skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"... Why does someone have to be a climate scientist to analyze climate data? ..."

True. Bellamy is also looking at empirical evidence. Looking at what is happening in the ecosystem is another form of research. He's also a bit of a lefty ratbag and I'm sure this also plays some part in it. Interesting to note how Attenborough, Oxford educated and establishment to the core has been repeating the same message. It is also reported he changed his mind on this topic quite a few times ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy#Views_on_global_w...

I also know Bellamy was one of those lefty ratbags being arrested demonstrating & not letting a corrupt Tasmanian government (Australias smallest, most southern state) rip up the Franklin River all those years back on December 14th, 1982 for a hydro dam ~ http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/07/01/2291193.htm

World needs more Bellamys ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy
Try http://8aweek.com/ it's designed for doing that (keeping track of wasted time while browsing and blocking after a while) - but I have to admit I disabled it.

I was also a little concerned about the privacy implications of sending them everything I do, and if you disable that (which you can), many things don't function as well.

Edit: WAIT!

What?? What happened to 8aweek!? Now it's socialbrowse, which so far as I can tell is designed to do exactly the opposite of what 8aweek was going to do (i.e. save your time - now they want to waste it).

Edit2:

8aweek was a ycombinator startup! What happened?
Agree. I love YC, and I love our colleagues at other YC-funded companies (both the companies listed and the companies not listed), but I think this is one of the most poorly reasoned, poorly researched blog posts about YC yet.

Please know what you're talking about before you blog about YC.
I like what I am working on, but it is hard and has a long-term payoff. The internet is easy and gives my brain a little dopamine jolt right now.
Anyone who says that Michael Crichton wrote bad books does not understand the point of reading

That's a very strong statement to make. Are you sure it's not the other way around? Perhaps you don't understand the point of reading. Or perhaps there are several reasons to read?

I read entertaining books too, but I do try to keep a balance between books that merely entertain and books that not only entertain but also make me a better person.

I think literature serves 3 purposes: 1) entertainment, 2) exposing new ideas, 3) exposing deep, ages-old pieces of wisdom. Achieving 1 is hard. Achieving 1 and 2 is harder. Achieving all 3 is hardest. I don't think Crichton ever achieved all 3, and most of the time he achieved only 1.

The same people who criticize Crichton will sit in front of their TVs and watch Lost, and then proclaim it as an excellent show

I think you have a bad habit of over-generalising.
Ya'll are a smart crowd. What do you say to the argument that being skeptical about anthropogenic Global Warming is like being skeptical about gravity or evolution?
Yahoo tells Microsoft: 'Buy us'
You seem to enjoy the prospect of the payoff but the journey is hard. You need to enjoy the journey in order not to get distracted.
When I see that you need laws and social pressure to force people to believe something, then I start to have major doubts about that thing.

If something is real it speaks for itself and you don't need social pressure to say so.
It's really hard at times (I suffer the same thing), but the only thing you have to save yourself is your own will, so you have to learn to strengthen it somehow.

Divide your day in small periods of time and set working goals for each of these. Let's say take 45 minutes to focus on work and finish some task. And then take 15 minutes to read feeds or social websites. And then back to focus on work. And so on.

The smaller the goal the easier it is to achieve it and the less boring it seems compared to these juicy websites waiting for you.

I recommend you read this on your first 15 min. break, it will help you to understand this method. It's a GTD thing:
http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/how-to-accomplish-...

I wrote that equation in a paper and have it right next to my screen at all times. That way I don't have the temptation to forget about it :)

Good luck!
Interesting. Any ideas for how to enjoy the journey more instead of seeking constant little payoffs?
The car companies probably wouldn't close overnight. Like the airlines, they would go to bankruptcy court. This would most likely wipe out existing share owners, however, contracts could be renegotiated to try and resurrect it and raise new capital. A healthier company, such as Toyota could also step in and buy some of the assets.
Uff. Is Yahoo now banging their heads against the wall for not accepting the deal the first time? And is Microsoft drooling at this 50%~ sale on Yahoo's price?

