skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's a bet you'd lose.

More specifically I can't without taking a huge hit in productivity (and there are somethings I wouldn't be able to do at all on a Sparc station).

In order to do my job, here's a short list of what I run on my MBP:

Eclipse (explaining why Eclipse is better for my needs than emacs (which I used to use) would take a while, but lets assume I'm actually more productive with Eclipse)

Parallels Linux VM running Oracle 10 XE

Parallels Windows XP VM for testing with IE and IE 7, and running a couple of windows only tools I need on occasion

Mail.app

Adium

Safari

Firefox

iCal

iTunes

TextMate

OmniFocus

VPN Client

SQLDeveloper

JBoss + ATG Commerce JVM (768 MB of RAM)

JBoss + ATG CSC JVM (768 MB of RAM)

Ant builds triggered from Eclipse that compile hundreds of Java files and deploy 5k+ files to the various JBoss servers

The JVMs have to be restarted frequently to pickup code and config changes

While I'm sure there are lots of people who could do their jobs just fine on a SparcStation 5, or any old computer, there are some people who need large amounts of RAM and very fast CPUs in order to not spend their day waiting for builds, JVM restarts, and VMs to come out of swap, etc...
so this is sort of how Paul Atreides could see?
thanks for helping me think.

I hope that my opinion about trolls is worthwhile, and hopefully will be corrected if it's not. What I observed, but didn't hear directly stated: trolls feel threatened.
For whatever reason, unfamiliarity sends some folks into a state of neurosis, an upsetting of their equilibrium.

I think of a troll partly in the case of the Three Billy Goats sense: the troll is an owner of a critical pathway. He collects tolls (tribute) a/or has a reputation to uphold in performing his daily routine. He is defining and defending the status quo. If he sees that you wish to build a new alternative (bridge), this threatens his current monopoly. Instead of scaling his current operations and building new bridges, outsourcing the admin of them, and franchising the operation, he wants NO NEW BRIDGES. Perhaps he inherited his power, or wrested it away in a primitive sense. Any evolution of methods that doesn't go the way he likes, he will thwart, dismiss, or destroy. Perhaps it's bullying, not to defend the troll, but to see things from his perspective: he was bullied, and overcame bullies to get where he is now. All he sees are threats and he doesn't want to play any new games. If you owned the phone lines, perhaps you're seeing wireless that way.

To return to your point: trolls aren't interested in learning new things about stuff outside their field. They aren't nomadic like the goats, so they see goats as merely trespassers, competitors, or as victims. Not as neighbors, partners, or customers. That would take a more open mind.

Part of rudeness is not knowing how really rude one is; the other part is not caring. Back to the old joke of when the punk is asked "are you ignorant or apathetic ?" he replies "I don't know and I don't care !" Perhaps it's natural that trolls see life as a zero-sum competition.
There's always a cynic, huh?

I think the point of this article is not that all bad ideas turn into good ideas or good companies, just that many good ideas and companies started out as bad ideas. So if you have an idea and you're not starting because you don't think it's good enough, that's a lousy excuse.

What's your solution: continue with the Eeyore routine and never start anything because there are millions of failures out there?
I use Scottrade.com. $7 trades and works fine on Mac OS X.
You completely missed the point of the article. It isn't about why Python & Haskell are good or bad languages, it's about how learning them doesn't necessarily improve ones' ability to work on projects with other developers, in unrelated languages.

There are social factors in language choice, it isn't just about the quality of the language itself.
As an aside, HuffPo does seem to quote so much of source articles that there really is no need to follow the link to the original. And, if you do follow the link, the way they've quoted this particular article -- quoting everything at the beginning and end and leaving out a few bits in the middle -- makes it difficult to go back to the original and find what was left out.

