skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You'll learn more about sober, typical perception through these than you will on drugs, the carpet bombing approach to psychedelia. And it's that exploration that's most interesting for me.
I Want Palm's WebOS, just not on a phone
I even wrote to pg couple months ago about the "discrimination" :-)

His reply:

"They just haven't edited their profiles since I turned off live links after spammers discovered using them as landing pages for spam campaigns."
Except this one is actually going somewhere... ;-)
It's not crazy talk, but it is, often really hard.

Any part of a process which has variable time or is at all out of your control is going to fuck it up.
Some of those preloaders are real works of art!
My point is just that a rational person generally uses his/her cognitive faculties to assess risk, but that regulation often leads to short-circuiting of critical thought.

The heuristic becomes one of people believing that the government must have already looked out for all dangerous possibilities, so anything that is legal is safe.

I don't feel the need to look down my nose and say "people should be individually responsible" because I don't consider that productive. I think people are naturally responsible enough to look out for their own interests, unless they are misled.

One example: investors in Madoff's hedge fund were misled by the SEC stamp of approval on that fund. Don't you think that normal scepticism about the returns ought to have led to some scrutiny?
If the poor became richer, how would that hurt the rich?
That's for local changes. I think what we're talking about here is a sheet (at one URL) referencing a completely different sheet (at some other URL). The equivalent in Excel, I suppose, would be one .xls file referencing another.
Last I checked CO2Stats was very careful about explaining what they counted. What I took away from their website is that if you have an account for them you're paying for your visitor's computer power, and the slice of network in between. That was most interesting, for me. I'm sorry the OP was under the wrong impression.
The first two points are exactly what I said 4 hours earlier:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430505

"The doctor's report accounts for a) your computer viewing the page for X minutes, b) the overall searches per power used by google's datacenters, and c) some other random guessing I'm assuming."
The New Journalism: Goosing the Gray Lady
Excellent point. You're right, a basic humility about the human ability to understand and control complicated systems is at the root of libertarian principles.

I think it's somewhat absurd that Obama and Bush even pretend they can do anything about the financial crisis.
http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=503867

According to this article, the IT industry matched the aviation industry for global CO2 emissions in 2007. A regular ol' desktop PC, with regular daily usage (9 to 5), uses about 400kwh of power per year. Servers, being larger/louder/faster than the average PC, and running 24/7, are obviously dramatically more consumptive.

Does that mean there aren't bigger problems that need solving? No, of course not. Automobiles are a huge source of problems and need to be dealt with. But, like CFLs, small changes to high quantities can make a real difference.

If we wanted to be in denial, or assume that only the biggest producers of waste need to change, then one could just write off the carbon footprint of your PC and servers as unimportant. I don't know enough about carbon offsets and such to know what the right thing is here, but I think it's a novel approach to a real problem. Companies with large data centers really are burning a lot of coal and pumping a lot of crap into the air. Sure, their employees are doing even worse on the drive to work...but people need to work on all of those problems, not just the most obvious.

And, of course...before I judge someone who is working on the smaller problem of server carbon footprint, I would have to ask myself what I'm doing that's more useful.
How often do you check your RAID/BBU/consistency status?
If we acted as if the stupid elements of the conservative/earth plundering lobby spoke for all of them, they'd look stupid too. There's no single opinion on the best solutions going forward.
There's nothing special about the ping-pong balls and radio. These are the effects of sensory deprivation, which can be intense if it's done right. Most interesting states of consciousness involve sensory deprivation or overload at root, including those induced by psychedelics. For example, sleep occurs most readily in partial sensory deprivation, and many forms of meditation likewise involve sensory deprivation.

Regarding the role of the radio static in this experiment, it's there to produce white noise. It's nearly impossible to drown out all noise. At 15 dB, you'll hear your heartbeat. However, the brain at rest cancels out white noise up to about 70 dB, so you can create essential soundlessness in a moderate quiet environment.

Sensory overload can be fun, too. I recommend listening to music on headphones around 80-85 dB, with your eyes shut and a blindfold on. You want the music to be just loud enough that it sounds like it's coming from within your head, but not so loud as to stimulate adrenal responses (or damage your ears).

Also, binaural beats are pretty cool. You can induce altered states of consciousness pretty easily with these technologies.
When Tim Berners-Lee was traveling around pitching the WWW in 1991 he didn't present it as a physics-only project, or even an academics-only project.
Willard Wigan makes tiny sculptures that fit on pin-heads or within eyes of needles
"The nobility of abolitionists isn't why 600,000 Americans died in the Civil War. Nobody gave a damn about slaves. The end of slavery is just a fortunate outcome."

So what exactly was the cost/benefit to the conductors of the underground railroad? Sounds like a lot of cost for no personal benefit.

