skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I try to read at least two books per month, and I force place into my schedule to read. I just finished "Circles in a Forest", a foreign book from South Africa, and I'm about half-way through "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". (Lots of parallels to coding in this one). I've read and reread the Tolkien books as well as Ayn Rand's works multiple times, and they're on the top of my favorite list.

I can't think of any better activity to spend my time on than reading. Eloquence in writing and speaking is built partially from reading, reading can make great practice for formal reasoning, it helps me think of creative solutions. So much so that often, when I'm stuck, I will sit down and read a couple of pages, maybe a chapter, before going back to what I was working on.
Thanks! I'll announce the URL as soon as the site is up and running. Watch http://twitter.com/wagerlabs for announcements.
Virtual gifts in Facebook are an example of the "How is this software going to get me laid?" question posed by JWZ(). You'd spend $1 on a stupid picture because you imagine some desired outcome. This is the same reason people buy flowers for other people, and in general the same reason people buy almost anything. The fact that the cost of making a virtual flower is entirely irrelevant.

() http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html
Initial freebie sounds good. $1000 to start or something like that.
Can you set up a private table at any major for-money poker site?
I'm a book collector, if that counts! Some months I only buy a few books, some months I will buy 30. Very few are technical. Most are non-fictional on topics such as marketing, PR, design, information theory, grammar and language, anthropology, social sciences, and art. I am not particularly good at finishing books but I read dozens of books each month in terms of pecking out chapters here and there where it seems appropriate.

I find it necessary to have books covering a wide range of topics - even those I have no practical use for - to act as a sort of "mental compost" to inspire me in my usual pursuits. I find that books on art, architecture, graphic design, medicine, and fashion all help me be more creative in other disciplines. This also goes for magazines. I'm no yuppie, but I subscribe to both Wallpaper and Monocle, simply for the inspiration.
I use vnc

firefox on my dev box

safari on my living room mac mini G4 (vnc from dev box)

IE? i call my friend to test or just go to internet cafe

iirc vnc server can take external ip ... so presummably you can connect to vnc server half globe away and see how people there connect to your site

of course the bandwith is shared between browsing and vnc-ing so u will get less than accurate experience
MPs want UK jail time for hacker
China top target for computer attacks
An alternate reason for why the US gets so many attacks from China - b/c lots of the botnet zombies are in China.
Money Is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons
Educate your email users about phishing
I love books and reading, although I'm finding as I get older I'm much more willing to "bail out" of a book. I also find myself in multiple books. Quite honestly I think this is due to a decreasing attention span.

I think there are two types of reading. The first type is conversational or fun reading. It's like having a dialog with the author. The second is structured reading, where the goal is information transfer at the expense of readability. It's great when you can get a book that does both, but the trick is to be able to make yourself read the second type when the information is worth getting.

So the books I have open right now are "Expert F#", "Getting past Ok" (recommended by another HN'er). "Practical ML", and "When Genius Failed"

I'm also watching a series of college lectures on the history and evolution of spoken language -- very interesting!

I read 2-4 books a month. It's definitely worth it to me. Many times consulting is just being able to consume and process information that most people don't have time for. That means a lot of reading. So while everybody else is watching football or dancing with the stars, I'm either working on startup stuff or learning.
Electronic voting could work
There is a lot of competition, but I haven't found a place where I could just play poker for fun, no download or payment necessary. If you want to charge a monthly fee, unfortunately your site won't qualify, either. Otherwise, your position would not even be so bad, I think.

Wouldn't ads be sufficient? I think there is a lot of money in ads for Online Poker. Of course that would be ads for other poker sites, so I am not sure if it would be good for you to have them on your site.
Start-Up Teaches Math to Americans, Indian-Style
The "Protocol for Synchronous Conferencing" is an IM protocol that was developed for efficient multicast and pubsub and extensibiltiy. It also has a much simpler(RFC822-like) to parse syntax.

http://about.psyc.eu/PSYC

But almost nobody uses it. It is even more half-baked than XMPP. I guess this is a tradeoff.
And the more Republicans you convince that it is meaningless to vote, the more certain a Democrat win is - so it's inevitable!

