skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Say, have you ever deliberately deprived yourself of net access temporarily to be able to focus on something important? Or blocked a site you frequented too much? Maybe deleted a game to stop yourself from playing it? No, never? If you have, then what the fuck were you doing trying to achieve the important thing in the first place, if you couldn't focus on it w/o silly restrictions?

People, by and large, need artificial encouragement to help them do what they want to do in the first place, but lack the willpower or procrastinate too much. People subscribe to classes so they can learn in a formal setting material they could perfectly well study on their own before, but didn't. People take out gym membership so they have no excuse not to go. People ask relatives and friends to help force them prepare for something important. You may be a champion of iron will (though I doubt it), but most people aren't, and they're still quite capable of learning nevertheless.

In the recent ML/AI course offerings from Stanford, the exercises were a joke - they were painfully easy. But if they didn't have graded exercises with deadlines, probably five times fewer people would have finished the course. In fact, similar courses with entire lectures and homework have been posted on the web for years, with little engagement, while this new offering, with a formal setting that graded you on exercises, has seen tremendous success.

Your rhetorical question is exceedingly naive.
Mark says that's their concern as well:

> For a start, we haven’t addressed the secondary aspect of the menu, as a visible map of the functionality in an app. That discoverability is of course entirely absent from the HUD; the old menu is still there for now, but we’d like to replace it altogether not just supplement it.
Whereever the line is, corruption will push politicians to go over the line. In the smallest possible government only judges are publically employeed, and even they could be bribed.

Look at Europe, it's big government. There's less corruption, less lobbying. Some places pay high salary and do get less bribery. Mostly it's more transparency.
I agree with you on the lack of evidence, but calling her a "freaking high school student" is an argumentum ad hominem.
1. Rewrites are a bad idea if you're rewriting what already exists today. We're writing something new. It's not a rewrite of today's Basecamp.

2. Nothing changes with the Basecamp you already know and love. The new Basecamp is an entirely different product. You can use whichever you prefer, no one is being forced to change or switch.
> "Dodd's no longer a politician and lobbying isn't illegal."

But it is if Dodd does it. At least for another year.

Though I concur that Dodd's not going anywhere. Worst case, they take him off the public stage and let him do his lobbying in private.
Good concept. I would have liked to see a demo page (or video) before subscribing.
Does an ebook on a dedicated reader count? ;)
What do colleges sell?
It will be interesting to see how they go about this. Even ignoring the whole thing about user inertia, I have only heard horror stories on how completely re-writing an app from scratch has caused all kinds of unforeseen problems.
Whenever I see anyone write, "say hello to the future of the ______", my immediate reaction is to assume the author is an idiot. The only person or company who has ever been able to say that with any authority is Apple, and that's only because they have a track record of consistently creating the future of ______ for decades.

Considering this HUD is basically "let's take Quicksilver and make it for menus", I think my immediate reaction was correct again. The idea isn't completely terrible, but it's not "the future" and it's riddled with problems. Hope you're the type who likes keeping cheat sheets around, because unless you know the exact name of every single command in your application, you're going to be in trouble.

"We’ll resurrect the (boring) old ways of displaying the menu in 12.04..." This guy's hubris is astounding.
Bayou Outdoors of Hammond 	
At Bayou Outdoors of Hammond, our inventory includes garden sheds, utility sheds, garages, barns, cabins and many other portable buildings.
Carports in Hammond, cabins in Hammond, portable building in Hammond, utility building in Hammond, portable garage in Hammond
The athenians had a way to kill lobbying / corruption:

Make it a democracy with direct participation, removing professional politics out of the equation. If everyone is participating in any vote (and this should scale now much nicely thanks to technology) and magistrates / executive branches were randomly selected for short mandates and with oversee of the complete electorate, then the only person to corrupt would be the citizens themselves. And that is a lot more expensive.
How to disable automatic restart or shutdown in Windows 7
How does this relate to Dremel? I thought Dremel had a SQL frontend to MapReduce that was already in wide use at Google.