Waiting for the next chapter of this soap opera...
There's a way to stop?
I don't like going to classes since either
a)I haven't prepared, in which case I don't get much out of it, or
b)I have prepared, and the class feels terribly slow - perhaps one point I had a question on will get addressed.

Classes where reading the book doesn't lower the information content to 0 are best.
According to http://modmygphone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4351 which is linked in the article:

Full system access, read and write, has been obtained

Basically, you can log in as root and fully access the file system.

Since you are no longer confined to a certain part of the system, e.g. via a chroot, I think that qualifies as a jailbreak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jailbreak
I bet PG would sign up for this program for Viaweb if he had to start it these days!
Argh! This question is distracting me from my work.. see what you have done :D

I agree with the others: find ways to enjoy what you do hr by hr.

Part of my day job involves analysing up to 1,000,000 images at a time and categorising them (that many images takes around 3hrs with our software). That gets VERY boring: what I do is set myself targbets - so I say "at 40,000 I will read my mail". Only when I get there I say - oh just another 5,0000. I developed a very usfel OCD-like thing of not beign able to stop until the "done" number reaches a precisely round number (which nevert happens :D) like 10,000 etc. :)

Try something similar: set short targets after which you will break - but then extend them. Set targets and what time you hope to reach them by; but make sure you will easily make it in the time you set. Then say "oh well in the time I have left I could do... xyz".

Keep setting tiny targets till you can't face it anymore and then lose yourself in the net for a bit :) (until you realise you should be back at work).

I have found that forcing work in this way for 2hrs then breakign for 20mins gets a lot more work done :D
Was so shocked to hear about this, didn't know he had cancer.

RIP and my condolences to his family :(
That's quite ironic/amusing :D

I remember 8aweek - and I did the same thing (turned it off).

At the end of the day it is too easy to click "sod off let me in anyway" (which is what I do to the anti-procrast feature here :D).
"If something is real it speaks for itself..."
There's a lot of physical phenomena out there that doesn't speak for itself. It requires scientists to speak for them.
Patent-B-Gone: Inventor Mitch Altman explains why he open-sourced his TV-B-Gone kit
Heh that is a neat looking app/site! Never come across it before so thx.

(amusingly googling for "rescue time dashboard" pops up with this page as the top link :D)
But the scientists simply present the info - they don't campaign for it. That's the difference.
I must admit, I had fun reading Dan Brown (Illuminati and Da Vinci) - more fun than reading Crichton. I knew that it was total nonsense, but it was entertaining. I think Crichton's main goal was also to entertain and make lots of money, so where is the big difference?
But that's just self-deception facilitated by using a linear instead of a log scale. It's easy to choose a conservative "really small" number of 1% or .01%, but what's to say that you're still not off by many orders of magnitude?
I'm rubbing off on you.
I'm pretty sure this guy was just playing buzzword bingo. He used "nine" to create the top ten feel people so love (why he didn't go with ten I have no idea). Also mixed in "web 2.0" and the "down economy". He should have used recession instead of that last one, might have gotten some search engine love.
I start my time wasting on a few sites (e.g. this one), so I just blocked them from my work computer (hosts[1] file -> 127.0.0.1). If I really have to, I can go in and remove the mapping. It's enough of a hassle that I don't though. It's worked so well that I ended up blocking sites that get me upset also (intranet).. that kills my productivity in a different way.

Also, as much as I thought I benefit from the internet while doing a lot of my work, I now really question it. In the past few years, when stuck on a problem, I'd just google it. Now, I think that's probably counterproductive in the long-run. It gets you out of what you were doing, and you don't learn as much or as deeply as working on the problem yourself.

