skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I would be a lot more impressed by people who make arguments that are rationally correct, but that do not favour them.

I've been arguing for a long time that universities should take fewer students and technical training schools should be expanded. Given that I hope to end up with a faculty position at a university, I'd say that this isn't a position which particularly favours me.

It's like people who argue for Eugenics - their version of Eugenics never involves them or their friends/family being cut out from the genetic pool.

I wouldn't argue for cutting myself out of the gene pool, since I think the genes I have which are responsible for my intellect are worth keeping (both of my parents have doctorates, so I think it's safe to say that there's a strong genetic component in my case); but there is strong evidence that I have genes which predispose for autoimmune conditions, and if I'm ever in a position to have children I'd strongly support using genetic testing to eliminate zygotes with those genes.
Well, I think that in the long (very long) term this will result in the manipulation of the physical world as easily as we copy and manipulate bits on a computer today. And that will be an even bigger revolution (IMO) than the digital revolution has been.

But in the short term, the only place where this makes sense is for one off items, where it brings the cost of production down nicely. Just like FPGAs versus statically designed microchips (I'm not sure what the right word is for that), intersting niches will be advanced by printing, but advances in mass production probably will have more impact on global wealth.

Don't get me wrong - I'm going to be taking a holiday next year to build a reprap, so I'm a believer in this technology - I just think it'll be used in specific niches and by hobbiests for a long time to come.

PS - About Rock Solid, I'm cofounder and a developer, yes.
if you are a small team and you don't want to waste time on logging in to a client such as trac, etc, why not just use plain paper (postit?) and a pen, pinned on the office wall.. that sure is cheap and has all the perks of your system..

and yes, I am being sarcastic..
The bigger economic disaster: 78 million baby-boom retirees
Challenging the Economic Crowd in Whispers, Not Shouts
DirectTV May Enter Online TV War With “Web On Demand” Service
Correct, but cost == value? I'm not sure.
The application will be out of date and no longer humorous in 2 days, and the application is tasteless. Some of those quotes are taken so out of context its unfair. All the candidates are human and are speaking in front of people non-stop for days. Eventually we get stupid sound bites because people get tired and make mistakes. McCain calling someone a jerk was fairly tongue and cheek. The question he was asked was a pointless one "Are you too old?" so he ended his response with "little jerk" as a joke to keep the audience.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2zx3-0zOPs

Obama saying 57 states is just a mistake, have you ever said one word when you meant another? I can't find any video or audio that has more context than just the 57 states slip up. Probably because Obama is so well spoken and the rest of the clip would bore people with short attention spans.

I'm not an American and I find that application tasteless. Nothing wrong with poking fun of our candidates if it keeps people interested but companies generally want to be neutral and not associated with things like this.
Why the Japanese stock market has done so badly
That's all well and good but if the Xbox was its own entity it would have been closed down years ago, I don't think the division is yet profitable.

What they are doing is using the profitability of Windows/Office to buy market share in other segments. Sometimes it is successful (IE/Sharepoint) other times not so much (Zune).
I think that the supposed lack of humility in science is because far too many of them have to deal with political attacks from people who don't understand basic science.
I'd rather pay $20 more and avoid the awkwardness of sleeping in some guys living room.
An Enclave of Brazilians Is Testing Insular Japan
A very clever setup, but is it necessary? Programmers, on the whole, don't need to type very fast because they're thinking and coding while typing. Writing code is not like writing an e-mail or a blog post where the brain can work much faster than the fingers.