Since a Democrat win is inevitable, no one needs to bother voting. Saves all the hassle of standing in line and such.
Blackberry Bold Available From AT&T | TechJaws
I feel your pain but don't know if ads will be sufficient. There's a huge downturn in ads at the moment.

Plus, if I position myself as a family-friendly site then I definitely can't show ads from other poker sites.

Perhaps there's good money in ads here but I definitely don't have a budget for running this site without external funding.
I'd like to point to real free "play for fun" site: http://gpokr.com

And it seems quite popular I think :)

P.S. written in GWT .
Nope!

I really wish I could bring myself to sit down and read, but if its not in my feed reader (or Hacker News), then I'm probably not going to read it.

I've always had quite a short attention span and when I sit down, open a book and start reading, within five minutes I'm thinking of everything else I could be doing instead of sitting there doing virtually nothing.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't consider reading to be doing nothing, but it just feels that way while I'm doing it... so I have to stop and go do something else.

I have countless programming books and a lot of Terry Pratchett Discworld novels... and when I can get over my attention span, I'll hopefully sit down and read.
I read, and as Daniel noted above, I tend to read several at a time. Generally, I read philosophy and theology (my undergraduate degree is in philosophy), though most recently I've been picking up some of the collections of essays my wife is reading for her graduate work. I'm also a huge fan of anything about the history of Pittsburgh.

Current reading list:
Christianity and Anarchy Jacques Ellul
The Gulag Archipelago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Third Ways Allan Carlson

My reading time seems to come in fits. Some days I won't pick up a book, and others I'll read for several hours. As for my favorites:

The Town and the City Jack Kerouac
The Death of Adam Marilynne Robinson
The Presence of the Kingdom Jacques Ellul
Intel Core i7 Processors: Nehalem and X58 Have Arrived
Very interesting AOL poll...

Another link: twitter users can “vote” on twitter using http://twitvote.twitmarks.com/ - Currently 15002 for Obama, 2681 for McCain.
I always struggle with setting the environment variables. Can't remember if you have to do it in .profile or whereever (.bashrc?). I think I also used an application starter that explicitly configures the JDK for Eclipse.
Probably too much (in that the expected utility of reading more books significantly drops off after a certain point).
I own way too many books. about 1/3rd literature and non-fiction and 2/3rds science fiction. I can't bear to part with the really good ones. But the problem is that at 4-8 books a month my collection grows on average 50-60 books a year. Since i started when i was 8 or 9 I'm up to about 600 books (a couple reductions here and there) that i don't want to get rid of. this is a hassle for moving and for space planning.

But it is worth it. Science fiction authors and computer scientists (lots of overlap there) seem to be only people on Earth that have zero respect for bullshit. Ideologically, those are the people who raised me. One of the ways in which I've been very lucky is that I have pursued very few blind alleys compared to most people. I can go back to the material I consumed at a young age and not shake my head in disapproval at my younger self as many other people seem to do. My life has largely been a continuous iterative process of ever better approximations of reality with no restarts (so far, i might still decide to live in the mountains and contemplate the pebble).
I don't read nearly as many books as I used to, but that's because I now look after two kids. I used to read on the way to work on the Tube every day.

I am reading two books at the moment though - Iain M Bank's latest - Matter, and Dennet's Darwin's Dangerous Idea
Just voted, and it felt great!
Maybe tagging a Poker site as family friendly is not the best approach? Even if people don't play for money, it could still get them hooked on gambling. There are plenty of other nice things to do for kids besides playing Poker.

Of course what would be cool is a trustworthy poker site. I just don't trust the average poker server, and there is no way in hell I would download and install their software to play.
The Perfect Desktop - Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)
I'm currently re-reading Joseph and His Brothers, a 1200-page heavy-weight monster of a book by Thomas Mann (himself a heavy-weight monster of an author).