http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html
reading thousands of pages of bills, proposals, analysis, point, counter-point, etc etc etc, is boring and a time-sink

A crowd-sourcing approach could certainly work here. People will go through boring work if they think it is worthwhile. Having free time is by no means restricted to the rich anymore. Github for politics? (people could do something useful online instead of playing BlaVille, for a change...)

we'll need good AIs to summarize and simulate

I don't believe that such AIs will be feasible any time soon. Also, it would raise even more security issues. Who controls the AI?
Search Engine Optimization Services
Softweb Solutions, Leading SEO consultant in Chicago, Illinois, USA having team of SEO specialized in ethical Search Engine Optimization, internet marketing, Social Media Optimization and SEO Services. Softweb Solutions provides you affordable SEO services with its proved methods to improve search engine rankings for your website.
Valentine Card Ideas: Cute Valentine Cards Free Download
Build it yourself and verify via hash that what is on the firmware is what would get written.

However, if you're so paranoid that you think this could be a problem, you're already outside the realm of buying preassembled computers anyways. Who knows who could have tampered with it en route?
Actually performance is suffering if you run it on a system with a not-so-good GPU. Intel GPUs are known for their poor WebGL performance.

The performance with wireframe rendering would be the same. The difference is that Andrew is simulating 150 points in CPU whereas this simulates ~260k in the GPU. On my 2008 laptop with NVidia GPU it runs at 60 FPS.
I find it truly sad when education has to conform to demands of companies, when instead it should be the other way round. A fail/pass system with a narrative evaluation would be much better for students at any age. It helps identify problems and, more importantly, discover strengths.
Build it yourself, using a pencil, paper, and some sort of bit-flipping raygun. You can compile C in your head, right?
JavaScript Testing with Mocha
Quick intro to start testing your JavaScript code with Mocha.
No, rather that "Hmm, this is odd, it seems there is no way to disable the mic"

I didn't read any allegations of remote recording here. Perhaps you clicked on another article by mistake?
On the flip side, there's "The Rational Optimist" http://amzn.to/Al7nQB (affiliate link)

I hate to use cliches, but I think you can look at reality and argue it either way -- it's truly arbitrary, a "glass half-full" thing. I'd the nature of being able to argue it both ways only emphasizes the necessity of taking Kierkegaard's leap: the nature of the problem is truly about working with incomplete information.
Sensationalist article.
Would not help against Van Eck phreaking and the likes.
Splitting hairs over the literal meaning of a term defined literally thousands of years ago is pointless.

Democracy is a philosophical institution and you need a lot more than a dictionary of ancient Greek to define it.

Democracy is about the rule of the people. Voting, direct or indirect through representation, is merely a means towards this end. Other important elements of democracy is free speech and free assembly - if the people aren't free to organise themselves, they can't effectively rule. There are plenty of examples of non-free elections, and it's obvious that the presence of those doesn't make the host country a democracy.

Another very important - and much forgotten - factor is the protection of minorities. Americans often lament that a minority of 40 senators can filibuster a law, because supposedly it's undemocratic to give such power to a smaller fraction than 50%. Originally, it was just one senator, although he had to physically filibuster the vote - and the purpose of this rule was to protect the minority from getting run over by the majority. This protection is paramount to a democracy - whether or not the filibustering rules, current or original, in the US Senate is a good way of securing this protection is another matter.

If you want to get technical, anything less that full consensus on everything can be considered undemocratic - because when one part of demos imposes it's will on another part, then it's not rule of the people any more - it's rule of a part of the people.
5 tips for building usable cross platform apps
It seems to me that the real solution is to dramatically limit the size of government, so that there is nothing to be bought, rather then just changing the currency used to make the purchase.

Either you have an elected government which makes the law, or the decision about how to behave is made by individual interests and resources, which are much easier to buy or otherwise influence than elected representatives.
Since its been established that the Irish data protection commission has authority over Facebook (since their EMEA HQ is based in Ireland) what implications would this legislation have for FB I wonder? I know Facebook passed the recent privacy audit that the commission carried out but would the ability of record/movie companies etc. to have offending sites blocked through the courts here would obviously affect FB right?
If you want something similar in OS X right now (though not with super-fuzzy matching like this seems to have) you can just use the search box in the help menu to search for menu items.

It looks like this, and you can press return to activate the item: http://i.imgur.com/uJPgD.png

I've mapped Ctrl+M to move me there instantly with Keymando:

map "<Ctrl-m>" do
send('<Ctrl-F2>')
send('<left>')
send('<down>')
end

EDIT: Turns out there's already a shortcut for this: Ctrl-Shift-/. XCode overrides it though, so I'll be keeping my mapping.

EDIT 2: Ah, yeah, it's Cmd, not Ctrl. I still like my two-key version though.
Brilliant! thanks. I've been planning on converting some of my markdown bookmarklets for blogging (http://5typos.net/post/259552063/bookmarklets-for-text-manip...) for some time, but was too lazy to checkout the specs. No excuse now.
I agree that a public television channel may be a good idea, and I agree that BBC produces great content, just as our DR does. I also see that your license is ~145£ while ours is ~265£ - not that that makes the argumentative difference though.

My problem is that everybody pays exactly the same, the poor, the students, just as the rich. Everything else in our society is based on a progressive tax, just as most "extras" besides your tax is completely optional. The license on the other hand, that's a flat "tax" that everybody has to pay. With the current rules, very few can honestly say they don't need to pay it. As such - let us pay it over the tax and I'd be fine with it.
Cell phones are badly-secured always-on tracking devices with built-in microphones designed to communicate potentially sensitive data over known-insecure networks. (Start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phone_hacking.) Why are we worrying about MacBooks again?
So basically... it's like the Windows 7 start menu search functionality, put into applications. It's not a terrible idea, but it should extend the current menu-based UI, not replace it.
I thought housing in Vancouver was very expensive. If it's really that cheap, then I'm packing my bags and moving.
> The new Basecamp is an entirely different product.

Good on you. This is how it should be done.
> If people are made unemployed the state pays for their retraining if need be.

They use them as 1 Euro Workslaves too. The unemploymend system in germany is very bad compaired to other countries (switzerland, sweden ...)
Here's the question I have.

Perl5 -> Perl6 is not a natural progression. It's such a radically different language that going to say Python or Ruby is nearly as similar a change. Why's it obvious to you guys?
That might be, but that begs the question, why? Why do we need to compensate the artists for our own private copying, for our own use? Once we buy their work, ought it not be ours to listen to, however we want?
Another philosopher discussing, with all of his empirical wisdom, what we can and cannot do in life... Who are they to say what is possible? Does this person understand and is up to the latest on every different branch of science? Something very few, if any, can do.

Philosophers are good at one thing, and one thing only: Exclaiming grandiose statements to make themselves appear intelligent so people take them seriously.

It's a wasted mind - what could he have done had he went into pharmacology, biology, technology, physics, something concrete that is pushing our species into the future, not hold it back with thoughts.

+1 for science, -1 for "philosophy"
For an average teenager who is about to go to college, online education is a less favorable choice as it would probably be deemed less prestigious due to issues mentioned in the article. In the near future, the education industry could primarily influence markets which deal with professional or people who would use it for the sake of learning (few and difficult to indulge them over long periods).
Ah excuse me, you're absolutely right — I have a strange blindspot where I think that startups I've been part of are "the software industry". (I have a cold right now, and maybe thinking too foggily to post my views. Thanks for the correction.)
Employee ownership is overrated
The insinuation is that someone from the media giants signaled FBI that it is time to take these people down.