I do find it hard to believe that more newspapers aren't slapping copyright suits on them in a time when the newspaper industry is losing money by the boatload. There were only three HuffPro-generated sentences in that article and they were padding for links to other articles.
I'm in the exact same situation. I've actually read a few dozen pages, but got sidetracked/intimidated...
We can talk about that after you actually read the article.
Mr. Ferriss is a master at self promotion. That doesn't mean that there's not good stuff to be learned after you sift through the self-promoting crap in the book.

Tidbits I picked up:

* Throw a quick 3 page website up as a sales letter to market a $100 product. Point $200 worth of ad-sense at it over 10 days to see if you get any uptake. If you have more than 2 signups or "buy-ins", you've past the break even point and you're on the road to making money.

* Focus on developing a $50-150 priced product. You don't have to sell a ton of those products to make a decent living for yourself.

* 100 units sold * $100 = replace my monthly income.

* Focus intensely on what's going to make you cash. All the cool technology you're building doesn't matter to your business unless it helps the bottom line. This was apropos to me, because I have an acute case of... oh, look at this shiny new thing. Focusing on what makes money helps cut through some of that.

* People like to buy things. No, really. They like to pay for things. It makes them feel better about their lives. So, if you offer them a compelling reason to give you money, they will probably give you the money.

* Outsource as much as you can that isn't non-core business. e.g. Hire interns to do marketing and PR work for you. Outsource writing your copy. Outsource design work, outsource product development if appropriate. Outsource market research, outsource date finding, outsource travel plans, outsource, outsource, outsource everything away to make your life simpler.

* Filter out distractions as much as possible. i.e. no meetings, minimal email.

* Have balls. No, really, dude hacked a martial arts festival and won. Why? By hacking the weigh-in legally. He has a lot of legal cons that help you hack the publicity system. Put your balls to use by hacking a social structure and rules in a situation to your benefit. If you don't have the balls to try something, you're not going to achieve it.

* Chase the big dreams. Life is too short. If you want a Lotus Elise, test drive it, and find out how much you'd have to make a month to pay for it. Figure out how to make that money. If you want to go to Figi, figure out the cost, make the money to get there and then just go.
It's ironic that such a vapid and well-known question still reveals useful information about a candidate -- precisely because it is vapid and well-known.
How is it actually very different from Japan-style deflation? The problem is that as the credit bubble has popped, prices across the board are falling, and consumers are so scared that even relatively well-off people are cutting back on consumption.

And once deflationary expectations set in, it's very difficult to rid the economy of them. For example, if you expect housing prices to fall even more, it makes sense to wait a few months for them to do so. If enough people act this way, deflationary expectations become self-justifying, and prices could keep falling even beyond the fundamentals. And while individuals benefit from their dollars having increasing buying power, this is more than offset by the fact that in the face of falling demand, companies will have to slash payrolls, either through benefit reduction or layoffs. This is in turn lowers demand, deteriorating the business environment even more. And this is to say nothing of the fact that people's debts become larger in real terms during deflation, likely causing more defaults of all sorts.

The shadow banking system refers to financial institutions that act like banks - ie borrow short, and lend long, oftentimes in illiquid assets - but don't have the protections that banks do, most importantly depositor insurance. Consequently, institutions like investment banks or hedge funds can still experience the equivalent of bank runs. Bear Stearns was a perfect example of this.
A summary of green(er) transportation progress in 2008
"but questions about the business model remain" -- only in the minds of reporters trying to scare up readers.
People have this strange tendency to read 4HWW like a recipe book. I don't understand it.

At one point in the book, Ferriss himself (indirectly) provides the explanation for why his own book focuses so much on his particular experiences and goals: He prefers to read books written by people that have actual experience doing something, rather than theoretical extrapolations. And so he's written such a book. He offers you a recipe for doing what he did because that's what he knows how to do. What more can you ask from one book? If you want a book about how to live a happy life as a hacker or a priest, perhaps you need to buy a second book.

To me, the fact that Ferriss has a very different personality from mine is a big selling point. If I wanted a book on how to think like I already do, I could write it myself!
"Almost every"? I don't think many Nintendo consoles subscribe to that.