My original point was that cost/benefit analysis can and SHOULD be involved in decision-making processes, but simply looking at emancipation as a 'fortunate outcome' is more than oversimplification.

----

In the future, it might be helpful for you to note that making sweeping generalizations usually doesn't help your argument: i.e. "Nobody gave a damn about slaves" really doesn't make me think you're taking a scholarly viewpoint on this debate.
If he is not a social media consultant, why should I trust him to tell me who is a social media consultant? SCNR...
My Crunchies Picks
If the poor become richer, then you become poorer relative to them :/ Surely...
Why are online ads cheaper?
Buy cheap, sell high... now's the time to hire great people for cheap, if you have the cash... I'm surprised that Google isn't hiring much - or perhaps it's just MBAs that they aren't hiring.
Of 3000 people when the entire population is over 20 million?
Even if you don't believe in climate change, I really like that CO2stats is a distributed opt-in approach. Instead of government mandates, you have individuals and companies taking action.

Other comments about cost-benefit analysis also miss the point to a certain degree. Raising awareness is valuable. Feeling good is valuable. That doesn't enter into an individual's cost benefit analysis, but it really matters.

The main critique of I have of CO2stats is that I'd like to see options besides buying energy. I'd like to donate to research into alternative energy, not directly buying current tech.

Donating to research also highlights that there are good options to choose regardless of whether climate change is real.
Why You Have To Jailbreak the iPhone
::Grabs popcorn and dons flamewar armor.::

I don't disagree with you, but "carpet bombing" is going a little far. I don't think psychedelic drugs are the best way to explore one's mind for most people, but they are interesting and can be valuable in some circumstances. Unfortunately, we as a collective know very little about how to use them, and individuals generally know less.
From a cynical viewpoint, I'd say the delay is to motivate the volume licensing customers (select and software assurance) to renew their 3-year agreements. It is my understanding that large numbers of them are declining to renew their subscriptions, and that this is one of Microsoft's major revenue streams.
I have been wondering why no one mentions the opportunity costs associated with the Internet vs. its alternatives.

Isn't it irrelevant in this context? No one is saying, "Computers are bad for the environment...so go get in your car and drive everywhere for everything!" The point of this service is to reduce the carbon footprint of Internet services. We, as an industry, do use power (quite a bit of it), and we do produce waste, so if someone wants to alleviate that by buying carbon credits, for marketing or ethical reasons, it has no relation to opportunity costs of the Internet vs. alternatives.

I don't know the answers to these problems, but it doesn't make sense to blame CO2Stats for not solving problems that they haven't set out to solve.
Create high-resolution displays for OS X
My original point was that cost/benefit analysis can and SHOULD be involved in decision-making processes, but simply looking at emancipation as a 'fortunate outcome' is more than oversimplification.

yes, this.
Yup, that's why they were looking at buying Yahoo! for a while there. The thing is, they do everything. And when you do everything, you can't do all of it well. They have too many eggs in too many baskets (for example, why did they compete in the mp3 player space with Zune?).

They do some things really well (Xbox Live is amazing, for example) but yeah they fail hard at the web.
How could a change in mere relative level of richness hurt one?

Let us assume that richness is freedom from need.
How the city hurts your brain
Ask HN: If you were to build a doomsday device, what'd it be?
It's Monday.

Rules: it has to sound moderately plausible. And debating "no that won't work b/c of blah blah blah" is no fun. Instead, suggest changes to help. We're all about productivity here.

To get the ball rolling: build another version of the large hadron collider in space, then, when it starts making black holes, throw it into the sun. Nothing says apocalypse like the sun dying.
I think the intro video is too long. For the intro, skip the sign up part, just get right into it. Try to get it under 5 minutes. And invest in a good microphone. It sounds like you're talking into a tin can.
I want access to whatever data is inside the spreadsheet. Currently Excel locks away your data unless you use a library of some sort that may not necessarily be 100% accurate, or capable of a specific feature.

Likewise, generating spreadsheets should be easy for 3rd parties.
Excel on the Mac really sucks and I don't really want to install Windows just for that.
I feel like I'm missing out on something here.

The most I've hallucinated while falling asleep is occasional swirly patterns. No sounds, ever. Maybe because I've had a tinnitus for as long as I can remember? (constant ~20kHz)

Likewise, nothing when waking up. Once every couple of months or so I "know" that I've been dreaming and at best can remember a person or object from the dream. After a few seconds even that is irretrievably gone.
Is this real? If so why is the guy from Heroes there?
For some people, it's a harmless way to alter perception and consciousness. For some, they never come back. Dropping LSD, in particular, can be, to some minds, catastrophic. Someone close to our family now claims, among other things, to have been approached by the reptilian leader Pindar, disguised as Prince Charles, to be his understudy.
Will Changes to US Healthcare Help the Technology Industry?
I'm pretty sure I had to download silverlight to watch netflix movies on my Mac.
I'm trying this as soon as I get home.
I don't think you have refuted my speeding analogy. Do you ever drive in an area with ice on the roads? I recommend that you observe the phenomenon before you dismiss it.