Lately, I've been trying to figure out how to best deal with IM. I do need to have it up so people that are too far away to get to me can ask questions, but I like talking to people more than I like my work right now. (I'm dealing with that also)

[1] /etc/hosts on unix, %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts on windows
'Having said that, be sure you know your market in and out. You better know who your competitors are ("We don't have any" is not an acceptable answer), the history of the market (What previous companies were similar?...'

At least, both Reddit and TicketStumbler claimed they didn't know who their main competitor was and they were accepted.

So, "We don't have any" _is_ an acceptable answer.
I have a simple rule for myself that works quite well:

Every day, I have to do at least one productive thing before I can leave work.

Usually I read email, programming stuff and news in the morning, then catch myself wasting time and then get to work. When I first get started, time usually passes by extremely fast (depending on my current assignment).
And don't you think that the millions of dollars of taxpayer money given by the government to a failed industry destroy jobs as well?

Look, if I take 10 dollars from you and give them to the shit sandwich maker, whose business is failing, that's 10 dollars you can't give to his competitor, a gourmet bread maker that could be thriving if only the government didn't redirect his potential income to his failed competitor. Moreover, this gourmet bread maker could actually be the same person as the shit sandwich maker, provided you stop supporting his failed business and force him to create something people really want.

If you want to have social policies, at least try to have sensible ones: protect individuals themselves (not their jobs).
Because this isn't peer-reviewed research. There are many reasons for having standard procedures to publish scientific work (theories.)

I love discussion, as long it isn't a time waster on basics. You don't peer review on BBC or MSM. It creates a false debate confusing people. And Daily Express is usually full of exaggerations and fallacies.

Also, I don't see very well the HN worthy angle. But that's just me.
Well there's an obvious exception for "If they like that sort of thing". But otherwise...
this is really depressing. are all of you asleep at the wheel? this essay is NOT ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING. global warming is only the latest in a long line of scientific studies that have become corrupted due to the influence of politics. The details of the current case are not important. Whether or not anthropogenic global warming is true is not important. What is important is the way scientists are behaving. If scientists are reduced to squabbling children as soon as there is some blood in the water what hope does the rest of humanity have?

This essay is one of genuine concern over the direction of humanity. And as the best hope we have for a rational future, concern over the direction of science.
I'm saying that the nation giving itself a collective pat on the back for being so open minded isn't progress at all. it is an impediment to real progress.
I try to do things that I enjoy. Something that I would do (or would like to do) even if it didn't have any monetary payoff. If you can find a project that you would do, rather than read the net, and it happens to pay the bills then here is your journey.

This is, of course, quite a bit simplified. In any non-trivial venture there will be a significant number of things that need to be done and that you don't particularly enjoy doing. But if the greater part is fun then it is easier to sometimes buckle down and get through the mundane parts.

I guess it also largely depends on the personality. I, for example, hate having to do something quickly, without fully understanding the area, and moving on. On the other hand, if I have a chance to spend time and get exhaustive knowledge about something then I genuinely enjoy working on it even if on the outset it seemed unattractive (think sales, marketing, writing, etc., vs hacking some interesting piece of software).
I like the idea of a CTO advisory position and Bill Joy should be on the short list.

As to Chief Security Officer, I can't think of anyone that belongs on the list besides Bruce Schneier. In fact, can we just give the FTA and Homeland Security positions to Schneier for a few months to let him write sensible rules for security? He already has most of the rational documented.

I do not like the idea of a CIO under-secretary, or whatever. A CIO trying to pull together "cost-saving" across government agencies would be a bureaucratic nightmare. Best to have gov agencies start to operate more agile on their own.