If the xbox360 is profitable now, it would still need to repay 6 years of massive losses.
Merb gets merged into Rails 3
You don't get it. You can use ANYTHING to write a game, but a developer should not be limited by the language of the platform. A platform comes with a preferred language. If you want to use the platform, then use it with what it comes with, don't impose your ideas on it.
What sort of advertising? I can see "brand awareness" advertising being reduced, but why reduce any 'results based' advertising? There's not real reason to reduce advertising that yields a positive ROI - which is easily measurable these days usually.
That doesn't really have much to do with the article. It's actually about a freelancer trying three different time management techniques, including the ones found in 4HWK. It was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. In fact, the author said,
"Ferriss' system basically amounts to finding ways to avoid doing your work." which I imagine you'd appreciate it for its intended humor.

With regards to the social implications of 4HWK, As had been said in many of the comments here about it, the idea is to be able to do what you want to do, whether it is to indulge in what you consider as fantasies, or to throw yourself back into doing another time-consuming, socially-productive startup.

I think you underestimate the difficulty of having nothing to do. In those moments, there is nothing to distract you from taking a good, hard look at yourself. There are many things that come up, assumptions about what is socially acceptable (getting a job) and what is not gets examined. I've done a bit of that in the past before, and I recognize it in Ferris's words at the beginning of his book. If after going on this imposed exile for a year, you come out of it going after a new dream, or a new project, that is often more true to yourself than running around being "productive". It is the equivalent of reaching the self-acualization stage of Maslow's ladder, and being ready to go beyond that. This experience is life-changing enough that I think people should have the opportunity to give it a try. Yes, it requires the cooperation of other people helping you out. What of it?

The other side of it is that American society may value egalitarian hard-work, but much of the middle-class affluence is founded on those living in harsher working conditions. Basic things as simple as running water, toilet paper, nutritionally-balanced meals, junk food, iPhones and news.ycombinator.com are all taken for granted here. They are not universally available. It is one thing to criticize Ferris's method for resembling an unsustainable Ponzi scheme, it is quite another to describe it as indulging in fantasies and gloficiation of no-work when the average, mainstream American middle-class is affluent by world standards.
VHS is dead. Next: DVD. Then Blu-Ray.
The Day Merb Joined Rails
Rails and Merb Merge
Not sure a HN writing group will take off, but I'd be all over it. A place to work on my own skills and a chance to help people who need... help would be great.
I've just finished up a Phd, so missed the consumption party anyhow, but still using a two year old hp desktop and four year old mac laptop - I would repair rather than upgrade unless a new model would actually cost less than the repairs (which has often been the case the last five years).
"problem is I don't have time to finish my reading at a stretch..." unfortunatly, this is where I stopped reading ;)

Go for images or video rather than a paragraph of text.
You didn't really grab my interest with so much text on the page, and nothing else.
And my point is that every language is flawed. If you only focus on the unique features of the languages you learn, you may not become a better program when working with languages that lack these features. But simply assimilating these ideas will do quite a bit to improve your productivity as well as your wisdom when designing systems because you will be alert for inadequacies that you would have missed before.
I just wonder how I should be able to find out that the environment needs improving without improving myself first.
When still a college student I went cold into an interview for a very senior position (slated to start after graduation). I am sure I answered all technical questions correctly, but I certainly gave the wrong answer to this specific question - which (along with showing up in a suite for an Internet company interview and several other things) gave the impression that I'm too "fresh" for a position like this.

Three to four months later (and two or so months before graduating - much closer time-line) I sat down with a hiring manager at a big-co and went over such stock questions and their purpose and interviewed for a different position at the same company which required the same skill set and level - and got the position.

