skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The author mentions competitive advantage. To be honest, I think that in such a fundamental case as this, competitive advantage isn't a win. Let's say that good nutrition increases general aptitude. So, more people are smart competing with me if nutrition improves. It also means I pay less money supporting people with bad health. And while I might be competing, it means that better things are being done.

Let's say that my IQ is 125 and the average is 100. Let's say we find something that can raise everyone's IQ to 150 except mine. That's a good thing, even for me. Those people will make production more efficient, create new and better products, etc. That lowers the cost of the same standard of living or allows one to pay a constant cost and get a significantly increased standard of living.

Now, my place in the social hierarchy would change, that's for sure. I guess people tend to care about that as much if not more than the other things.

In terms of genetically engineering children, I'm less thrilled. The fact is that biodiversity prevents extinction. Designer genes might, for a while, provide us with better results, but in the long run it leaves us very, very vulnerable to catastrophe. So, do we pick ourselves or our species? Parents will always pick their child over their species. So, all parents with the means to do so, will eliminate that genetic diversity to the detriment of the species.

We're even seeing it today with parents refusing vaccinations. They work off the principle that everyone else is vaccinated so my child won't get those diseases anyway and I would be terrified if my child got autism (which has never been proven, but they're nuts anyway). They pick their child over society. What happens when everyone does that? In the case of vaccines, it won't happen because once enough people do it, disease will return and parents will be burring their children. In the case of biodiversity, we might not know for hundreds or thousands of years.

I wouldn't be so quick to accept this as improving the human race. Improving individuals: yes (at the cost of loosing the biodiversity that sustains species). We'd become like the banana - doomed.
Imagine having been born in the year 1100 and still be alive with about 90 years to go.

PS: For what it's worth, humans actually did live for about 900 years on average until the Great Flood---if you believe in the Bible.
I'm not sure it would be necessary. Kids in developed nations are already considered optional (vs. undeveloped countries where you put your kids to work so you can eat) so as people get accustomed to having more time to raise kids then they may seem them as much less of a priority and birthrates would continue to decline to offset the increased lifespans. I do wonder what people would consider to be the age of maturity at which you are expected to be on your own. Would people expect to be cared for by their parents until they are 300?
It's my understanding that the bulk of the internal White House staffers are fairly young. Likely because of hellish working hours/conditions there.
Value is in the eye of the beholder.

If people are willing to pay 100 dollars for FooBarSoft version 12, it means that they value it at least 100 dollars.
If 20% of the population becomes mufti billionaires a billion will not buy what it used to.

Compound interest works in large part because capital has value. As the world becomes rich the value of wealth will go down relative to the value of peoples effort. Basically over the extremely long term expected ROI should go down if people start living into extreme old age. Granted some people will always balance this out with the 700 year old with credit card debt keeping the people who get that interest well paid but if 60 million people are willing to lend billions the interest rate is going to be vary low.

PS: What I wonder about is how the death penalty vs life in prison is going to work out. As people live longer I expect more people to commit "major" crimes and even larger groups of people to know someone that "flipped out". Will we want to punish people for mistakes they made 200 years ago or will people become so jaded that minor crimes are are just dealt with by killing the offender?
If it is so dynamic, why does it have header files and interfaces?
The benefits of a monthly recurring revenue model in tough economic times
How Local Motors is Using the Web to Crowdsource Car Design
First U.S. Face Transplant Described
everything that can be invented in the garage has been invented, now its getting to the point where any real technology needs a ton of R&D just to move forward
True enough. Satellite costs 60 bucks a month and you save much more than that by avoiding the various expenses associated with city living. No boondoggles needed here.
That's nice and anti-free market of you...
But why make the rich guys pay more? (If you want them to subsidize the poor, why not ask them outright?)
Like VMware this is all based on problems with existing operating systems. I should be able to download, install, and run any application from anybody without compromising my system or adding much bloat. That's the real problem that needs to be solved and I think the first group that get's this working is going to become extremely wealthy.

PS: When you think about it VMware is one of the few operating systems that has real working security, but I wonder how much else an OS can do while still providing that level of safety and efficiency.
Google launches cross-language search feature
This is actually putting your Mac to sleep, not wakng it up, faster. It's going to wake up fast as long as you are reading from RAM. This "hack" makes it sleep faster by skipping the write to disk.
Nokia 6500 Slider All Black Unlocked
Nokia 6500 slide has come up with the dramatization performance and splendorous look with many included functions and having 3.15 MP of camera and many more. If you are a music lover and searching the best one then you have to stop here
Gaming = legal. Drugs = illegal (generally). Although I did meet a couple of people that were really good at their jobs and I later found out were drug users. This is what taught me not to assume or generalise stuff about others before even getting a first impression.

We can play this game and substitute drugs or WoW for anything you want, it will still work, yes. What does that mean? That the problem the object of addiction is not really a problem by itself. The person, who is weak and gets addicted, is the problem. The ones that lose control and become slaves of their desire. Drugs in that sense are more powerful because they create a physical addiction, not just mental. Games are more addicting than e.g. TV because interaction provides more satisfaction than just being a mere spectator.

But some people can still seize control over this and not let it overrun their lives, while others just let themselves go and end up with a huge problem on their hands. I'd say the first group is a very interesting group of people, they show mental strength.

These kind of personal qualities you can find with psychotechnical tests, that's what I meant with my original message. Isn't that what headhunters are supposed to do? Find skilled people and then study their personality to see if they are adequate for their company.
The Man from Earth
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/
If you think you're qualified, apply.
No. We have shockingly little control over basic diseases and health issues. This de Gray character is just an attention whore.
You know its amazing this guy is where he is at such an early age - he is certainly talented. It also speaks volumes about Obama that he recognized talent and obviously knows how to nurture it. I am looking forward to the inaugural address.
Apple, MacWorld and Steve Jobs – the Wal-Mart Connection
What's not discussed is "the increased savings from moving to an open source knockoff of 37 signals' offerings", given that you're not just paying once, but every month.
You consider those three languages bad compared to Lisp/Smalltalk, without asking why C and C++ were vastly more popular.

I see your point about OOP, by the way: I don't think I really got C until I learned assembly language, and then it all fell into place.

Looking only at language aesthetics, Lisp/Smalltalk are excellent at OOP. We now have the benefit of computers that are insanely fast by the standards of the history of computing.

Go back a decade, and you want to get the best performance for a system by taking that awareness of the underlying assembly code. If you're dealing with pointers and structs then you can write sections of your program that you know will convert to a handful of assembly instructions.

You do have a point: trying to do OOP in a fancy version of assembly language is not going to be as seamless as a language with different core concepts. There are some ugly weld marks in C++ and ObjC, although I have come to appreciate the ObjC design approach after some time with it.

I just think it is meaningless to talk about good or bad languages without reference to the goals of the programmer.
$1000 to spend 
How will you spend $1000 for marketing b2b product? We have already tried Google ad words. Other suggestions are welcome.
TV today: it's still about lean forward vs. sit back
You don't have to be a citizen to start a regular Delaware company either. You don't even have to live in USA. When I first heard this, I was so impressed and realized how most of the world is Doing It Wrong.
I don't know that wealth necessarily implies a lower return to capital. More people are wealthier worldwide right now than at any point in history -- the poorest American makes old European royalty like paupers. (Lives two to three times as long, too.) But what does the return on capital look like in 2008 versus 1408? It is much, much higher.

People, in aggregate, have trillions to invest right now. The market finds a way to deploy it. In a society marked by superabundance for a few, the market would presumably deploy capital towards projects with enormous ROIs and entrance requirements which stagger the imagination. (Think on a sci-fi scale, except with reasons to do it other than to sell sci-fi books. Less "colonize a new planet... because we can!", more "harness a star for energy".)
I guess we're not as skeptical about this underwear-gnome business plan as you are. We don't know for sure what #3 is going to be and I don't think we have enough information yet to decide.

It's not just a product (or a product at all, since we aren't selling it). It's also a framework and what we are really concerned with building is the community around it. That's where our priorities are at the moment.
way more information needed to make constructive observations
LinkedIn's Most Unusual Members: Meet The Super-Connected
I'm just happy we're starting to have this conversation at all.
If extending lifespan from 30 years to 70 years was beneficial, and I believe it did, I don't see why extending it from 70 to 160 wouldn't be similarly beneficial.
Uhh, dude, if you read your history then pretty much everywhere has invaded everywhere else at some point

Not really. Europeans essentially invaded and colonized the western hemisphere, Africa, India, Australia, etc... and yet none of the reverse happened. The Aztecs did not land on the shores of Spain. The Zulu did not invade France. (About the closest you can point to is the Turks besieging Vienna.) If you've ever wondered why europe dominated the new world & africa and not vice versa, I highly recommend Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel."
Consider investments in, e.g., a german bank in 1900. Today worth what? Over the past 1000 years, we've seen major epidemics that wiped out big chunks of the world (e.g., 95% of the population of the americas, 30% of eurasia), deranged dictators who confiscated wealth, revolutions and all sorts of total collapses of society.

Over 1000 years, the risk of losing everything becomes significant.
Look into a dutch auction - multiply the various bid amounts by the number of people that will pay that, and take the highest product - which all successful bidders pay. For example, it's better to fill 25 offices at $10 per month than 30 at $5. From a fairness perspective all winners are paying the same amount too, and any empty space can be rented out shorter term for larger amounts for inevitable short-term overflow needs.
The economically fair way to do it would be to auction all seats at once, on a blind auction. Have the top 30 offers win, everyone paying the price of the 31st offer (the first that doesn't win).

You could probably do it in an open auction too. Count the people who want to participate at the minimum price, start incrementing the price at predefined steps and count the people who are still in. Once you have less than 30 people, you have a price. An open auction every month may be too much of a hassle, though.

I live in Sofia too, drop me a mail if you like.
While true, I imagine a lot of small businesses who use 37signals won't have a dedicated IT staff to manage and maintain an instance of XYZ project manager. Having 37signals handle all the 'techy' stuff and having them as support must be cheaper than hiring someone to maintain it.
> that there is something that human families and communities transmit from generation to generation -- perhaps a form of economic culture, a set of attitudes or beliefs, or informally transmitted capabilities

Hmmm, what ELSE might be transmitted from generation to generation. I just can't put my finger on it...
I again recommend Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs and Steel," for the refutation of "they were just smarter" argument.
?

First of all we would have not to kill the not yet born ones. This would be the very first step necessary.

The next step necessary would be not to help to kill the old ones.

Currently we have no real respect neither for the not born ones, nor for old ones.

In other words: currently we still (kind of) hate life.
It's good to see JayIsGames getting that link - excellent reviews and commentary on indie, casual, and web games...
>Or exactly the other way around - the better the person is at producing, the earlier they managed to switch to agriculture. Or in less politically correct terms, the smarter the people, the more they make today, and the earlier they managed to figure out agriculture.

It might have more to do with when they first had to switch to agriculture. Paleolithic hunter-gatherers had a better lifestyle and better nutrition than early farmers, so why start farming if you don't have to? Farming is tedious, backbreaking labor which gives you grass seed to eat, while hunting is something men do for fun even when they don't have to, and gives you meat.

I don't really see the connection between farming and intelligence. Which would you rather trust a stupid person to do: plow a field or kill a lion with a spear?

My first thought was that adapting to the tedious, persistent labor of farm life would lead to useful traits in a modern economy, unlike hunting, which is more like a leisure activity.
However, the way you suggested is automatically unfair. You're assuming that a richer person will want to pay more (and they will) but that they won't feel unfairness when poorer people get a better deal. Unfortunately, even if I was rich, knowing the person next to me was getting cheaper rent just because they were poor (or less successful or less hardworking) would seem unfair.

You might want to offer different services or spaces for different amounts, cutting back costs and offering cheaper/smaller space to make the inequities real, and therefore justifiable.
The third world country's / developing country's. How would they get a piece of this?
I'm quite sure they wouldn't - or if so, it would be an order of magnitude below what the western world would have.
Already more than enough to go to war for, by the havenots.

And resources? Would we just ultimately end up allowing 1 child per 1k couples to try and stem the rampant population explosion and resultant resource drain?

Would we tackle extreme age with a longevity based tax on a log scale?

It's the little things that add up and kick us in the arse, because even though we could live 12 times longer, the human condition would not advance anywhere as much.
Startonomics: Startup Scalability Strategies
HN Feature Request: Relevancy voting.
What does anyone think about having an ability to vote on whether you think a particular submission is relevant to Hacker News? The vote could be totally impotent and serve only as a visual signal to the community which submissions are appreciated and which are not i.e. it would not affect its rank. If nothing else it would provide a sink into which you can pour your frustrations regarding off-target submissions. It shouldn't be too hard to implement or remove should it not work out.
so the question is. what happens at 1000 that kills us, and why aren't we solving that problem?