As a side note, Kleiner's flying a Turkish flag on his new sailing toy may raise awareness about how the rich offshore money and avoid taxes (yes, I do understand how high luxury yacht taxes are and that this is standard practice). Doerr may want to be careful about not attracting too much attention to his friends that make most their income on capital gains ;).
those people's skills are currently mis-allocated to a company that doesn't give people what they want.

the mistake socialists make is to treat the world as a zero sum game like the mercantilists did. As if those people couldn't be doing something that people want. Until everyone has everything they want there shouldn't be anyone wasting time doing something that people don't want.
When I need to do work, I close the browser.
Partially managed to fix the 'read the mail, websites' urge by replacing it with a distraction that is still useful to my work 'scan the titles / abstracts of new HIV publications'. I just need a distraction occasionally, and that one works just as fine as reddit.

Find yourself a useful dstraction :)
Welcome to Spying 2.0
The soft risks of social networking
I would have voted him up if he was doing AI - the most impressive way to get a phd in AI would be to have your creation defend your thesis for you.
Pull the plug on the internet altogether when you catch yourself being distracted. After about 15 minutes once you're into the problem it doesn't matter too much if you reconnect it.
I think the last chapter reads: "The smart money always knows when to sell."

Jerry Yang is a great American entrepreneur, but he did miss the mark by a wide margin on this.
Sony Ericsson J200 Mic Ways
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Telemarketing Services
Axiom Bpo Telemarketing services specializing in outbound telemarketing services, inbound telemarketing, lead generation, customer acquisition, appointment setting and telemarketing surveys.
Yahoo, please decide what you really want to do in life! You are being extremely fickle minded. Arghh..
The clock project http://longnow.org/projects/clock/ was a motivator for Stephenson's new book, "Anathem"

I was a great read!
Keep in mind the SLA is only 99.9%. They definitely go down (and occasionally instances lock you out) but it's getting better all the time.
Ubuntu is getting slower
In simple terms, this bound tells us that the probability that aliens exist lies somewhere in [0,1].
Siege is pretty good, if you're not happy with AB.

http://www.joedog.org/JoeDog/Siege
Where is the magic point of a Monad?
It is hard to name good candidates for such a position unless/until the job description is known. Does technology = computers? If so, Bill Joy is a great choice. But what if it emphasizes engineering, or science, or medicine (or sub-disciplines of them)? Or all of them - how many polymaths are in the market right now? And how many of them want to work for the Govt?
poor and black does imply criminally inclined. reality doesn't care about your notions of what is fair or open minded.
> Politics drive me (and most of HN) insane

But you voted in whatever election(s) are appropriate in your jurisdictions, right? And maybe donated time or money to causes you believe in (as they're often political as well)?
Great podcast, I love All in the Mind.

I recommend anyone at all interested in neurology and artificial intelligence to subscribe to the feed (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/mind.xml).

btw, the 25th October episode was awesome:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2008/2396857.h...
I say it is a silly argument.
lol - your supporting material is a salon.com article? Wow. Just wow.
Or was, at least. These things may change over time as YC gets more competitive.
Anyone have similar advice for an ultra-nerd like me who has always wanted to make RPGs and only RPGs (the games, not the weapon)? I have always assumed the skill set would be a little different.
Can someone substantiate the rumor that our beloved Treasury Secretary, Paulson, received tax exclusion when he was anointed to the position? I've read snips about this but don't know if its true or to what extent.
I don't. I really dislike people who think that reading is in some way something special or unusual. People who think that reading is all about literature. That's like saying movies are all about French Films with 15 minute stretches of silence.

There are many types of books, and there are many types of reading. Books are just like talking, but written down. Talking does not fit neatly into your 3 categories. When Jay Leno does a monologue, do you criticize him for not imparting ancient wisdoms? No. But people have nothing against criticizing a writer of popular sci-fi for not doing the same.

Crichton was not a bad writer at all. In his genre, he was excellent. His purpose was never to create some long lasting work, it was simply to entertain. And succeed he did.

Books are not some mystical source of magical knowledge like so many pseudo-intellectuals seem to think. It's just someone telling you something, but in a written form. You may not like what a person says, but if millions like it, then he is doing it well.