Not saying it is impossible but how would that work? Would they go through a Congressman by paying them? Is there a number you call and can set a bounty for a particular investigation like "investigate this and if you prosecute successfully you get $100k bonus"
I like the theory that germany was forced to exapt if they wanted to have a reunion.
The 13 inch Macbook Pro, just like the Air, does not have a dedicated audio input. It's one of those mobile phone headphone/microphone combo jacks.
We've struggled to gain any sort of traction with our 1.0 release. We just brought out 1.1 and were looking for comments/feedback as to how to improve our execution.

Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Here are some codes to get the app for free:
YE7PL6X4KR37 FK74FX6L47MJ 4KFFK3AEANA4 P73TXMTW9JLN A7AJYH76WTT6 6PKF4EEFMA6A MHLX3PRPYAJ9 N39YFP7LXLK7 KEPFHYR6KYRL YMYEAY67TX66 N63WWTTFNLPE 6KYWP4EH4T9H YJ3K666HH3YA T9N76F9R6NRH W6PYLPXM97M6
The (Hacker News) headline is a bit sensational, over simplified, and speculative. The article simply says MegaUpload was going to release a new site targeting music distribution. If they are guilty of the charges against them, it's very possible that their new venture wouldn't be "legit" at all.

Edit: The HN headline, not the Techcrunch headline.
I don't know; this hypothetical family of 4 making $200k would have about $12k/month in take-home pay. After rent, utilities (including cell phone bills with data plans for 4), food and clothing, 2 cars (loan payments/gas/insurance/maintenance), college tuition (paying it or saving for it), orthodontics, etc., it could be near "living paycheck-to-paycheck" territory.
I think this is reaching quite a bit. The service is not revolutionary or going to "disrupt the music industry" because this is exactly what Grooveshark offer now to independent artists[0]. Grooveshark are of questionable legality and use this model, yet they have not been shut down and they would be an "easy target" if the "corporations" can take down Mega upload.

The only value Megaupload has over Grooveshark (and Spotify I believe offer this too but I'm not entirely sure [1]) is the traffic, but I don't think being popular with this on the way is reason enough to shut them down.

[0] http://www.grooveshark.com/compensation
[1] http://www.spotify.com/uk/work-with-us/labels-and-artists/
Why would you compress these in JPG :(
This was actually a remix[1] and nod to the legendary guide, "Shooting yourself in the foot in various programming languages,"[2] which has slowly evolved over the course of usenet, gopher, and websockets.

I'm convinced that this list will one day be fed recursively into a prolog console and become skynet.

1. http://blip.tv/goodiebag/everything-is-a-remix-part-1-413601...
2. http://www.toodarkpark.org/computers/humor/shoot-self-in-foo...
Teaching Students To Be Rude
True about Google, but if corporations were banned from donating in the first place, we wouldn't have this problem now.
People pay $299/year for a good city email address
Does not seem to be entirely working on Chrome 17 (Win7 64bit), the actual code (which one would put into colorscheme.vim) does not reflect the chosen colors. The code sample however does. To clarify, clicking a "highlight" item and changing its color does not change the hex or terminal color codes. I started by modifying an existing scheme.
I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 yesterday, and the experience sucked. It broke Firefox and Emacs, and it took me a lot of fiddling to get back to a desktop I can live with. Turns out, for instance, that you have to alt right click the bottom and top bars in Gnome classic, to modify them. Not exactly an easy thing to figure out if you've just been right clicking them for years.

Time for Ubuntu to stop dicking around with all the UI stuff and go back to making something that is solid. I really liked it when it first came out: it was a fairly dependable system that had regular updates, and was 'good enough' in the polish department. I could use it on desktops and servers alike and be pretty happy with it.
Adderall shortage hits America's youth hard
I quite like this it reminds me of Firefox Ubiquity project. Which should act as a warning to Ubuntu as that never gained any real traction beyond power-users.

The fact that Mark mentions that they one day wish to replace menus is odd. Menus work and are universally understood. This system could be great in a complimentary fashion, the blender example seems like a great use of the system.

I really hope that Ubuntu don't throw the baby out with the bath water in their attempt to innovate.
Maybe not lobbying per se, just banning corporations from donating money to them. Money is not speech.
The separation of structure, presentation and behavior is dead
I love the idea, especially that you aren't trying to create another ticket marketplace but utilizing the networks already being used.

This is a really great MVP and I think some design consulting could push it over the top to help marketing (it's kind of annoying having to scroll down the page and read so much text). Check out http://cherry.com/ for some idea.

I am confused on the fee though, as low as $2.00? Now I'm thinking well how high could it be! Is it a percent? Does that percent change based on how much I sell the ticket for? It also feels like the evil Ticketmaster service fee. I know this is where you plan to make your money, but I would fine tune it to make it more transparent.

Great job! "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a young man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
I live in Connecticut, and people should be aware that we have a great campaign finance system here (best in the country, IMHO) that's made an enormous difference reducing the power of lobbyists at our State Capitol.

To show how the system works, I'll give an example. A typical State Senate campaign runs a budget of about $100k. Under our Clean Elections system, participating candidates must raise $15k in small contributions of $100 or less per person. They then qualify for a grant from the state of $85k to round out their budget.

The grants are funded by state auction of unclaimed property and the like, not by taxpayer dollars (though even if we didn't do it this way, clean elections would still be a worthy thing for taxpayers to support).

This system is purely voluntary, but 75% of all candidates participated in the last state election. Our current governor was the first ever elected under this system.

Of course, this kind of reform doesn't happen out of the blue. A previous governor of our found himself thrown in jail for bribes and corruption. Afterward, both parties found themselves competing to "out-reform" the other, and this campaign finance system was the result.

Politically active folks I know tell me that lobbyists at the State Capitol in Hartford are less than half of their former selves. They still exist, but don't hold nearly as much power as they once did, when we called our state "Corrupticut."

Our system isn't perfect, but I think it's far better than anything that's done in any other state.

More states should move in our direction, but that will require overcoming their own lobbyists first. Not easy, but we are proof that it's possible.

Sadly, many outsiders don't like our system. The US Supreme Court also might destroy it (and a similar system in Arizona). It would be like Citizens United all over again.

But don't just take my word on all of this. Here's more info for the interested:

http://prospect.org/article/clean-election-state
Look under "Even better for the power user": at least some testing was done.
What we have here is a list of trite, mostly useless if not wrong, observations, followed by an explanation that "religious people were right all along", without anything to back this up.

The essence of religion is not "finding meaning by artistically living an authentic life", for several reasons :

Religion is not a way to find meaning. Religion gives you a meaning (Either revealed by a god to a prophet, or made up on the spot by the latter) that hopefully transcends your mortal life (i.e. the trite observations listed above). This meaning involves respecting things that are deemed sacred (divine commandments, symbols, rites or whatnot), in the hope of gaining something (going to heaven, escape this meaningless cycle of reincarnation, and so on)

"Living artistically", whatever that means, has nothing to do with religion. Artists may find their inspiration in their beliefs, but there are plenty of atheist artists, and there are even more religious people who have absolutely no kind of artistic talent, taste, or inclination.

Finally, the phrase "authentic life" is pretty much devoid of meaning. How do you decide which life is more authentic ?
Is living a hedonistic life of excess ending by an overdose less authentic than dying alone at seventy-eight after years of hard work ? Or more authentic ? What are your criteria ?

Besides, to "creatively speculate on what values you want for life and why" is something most people never do and don't particularly care about. It's certainly not the only rational thing to do. It is just as rational to decide that yes, life is a pointless maelstrom of absurdity that never amounts to anything, and keep on doing what you do, just because.
How web anonymity drives the innovation
I don't see why, if CyanogenMOD use is in fact rising. The rest of the title is about as sensational as the rest of the article, which is to be expected of an editorial.