I would say my answer to this question is always honest, but I'll never ask the question myself.
Rethinking Cars
Well, it could certainly be that Frind's stats are off -- accidentally, or on purpose, or for the same reason that many scientists' stats are off. (They make an initial mistake, and the positive feedback from that mistake creates a big disincentive to reexamine the data too closely.)

If so, it's a joke on the web stats industry, which seems to be... well, a joke. If people had any confidence in the accuracy of these traffic estimators, there wouldn't be room for a wacky conspiracy theory, right? Does anybody really know how many people visit a site, besides (perhaps) its owner? I suppose Google might give me more definitive data if I paid enough and signed an NDA in blood.
Those last three are great suggestions (I don't know #1). #2 is a classic, but I've read it a couple of times. #3 I've been meaning to read for years. #4 I'm actually in the middle of right now (I think because tptacek recommended it here) and unlike the vast majority of business books, it's superb. It's also older (pre-internet) which is actually a good thing as it focuses one's attention on fundamentals.
OpenFriends Initiative Launches to Save Drowning Social Surfers 
Google, Linkedin, and Facebook are all trying to own your list of friends, but they are yours and you should have control over them
Yeah, the Taiwanese with whom he competed with are pretty serious about Face. When I read the excerpt about it, I rolled my eyes and thought Ferris was full of it, claiming to be a national kickboxing champion. After reading the account, however, I have to admit it was a good hack. Throw people out of the ring. There isn't much way for the judges to cheat on that either, heheheh.

Ferris recently got a new TV show on History Channel, airing as a pilot. It is called "Trial By Fire", where he attempts to learn skills that normally takes 10 - 20 years to master and learn them in about 5 days. The show is interesting to see how the strategizing works. I have no idea if there are going to be more made, but if they were, Ferris promised showing skills like car racing.

Of course it is probably a way to get all of the stunts he wants to learn financed by a TV Network, but that's the point. What he wants to do isn't necessarily what I want to do, and applying the skills of hacking to life is a good thing.
Don't really understand the point of this.
23 Top 10 Lists for Tech in 2008
What were the hottest companies? What were the big ideas in Cleantech? What CEO's made departures from this year's most prominent tech companies? Where are we going and what technologies will continue to be disruptive? Did you even know there were 10 new car company startups?
I once had an interviewer ask me my greatest weakness, stop me before I started to speak, and added "don't even try to give me an strength dressed up as a weakness because I'll keep rejecting your answer until you give me one I like." Upon hearing my response, he asked me what I was doing to combat that weakness. Upon hearing that response, he asked me how progress was and to project how long it would be before it was no longer a weakness. That line of questioning was far more effective and a whole lot more fun.
You might have had the offer almost regardless of your answer to that question.
Merb is Rails
Perl:

join "\n", grep { $_ } map { $_->description } @myList;

Or

join "\n", grep /./, map { $_->description } @myList;

Ruby:

myList.collect { |f| f.description }.select { |d| d != "" }.join("\n")

Python:

descriptions = (f.description() for f in mylist)

Or if we'd like to constrain ourselves to one method `FooClass.description()`

descriptions = map(FooClass.description, mylist) # `map` returns an iterator in py3k

"\n".join(filter(None, descriptions)) # `None` means `lambda x: x` here

Or if you don't like `filter()`

"\n".join(d for d in descriptions if d)

Or if `description()` is a side-effect-free method then It should be a property:

"\n".join(f.description for f in mylist if f.description)

At the end of the day new features doesn't matter due to most .NET-shops use old C# versions and It will not change any time soon.
I've been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I just wait and persevere.

I've had to wait through dark times: hoping the suicidal thoughts will go; hoping the crying will stop; hoping I won't take the final step.

And, then, hoping the good will never leave; hoping my thoughts will continue to accelerate; hoping the pen won't stop; hoping the music in my head won't slow; hoping to dance, and wanting to run forever.

I don't deal with it, I just live with it.
The division is now quite profitable and projections show they will work off all of the previous losses in a few years. Additionally, Microsoft has gained key strategic control of the living room.
I'm modding this up because one of these submissions needs to win, so that we know where the conversation should go.
Wow, big news.