Of course, I can make this argument as long as I want, but I'll never be able to make these people understand that having Dostoevsky on your bookshelf does not mean you understood it. When you read it and then all you get from it is the same as what one could get from Wikipedia, then you have failed in your attempt to access literature that is not for you to understand.

Some of the most ridiculous dialog I have observed is usually between two people talking about books that are noted in popular culture as being intellectual. What most readers can do is talk about the books, but they don't understand what the guy who wrote the words was trying to tell them. They see the surface, they analyse the tricks, but the fail to understand the meaning. Ridiculous!

It's often those same people who will criticize "lesser" books and "popular" authors. I really dislike this pseudo-intellectualism.

One has to achieve humility in interacting with other minds.
Right there on the home page mibbit.com is asking for Yahoo!Messenger passwords. So it is essentially a phishing operation, no? Google is right to disassociate itself from that.

Cf. http://adactio.com/journal/1357
Maybe it should be "Linux supports more deprecate devices than any other os". They should clean up the kernel at some point. I'll probably won't be using that ISA SCSI card that I can't find anymore. That and a motherboard to use it on.
Using IPv6 On Debian Etch
The 10 Commandments of Online Dating
Finding the right romantic partner often seems like looking for piece of hay in a large stack of needles: a painful process with somewhat disappointing rewards. Online dating eliminates the need to get dressed up, musked up and out there - but that doesn't mean there isn't etiquette to follow.
It's also good to be skeptical of libertarians denying externalities:-)
A few things work well for me:

1. 10% rule. Whenever you're doing something and feel like taking a break do 10%-20% more. Usually you go over the bump. After fixing a couple of bugs and you want to take a break - fix one more. Just read 50 pages? Read 10 pages more before you take a break. And so on. It gets easier once you're used to it. Concentration is something you have to work on, especially when you don't really like what you're doing.

2. Music helps me get started on work, but I usually do my best work in complete silence.

3. I get distracted more easily when tired.

4. Create deadlines. If you're a deadline-junkie you may do your best work by skipping sleep the night before the deadline and working for 16 hours straight. You can't slack for more than a few minutes when you know time is running out.

5. Realize that you don't really want to read social news sites, that's it mostly a waste of time. Think of the things you'd rather do, and then do that instead as "reward" for doing something productive.
Is that the rule of thumb?
Well, yes and no. There was a time when programming was 90% knowing the language and 10% knowing the libraries. Now it's the reverse.
In situations where I want to take notes but don't want to distract myself or others, I keep my laptop on but with no backlighting (so the display's almost black). I can just stream what I want into there and edit it later. Often I'll grab audio as well.
The question I'd like to know the answer to is...

How much would you be willing to pay for a solution to this?
UK Government black boxes will 'collect every email'
Kodaikanal Hotels
I hope they're able to raise the additional money. For a complex of buildings that old and in that condition, they'll need it.
Advantages of Digital Photo Frames
We live in a very technological age. Ever day we see new products coming to store shelves, some designed to make life easier and some are just for fun. Once such product is the digital photo frame. Digital photo frames are a bit of both. The exciting thing about the digital photo frame is that they help make your photos more portable, easier and fun to view.
There are a lot of superfluous details in this article. After doing a few initial benchmarks it should have been obvious that the largest performance decline occurs between the 7.04 and 7.10 releases. The article should have answered that question first before throwing 8.x into the mix.

Also, don't use a laptop for benchmarking operating systems!
I really dislike this pseudo-intellectualism.

+

One has to achieve humility in interacting with other minds.

=

Seems like you need to take a bit of your own medicine, mate. On the one hand you look down on those so-called "pseudo-intellectuals", "these people", for having a multi-dimensional understanding of the purpose of books, and on the other, you preach humility.

Get some humility into your own brain first. Those people you look down on see something you don't. That doesn't make them inferior, it just means your perspective is narrower.
Libertarians don't deny externalities; they just recognize that some of them can't be measured.