This keyboard optimizes perhaps the widest part of the pipe - which is awfully fun to watch, but lacking in real productivity increases, I believe.
Actually, the first argument favours you because then you would be one of a smaller elite. The second argument also favours you, because you don't want to be responsible for the caretaking of a sick child, and you don't want your offspring to have problems.
That guy's plan about a bipartisan committee that can bring everyone together on an agreement is one option. A more effective, one, however, is probably going to be learning survival skills, and running out into the Canadian wilderness in about 10 years' time..
It's awesome that people are translating good articles like these. It makes me wonder if, perhaps, there should be the option for people (co-ordinated with pg or not) to set up local versions of HN?
I believe the Xbox is profitable.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/24/xbox-goes-profitable-almo...
Secret message in source code of Digg
But certain arguments do favor the proponent, even if they do not appear to.

For example, I'm irreligious, so I should be in support of the world becoming religion free, right? I'm not. I know that I don't need it, but I think people, generally, are not morally enlightened enough to deal with a world without religion.. ergo, I want it to stick around!

I guess this is a bit like a master criminal being in support of more policing because they think they can get away with it while lesser crooks are put off by the extra policing. I believe this sort of reasoning is quite common - but it goes against your pattern, I think.
If you're able to write well, you're overqualified to be a plumber.

What a ridiculous stereotype. That's like saying if someone's able to program well, they're too geeky to get a girlfriend.
Net is catching more young inventors
Ask HN: Good OS X data modeling software?
I'm looking for something to help me visualize my data structure design. I've done the requisite Googling and haven't come up with much besides OmniGraffle, which is a little pricey ($100 US for Standard Edition) and not built specifically for this purpose.

In the old days I'd just fire up M$ Access and use that to show table names, attributes, and relationships. Currently I've resorted to pen & paper.

Anybody solved this problem before? HN community advice is always welcomed and appreciated!
bug tracking should be integrated with the version control system. If you use git there is ticgit or something like that which just maintains a simple file of bugs. But when you checkout a branch you can see what bugs are open on that branch, and when the branch merges, it will merge its closed bugs.
I guess if you look at things closely enough, anything I could ever argue for would favour me somehow.

If I want to see more students in university, it favours me because I want to be hired to teach them; if I want fewer students, it favours me because I remain part of a smaller elite.

If I think computer scientists should be paid more, it benefits me because I would earn more; if I think computer scientists should be paid less, it benefits me because it means that fewer people would enter the field and I'd have less competition.

Somehow I get the feeling that we'd get more done if we stuck to arguing about policies rather than spending time dissecting the possible motives of their proponents.
this is a business. couchsurfing is the open source equivalent :)
No; programming and getting a girlfriend are not positions on a single scale, as cperciva's statement implies, whereas programming and plumbing are.

He's saying a large number can't be a small one, and you're saying that's like saying a large number can't be prime.
Nice easter egg!

Title is a bit misleading as I clicked on the article thinking Digg had open-sourced the site (which would be pretty rad). The source code in question is the HTML source, not the code that outputs said HTML.

Perhaps it would better read "Secret message in Digg's HTML markup".
An adopted relative of mine is a plumber -- he works hard, runs his own business, does useful things, and probably makes a lot more money than I do with my PhD.

Ask him why he "deserves" to be a plumber and he'll give you a confused look: he deserves to be a plumber because he worked hard during his apprenticeship and learned how to fix drains well.

Being a plumber is a pretty good life: given the choice between being a plumber with his own business and a mid-level Bachelor's-wielding drone in some random company, I'd choose plumber any day. Sure, a plumber has to deal with some pretty unpleasant substances, but then again so does a surgeon.
Salesforce.com CEO's head is still in a 'cloud'
Not at all. I didn't say that a writer wasn't able to do plumbing; only that he was overqualified to do so.

There are some fields, such as writing or computer programming, where the gap between "average" and "good" is huge; and other fields, such as plumbing, where the gap is relatively modest. A fantastic plumber might be twice as good as an average plumber, but he isn't a hundred times better.

