skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would like to nominate firearms, and especially the political landscape around firearms, as an informally off-topic subject for this site.

Everyone that has an opinion about this topic has a strong one (even me), and I've never seen a forum of any charter not fall into 1) banal, uninformed bickering or 2) scary monoculture or homogeny of thought, relentlessly punishing dissenters.

The value of HN (to me) is that it is well tended, and this looks like an additional loss of focus that isn't welcome in my opinion.
TV is evil and will turn you into a zombi...

sorry I remembered Heroes and house was on the tivo. Those shows are good. I forgot what I was thinking. Must watch more TV. TV... Must see... No... I must see it...
I think people have the capacity to be both good and bad, depending on often quite random stuff that happens to them.

I'm just glad to live somewhere that the majority of people, "good" or "bad", don't carry - I'd hate to live somewhere the opposite was true.
Why the illegal business is thriving
by that logic, the other guys were right too, because most stocks were on their 52week high in march 2008.
swiftweasel + firebug
Obama’s Talk With Clinton Starts Buzz
currently I am testing minefield every other day, but the lack of plugins is frustrating but I understand why...
I find it interesting I'm slowly developing a love of getting karma. It seems to come from if I'm getting it, someone is reading my comments, and there may be interesting replies to read....
I think our opinions are informed by very different "real world" experiences. I've worked mainly at small companies where HR had very little power over staffing or other important decisions. When I have had hiring responsibilities, I worked very hard to balance the interests of the company with the interests of the future employee. I care deeply about the happiness of both parties, because I think happy, successful employees are the foundation of a healthy, successful company.

It sounds like you've worked often (mostly?) with larger companies. Companies staffed with people who think life / business is somehow a game. That in order to win, someone else must lose.

I don't doubt that such companies exist. They may even represent a majority. But, not every company is run that way, and I hope you are fortunate enough to work for a better sort of company someday.
I've been doing that for 2 years now. Now I'm starting up a company to commercialize the work I did on a presently intractable problem. If I studied the same thing in med school, I wouldn't be able to get a job at the company I'm starting, but independent study has let me create a hypothesis about solving my unsolved problem.

All my peers who graduated and bought houses and got corporate jobs when I dropped out of school are now looking at mortgages with negative values and shaky environments. I live like a starving artist so I have no assets to lose value. It's a great life, if you don't mind living like a starving artist.

I'd love to hear your further thoughts when you have time. I agree that being isolated is the most dangerous part of being too independent.
Congratulations. I blooged about Dabbleboard a while ago, but blimey - with the new tool set, I'm going to need to blog again.

Brilliant work
This is just the weekly radio address...with video.
For my first job, my boss negociated a salary much lower than what they could give me (I learned it soon after starting by talking with the secretary)
As a result, I never made much effort for this job and tried to find a better paying job as soon as possible (I quit after 6 month)
Ask HN: Virtual gifts vs real-world prizes?
I am currently working on a project that features a social network in which people can earn points for different actions around the site. Just like most forums or social networks, rank increases with the total points a user earns. I've been considering taking this system to the next level in order to give added incentive for participating in the site. There are a few options but the two that seem to stick out to me are:

1. Virtual gifts - User able to 'buy' digital gifts using points earned.

2. Real-world prizes - User able to claim real-world prizes using the points they have amassed, which are then shipped to the user. These prizes would obviously be much harder to obtain than virtual gifts.

I have seen many examples of sites using the first model, however the second seems to be a bit harder to find.

Has anyone else considered these options for their project before? Any insight would be useful.
Previous post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365274
Startup founder evolution (or, the biz guy *is* valuable, just not at first)
In the first paragraph the author suggest correlation:

"A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing."

But in the next paragraph makes the cause -> effect leap:

"Analyzing 30-years worth of national data from time-use studies and a continuing series of social attitude surveys, the Maryland researchers report that spending time watching television may contribute to viewers' happiness in the moment, with less positive effects in the long run."

I'm not sure what the actual study says, but in my experience it's very much a correlation: unhappy people watch large amounts of TV to escape reality.
I've seen this thing about "multiple scroll bars" in relation to scribd quite a bit (often presented as if this is a killer point that is the striking blow in the argument against scribd).