Do I recommend it? Yes, but not for everyone. The preface itself is one of the heaviest essays on theology/philosophy out there, but the whole book is crammed with brilliant ideas/wisdom and is a masterpiece of literature (but it's heavy and the story moves fairly slowly).

Something lighter along those lines would be Narziss & Goldmund, by Herman Hesse - also heavy-weight, contemporary and compatriot to Thomas Mann, but capable of a lighter style!

But yeah, I love to read (and not just German literature... those are just the examples that spring to mind right now out of the countless ocean).

To answer your other questions...

What is your most favourite book and why?

What's your favourite movie? If you read any significant number of books, naming a single favourite is impossible - unthinkable, even.

How many books would you estimate you read a month?

It really depends on the books and the time of my life... sometimes I've finished a book in 3 days, but other times it's taken me months to get through a single book (such as the Thomas Mann brick I'm currently reading).

do you think all this reading is worth it?

I think life would be pointless without it. At the very least, it would reduce my mental freedom to not read books. I made an argument for that on my blog: http://inter-sections.net/2007/12/13/sapir-whorf-books-and-y...

would it not be better if you spent your time doing something else and why?

It really depends on what you're reading. If you spend your time reading Dragonlance novels (I've done that, it's nothing to be ashamed of, so long as it's a phase that passes), then yeah, you could probably do something better with your time. But books are still far and away the deepest and most fruitful repository of human wisdom that we have available to us. Sure, you can learn all you can learn from books, from your own life. But you'd be a fool not to climb on the shoulders of those giants who have come before us if all it takes is a few hours of comfortable, enjoyable time with a good book.
When I've got Drupal or Joomla why would I choose yours?
What makes your stuff different from Drupal(+ a custom plugin and theme) or Joomla(+ a custom plugin or theme)?

Mention those on the front page. That should serve as an ad :)
And make your site colorful. Pure black-grey-white shades are boring IMO.
Science fiction authors and computer scientists (lots of overlap there) seem to be only people on Earth that have zero respect for bullshit

I call bullshit on that statement and point you in the direction of a certain L Ron Hubbard.
It obviously is true that there is confusion about the project's goals, but the confusion is not a simple matter of Stallman's passion coloring his perception. Even today, vestiges of an ambition and commitment far beyond delivering machines to children remain on the OLPC site.

"XO embodies the theories of constructionism first developed by MIT Media Lab Professor Seymour Papert in the 1960s, and later elaborated upon by Alan Kay, complemented by the principles articulated by Nicholas Negroponte in his book, Being Digital." --- http://laptop.org/vision/mission/

If you read more about constructionism at http://www.papert.org/articles/SituatingConstructionism.html, you will see that it is consonant with the freedom "to improve the program" and all the rest of the Free Software freedoms.

"Our commitment to software freedom gives children the opportunity to use their laptops on their own terms. [...] we do not want any ceiling imposed on those children who choose to modify their machines." --- http://www.laptop.org/en/laptop/software/
Good point. Have any egg-laying species been cloned yet? My knowledge of foetal and shell development in egg-laying animals is effectively non-existant. Maybe crocodiles would work? Komodo? Ostrich?

Aside from that of course, dinosaur remains are, as far as I know, all petrified, which is somewhat worse than species that became extinct in the last couple tens of thousands of years.
Family-friendly is not the right term indeed.
Magnetic shield for spacefarers
ILD Spire Greens, Spire Greens Sec - 37 C Gurgaon Call-UK-0845 43 00015, 020 8090 4217
ILD leading Real Estate developer, has launched " ILD SPIRE GREENS”, 2/3/4/5 BHK Luxury Apartments in Gurgaon – 2111 pr sq/ft – visit gurgaon.investinnest.com for online booking in ILD spire greens gurgaon
Right now, I am chewing through The God Delusion.