If you're a good writer or computer programmer, you can make a far larger contribution to society by working in those fields than by working as a plumber, no matter how fantastic a plumber you might happen to be. That's what I mean by being overqualified.
You could do your modelling in xCode using a core data model. Just create a Core Data application in Xcode and play with the model file.

http://developer.apple.com/macosx/coredata.html
http://developer.apple.com/macosx/images/CoreDataSimpleDataM...
I'm not sure that programming and plumbing are all that far apart.
New York Academy of Sciences Teams Artists and Scientists to Explain the Five Senses
It looks computer translated... Wait a minute, computer wouldn't misspell this often!
Gender and peace (1)
It's a beautiful thing, linear algebra.
Japan has long been a "two tier" economy. They have a handful of world class corporations that do very well, but most of the domestic economy is actually extremely inefficient businesses.
"his idea of 'software as a service'"

hardly
Yes, but in your examples, even though the argument on the surface seems to be against you, in actuality, you are making an argument that benefits you.

Just so there is no wandering from my main argument - what I am saying is that everytime we read one of these 'controversial' argument, the opinion of the article writer is almost always an opinion that directly benefits him or some group he identifies with. Rarely do we get a controversial article where the person discovers something that turns out to be totally against what he is or stands for.
Pycorn: interpreted OS written in Python
Yes, I understand that they want to be the first guy, but I was not able to contact them in any ways before release, so we send PRs through the "standard" channel. And my emails were very short, I can see it quite clear that nobody expects to receive essays in emails :-). My frustration came when none of the dozen top bloggers I sent tips to did not respond.

Our calling method cannnot be applied to SMSes, sorry. We are using Clickatell to sends SMS notifications to users which cost us quite a lot.
a summary of what i understood all this to mean:

bd+ uses a virtual machine built into a player to load an encryption scheme on a per disc basis. so the folks at doom9 were able to deduce the extents of the vm (input/output/throughput, etc) and subsequently map out the input (encrypted instructions + disc data = input). Then, by comparing the output of the (functioning) vm with the input, they were able extract specific keys with which a (single) disc was encrypted. to make this applicable across many discs that presumably do not reinvent their entire encryption scheme with every new release, they began looking for commonalities and built a conversion table that, up to page 17, is now being standardized into a packaged utility that can apply to any disc that can be decoded given their table.

it's an interesting example of collaborative code breaking. as one poster said - this would make a great movie - though the audience might be a little smaller than the next bond and blu-ray not distribution format of choice.
You know, I've been aware of this problem for years, and (far from thinking there is a macro-level solution) I honestly can't come up with a personal strategy that doesn't involve moving to Uruguay or the badlands of Montana. The problem is that we are faced with very different possibilities:

1. Argentinian-style perpetual insolvency. In this case, buying gold and certain foreign debts is the best strategy.

2. Cuban-style socialism. In this case, offshore accounts will be needed.

3. Bolivian-style hyper-inequality. In this case, it's probably best to bet on a few big corporations and hope they get most-favored status by the government.

4. Chilean-style clown fascism. Least likely, but in this case, petty dictators come and go, leaving the usual bodies behind. Best bet here is to just shut up and mind your business.

5. Mexican-style mediocrity. In this case, everything is pretty much the same, but everyone is poorer and the public infrastructure is shabbier. Really, this is most likely, because people won't see it coming, and won't have to shift their portfolios around too much.
This could work, thanks I'll look into it!
You mean HTML. Saying HTML markup is rather redundant.
I know this is not as advance as you would like, but I use Open Office Draw for my process flows and DB models and stuff.
It looks like a nice book. My only criticism after a quick skim is that it seems to neglect stability issues (condition numbers, etc). I realize that that is technically linear analysis (and nearly all textbooks neglect it), but it still belongs in any intro book.

He touches on it slightly on page 68, but inadequately in my view. The issue is not that it's hard to program, but that the problem of ill-conditioned matrices is fundamentally hard.

Nevertheless, I like this book. I'll strongly consider using it in the event I teach linear algebra.
Maybe you are right and our domain name choice was a failure, but do you really believe that everything in this world depends on just a domain name ? If so, I'm a retard.
Savvy programmer enlisted
lol wow, we're such nerds. I love it.
This observation runs quite deep. This two-tier economy is the price Japan paid for its export obsession and its long post-war tradition of mercantalist trade policies (export good, import bad ...)

Here is approximately how it happened: Japan exported heavily, piling up trade surpluses. Eventually the currency appreciated sharply (250 yen to dollar in 1980 to 100 yen to dollar by 1990), making Japan a first-world nation in terms of per-capita GDP. Yet, Japan's overall economic structure wasn't and still isn't as balanced as more mature industrial economies like Germany.

Imagine a kid who has been trained and trained from age 4 to be a world-class chess player (with no exposure to anything else). He/she could achieve world-champion chess player at 25, but would be a highly imbalanced individual. Japan's economic story in a nutshell.

You can see this when you travel to Japan: their service sector productivity sucks. Over-staffing is rampant. As a society they have chosen to redistribute the enormous surplus from exports to sustain inefficient employment in a lot of far-less-than-world-class businesses. Their totally undeveloped software sector shows the real cost of their mercantalism. Their woefully tiny housing (NOT to be attributed to population - Singapore has higher population density, has lower per-capita GDP than Japan, yet Singaporeans enjoy larger apartments and overall live better than the Japanese) is an everyday reminder of the cost.

On balance Japan has done fine, but considering that they are the hardest working people on the planet, they could have lived better, and could live better today, if they hadn't developed that export obsession. They gifted the rest of the world a lot of their hard work, while denying themselves those fruits.

As an outsider, I can't complain, I love my Japanese luxury car ;)
So this guy just stole a list that Techcrunch republished? Why are we linking to him and not the original?
That doesn't make much sense. The skill of writing is orthogonal to being a plumber. That's like saying that if you're able to ride horses really well, you're overqualified to be a tugboat captain. The two have nothing to do with each other. A person could write beautifully and still be unable to comprehend plumbing.
Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/) is also a good choice (free, fast, easy to setup and use), especially if you want other project management features.

We use it, and are happy with it.
Haha but some places the difference can be $100-$200.
SQLEditor works very well, although a single license costs $79. Try out the trial. One awesome thing about it that it can parse a SQL dump of your existing database and create a visual model of the structure.

http://www.malcolmhardie.com/sqleditor/
I don't know man, it would still be something I would try as hard as possible to avoid. After my last big 6 month trip, I'm sick and tired of staying hostels. The last month of the trip, I stayed in hotels only. Being able to scratch your balls in private is worth quite a lot of money, in my opinion!
Haha lighten up. Of course the quotes are taken out of context... that's the point.

Seems pretty neutral to me if he's got both parties represented, and there are already other apps on the iPhone that are specifically geared towards one party that will be largely useless in 2 days (the Obama for President app for example).

My guess was that they were worried about copyright issues with the clips? It just doesn't seem controversial enough to reject it on that basis alone.
http://xp-dev.com the "bug tracker" isn't that complete yet. and for now, only one team member is able to access one project (yikes) but they do allow hosting of commercial projects. for free ;-)
I vote for pencil and paper ;-) you can erase!
I do this and then directly create the sql in phpmyadmin or something similar -- for most of projects which are small.
Entitlements?

Hmmm, that's not what they called it when they took the first 15% of every check I ever received.

STFU and give me my money back.
At the core of the problem is the fact that one generation of politicians can get elected promising goodies that another generation of politicians have to pay for. As long as elections turn on "what's in it for me", the system is spinning out of control. This example is just the biggest symptom of the underlying problem.

Options? At a national level, I don't see a solution without restructuring government. Once the federal government completely usurped the states, there was no longer and tension or balance between who was responsible for what. The feds are into everything, and the states don't have an even playing field. National politicians get elected not on national issues, but on how much money they can get spent in their district.

Personal/Startup options? I'd move my location to the best place for each stage of growth. Need to be in the Bay Area to start out? Fine, but you might not need those same environmental things at 2 years in. Then you might want lower cost-of-living, low taxes, and cheap infrastructure. The only way to survive is to be able to grow where the best soil is. BTW, that's the same way it is today, but the difference is that instead of just moving one time, a small startup might move 2 or 3 times -- sometimes across national borders. You can have a separate discussion of whether that's patriotic or not, but I'm just talking survival.
It's been there since early 2006, and was "discovered" once before.
Hahahah same thing happened here. "Secret message in Digg's HTML" works well.

Hmm I couldn't help but notice that he uses cutenews. That script hasn't been updated in a while and is vulnerable to script kiddies and ugly cracker people. :(
Why do you care about TC/GigaOm? Neither of those sites will drive significant traffic. Concentrate on SEO, real/traditional press, and smaller blogs. If your site handles free calls internationally, hit the blogs that target large groups of overseas callers. If you're trying to compete with Jajah, you may wish to study their marketing.
as mcormier said, you can use Xcode's data modeling. There is also Umbrello, which either requires X11 or finding a recent native OS X build.

i don't have any experience with it, but also found ArgoUML (http://argouml.tigris.org/)
Good plumbers make more money than university professors. Beware of appearances and topics.
you can erase!

And you're not limited by the preconceived notions of the software you're using. It's also surprising how quickly you learn something when you have to draw and erase it 5 times (vs. entering some data into someone else's app.)

for most of projects which are small

Large projects too. They're just a lot of small projects stuck together.
I usually just use pen and paper (my workflow works best this way), I also like OmniGraffle, but here are some others to check out:

http://www.aquafold.com/

http://www.sqlpower.ca/page/architect

http://www.dbvis.com/products/dbvis/

http://www.thekompany.com/products/dataarchitect

ERD Stencil (Rails) for Omnigraffle:
http://graffletopia.com/stencils/318
> I'm not a believer in Dvorak

Is it just a belief or do you have some reasons?
Completely agree. Maybe scientific research needs the equivalent of angel investors, or maybe just rich patrons, because investors tend to be impatient, etc.
We need to go back to the days of great experimentalists like Rayleigh, Faraday, etc. The publish or perish way of working does not advance science most of the time.Scientists resort to all sorts of tricks to stay afloat. I remember reading somewhere that 80% of papers published in even reputed jounals like Physical Review Letters do not advance our understanding by a millimeter. It's wonderful to read stuff like this.
Can you elaborate? What's the problem with charging users?
It can be a good thing the way HTML-CSS-Javascript separation can be a good thing. In the case of Clojure, it actually is possible to write the layout code in a declarative style and keep the handlers completely separate, but for most of the popular languages, it's easier to just use Qt Designer, Glade or similar to generate an XML layout and write the handlers in your language of choice. Compared to the old approach of GUI designers generating a pile of C/C++ code, which you then modify, the XML blob is actually much nicer.

Also, most of the XML-presentation libraries offer multiple language bindings, so there's less of a requirement for your language to provide its own GUI toolkit, and it's easier to convert your app from one language to another (e.g. injecting Python into a legacy C app) without losing any of the details from the original interface.
6 Billion Inventors : Neil Gershenfeld on Fab Labs
Sometimes I wonder how people type like that.

russian keyboards much? 0.o
Sicilia Sud tour virtuali eventi turismo vacanze in Sicilia
You may want to glance at 'R' which is an open source alternative to 'S'. http://www.r-project.org/

'R' is used to manipulate data and graphically display the results. I've never used it myself, but I know it's used in my University's Computer Science department.
But the financial markets do not see it. How can we tell? Because those markets are willing, today, to lend unlimited sums to the Federal Government on supremely favorable terms.

Given how the "markets" completely failed to foresee the current crisis (otherwise there wouldn't be one to begin with), this is not much of an argument.