in the article's study, this isn't necessary, but for that whole other group aren't natural born, I do believe something like this is very necessary if any of them hope to become effective programmers. It's not impossible for them, as the study implies, but does require taking into account how the mind works (which we know now thanks to modern neuroscience), how it is malleable, and then designing an instructional course around that understanding.

Additionally, trying to educate the 'goats', the second group, at the same pace as the 'sheep' is going to fail. It simply takes more effort and more time for their minds to adjust, for things to 'click', for their neural pathways to rewire. Especially when that the thing that is getting rewired is their fundamental need to grok meaning amongst the relatively 'meaningless' rules that programming consists of. They're not a lost cause, but trying to educate them with the same curriculum and pace is.

Finally, the programming instruction should, as you imply, be bottom-up exploratory, not top-down memorize-apply-repeat. Part of the problem may also be that people with weaker working memories have a harder time with the academic approach to learning, even project-based ones. One of my favorite pieces of anecdotal evidence for this is from a story Paul Graham linked from 'Beating the Averages' [0].

So, given that it takes significantly more time and effort for the second group, it is all the more imperative that they start earlier, as early in life as possible. As soon as they can read and type, basically.

And in order to increase the amount of time per day that such students can spend practicing programming, it may also be worth delaying math education, or integrating it with programming education. Something's gotta give. No more pen and paper math, or even calculator math, if possible, rather learn how construct and solve math problems in code.

That may sound extreme, but given where the world is going [1], I think nothing should be off the table when it comes to teaching people, even (especially) the 'goats', to code. Even if they go on to non-programmer jobs, the ability to think both abstractly and concretely simultaneously, and the ability to handle meaninglessness, are both supremely valuable, no matter what you endeavor.

0. http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html

1. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...
An n-only device probably wouldn't get certified as Wi-Fi™; AFAIK Wi-Fi devices have to have b and g for precisely that compatibility reason.
Notation aside, I like the term "turn" used for the whole unit. If you say 2 pi or 1 tau, it's still cloaked in traditional mathspeak. That kills opportunities for intuitive understanding, which can be a foothold for some.
Regenboog - So long, and thanks for all the passwords
A Web 2.0 rainbow table using Node.js and Redis.
Ok, sorry for misspeaking, but I don't think it changes the conclusion. I don't know how to measure consistency in my example, but correctness necessarily implies consistency.
How will you feel when your competitor will be one of the freely accessible sites while your site is one of those for which your customers will have to pay data access?
I mapped <jk> to serve the same purpose (quit insert mode) - it's a common power user tip but I've never gotten used to it. Unmapping wouldn't have been so fun... I also display a `fortune -o | cowsay -f hello-kitty | lolcat` on screen for five seconds while the phone is ringing.
> all life will be destroyed by natural catastrophe.

I'm going to disagree with you there.[1]

A bit tongue in cheek, but regarding your larger point, I think that thinking about preserving life in our corner of the universe solely in terms of keeping meat puppets alive in interstellar space is a rather parochial way to think. We already know of two forms of life that are far better suited to the void, autonomous robots and bacterial spores, why not get them out first?

[1]: http://worldcat.org/title/impossible-extinction-natural-cata...
You can get away with a less than stellar design if your app provides a lot of utility in an under-served niche. Group messaging is not an under-served niche
This is what I've always used http://www.steripen.com/
Directories that are based on objective criteria don't have this problem.

For example /dev is defined by objective criteria, and thus there's not much argument to what goes into /dev. We should only have core directory structure defined by objective criteria.
Why Eating Fat Doesn't Make You Fat: Sources
Nintendo doesn't need developers, they own the most beloved franchises in gaming.
If only more articles like this made it to the frontpage... Instead articles about the MPAA and RIAA seem to make it to the frontpage more and more.
that's not the argument. no one thinks that when twitter does business in germany it shouldn't be bound by german laws. people think that twitter shouldn't do business in germany.
Fair enough. And to be perfectly honest, I do go back and forth and the issue of privacy. It's certainly a complex and important issue, and I'm glad that there are reasonable people on both sides of it.

On a meta-level, I find that while I'm rarely swayed in the course of an argument, I often internalize some part of the opposing argument and at some later point find myself with a more nuanced, if not completely different position.

So, thanks again for the great discussion! I also enjoyed it quite a lot, and it definitely gave me plenty to think about. It's always a pleasure to have an intellectually honest discussion, and for all the lamentations about declining quality of discourse on HN, I find myself having plenty of great ones like this.

My name's Joe, and you should let me know if you're ever in Portland, Oregon so we can get some coffee or something!
This is a little bit disingenuous. I can certainly see the point that all of this separation is unnecessary on a typical modern desktop system, but several of the paths you listed in support of your argument are not actually specified by the FHS, nor do they even make sense.

Of the paths you mentioned, there is no such thing as:

/usr/share/bin
/usr/share/local/bin
/usr/local/share/bin
/usr/local/share/lib
/usr/share/lib
/opt/bin

All the paths that involve `share` are for non-executable data, so `bin` and `lib` subdirectories of these don't make sense. That's not to categorically say that there isn't any OS that provides them anyway--I've seen plenty of Linux distros with disorganized file systems--but that's a problem with the distro, not the FHS as a whole.

The `/opt` hierarchy is pretty much the wild west, I'll give you that. It's basically like `Program Files` on Windows; packages get an entire hierarchy to themselves. Most of the software I've seen that installs to `/opt` is Linux ports of Windows software, where the authors were either ignorant of the Unix way of organizing things, or simply didn't want to bother conforming with the norms of a different platform.

Incidentally, one of the reasons I prefer Arch Linux over some other distros is that the organization of the file system follows the standard and actually makes sense. Things are always where I expect them to be.

Your overall point may have some merit, but it feels a little like you're reaching for support for your position by making up wacky, confusing paths that don't actually exist.
Can someone explain to me how links to copyright content come under DMCA? Twitter is most definitely not hosting the copyright content? Why are they even at the receiving end of takedown requests?
Build a Fundable Startup - from Sam Zaid and Getaround.com
Although I do not own a stock portfolio yet (it's on my financial to do list), I personally would be wary of owning Facebook stock at this moment or in the near future.

People have been buzzing over a Facebook IPO for at least a year now, so when the moment comes you bet it will be a highly publicized event. Pre-IPO investing is already risky to begin with, and I have a feeling that all this media frenzy may make Facebook's stock unnecessarily volatile at the start.

Sure, the people buying in now may get lucky and see the stock rise in value, but it's also possible that this IPO may just turn out to be another Groupon. Although I'm still in my 20's, I'm not much of a risk taker when it comes to personal investments. Sorry, but I'll pass for now.
this is great news - end of the hype era and the beginning of the reality and earnings era for Facebook.
I never said it refutes our ability to model nature. I said it seems to refute the idea that nature itself runs on mathematics. Because what is the super system of nature?
Take the stress out of previewing your Web designs to clients with Mocku.ps
"Prison rape is so endemic more than seventy thousand prisoners are raped each year that it is routinely held out as a threat, part of the punishment to be expected. The subject is standard fodder for comedy, and an uncoöperative suspect being threatened with rape in prison is now represented, every night on television, as an ordinary and rather lovable bit of policing. The normalization of prison rape like eighteenth-century japery about watching men struggle as they die on the gallows will surely strike our descendants as chillingly sadistic, incomprehensible on the part of people who thought themselves civilized."

I found that quote to be particularly insightful.

Ron Paul thinks it would be a good idea to pardon all non-violent (violence includes theft) drug offenders.
Here's why I am going to buy:

Google's Retargeting product drives insanely strong conversions for clients vs. their traditional adwords.

You're able to re-reach folks that, by arriving on your site in the first place, have categorized themselves as interested and, as a result, close at a much higher rate.

Google's recent move to consolidate privacy policies, and in effect, sets of customer data is going to provide massively better targeting capabilities.

As a result they'll be able to sell the exact same ad-space to advertisers and yet advertisers will see better results, thanks to better targeting.

In the "bid-for-space" model this will translate to higher ECPM to Goog, to site owners, etc.

Now, enter FB, coiner of the "Social graph" and consolidator of all the things and people.

They are doubtlessly working to build and improve their advertising products.

They are going to earmark a lot of that $100b to buy large advertising businesses, just like Goog bought AdMob etc, that they believe they can improve ECPMs on.

Is it speculative? Absolutely.

Does $100b already have a lot of this expected upside baked-in? No doubt.

But still, I have seen the future of online advertising and it be profitable.

He with the most customer data wins, and FB has that in abundance.
@PaulHoule,

The fact that arXiv.org has had difficulties in becoming financially sustainable is irrelevant, because it represents only one of many possible models for providing open access to academic research.