I both read and buy a lot of books. Infact, most of my funny money goes on books, as I go through them fast. I have a reading speed of around 6 ppm for fiction and 3-4ppm for non-fiction.

$100 of books barely lasts a few days :(
Colorize your election party
Regardless of the politics, this cool hack takes the election results and describes how you could hook them up to a DMX controller to change the lighting depending on how things are going.
What's wrong with L. Ron Hubbard? He made a bet with a friend that he could start a religion. so he did, and got rich. You wouldn't do the same? I would.
Looks really well done.
And expensive, capped, government controlled internet. Which the government wants to add an extensive government firewall to. And logging/surveillance of which websites people visit.

But who want's freedom when you can have sausages? ;)
I'm trying to read more as of late. Sure, I read a lot online but it's usually smaller articles and quick tidbits from my RSS reader. My girlfriend has even urged me to read atleast 20-30 minutes before bed but most of the time mental, and sometimes physical exhaustion just kicks in and .. oh god bed is so comfy :)

I always find a lot of great PDF books but it's hard to read them on the PC. I really want a Kindle, but its price range is too much for me just yet.
Minnesota Disability Lawyer Seeking Legal Claims
Minnesota based Social Security Disability Lawyer fighting for rights of those seeking benefit claims.
I read lots, mostly randomly what falls in my hands, catches my attention, or I can pull out of the internet.

Privately, I call it procrastination. It has plenty of good side effects. Without reading, I would never come up with the list of silly ideas I have per day; some of which pay off for the rest in excess.

If I was to buy every book I read, I'd be broke. "Public libraries"--in its most extended meaning--are the best idea ever.
Before I comment let me qualify this with the fact that I worked on one of the big poker websites as lead engineer.

There is a big difference between free and raked poker. The betting patterns in free poker are erratic and make the game MUCH less fun. Because no one buys in to the hand (literally and figuratively) no one cares if they win or loose. So there is always some idiot who just goes all in on every hand clicking the 'more free chips' button when it goes wrong. They ruin ALL the free tables on all the poker sites.

To make games more fun you could consider:

private tables: people pay for the right to create private tables that they invite friends/family to play on (eliminating the free play whores). Maybe with a subscription you can create a private table for 10, without it's limited to 6.

limited chips: people can only get new chips once a day (or what ever period suits your traffic). You can get very clever with this allowing bad beat loosers to get more chips buy reckless players get penalized.

I wish you luck but it's an industry flush with cash and corruption so you'll need to be very canny. There are sections of the community (such as students) who are looking for a good time on the cheap. They are also prime candidates for beer advertisers so there is an angle there. You might want to consider splitting your site in to students.domain.com and family.domain.com so you can target the respective audiences more accurately.
Because it is compulsory, it is also very easy to vote in Australia.

Most people can walk to their local school, community hall etc. There are places to vote absolutely everywhere.

There are no queues to vote. You just walk in and vote.
This year, I queued for the first time ever. there were four people in front of me, I had to wait maybe twenty seconds.

Voting is always held on Saturday
since there are a lot of science fiction fans on HN here is an easy way to find quality sci-fi:
http://home.austarnet.com.au/petersykes/topscifi/lists_books...
With all sympathy, it seems to me that a PC that is capable of running Linux AND Windows is more free than a PC that is only capable of running Linux.

I understand the concern of making Windows available to children, but in the end, it is better than no PC at all.

At least if you have a OLPC with Windows installed, hopefully you can find a Website that tells you how to install Linux on it. If you have no OLPC, you can not even install Linux on it.
Great advice, thanks!

And Hacker News is THE site to read.
Nokia 7250 Sim Card Problem
7250 sim problem, 7250 insert sim, 7250 sim, 7250 sim card, insert sim card, Nokia
Isn't 1 vote per person just mob rule though? You end up with the lowest common denominator...

Doesn't it sort of irritate the hell out of you if you're informed, voting for the best interests of the country and future, while someone next to you is voting because the candidate has a nice smile or has the same first name as them.