I do not think you have refuted my claim that regulation leads to people suspending critical judgement about risks.

Reserve requirements are a good example of this effect. Industry lobbyists try very hard to have the limit decreased while benefiting from the public perception that the regulator has assured that the bank's assets are sound.

If you don't buy my argument then you probably believe that people are so stupid that without regulation banks would hold $0 in reserves.

The alternative view of humanity is that people are sensible enough to demand sound practices from institutions they deal with on important matters.

My argument is that banks don't use reserves as a way to win customers the way they would if regulators weren't giving an A+ to every bank that holds the minimum :)

One exception is Goldman Sachs. It did not need TARP funds to remain solvent. Yet Treasury forced all banks to accept the funds. What did Goldman do? It immediately paid a huge dividend to its investors.

What happened? Goldman actually had more sound practices than the rest of the industry and was not in danger of failing. It would probably have waited for bankruptcy proceedings and picked through the assets of the other banks, strengthening its already strong balance sheet.

Regulators did not want more money to flow to the firm that had good practices, so it insisted on bailing everyone out. This was to hide information from investors and customers. Goldman angered regulators by paying out the dividend right away, but managed to signal its health.

To understand the point of libertarians on this issue, consider the world in 10 years from today. We might have had a world where chastened investors and customers looked a lot more carefully at the risk management practices of banks before trusting them. Instead, we have a world in which our government owns 30% of all banks and regulators are being hailed as the saviors of the banking industry.

Do you want to live in a world where people act based on reality, or one where taxpayer money is appropriated without congressional approval and given to selected industries, and the appropriators are hailed as heroes that helped the little guy keep his job, prevented another great depression, etc.

It all comes back to the burden that people take upon themselves to assess the riskiness of the decisions they make. Industry loves to have its status quo practices rubber stamped by regulators, to add additional credibility. It all works out well as long as there can be another bailout, etc., but it's not based on reality and represents the slow transfer of wealth from the most productive companies to the ones with the most effective lobbying.
Is there anyone who doesn't know this?

Who hasn't relaxed with some classical music and their eyes closed, while their brain fires off pseudo random pretty imagery?
Beautiful. I wish had the artistic skill to do some of that. My favorite one had to be the Old School Movie loader.
My thinking was to show people how quick and easy it was to get going from sign up through to actually using the product but perhaps this might be better suited to an instructional video rather than the main promotional one on the homepage.

Will order a microphone and see if I can get better quality sound on it, thanks for the shout. I'm normally too busy squirming at the sound of my own voice to notice the quality of the recording!
I think it's very likely that both A and B have some truth to them. I have heard many comments from Iraqis confirming that there are indeed a lot of foreigners present. You wouldn't need tens of thousands of them in order to be effective. They don't have to do all the bombings themselves.

What we don't know, and probably never will, is what share of attrocities has been committed by which group. I do share your skepticism about information coming out of partisan sources.
These sensations are usually just a result of being stressed.
Stockpile thermite. When sufficient mass is achieved, ignite the lot and burn a hole through the earth's crust. The resulting supervolcanic eruption should end civilization.
Have you by any chance watched any "Dexter's Lab"?
"Free is not a business model," said Mr. Moffett of Bernstein. "It sounded good and everybody got excited about it, but when you look around, it is clear that is creating havoc and will not work in the long term."

I beg to differ. OSS and GNU/Linux are perfect examples of the contrary.
Duplicate of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430863
One meter in your car equals one Google search.

In terms of greenhouse gases, one Google search is equivalent to about 0.2 grams of CO2. The current EU standard for tailpipe emissions calls for 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven, but most cars don't reach that level yet. Thus, the average car driven for one kilometer (0.6 miles for those in the U.S.) produces as many greenhouse gases as a thousand Google searches. </quote> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/powering-google-searc...
So do I; but then I'm narcoleptic, and sleep-onset (hypnagogic) hallucinations seem to be a symptom of mostly narcolepsy, but also some other sleep disorders:
http://www.sleepnet.com/forum3/messages/367.html
While having a symphony orchestra play in your head is fun, if you experience other sleep problems, especially excessive daytime drowsiness, maybe you should have it checked out.
Best Dressed from the Crunchies 2008 in San Francisco by His Catalog
If you're doing this, there are some operational risks.

People make money off intransparency. Billions.