Your comment reminds me a bit of all those industry experts who for years kept saying that tablet computing had no future, based on the embarrassing failure of Apple's Newton in 1993 and Microsoft's unsuccessful Tablet PC initiative in 2000. They were right until they weren't.
"8% of students didn't give a damn and left the answers blank. "

That's very revealing about the author. It's the basic semi-autistic cynicism. Dismissing what's going on and demoting people who don't immediately get something. Before they're taught even!

I can say that it took many years to learn to program with any skill. Because it's a skill. You don't just understand one thing and become a good programmer. You need to learn the micro of things like assignment, all the way up to the shape of program in order to make it more extensible and flexible.

But if someone can't learn it on their schedule, are they really a separate person? Maybe if you find them a year later they're no longer a goat.
Como posicionar una web
7 pasos sobre como posicionar una web en Google para lograr aparecer dentro de los primeros 10 resultados del buscador
Oh man... if only we had all statically-compiled Linux systems these days. Sure it'd be a pain to deploy changes in libraries, but less dependency-breaking consequences means you can push a patch to a single application without testing a whole suite of dependent apps.

The really hacky solution to that seems to be building versioned packages in versioned directory paths (e.g. "/opt/lib/db/4/4.2/4.2.52/libdb.so") and mess with linker paths and create a sprawling tree of symlinks and wrappers for weird use cases. With a custom package manager it works really well: run 6 conflicting versions of the same library and just build apps against the library you know works, instead of fighting to get everything running on one compatible library.
> So if [bike] commuting were the only purpose of the road, you would essentially never need to replace a road again.

You're assuming that use is the only thing that harms roads, and that's clearly wrong.

I mentioned tearing up the roads for utility changes.

Another factor is weather, which amplifies the problems caused by utility "tear ups".

It's fairly easy to see these effects; pedestrian-only and bike-and-pedestrian-only "roads" deteriorate.

However, we know also know that (as you mentioned), these roads won't be bike only.

In short, there will be some maintenance savings, but not a lot.
FYI, the linked post completely contradicts what you wrote.
To retro-paraphrase your question: "What on Earth would Apple do with NeXT?"

Sometimes it's not about the product, but the people. Maybe the current Apple board /really/ wants Zuck to run the show. Best way to do that is to buy FB.

I agree with you, though. Apple buying FB would be a not-so-small mistake.
I question the architecture and approach of this much caching. Because this is memory, I assume it's for a read-only cache?

That said: most read heavy services only need at most 10% of their working set cached, in memory. The hardest problem in caching is figuring out what that set is and how to control consistency. Not how to store it.

So, having this much cache seems to imply that you think you're going to have large amounts of read intensive data to cache.

Or else you intend to cache your entire working set? Either way, you'll have a single point of failure (either in a single server, single datacenter, or single geographic area).

Any large operation can tell you that the problem becomes 90% network and stuff like a CDN become far more important than how fast and big your cache is.

Perhaps a nice technical writeup on your architecture would silence the pundit inside me?
All founders by definition must figure out stuff for their own and take risk. This invalidates your assertion that "YC is not for founders who like to go their own route." YC is for founders.
> We can't be sure that the models' inner workings mimic nature's inner workings

William of Ockham says we have reasonable hope of coming damn close. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

Anyway, infinite certainty doesn't exist. Not even for 2+2=4. http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Absolute_certainty
My name is Geoff and I've found this to be a strange thread.
Why don't they pitch for money, like Wikipedia and NPR do? If they think they're above fundraising, then it stands to reason they will be broke.

I was deeply involved in xiph.org (vorbis, theora) for some time, same sort of situation. They were doing something arguably really important for the world (patent-free [rather, free of royalty-demanding patents] media tech), but struggled to scrape together a high 5-figure budget.

There needs to be a refactoring of how we think about and fund important endeavors that are not for profit.
Austin's argument is that "I promise" is unique because saying "I promise" is the act of promising.

"You promised" is not a promise, it is a description of the act of promising (carried out by someone else).

[see How to Do Things with Words: http://www.amazon.com/How-Do-Things-Words-Lectures/dp/067441... ]
Make it so that powerful spam filters (like Spam Sieve level) are built into the mail client package and are cloud-based. While I love Spam Sieve, the fact that it is essentially desktop software chained to individual machines makes it incredibly sloppy. Any time you pick up and turn on your phone/tablet, thus breaking the chain of protection, spam leaks through.

If there was a way to have spam protection as a service for email providers that don't already offer it (like Gmail does) that would be a great product indeed. I'd drop Mail/Sparrow and Spam Sieve if I could get it all in one package.

That's my #1 gripe, less the prioritization and/or labeling of email and message types. Creating folders has worked pretty well so far. But I'd even be willing to change my workflow for an all-in-one solution.
If this proposal ends up being widely adopted, you're only losing the ability to keep /usr on its own filesystem. You still can (and very much should) keep /var and /tmp on dedicated volumes. (And should probably also symlink /var/tmp to /tmp, so that you don't have a world-writable directory on the filesystem you want to keep safe for writing logs to...)
Can a Windows Phone help fight malaria? These guys think so.
It drives me crazy every time I'm on a Linux system and ifconfig is in /sbin, and not on users' PATH, even though the no-argument form works perfectly fine as a user.
I guess we'll have to worry less about global warming as well (or at least the concerns about increase in sea level) :)
like the networking NAT (network address translation).

To facebook, goldman sachs is a single investor. However, many individual investors are part of that GS banner.

In much the same way, with a NAT, there may be many computers within an internal network (but to the outside world there is a single external IP address)
My point still holds valid since any company that uses Chinese manufacturing instead of US manufacturing would come under fire from you. The thing is, Apple can't get the results they want from companies here and so they go where they can (there was an article about this recently on HN). American consumers get the products they want, China gets the opportunity to improve the quality of life for its citizens, and Apple continues to do what it wants. It's a win win win situation.

You're arguing for companies to use US manufacturing and that's a naive view in the long run. Any student of economics will understand that it's a GOOD thing for the market to not be controlled the way you want (arbitrary limits on where Apple should and should not go). Placing restrictions would make the market not as competitive as it could be and just result in greater inefficiency.
> primary math education (i.e. young children) isn't personalized very much. This is demonstrably true, at least in the U.S.

I would say that it is demonstrably not true in many EU countries. Maybe "non personalisation" is the tendency of lazy teachers, but I remember pretty well how my math teachers repeated the same subject thrice: the first time describing its core in an abstract way, the second time with concrete examples (apples and pears) and the third time in very little incremental steps. The first explanation was for naturally able math learner, the second for those how needed practical examples and the third for less able pupils. Some of us complained about the fact that it was a boring way to teach (and you know how horrible bored kids can be in the class) but I'd say it was worth it to have all my classmates learning more or less at the same pace with nobody left behind.

Actually, I complain more about the fact that we had to change math teachers so many times because of educational reforms and budget cuts/reorganizations.
In one sense, yes; in another sense, if I'm paying somebody to not blow up convoys, they're going to do something else. That might as well be building a school.
Reason #9364 why I am soooo glad I stick with FreeBSD.
Patrick, I don't get this comment. Is there an inside joke I am missing?
Sure, I get that. That's my I included the "hundreds of thousands of years" modifier. I want my kids to grow up, be happy and have their own kids if they want to, but I really don't care about what happens 100 generations down the road.

That's the perplexing part.
it's funny. I met a guy that had a PHD in computer science. He not only didn't really know how to develop software, but he didn't know anything about the internal makings of a computer (CPU, HD, etc).
A distribution that does just that is NixOS (http://nixos.org/nixos/). It has to, because it's purely functional (new stuff shouldn't overwrite any of the old stuff) and it has to support several different versions of the same package being installed at the same time.

It is awesome, especially the easy rollback and that you can specify an entire system with a recipe. Still, it feels strange for us who are used to mainstream Unix systems.
I agree with you telling them to get serious, but I would add that it's not funny (it's not funny on Reddit either).
> Can someone explain to me how links to copyright content come under DMCA?

I'd surmise it is because to non-technical users, the distinction between a "link" to the content and the "content" itself is something they don't understand. From their point of view, the "link" is the content because when they click the link, the content appears.

The vast majority of atty's filing dmca notices would fall into the non-technical user category.
Every one of those paths I mentioned are paths I have encountered during my use of various unix distributions since 1991 (Solaris was the worst offender). And that's not even the complete list. I gave up trying to predict where software would install to a long time ago.

My point is that what "makes sense" is subjective. Each developer/distro manager who made one of those paths thought to himself "it makes perfect sense to do it this way". FHS does go a long way towards cutting back on the craziness (by arbitrarily dictating "do it this way"), but it's still clunky.
I figured he was being sarcastic.