skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Did you really read my post and see its central theme as being about "fun"? No, of course it's about learning; but if you go into it determined to make it un-fun, and succeed in doing so, you can't turn around and complain about how dreary and pointless it is.

You're also right that learning doesn't necessarily require a professor. But, if you're the sort of student that could learn something without the prof, and yet you have the prof right there, I bet that if you thought about it you could think of some relevant questions to ask that would let you learn more (or faster); and I can almost guarantee that if you're that kind of student the prof would be more than delighted to answer.

As I noted above, the problem is not that doing the work isn't enough; it's that if you go in thinking, hey, I just gotta check every box and I'll get an A, you're a lot less likely to actually succeed in getting the boxes checked in the first place.
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The big hack for living in the Bay Area seems to be having roommates. I'm currently trying to find a really nice, big house in San Mateo County (the only Bay Area county which is pro firearms ownership, thanks to an excellent sheriff, Greg Munks).

There's really spotty availability of nice houses in a "reasonable" price range (2-3br/2ba for $3000 or less) anywhere reasonable, but a lot of huge, absurdly nice houses (8-12br, 8+ ba, multiple pools, etc. for about $10k/mo). The rent vs. buy calculation is totally rent for properties like that too.

Clearly the arbitrage play, assuming you don't mind sharing a $300k gourmet kitchen, housekeeper, chef, etc., is to rent a house like that and share it. $1-2.5k/mo, and you get to live as well as you would in Texas, while being in SFBA.
Is like asking a duck what it thinks of all the flooding after a tsunami.
I think you nailed it. Different solution are valid at different times.

Also in many cases, a website rewrite is really nothing complicated.
Because one half of the political system is stridently opposed to infrastructure spending and wants to pour all available government investment into the military.
Aw. I saw the posts and followed the links on your blog thinking that was you. Are you developing a similar engine?
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Except that's not the only style of living that HK offers.

Some people do opt for the arrangement you've just described, living in e.g. the "Lake Silver" high rises way out at the very end of the Ma On Shan metro line. Most of them don't seem to mind it, even though it means long rides on the bus or MTR to go anywhere.

But it's just as easy to live a few stops from work, in an older neighbourhood like Sa Ying Poon or Prince Edward with smaller buildings, where you have three different supermarkets within a five-minute walk and are surrounded by shops selling everythinng imaginable.

I mean, how many cities have two overlapping and completely independent public transport networks? HK has the "official" bus and metro system, but the red minibuses are essentially a rogue invisible-hand-of-the-market creation that just sprung up organically. And unlike most American cities, where the public transport struggles to even survive, both of these HK networks are thriving...
...any runtimes except *nix (or cygwin), that is.
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Postmortem: Big Huge Games' Rise of Nations
I just highlight with the mouse.
The question to ask, is not whether we can become as dense as Manhattan or Brooklyn, bur rather, do we want to be more like our Northeastern counterparts?

In the 70's, most of what is now called "Silicon Valley" was farmland. All those shopping centers and apartments named after man-made formations of fruit trees are because, well, there used to be a lot of those trees there a few decades ago.

In four short decades, we have developed the land to the point where, as others here have mentioned, "no more open land" to be easily developed. We are now faced with a choice: do we develop further? If so, to what end, and for whom? What are the costs?

But first we must consider, who is the "we" in my queries above? Whose interests should be considered? The long time residents of the Valley? The young, vibrant, restless newcomers?

Understandably and naturally, there is friction. There is tension. The old timers already have what they need: a comfortable single family home with a family to fill its corridors. Why would they or should they allow others to disturb their peace and comfort that they worked so hard for? They fight to protect the space and luxury they feel entitled to, and arguably are.

The newcomers find it increasingly difficult to not only find such an abode, but to find even a reasonably priced rental until located within a reasonable distance from their offices. Understandably and naturally, they pine for amenities that are well within reach for others their age in other parts of the country. They rightfully feel that they are entitled to what they need: reasonable living arrangements.

Both sides have legitimate arguments. Silicon Valley is a beautiful place, and it would be a shame to turn it into a concrete jungle. But on the other hand, there is an undeniable generation inequality with respect to real estate: real estate prices in Palo Alto only declined by about 15% during the worst times of the financial crisis, and have most likely reached new heights by now. Every year, it becomes more difficult to find affordable housing, particularly near the mega-employers like Google. The year over year increase in rent in Mountain View is in excess of 10%. Only the privileged amongst the youth can afford the slim pickings that are available, as the rent is enough to crush the savings of more modestly salaried engineers.

Who is right? It is more of a generation divide than a class divide. I sympathize and empathize with both sides, being both a young, modestly compensated professional in the tech sector, and also the son of immigrants to Silicon Valley who sacrificed a monstrous portion of their lives to attain the little that they have to show for it. Whichever way the ball rolls, I'm in line for both pain and pleasure.

"We", both the old and the young, are both right to lay claim to what we believe should be rightfully ours. Such a situation does not have a simple, elegant solution. But we can at least start by acknowledging to each other that yes, you are completely justified to want what you want.
How to hire your first customer service representative
The measure of Windows Phone's failure is...
While this drives up costs, San Francisco has plenty of tall buildings that are quite safe.
90 million users certainly does not equate to 90 million rows of data.
> Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week for that stuff?

Having left London, I really do miss Ocado. Unlike the silly timing restrictions you suggest, they delivered at any hour between about 0700 and 2300 with one hour windows.

> ...ride the public transport (which usually moves slower than a car even if it weren't making a bunch of other stops between your home and ultimate destination's drop-off point)

This is just the tragedy of the commons at work. Outside of the City there are bus lanes (shared with cabs). It isn't the job of society to subsidize drivers in congested areas. There's simply no political will to squeeze private autos.

> If you already live in a highrise

You're tilting at a straw man. Single family houses and high rises aren't the only options. Greater London, for example, is full of four story row houses.
Finnish court: open WiFi owners not responsible for copyright infringement
As a former Civil Engineer [4] and advocate of commodity-housing [1], I can tell you that rent control [3] is the minor issue here. I'm glad that HN is finally paying some attention to the elephant in the room...zoning laws. I bet that for most HNers who pay rent, it is about 50-60% of monthly expenses. This is freaking ridiculous! Look at it from a Civil Engineer's perspective: modern houses are built from very durable materials, and once constructed the maintenance expenses are minimal.

Is it that hard to connect the dots? People in power are all landlords, and they get a big chunk of their idle income via rents [2]. All they need to do is make sure that no new housing is constructed where they own rental property...basically protection racketeering. Next time you visit the Golden Gate park just spare a few minutes to read the plaque next to Joseph Strauss' statue. It says, "the biggest opposition to building the bridge came from the landlords of San Francisco, who feared that once the bridge was built, it would lead to a nose dive in rents".

[1] Housing so abundant that rents are on the order of maintenance costs, about $50-100/month!

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959941

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finan...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3959500

[3] http://www.baycitizen.org/columns/elizabeth-lesly-stevens/sm...

This article describes in depth the problem you are facing, and since you are a new landlord it does seem like the biggest issue ;)

[4] One of the reasons for leaving Civil Engineering was the realization that the problem of high-cost-of-housing was not an engineering problem, but completely a political and social one. Constructing abundant, high quality and cheap housing was declared a solved problem in Civil Engineering by the 60s!
Yes. I actively use Quora without Facebook account connection.
makes sense to me: more is good, less is good, middle is not so good
I actually think the grey has the opposite effect, makes the post really stand out and i go out of my way to high-light and read it, if only to see why the person was downvoted so much.

To stay on topic I can't believe the guy still hasn't apologized. Judging by his attitude and replies he's probably too busy self-rationalizing about how he's right and if everyone else wasn't an idiot we would all agree with him.
if anything, odesk is among the most open companies i've ever seen (note, I don't work there). They publish lots of data in oconomy and in blogs.

I think Greg's idea is really interesting. It takes advantage of a distributed economy and gives experts the chance to make a few extra bucks. One of the things that will be really interesting is how they will curate the experts on the site to make sure the 20 minutes are with someone who can actually add value.
lol. Saverin Sr leaves a country before it gets too dangerous => Applause

Saverin Jr leaves a country before it gets too dangerous => Boo
The RDBMS space has been addressing how to do this with distributed systems for quite some time as well (a couple of decades at least), and at least the more sophisticated systems tend to support a fairly broad set of approaches to addressing this problem (and means of expressing those choices quite succinctly).
That's a brutal over-simplification of what you need before developing for Android. "Downloading the Android SDK" is actually a dozen steps of installs, updates, add-ons, setting up emulator devices and so on.

The Apple dance takes a couple minutes to do and costs $99/year.
An update to those users seeing spam in their saved links
It's not the text contrast that bothers me. It's that we're effectively trying to censor someone directly related to the article, if only for the fact that we believe him to be wrong. I would prefer that his comments are perceived as most relevant to the discussion at hand, and upvoted (or at least left alone) so that the comment can stand on its own.

Zee's 'punishment' shouldn't come in the form of mass downvoting and censorship. His punishment should be publicity. Let the community see what he has to say and judge his actions, not his comments.
Many people would disagree with you. Groupon has been shifty with their earnings and filings each time till now (e.g. http://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2011/11/22/history-re...), and currently being investigated for it (http://ansonalex.com/infographics/groupon-sec-fililing-and-i...). There have been various statements by former/current employees about inflating prices (http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-10-17/tech/30288824...), and others that find negative Yelp effect from Groupon (http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2012/03/groupon-effect-on-y...), and businesses almost shut down as a result (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/weird-...)
Computer Science is not about learning to program C, or Java. If your college gave you that impression then it most certainly failed you.

Where did I say that?
It's two different things, one is national the other local.

Local is more expensive since you are building right in the middle of populated areas. You have to get the land which is hard to do and expensive and when you do construction you are obstructing other traffic. The construction itself is more expensive too since you can't use very large machines to do it in bulk.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bullet-risks-2012051...
False.

I'm talking about the actual quantity being demanded. You're talking about a demand function. They are two different things. I'm talking about a number like 1,500. You're talking about something like a coefficient changing in Q = a - bP.

A demand curve shift does result in a change in quantity demanded. However, there are other things that can result in changes in quantity demanded as well (such as a price ceiling or technological progress resulting in lower prices).

You already agreed that a price ceiling leads to excess demand. That means demand > supply. Yet, the supply curve did not shift either. Again, this is because demand is a point on the demand curve. You're confusing a graph of demand at each price with demand itself.
Yes it is out of sync b/c Germany cut costs in the 2000, cut social security, changed job laws, increased the minimum pension age etc while the southern countries increased spending and increased massively labor costs.
Ehh, I'm going to wait and read the story when their second set of numbers comes out. Happened twice so far...
Porting XCode and emulators to windows/linux is probably a huge undertaking, the technology stack is completely different. In addition, the cost of a Mac for development ($599 for a mini) is not stopping anybody, and most iOS developers will already have one, so there's little return to be had.
Quora is creating a giant collection of well-indexed, compelling bits of content in a format that Google finds delicious. They're already in the top 1000 sites and have been rising steadily. And they're doing it in a way that users are doing most of the work.

The obvious comparison is Wikipedia. Whether or not they'll get to that level I can't say, but it's not crazy to suggest that they will, and if they do they'll be worth a lot more than $500m. And even if they don't, they'll have a lot of users, a lot of pageviews, a smart staff, and a solid technology platform. Odds are good they'll find something to do.
oDesk research team
Ugh, yeah, I'm not really happy with the sysadmin class either, for all sorts of reasons I'd rather not go into here (although if you're curious you can take it to email).

I think I agree completely with this last sentence:

> If you have knowledge going in, the easiest thing to do is juke the stats and grind out as fast as possible.

I guess my larger point is that a lot of your argument hinges on that first clause---"if you have knowledge going in"---which is not true of the typical student; and that even when you do have the knowledge going in, the "easiest" way is not the most productive, not the most effective use of your tuition money, and not, in general, the best.
From the ECB homepage:

"The ECB is the central bank for Europe's single currency, the euro. The ECB’s main task is to maintain the euro's purchasing power and thus price stability in the euro area."
I think the key is curiousity. Without it, if the process is reduced to just checking boxes, you're right. Something is lost.

Asking questions is crucial. If you cannot formulate the right questions, you cannot progress in learning.

This student sounds like a self-starter. I just think it's uncalled for to question what he did. Even if he thinks of it as "just checking boxes". He might not think of it that way in years to come.

He did the work. He kept his GPA up.

Hopefully he was intellectually curious and he formulated questions (even if he never got the chance to ask them). If he has aspirations for grad school, "it's not over yet".

There's still plenty of time to reconsider viewing his education as "checking off boxes" and to become more curious.

Meanwhile he did the work. And that's more than many students do.
I think the leaderboard should be based on your win/loss record. Leave snacks as a way to get bigger and give you a better chance to win the game... they don't need points as well.

The game is a classic, no need to change much, adding multiplayer is enough.
The problem is that costs for building the same transit infrastructure in America are ten or even fifty times higher than in Europe or Japan.

Part of the difference is inefficient procurement policies letting contracts to very high cost bidders with corrupt hand tailored RFQs and hiring expensive labor from well-connected limited pools. Part of it is active local democracy of communities that have been trained by the freeway boom to see infrastructure as a disaster for places that get it. Part of it is a very slow environmental review bureaucracy. Part of it is buy-American policies even when none of the top countries in some industries are American.

But the main problem is that transit is built and run in America as a way to spread political influence for committees that distribute pork and a fun indulgence for influential people who won't ride it. In Europe and Japan, middle class voters expect transit to work and the politicians and bureaucrats who build it intend to ride it themselves.

BART to SFO cost almost $2 billion. A good connection to CalTrain would have cost under $200 million. Heck, for under $1 billion you could also have connected CalTrain and BART at Embarcadero or Montgomery with a lower total trip time for most passengers.

I don't know what BART to San Jose will cost, but you could have really high quality BRT down El Camino with similar benefits in just a year with the money BART will spend on engineering studies over the next three decades planning the San Jose train.

But the authorities enjoy being involved in a big splash white elephant project more than building good transit.

A very good and short brief:
http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/us-ra...

More:
http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/cost-...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephensmith/2011/12/07/washingt...
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That's the most subtly annoying font I've seen.
Mentioned elsewhere: I'm not complaining about the specific text contrast. My concern is with downvotes being misused (albeit for my own definition of misused).

Downvoting also has the effect of lowering the comment's position relative to other replies. No matter the color, the comment will appear below someone who gets a higher score, even though I can't imagine a more relevant comment than from the guy this entire thread (and post) is really centered around.
Haha that's nit why. The reason why is living cost. I live in Palo Alto (rent of course) and its STILL increasing in cost. Startups can only pay so much. Since this area carries prestige from Stanford and the tech industry its expensive. Always has been. But real estate sees all this glamour and wild success stories as an excuse to charge lots of money. It's an inflated area...in the cost of homes, rent, and food. The crap I overpay for at most restaurants downtown is insane. Coming from NYC, I had far more options and better food for cheaper. Why? Size. Competition, sure...But also no bubble. Ladies and gentlemen we are in the middle of another tech bubble here. Prices are outrageous and companies are over valued. So it'd the cost. That's why. People do their best to find places to live and they over extend themselves. I know doctors (both husband and wife) who are struggling. A nice profession...Still not enough. If you actually look at the stats (there's a map/site for this) most people move out after moving here. So "growth" and how many people actually do try to move and live here are two different things. It's not the running out of space...it's the cost.
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Why not use a Prolog backend to handle all of that?
Starting to write your own DSL seems like a risky decision, especially if you're new to the field.
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I think his point was more that it was possible to get high grades simply by checking things off.
In my experience , some people are better at doing things this way than others, while you will also get students (like me) who enjoy learning things but have little motivation for doing things like coursework when the coursework is something like "implement a BST" or "implement Newton's method for root finding".

I know people who got high grades (in CS) at college who couldn't write a practical program to save their lives and are now working in some business role. I also know people with mediocre grades who are busy doing interesting stuff with machine learning and cloud computing.
But then it would be a whole new sensation of identity of the copy, not the existing sensation of identity.
Probably written wrong not degraded.

That was my thought. Heck, it happened to me once.

Combination of a SCSI cable knocked loose, but not visibly so, and the brand new sysamdin (me in both cases) knowing enough to head and tail the backup log file looking for 'start' and 'complete' but not knowing to look in the middle for what was actually happening.

Lost a month of data in the (thankfully) little used legacy ERP system we used. If the entire plant had still been using it it would have been a disaster, not an inconvenience.
Nobody is going to take their homes away from single-family homeowners on the Peninsula.

The proposal is to upgrade zoning around El Camino, the 101, office parks, and downtowns to allow willing sellers to make even bigger gains by selling to higher density developers. Those developers would be allowed to put up Pacific Heights style tasteful, quality higher density (nothing Manhattan-like).

Or that's the fantasy proposal. I don't think there are any real proposals to make Peninsula development rational or useful to the people who live there. The local politics is content to choke on its overpriced and aging stagnation until some foreign center captures the magic of Silicon Valley.
I don't recall specifically what version of *nix was being run on what hardware at that time, but I do remember talking about the fact that things (like virtual memory) were writing to the drives before we even pulled the plug on the machine.

And, at that point in time, introducing more uncertainty into the restoral process wasn't going to help. There was already too much uncertainty everywhere we were looking.

I'll post about that separately...
That's not actually true. The US is 3,794,101 sq mi. Europe is 3,930,520 sq miles

However, Europe is almost entirely concentrated in walkable, urban areas -- even beyond the major cities, small towns are accessible by train, navigable by foot, and have excellent support in the form of public transportation. If people do have "cars," they tend to be tiny or Vespas.

There's no reason we can't have the same system here, except that we absolutely suck at infrastructure investment. It's really not that hard to build an urban environment, and it's overwhelmingly popular with people who can afford it. The exurbs of Las Vegas and Miami are completely worthless, and will be even more so in a future with higher fuel costs, water scarcity, and resettlement in urban environments.