If they perceive transparency efforts as a thread, they may simply invest some of their winnings in having you and your transparency efforts destroyed.

Doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. But you need to need to be aware that this kind of stuff does go on.

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/09.05.02/fitts-0236...

solari.com

whereisthemoney.com

from the metroactive article:

"Starting in 1994, Hamilton Securities Group began building an easy-to-operate computer software system to track the money flows in any given region. The program, Community Wizard, provided the kind of transparency needed to expose cooked books. Former Hamilton employee Carolyn Betts remembers the power of Community Wizard, even in its infancy.

"It was in the beta stage, so it was not complete, but with each piece of information it became more and more powerful," recalls Betts. "The HUD field office people went absolutely crazy when they saw it. You could go in with a pointer on a map and get to information on expenditures by each HUD program. It was a pretty beautiful program and would have become unbelievably powerful."

Community wizard was dismantled in 1997 as part of a legal hatchet job, the servers confiscated, and the backups with source code wiped.
I have gotten plenty of great applicants - thanks guys! Please stop sending me your application info at this point...
explore one's mind

This is the big lie of psychs, that they allow you to "explore your mind" as if somehow you're not fully understanding it while sober (and through meditation).

Psychs rewire how the brain handles and deals with sensory input, so that when you do them you're not exploring the mind you have while sober, but entering into a completely different "mind" based on distorted perception.

It's like thinking you're exploring new rooms in your own home when in fact you're 9 blocks away checking out a house that's entirely different in structure and form. Of course that adventure will bring in fresh new perspectives, but in no way does that help you discover more about your own home.
VisualWikipedia Adds Interactive Context to Wikipedia
I do not know what Google does in regards to green energy. I am simply saying that if I were Co2Stats I would have try to work with them.
"In 1993, Ramzi Yousef used a truck bomb to attack the World Trade Center in New York City" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda#1993_World_Trade_Cente...

"War between Japan and the United States had been a possibility each nation had been aware of (and developed contingency plans for) since the 1920s" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#Backgrou...

"Austria was merged into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. There had been several years of pressure from Germany and there were many supporters within Austria for the "Heim ins Reich"-movement, both Nazis and non-Nazis." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anschluss

Your less specific in the details of your other facts so it's hard to get specific counter-facts on them.
I'll have to try that out. My MythTV setup is currently more effort to troubleshoot than it is worth.
I worked in a consulting firm that had built its entire business on Excel "apps", heavy, clever VBA-driven rich GUI interface spreadsheets applications that were replicated time the number of people in the client organization. While a bit wonky, and web-naive in way, these app's proved to be surprisingly resilient and flexible for "lowly" Excel (lowly only in the hierarchy of "legit" programming environments). From this experience, I would say that what would have been a profoundly useful tool, would be a software conversion tool, that could capture some of the logic, or UI of such "apps" and webify them, or at least convert some of the syntax into better object oriented code. This is of course a tall order, if not impossible. The dream of automating quality code may be nigh impossible, but it would be a huge business value even if executed only in part.
...how does obama have anything to do with self control? On numerous occasions he has lost his temper to the press, and that is just public stuff.
I think I remember seeing a much better set of procedures, involving a special set of glasses and maybe some other equpiment that you had to build, which would actually lead to something that wasn't just a fun party trick.

Oh, this is it: http://www.makershed.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=MSBM

Also, if you want a much more painful way of achieving hallucination, experience a traumatic situation repeatedly, which is clearly preceded by a distinct sound. From personal experience I can say you will occasionally hallucinate the sound in situations where it would never sensibly occur.
The research was published in 2007. And it has been discussed here before.
Well for a start, if poor nations become rich, they may not want to continue working for a pittance to satisfy the richer nations whims. Prices may go up pretty fast.

Also, if the poorer nations are using all the coal+oil, there's going to be less for the rich nations... again, making prices rise.
Simple. A basic worm that infects IOS-based (Cisco) devices and renders them all inoperable at a coordinated time.

No Intarwebs would either equal doomsday, or massive social liberation.
Donate it to a kid in need.
Did he use LSD once, or many times?

My understanding is that it's pretty rare for someone to develop those sorts of mental issues from psychedelic drug use alone, though these drugs can provoke an episode. (There's a neverending debate over whether those events "would have happened anyway".) Frequent use of psychedelics, however, can be really dangerous. Acidheads aren't profound, shamanic people; they're often really boring and screwed up.

Drugs have an utterly opposite marginal utility behavior to that of meditation. Drugs take off rapidly (too rapidly for some people) but the marginal utility drops off (and becomes negative) very quickly. Meditation starts more slowly, but the marginal utility increases as one progresses.
Consider this: If they had never used that name, this story would've never existed, and less people would've heard about them.
http://xkcd.com/350/