When I first used scribd, I remember seeing two scrollbars on the right (this author says left ("And it introduces confusing functionality (TWO scrollbars on the left!? WTF?)"), which is weird, because vertical scollbars rarely, if ever, appear on the left). Then I realized that, since the scribd flash widget takes up the entire screen, the Ad Block Plus firefox plugin was adding its little "block" icon/tab, which was really making the widget larger than the size of the browser viewport. So there was the scrollbar created by the scribd interface, and the browser's scrollbar. Disabling Ad Block for scribd.com appears to have "fixed" this.
That's reassuring.I was left with the impression from one of my job interviews that they were looking for someone in a set price range, and would have bounced anyone who asked for more. Of course this job was basically a minimum waged, low skill job I had in high school. Maybe its different for high skilled jobs.
That's true, but HR people don't generally have the authority to negotiate outside of narrow parameters. They're recruiting for particular jobs, with particular salary ranges.
Most HR people are staffing for positions. They don't have the authority or the incentive to "bump" you to another job (and most likely, another recruiter).
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694
The plunge is so severe that some executives are comparing it with the dot-com bust in 2001, when hundreds of companies disappeared and Silicon Valley lost nearly one-fifth of its jobs.

I had never heard that statistic before... Interesting.

The article had my internal monologue going "ok, where would be better, what move could I make to avoid the fallout from this?" and it occurred to me that there's probably not going to be any industry that makes it out of this unscathed.

I suppose it's a good reminder that as an individual you should invest in high risk things in good times but also have a sound strategy for minimizing your risks in the event of serious economic troubles. Maybe it's a lot easier to say that on a web forum than to practice it in real life, though.
Is the U.S. losing its edge?
I wonder if the impact of lawsuits on public opinion is evolving in the age of the Internet?

I don't know the specifics of this suit other than having read this article, but it seems that going after SourceForge is the kind of litigious over-reaching that damages the reputation of the plaintiff. I would make the same argument recent RIAA cases, SCO v. IBM, etc. I recognize that there's legal posturing going on here, and that strictly from the lawyers' perspective, public opinion may be nearly irrelevant (in mundane corporate law, anyway).

But the visibility and transparency of these cases has changed. Vast groups of people can follow these cases in minute detail, get the advice and perspective of interested lawyers, even change the course of the cases themselves (Groklaw). I can't imagine this kind of public involvement with corporate legal cases existed twenty years ago.

My question is this: has the Internet made the position of "suing everyone" -- at least as an opening move -- too risky?
I think "happy" people may just be busier and not have enough free time.

I think there are some good TV shows, but my todo list keeps me busy.

The real question though: Do happy people read news.ycombinator.com? :-)
What about people who consume media online? Watching TV all day is not different from watching Youtube videos all day.
Yes, but they have surveillance cameras everywhere. It's a bit Orwellian.
Nick's Ask The Headhunter column was a great source of job hunting strategies when I first read him on EETimes (I think) back around 2001.
old definition of genius: exceedingly rare brain abnormality that confers exceptional intelligence.

gladwell definition of genius: exceedingly rare brain abnormality that confers drive to devote 10,000 hours to a random task.

forgive me if i don't feel inspired by this paradigm shift.
I've done this exact thing with jruby + derby, runs anywhere that java is supported.
It's not jaded - it's just reality.
The problem with this is that it's mainly a disadvantage to disclose your current salary if you're earning below market rates.

If you're earning above market rates you want to disclose your salary both to show the company how much your previous employer values you and also to get you a higher salary at the new company.

Hence the people who aren't disclosing their salary are implicitly informing the company that they're currently being paid below market rate. While it might not be true for everyone who refuses to disclose salary, it's true for a large enough percentage of applicants that it's safe to assume.
He listed 7 reasons his worldview was better than yours before covering humility. List ordering fail.

I deny that humility is a virtue and that humility corresponds to rationality.

Also, it's rational to be occasionally irrational, because that instability contributes to beneficial evolutionary changes in the structure of thought.
I've been hiring in the valley for the last 12 years, starting off in the interview chain at Netscape in '96, and moving into management at my current organization in 2003. Since I moved into management, and end each interview chain (with a candidate that I am the hiring manager for, and have a candidate that I think we will bring on board), I have always ended the interview with three questions: Do we have your application filled out, When can you start, and "what did you make at your last company."

"What did you make at your last company" is a valid question, and I know of no employer (at a Silicon Valley Company) that has instructed their employees to _not_ tell future employers what they make. It is, of course, considered good taste not to discuss compensation (Stock or Salary) with coworkers - but it's remarkable that there aren't typically company policies against that. (There are exceptions, I'm sure)

The thing is - you _need_ to color that answer. Don't just say "I made $150K/year as a Sysadmin at my prior company", it's fine to say "They were paying me $150K, but that was probably an outlier, and I'd be very comfortable making $115K." Or, "I was making $90K/year, but I'm looking to make $115K at my next engagement" - You probably know (through salary.com, your colleagues at other companies, etc..) what the market will pay for your skills - and that is the number you need to communicate during the interview, what you are _worth_. It is as destructive and harmful to a career to be paid more than you are worth, than it is to be paid less than you are worth.

The employees being overpaid are always the very first ones to be laid off, while their less skilled, but more appropriately compensated colleagues, are kept on. And, when you aren't being laid off, if you aren't delivering to your compensation level - you are never receiving positive performance reviews - even if you are performing at a much higher level than someone less well compensated - makes for a stressful work environment. (There is more to a job than money.)

Speaking only for myself, any candidate who starts going down the road of "I won't fill out employment application until we are interested in each other", "I won't discuss previous salary", "I won't provide references until there is an offer letter", etc... - just screams "Prima Donna"

That strategy might work if you are a very strategic hire, with very specialized skills, in a very tight job market - but in general, life is too short to have to manage those type of personalities, and I'd rather just take a pass and bring on someone who is willing to work _with_ me, and not _against_ me.
I can send it to you if you want. My email address is on this page http://apgwoz.com/about/
The way posterous handles signups is indeed great. Actually, posterous as a product is pretty great, I don't know why I don't actually use it.
This is really sad. Recession or No-Recession, he would have done the same thing. I mean you can always cut your expenses, get a low paying job or go back to your home country(if you are an immigrant). His actions basically affected 3 families directly + also might indirectly bring uncertainty in the lives of other fellow colleagues at the startup.
Need help
I need 2-3 technical partners to start an online based network/website. If you are interested contact me please! Need partners who know webdesign/platform building and coding.
John Doerr: Seeking salvation and profit in greentech [video, TED]
"The medium is the message."

In one case, your reality is being programmed. In the other, you are programming it.

Watching TV is different from watching youtube. "The medium is the message."
The best way to write a book is to work on it every day.
I don't know... maybe it's due to it being "getting up time" in the US (I live in the UK, but travel to the bay area every so often).

Probably more likely though just a nice break to the day to stop, have a think, and read a few more pages of a book.
Have you found the "Select channel" button on your TV?
I must be one of the least happy people on the planet, because I LOVE to watch movies!

Maybe I would have discovered my unhappiness earlier if I hadn't split my side laughing when C-Bass cornered Lloyd in that gas station bathroom stall. Or if I hadn't gazed in humor and a twisted respect when Captain Reno declared himself "SHOCKED!!! SHOCKED to discover there is gambling going on..." in Rick's Cafe. Or . . . oh well, you get the picture.
I agree with you to a point. But people can 'survive' on a dollar a day if they have to. Food, water and air is all we really need.
Twitter’s Hockey Stick Moment
VirginTech: Ignore Chat messages link with heysan.com
"Person-I-know has uploaded your photo. Click on the link http://i.heysan.com/YEyw4Sy4 to see it!"

Say it ain't so Heysans.
Fortunately, since 1996, the task of getting Jerry Pournelle's job has gotten much, much easer: start a blog, write on a schedule, promote your content, and become popular. Then pitch the blog (and it's topic) to the publishing venture of your choice.
Are you aware of all the research on when exactly humans will change channels, which describes human behavior exactly as if humans were ants? The TV executives are.

Or do you think you're some special little butterfly whose behavior is not predictable in the exact same way everyone else has predictable scientifically validated patterns of responding to TV. "Select Channel" does not function neurologically the same way youtube does. TV execs have mountains of private data on that.

The difference is the activation in reasoning centers in the brain. When you watch TV, your reasoning center shuts off (and thus does not guide your remote control usage). When you use the internet to watch youtube, your reasoning center stays on.

You seem to believe people have free will and aren't walking around completely hypnotized behaving in almost completely predictable ways.
Usually a book, sometimes my macbook perched on the toilet showing a DVD. Quite often an ice lolly.

Too much info?

Actually that reminds me of a funny time - I was reading a book in the bath, while eating a "mars ice cream" - chocolate covered ice cream. Took a bite, and the thing cracked all over the place, fell in the bath. Melted chocolate everywhere. My wife happened to come up, peer in the bathroom.....