I'm mixed on this. One of the strengths of Rails was that it was the dominant Ruby web programming framework. This meant that virtually the entire community was behind Rails when it came to web app development - unlike some other languages, which have several frameworks competing for the crown. But Merb has recently started to give Rails a run for its money. Fortunately, the learning curve between Merb and Rails is relatively small.

So on the one hand, it's great that the Ruby community won't splinter between two competing frameworks.

But on the other hand, Merb was really creative and innovative, and I'd hate to see that innovation slow down as it becomes the Establishment.
Impressive! How often do you hear about two open-source projects merging? Forking is much more common. I can't even recollect other instances of merging.

Best of luck to the two teams with making it work!
Hop in #merb and #rubyonrails for commentary from wycats and dhh. Lots of good discussion.
If you want to read about many of these kinds of cases, I would suggest "Consciousness Explained" by Daniel Dennett. In light of that book this kind of thing is not that surprising (though still very interesting). The book highlights many examples that show that being consciously aware of something is not the be all and end all of the brain's function. There is no central Cartesian theater where the "I" watches the world through the eyes.
Reminds me of a time I screwed up a Java project (well, not really; just took a long time to write code most Java devs wouldn't understand) by using attempting to use generics and Java's static typing system to build-up an ML-esque ADT system.

4-ply parameterized types (e.g. string array list option) do not attractive siblings in Java-land.
It's ridiculous, but no more so than the brain-twister puzzle type that used to get so much attention.

Actually, it would be fun to conduct an interview consisting of nothing but ridiculous questions like this, while acting as though the interview were completely normal. I don't think I could pull it off with a straight face though.
Annual “cutting the Long Tail down to size” roundup
amazing. i'm all for a less-cluttered field of choices.

anyone know of another high-profile project that has merged with a "competitor"?
Motorola W220 Black Unlocked 
Show off your individual style as well as your original moves. With a built-in FM radio and a colorful clamshell design, the affordable new Motorola W220 delivers a fun fusion of entertainment and communication features to keep you connected.
Compiz and Beryl. Beryl forked from Compiz and, if I remember correctly, relations were very sour between the two projects. Several months later they merged into Compiz Fusion.
Sinofski is a revered person at Microsoft. He has been responsible for the last couple of versions of Office, includingthe radical 2007 decision, and was very much selected by merit to lead the development of Windows 7.

For anyone who tried the Vista beta, you know that traditionally Windows was a mess right up until (and often until after) it shipped. Lack of engineering discipline and talented engineers forced to go into management for raises was really hurting Windows. Sinofski shook up the rules and let the engineers quit management and go back to engineering at the same pay. He also helped shape policies that have substantially improved quality. For example, the main-line Windows 7 branch only contains ship-ready features. Windows 7 won't be late because Ballmer could say "hey, let's ship it tomorrow" and it would be ready.

He MCs the excellent Engineering 7 blog http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/ as well as a popular internal personal blog. His writing style is very long winded, but information rich. After reading his posts, seeing him at the company meeting, and giving a few tech talks, I am quite confident in his ability to turn Windows around. I wish I could say the same for many other teams.
Merb was really creative and innovative, and I'd hate to see that innovation slow down as it becomes the Establishment.

All innovations either become Establishment or remain obscure. I'm perfectly happy to see Merb go Establishment. If it doesn't work out... it's not as if the project won't be forked again.

Innovation won't stop. It will just have a different name and perhaps some different principals.
the so-called "sugar high"
Date Range Picker with jQuery UI
The entropy of code
Well, this move has cemented Rails' future as the best web framework there is. What an awesome move! Congrats to Merb & Rails teams!
3 Reasons to buy a Netbooks instead of a Puppy
Here's a good place to start:

http://www.buddhanet.net/budsas/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm