skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
14 years of piano lessons. Also clarinet and saxaphone and I'll mess around with just about everything else.

When I told my piano teacher that I was going to school for engineering and got into the pre-med program (as opposed to music), she was in total shock and her immediate response was, "wait... are you smart?"
And to think that I do this for free whenever any of my pet ideologies are attacked on the Internet. I'm getting ripped off.
Disruptive innovations and why great firms are so helpless to survive the impact.
This has always annoyed the crap out of me when using Ubuntu. There is a ton of great info at ubuntuforums.com, but it is not well organized and questions don't always get answered. Sometimes a problem will get considered answered without really being answered. A simple issue shouldn't require going to the forums, which can be considerable time investment. Maybe community efforts could be focused on a wiki for more common issues and reserve the forums for problematic issues among those doing real development work. Then again I could just be too lazy for Linux.
Processing.org : easy to get started with graphics. I have been having fun with it recently myself.
As long as the new stuff displaces less important and interesting projects, don't worry about it.
If Libland did not have the capacity to generate Food, I would think Liblanders would have unique and unusual ways of being resourceful with Food and its storage, knowing full well that they are dependent on Xia for it. Canning, freeze-drying and other methods of preservation would probably be innovated to an extreme in this massively unrealistic metaphorical Libland.
welcome to first year!
Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth
Teen body image and the media
What's the incentive for them to innovate that?
A language is not obsolete until not enough people know it anymore and companies are forced to convert their code to the "hot new thing" or some mature-but-not-yet-obsolete language.
I play and record myself on acoustic-electric plugged into a multi-effects pedal, plugged into the computer, and I sing.

I suck at everything.
A mathematical proof is a series of steps each of which the listener is confident they could prove to be correct. The more difficult or surprising a result the more steps you will have to add to convince the listener.

Similarly when you are writing a program you don't know the exact inner workings of every function you call. You should, however, be confident that they work and that you could understand them if you need to. The source for a computer program omits plenty of contextual information thats needed to make it meaningful. The only completely unambiguous interpretation of the program is the machine code which is analogous to the proofs in the principia mathematica. Its nice to know how it works in principle but you dont want to work with it unless you really have to.
The Malady Of The Cross: Crucifix Scares Kids, People
I actively play guitar and electric bass - I fool around on banjo, mandolin, and drums. I'm also currently learning to play cello. I find that playing/writing music often times gets me through a tough coding problem more quickly than thinking about it directly. I'm also likely one of those people who Knuth mentioned as I have pretty serious interests in the mathematics behind computation.
Just because you lack the ability to understand economics, systemic effects, human nature, sociology, business, doesn't mean you opinion on a "simpler" system is really valid.

People side with libertarianism because it sounds good, but haven't reasoned through the side effects. If you thought for just 15 minutes on what people would under libertarianism would do, you'd realize it just won't work.
I was scrolling down the comments looking to see if someone was going to make this joke.

Glad to find it at the bottom where it belongs - Thanks HN.
I'll also chop up some broccoli and add it to the ramen. Along with some shredded pork (MSG-free) and chili, it's a pretty tasty dish:

http://www.piermall.com/Chinese-Shredded-Pork-Sung-No-MSG-p/...

http://chowtimes.com/2006/05/21/shredded-dried-pork-aka-meat...
Who told you that? Or like akronim has mentioned are you sure you know the meaning of obsolete?

Java is one of the core programming language on which the WWW stands today.

Yes, way back in 2001, there was some problem with JAVA, and lot of IT professional lost their jobs too!

But as for now, it indeed is one of the coolest thing.
The mediocre, median case of the useless Web 2.0 startup founder is that he fails or exits badly and re-enters the "real economy". The median case of the financier is that he makes millions and stays in the industry for decades. Well, it was that way until 2008 happened. Now this is less clear.
http://www.booksprouts.com/

Designed for exactly this kind of scenario, and recently launched.
As a collective, yes. But what's the incentive for any one individual to attempt to innovate, especially given the high chance of his attempt failing? He might as well just wait for someone else to innovate.

Indeed everyone else will wait for someone else. Prisoner's Dilemma. Oops.
Minitrue? You mean Minimal Truth?
> I'm not sure where you missed the fact that I can't play
> full-screen DVD's (both discs and iso's) in ubuntu (I
> would venture to say a very important feature for the
> desktop/consumer OS) without it playing back at around
> 10fps.

What video card / drivers are you using? It sounds like you simply don't have accelerated video drivers. I frequently play 720p video fullscreened in linux. The same goes for your comment about not being able to resize a window in real time. It sounds like you a have a fairly broken linux experience.

Completely agree with you about UI consistancy, though.
Boomers have already started retiring. The first wave became eligible in 2007. Perhaps you mean the peak?
Ironically, I'm in Canada and it can't find me... not even a guess.

Edit: Oh it guessed. Kamuela, HI 96743, USA. Not quite, to say I'm near Toronto, Ontario.
Ask HN: SlinkSet or Pligg?
Which should I use?
It's not that bad. I think we flew for about $80 round trip. There's always the trains too. :-)
that advice is for founders....which he is not
Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles
State department has an email problem...too many reply alls hogging up servers
It's really not as simple as these anti-polygraph sites would have you
believe.

There's a sensor that's strapped around your chest. If your breathing is
irregular, they'll detect it. Also, doing anything mentally draining
while someone is asking you a question and answering it correctly is not
easy. At some point, you're going to have to focus on the
question. You'd have to be able to consistently deceive them for every
question and keep at it for several hours.

They don't necessarily tell you which questions are the control and
they'll slip in questions that you'll have to think about and answer
honestly. They'll catch your baseline with those. At times, they'll intentionally try
to agitate you by accusing you of lying. It's difficult to
keep cool and it will throw you off balance. You'll forget that you were
trying to trick them.

The government knows about all of these stupid little tricks. People
used to put pins in their shoe or contract their anal sphincter muscle
to generate a response. Examiners now have sensors under your feet and
ass. These tests aren't designed to simply detect that you're
lying. They want to push your buttons and make you crack.
But it isn't tho', not by any measure. Microsoft (and Apple) have something Linux never has and probably never will: HCI specialists who can't code themselves yet nevertheless, the programmers listen to them and do as they say.
I like this one...

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.

- Voltaire
OK. I stand corrected.
Read this: http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.h...
I'm an OS X user by day but very pro Linux generally and have tried hard to use Ubuntu (in particular) as often as I can "on the side".

And.. my biggest problem is there are niggling things that no-one seems to want to fix because they're cross disciplinary. For example, take window moving and resizing. Seamless in Windows and OS X, but on the default GNOME it's a hit and miss affair. Yes, you can press Ctrl and click and easily move windows, but if you try and clickdrag the title bar in the usual way, half the time you don't "grab" the window for some reason.

Worse is resizing (see: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/8473/ ). Only a 6 pixel wide or so region at the bottom right of a window is grabbable, which makes it a real job. It's not seamless like in OS X or Windows. They need to add a transparent grab zone for this. Yet, despite many complaints, metacity developers seem to think it's a theme problem, and themers think it's a metacity thing -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/human-gtk-theme/+b...

With too many disparate elements and tiny fiefdoms, it's hard to dictate good practices from the top down. Once they sort that out, a lot of the UI issues - including those you raise - could be solved, but the dictatorial technique probably isn't going to fly with this community.
If that individual has progeny to nurture and protect, I would think that individual would take measures to innovate methods to do so, including grouping together with other individuals with common goals. Even if he or she didn't, the survival instinct would still persist. If that grouping no longer serves those inviduals, then they would likely want to disband it, especially if there were a sub-group of parasitic individuals within it that existed simply to maintain that group if that was their only method of survival.

If you're going to cop out with intellectual laziness rather than provide your own opinions and observations, I think I am justified in referring to someone else's work on this topic who has addressed everything you are anemically trying to assert: http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDF_Books/why_govt_doesnt_work....
I play the piano, as a hobby. One or two hours a day. I go to classes and I've been playing for five or six years.
I have also composed some electronic music and remixed popular tracks but I stopped doing that because of lack of time.
You could always apply for a job that requires security clearance. In my case, I once applied for a job at the CSE (Communications Security Establishment -- Canada's equivalent of the NSA), which required top secret clearance. I would have had to submit to a polygraph had I not backed out to accept another job.

Having a psychology background, I was curious about the test and somewhat disappointed that I didn't have to take it.
I'm not sure I'm considered a musician, yet, but I'm learning bass guitar. I practice daily, though not as much as I'd like.
You might want to check your antialiasing settings (in Preferences -> Fonts I think). You can choose different levels of antialiasing, and if you're using an LCD monitor, you'll want to use sub-pixel rendering, which is equivalent to Microsoft's ClearType.

It would be nice if that could be automatically turned on based on your monitor type.
Regarding music and hacking. Personally, music theory and the compositional techniques I learned as a student "feel" very similar to hacking: writing an examination fugue in the style of J.S.Bach involves complex thinking and problem solving within a (semi) formal system with an additional (and essential) appreciation of conciseness, grace, style and aesthetic.

Also, hacking music is fun! When I was learning to program I wrote a little app to solve species counterpoint problems with a genetic algorithm. Although not always up to "human" results (especially fifth species counterpoint) the "solutions" were always fun to listen to. ;-)

As for me: I'm a tuba player - a graduate of the Royal College of Music with an academic (rather than performance based) undergraduate music degree. I also play organ and piano. I still play regularly and was recently a soloist with a local orchestra in a performance of the Vaughan William's concerto. Life without music would be unbearable... :-/
$80 is indeed great but the train is much more exciting ;-)
As someone who generally considers myself libertarian, yet admittedly doesn't fully understand all the philosophies and intricacies of it yet, I enjoyed this read. I have a question about your marijuana comment: can you point me to a good read about a consistent libertarian drug policy? I'm certainly for legalizing marijuana simply because alcohol and tobacco are far more dangerous, but for more dangerous drugs it's a bit harder to argue for legalizations. However, while I haven't completely formed my opinion on drug policy, I tend to think that every drug SHOULD be legalized, and that doing so wouldn't harm society much. I can't really back up my opinion yet, other than by listing these two points: 1) We are allowed to do things like climb mountains and drive cars, given a certain amount of training and/or a test, not to mention eat whatever we want and refuse to exercise, even though all these are objectively shown to be rather dangerous. 2) I personally would not start trying all the dangerous drugs were they suddenly legalized, so I suspect reasonably wise educated people also would not, and there would not be some huge decay of society just by legalizing drugs. In fact, I have no research to back me up, but I tend to think legalization (which really is just decriminalization since we all know drugs are quite available and common) would introduce competition, drive the prices of drugs down, probably make drugs more safe (i.e. not mixed with other, worse substances), and remove the association of drugs with slums/high-crime areas. I welcome more educated libertarians to comment on my ideas and educate me more fully.
I didn't read your entire comment, but as for personal financial decisions ruining the economy, I don't think this would happen in a free/more free market economy where the idea of market failure was allowed to take place. Federal bailouts are what expand bubbles and cause them to be worse later. If a bank knew for sure it would fail if it took on such risky loans, rather than just being bought out by a larger bank or paid off by the government, they would probably choose a more rational lending policy.
That doesn't necessarily follow, eg lets assume it's a hardware problem. Have you ever tried installing XP from scratch? After you spend hours hunting for drivers, do you conclude windows isn't ready for the desktop? Or look at all the people having hardware problems on the OSx86 forums. Try buying something from dell if you want to convince yourself about readiness for prime time. I don't particularly care, I've been using it for years & I have no problems with window decorations.
A function of their success is not caring about potential customers like you. Sorry, but it is.
Not necessarily on topic, but: when sending personal emails (not even business-personal emails, but actual personal emails between friends&family) do you include a salutation?
I'm the lead guitar for Ann Arbor-based rock band, Moment of Inertia (we all happen to be engineers... computer, electrical, mechanical, and aerospace between the 4 of us).

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8umukDN_PVE

We've been a band for 5 years now, and this is definitely my top activity right after running our startup and right before autocrossing (oh, and my girlfriend fits somewhere in there too).
I am sorry -but your site could also be considered a Usability blunder. Will not go over too many issues I have but for instance having the link text one shade darker then primary color is considered bad.
Folks that want to apply these techniques have jobs and management and organizations that I simply don't want to have to deal with; fixed, inflexible, distrustful, political, bureaucratic.

There might well be good and valid reasons for any or all of these organizational choices, but I too have a choice in the matter. And I choose not.
Looks like he forgot "Don't put textured background behind site content".
i use a lot of google's services, including gmail and google docs. it's nice to see that they care (in some cases) about a user's freedom with respect to his or her own data.

i know some people get upset wwhen open source and open data are confused, but the principles at heart are really quite similar, and very awesome to see a company respect that and not treat users like idiot consumers.
obsolete? no, and it will probably take a serious hardware revolution before it happens. cobol is not obsolete. cobol would become obsolete before java.
That's the thing about Ubuntu (or, Linux in general). When a user has a problem like this, it's not supposed to be his/her fault. And yet whenever a user says "This thing isn't working", Ubuntu supporters immediately say "Ubuntu is fine, your stuff isn't right". It shouldn't be the user's fault. Ever.

If a user's system is unsupported, the OS should know this and fail gracefully. Don't blame the user. Especially if Ubuntu is designed for the "every-user", don't tell them to go to some website. To them, it's just broken and they'll gladly switch back to wherever they came from.
Cocoa meets Javascript: http://cappuccino.org/
Society is more akin to an iterated prisoner's dilemma: the same game, but played lots of times. In that situation, the ideal strategy is actually to cooperate.
I don't think "weak" and "minimal" should be used interchangeably. MY personal beliefs, which I generally describe as libertarian (though I admittedly don't know, understand, or agree with ALL beliefs that may be called libertarian), are that a government should be very strong and able to do WHAT IT NEEDS TO DO. I use the term libertarian simply to mean prioritizing personal liberty. A government should be able to protect your liberties, and should perform that task above any other. Libertarians in the US surely all agree that the FEDERAL government should be small, and most probably believe the State government should stay out of your lives as much as possible as well. However, I think most would agree that the more local the government, the more of a true voice the individual has, so regulations/taxes/etc. are more acceptable at more local levels of government. For example, speaking only for myself, I have a problem with federally funded, regulated, and mandated public schools, but I DO NOT have a problem with a local tax to fund local schools being on a local ballot. Depending on where the funds would be used, the perceived necessity of the funds, and perhaps my own financial status, I would choose whether to vote for the tax, and would have no problem with the tax being passed if the locals voted for it.
Fingerstyle guitar. http://peterkeane.com
Disney CEO and impact of tech (and Pixar) on their business strategy
> "5. Don't send HTML or pictures. Personal email doesn't, why are you?"

uh. shouldn't you just do what you normally do? just like the "keep your salutation normal and un-merged" rules?

i personally prefer text only emails, though attachments are fine. i appreciate a client that permits me to "click on" htp://... to automatically see the page rather than copy paste (pine, gmail).

when i set up meetings with people i've never met in person before i often include a picture of myself. i sprinkle that same picture around the internet. maybe interacting with strangers isn't personal, but then the whole point of the picture is to make things more open, friendly and personable.
Thank you for the reference. There was no need to be rude.

Regarding the title of the reference, I'm happy to accept that government doesn't work, but I can't understand why libertarians think that libertarianism does. I shall save further comment until I've had a look at the reference.
Hmm, I usually find answers to all my simple questions on google. There's so many of them I think you'd also have to google on a wiki.
Dear Noah,

No.

Thanks,

Kirubakaran.

PS: Hope you had a merry Christmas or a happy New Year or both. If not, hang in there buddy!
A cutting-edge legal mind turns to an age-old problem: corruption
Appreciate the feedback, guys. In particular, the progression of HtDP->SICP->CTM by Kaizyn is helpful; I'd been wondering how these 'big 3' stacked up in terms of difficulty.

Edited for future reference:

HtDP: How to Design Programs at http://www.htdp.org
SICP: Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs at http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp
CTM: Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming at http://www.x-crew.com/crew/apollo/ProgrammingText.pdf
yes, but not always. usually it's something informal 'yo'.

a good idea, regardless of salutations, is to gently focus your readers into your email. would you like it if someone immediately rushed into their idea? it'd be a little jarring.

on the other hand, whatever. for short messages why clog the signal?
I agree that photoshop is the better of the two tools, I'm mostly using gimp BECAUSE it's a less powerful tool.. it's an experiment to see what I can create using lesser tools so that I rely more on my creative abilities and less on an elegant solution.

I may well end up hating it, but I wont know that until I give it a try.
Well the issue probably is the companies that use Autodesk need to print the drawings they create on special printers. With special drivers. And thats only the tip of the iceberg I'm sure.
PRIVATE land owner I would believe.
Guitar. taught lessons to get thru h.s. and college (Best job ever for a punk kid who happens to be punctual.) Went on the road for a few years with a band (Best job ever for a beginning hacker (lots of time in the van with a laptop.)) After that I got a "real programming job" and built copies of vintage gear as a hobby. Now i'm in a working cover band and in a few experimental things.
Probably less so. Those with more wealth wouldn't be able to lobby a powerful government for favorable legislation and bailouts.
This point was mentioned in Fast Food Nation.
Took piano lessons until 8th grade, in 9th grade picked up guitar on my own, learned to play by ear, I'm pretty decent albeit a casual player. I don't play in bands much, just jam around with friends, and I know I don't have the chops to be a professional. Music is a great thing to geek out with, you can really be a music gearhead just like with computer equipment. I'm especially interested in digital audio workstation (DAW) technology, it's a perfect blend of computer science and music.
"For example, take window moving and resizing."

Yeah, everyone uses compiz's resize window plugin. I think it's enabled by default, try holding down alt & dragging the scroll button.
http://www.tshaddox.com/?cat=10 Some compositions of mine (mp3 downloads).
A modest piano composition of mine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPS1DDVenrk
How is flippantly pointing out some simplified abstraction like the Prisoner's Dilemma not rude? Anyway:

"In Game Theory, simple mathematical ``games´´ such as the prisoner's dilemma or the ``chicken´´ race, model situations where there is a potential benefit for players in finding a way to coordinate their action. All the ``theorems´´ about such games merely restate in formal terms the informal hypotheses that were put in the model. It certainly does not follow that government is the right way to achieve this coordination — though such is precisely the non sequitur claim of statists. Actually, it is possible to apply game theory to compare coordination through government coercion with coordination through market competition; and this exercise in game theory will easily show how dreadful the effects of government intervention are."

Libertarian thinking is predicated on the concept of minimal government, such as the author of that document (who was the Libertarian Party candidate for President). I'm confused as to why you would accept that government doesn't work, yet think that is somehow in conflict with libertarianism.
Right there with you. I picked it up only a few months ago so I'm an amateur at best.

I always keep my harmonica within the reach of my hands, so whenever I'm tired of coding I lean back and play a little.
University of Cologne considering 45,000 iPhones