"It's not what it looks like honey.... :-/"
"It's rational to be occasionally irrational" is an irrational statement. It is rational to be open to new ideas, but that is not irrationality.
Excellent post. Too often, product guys and business guys don't really understand each other or the value that each bring to the table. I've lost count of the number of times that I've watched business entrepreneurs try and hire a code monkey to build their vision for a tiny fraction of the equity, knowing that they'll probably fail because they place too little emphasis on the product and technical vision, especially in the early days. Similarly, I've seen a lot of disdain for business entrepreneurs from the hacker side of the tech community, probably partly due to backlash from the "code monkey" mentality described above, but also due to a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of marketing and sales. Both sides are important, but which is more relevant is determined by the phase you're in.
I assure you that families break down in upper class environments. I went to a very expensive episcopal school, and when I was making plans to play tennis with a classmate, he asked "should I call you at your mom's house or your dad's house?" I told him they lived in the same house. "Really?" he said. The assumption was that they were divorced. In one grade, 22 of 26 students were from divorced households.

Now, that doesn't mean you're wrong about the social catastrophe that the failure of marriage brings in poor areas - just because wealthy episcopalians get divorced all the time doesn't mean they experience financial disaster when they do. They're well off enough that they can just split into two (or three or four) different households and still have enough to pay the mortgage, fix the car, buy clothes, and take nice vacations.

But I will definitely disagree that they are wealthy because of strongly bourgeois family traditions. Man, that's the last phrase I would use to describe these people.

For the record, I was in the 10% of the class that lived across town, and didn't come from a family with that kind of money - though I would certainly not describe myself as deprived or from a social class that feared financial catastrophe.

By the way - I'm genuinely interested in hearing why you think that gay marriage would be a threat to marriage in poorer areas. I do agree with you that families are important and should be protected - but why from gays? That one doesn't really make sense to me. It seems like poverty, layoffs, long shifts, poor schools, and so forth threaten families. Adultery and constant conflict (I'm not talking about the truly criminal violence, just the way people can be constantly fighting) can also obviously wreck a marriage - though I think that's often a symptom of the things I listed above.

Gays getting married? Seems like the last thing I'd worry about. This is why the anti prop-8 crowd is so frustrated to see the Catholic, Mormon, and Evangelical churches so actively working to ban gay marriage. It's like: people are hurting, and this is where you put your resources?
Study Finds GoogleDocs Struggles to Gain Foothold in Productivity Market Dominated by MS
"Are you aware of all the research on when exactly humans will change channels"

Firstly, modern TVs don't just have a "select channel". They have video on demand, recording, live pause, heck some TVs can play youtube vids etc themselves with full integrated internet capability. Perhaps you're right - maybe some people sit down on the couch, turn on the TV, and don't know how to select a different program to watch. That's not the norm though.

Secondly, you can't make big generalizations about peoples usage of the TV. Different countries have vastly different quality of TV output for a start.
But we are supposed to be better than that. This guy wasn't some bum who dropped out of high school, and now spends all his money on drugs and liquor. I mean what happened to the American dream? You work hard all your life, get a good education, get a good job then someone else fucks up and you have to go live on the street?
I don't think too much should be drawn from the October sales figures. In my own tiny business I saw sales die completely in October but they have come back in November. I interpret that as basically that nobody was buying anything at the peak of the crisis - the whole world was basically having a seizure. Now people are seeing that they still have their jobs, their lives and they still need to move forward with their plans and that means purchasing stuff.

See what happens in November.
No I mean it's rational to go bat-shit "the lizard men would have gotten me if it weren't for the fairy tucking me into extra dimensions where my entire worldview fell apart like a glass chandelier shattering I feel like I'm dreaming but I'm wide awake get that guy some seizure meds" irrational every now and then.

It's most rational to be able to slide into any degree of irrationality that maximizes the placebo effect and evolutionary change in thought. Thinking is what you put into your brain to cocreate your reality. Irrational thinking can sometimes lead to the creation of a better reality. (It's probably irrational to feel optimistic about your business endeavor, but you're more likely to succeed if you think it anyway.) I mean a lot more then being open to new ideas. I mean having the mental flexibility to slide from completely insane to completely rational intentionally, and using that to create the best reality.
Maybe you felt safer, but the numbers suggest your feelings were incorrect.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/798708/posts

Note: I realize the US has high murder rates. Murder rates are not indicative of general safety, since most murders consist of one crook killing another. To put a face on it, think Tony Soprano or Stringer Bell taking out the competition. Most robberies (at least those reported in crime statistics) consist of a criminal robbing a civilian.