Maybe you get a vote when you can answer a few simple questions to prove you actually have a clue what you are voting for etc.

You wouldn't run a company by giving an apprentice the same voting rights in decisions as the CEO.

Personally I think there's a lot to be said for having a monarchy.

I know these views are probably completely counter to most people, but that's life... Thought I'd give my 2c.
Joel I think you should think about your idea a lot first. I follow you on your blog and you happen to jump from project to project and your mind just can't settle with one on the long run. How about planning the business first with all the legal things (which everybody hates and leaves the last). After that you may see if it will be a success or not. Read back your ideas and look at why they change every day :) If you have one for more than 5 days than that will be the winner!

But that's just my 2 cents.
No, I don't think I would. I don't think starting a nefarious organisation of religious nuts is an achievement that anyone should be proud of. It's easy to cause more grief - what's hard is to build something better.
OpenOffice 3.0 - The Only Option For Masochistic Linux Users
Your Birthday Suit Has Political Stripes
You are using the techical description of "efficient markets" right? (i.e. perfectly accurate odds). Of course by this standard you are bound to be correct. However I'm sure you realized that by participating in and 'beating' the market you are increasing its accuracy.

The important question is 'how useful or accurate are these markets compared to anything else?'. I'd challenge you to find a more accurate predictive indicator that is publicly available (even if not for free).
“For some reason, American kids seem to be willing to put in the work with athletics, but not put it in with the one subject that’s going to matter more to their lives than any other activity.”

"for some reason"? I'll tell you the reason: incentives. The kids are learning by social osmosis that status is gained by athletic achievement, not by mathematical achievement. This is one of the ways in which popular culture lies to kids about likely outcomes, which distorts their ability to make rational decisions about the future.
The psychological and neural foundations of our moral beliefs
And don't forget obituaries. Usually the job of interns is to write obituaries so that they're ready when someone unexpectedly dies.
Xiph.org Theora 1.0 finally
I read and I read fiction for the most part. I want to make the case though that fiction is not necessarily non-educational and is rather uniquely educational or educates in a unique way.

One common excuse for fiction reading is to suggest you learn passive facts about the setting as you progress pleasantly through the story, but that's not a particularly strong argument in favor or reading fiction. Sure I could pick up a book about Austen-era England or I could read an Austen novel and get a slightly inferior product education wise with a nice romantic chaser.

That's not what I'm talking about. Specifically I think fiction is a way to learn though experience vicariously, and I think there are some things learned best and perhaps only that way.

For example I could read a terse description of objectivism or I could read a Rand novel and walk a moment in the shoes of her characters. I would argue that the chance of fundamentally understanding what her philosophy is about through channel one is very low, although it takes a lot less time.

Another example: I could say "Sentience is not mutually inclusive or exclusive of understanding" or alternatively read Speaker for the Dead. "Morality resides entirely with intent rather than result" or read Ender's Game. "What is self?" or read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

The deepest and perhaps most important topics can best be addressed this way. Regardless of how you feel about the historical accuracy of the Bible or Qur'an, certainly someone found it valuable to tell stories and parables to covey abstract concepts.
I have been thinking about this for a couple of months now, ever since I commissioned the Flash client. It's obvious to me that I cannot plan this business, there's just no way to predict the way the cookie crumbles.

I have another daughter coming up this month and a certain limited amount of savings. I'm throwing my weight behind this project.

Do you have any specific legal concerns in mind? I'm not going to run a gambling business and Wager Labs, SA has been in business since 2002.
Ocean Freight Audits - Factors to be considered
Companies have learnt through experience that if they fail to run a freight audit they are almost certain to lose a lot of money on their ocean freight charges. Freight carriers tend to make mistakes in the calculation of freight charges. Most companies today, hire a reliable freight audit company that they can work with.
Is this thing free? I get a prompt asking for a license key when I try to run it
Marketing Lessons From The US Election