WTF didn't anyone see this coming? might as well just die now if it's all going to be the same...
Work is not an end in itself; there must always be time enough for love.

-lazarus long
Buzz makes the world go around, doesn't it?
Well, by distribution, I mean "How do you acquire users / mindshare / customers?"

Marketing, actually. =)
20 Ways To Trim Your Budget And Survive Hard Times Ahead
Most people agree that there are some hard times ahead. The recession is going to take its toll on the economy. It is a good time to trim your budget and hunker down financially.
Book Review: The Art of Pricing
GM Puts the Brakes on $370 Million Chevy Volt Plug-in Hybrid Engine Factory
Guns, Germs, and Steel falls apart if you examine the world after 1800. Why did economic growth go geometric in Europe and European colonies while many societies did not grow at all? It is not a matter of animals or steel or resources, because by the 19th century all this was widely disseminated.

A Farewell to Alms is a much better book with way more hard data than Guns, Germs, and Steel. It builds a solid and excruciatingly researched case that beginning in the middle ages unique demographic forces shaped the European genome and culture (eugenic forces). Diamond's conclusion that it was geography and nothing else pales in comparison to Gregory Clark's case.
the top gear show, pretty much said that the Tesla's technology is irrelevant. They covered a Honda hydrogen car(can be refueled at a pump), and said that is the future, since we have the infrastructure for it already.

They don't see the future as all electric, They see it as a Hydrogen fueled daily driver, and a gas powered weekend car
Maybe they're just talking about web-based software but it seems the most popular model in the enterprise space is one-off pay up front, pay for upgrades and pay for support.
I loved that movie, wish more movies like it were made.
Ooh, a game, let's play. I'll write an iPod one...

"The iPod has morphed a lot over time into many shapes and sizes, but now its days are numbered. This may sound like an unusual statement, but the writing's on the wall. The chalk is on the chalkboard. Apple's products are more expensive than the crappy competition, which was ok before, but not now. Economy and stuff. People will stop buying them. What can Apple do? Stop selling them, of course."
methuselah lived 900 years,
methuselah lived 900 years,
but who calls that livin when no gal will give in
to no man who's 900 years
Here are several articles i've collected over time about pricing:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/113637/softwarepricing/pricing%20...

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/113637/softwarepricing/How_Do_You...

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/113637/softwarepricing/Econometri...

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/113637/softwarepricing/VBSP.pdf

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/113637/softwarepricing/PricingMet...

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/113637/softwarepricing/SW_Pricing...
I just don't get the appeal of Merb at all. Rails was such a relief after a few years of roll-your-own--web-stack Java. Why would I want to go back to dealing with all the little incompatibilities and bugs that creep in once you start mixing and matching pieces to build your own stack?
"Any application" would have to include applications that compromise your system.

For example, suppose you want an application that deletes any files on your hard ending with tmp. I offer it for download, you get it, run it, like it. Now (just because I can) I change the application (without telling you) to delete all files ending with doc. You've been compromised.
Isn't this the same as a "down arrow" on submissions?

It would be interesting to have a down arrow on submissions that doesn't actually do anything, just to see how people would use it.
so, "online cordial personalities" are pretty much a prerequisite for being a good leader. and even if you want to find fault with this particular example, there are plenty more where linus acts exactly like this.
Perl Grafiti
Songkick (YC S07) raises $4m series A
I thought Linus had a good point. True, the forces involved in biological evolution are usually a lot dumber than your average programmer, but it's still a fair analogy to compare the lack of overall direction in the open source world to the lack of overall direction in the biological world.
Saying 1000 years is too much is a just a matter of perspective. A few thousands years back, I am sure most people died at around 40. To them living 100 years would be way too much. 1000 is nothing. We will adapt to it and still find ways to be miserable and need more time to do the things we want to do.
I would have thought some of these things are the first to get the axe.

Do we really need to pay $20/month just to have a chatroom? When there are free alternatives out there? When times are good, sure if you like, but when money gets tight, it's probably a contender for getting cut.
i don't buy their security claims (weak as they are), and i don't think anyone else should either. the complexity involved in their toolchain implies a very long beta period to reveal exploits. even the existing web model is rife with security issues...and thats just for standard markup and scripting (see the recent zero-day IE exploit). downloading binaries from the web and running them directly on your computer without having public access to the source code is just not smart.
Evolve poems using (un)natural selection
Technology for Barcode-verfiied Train Tickets Purchase by SMS (UK)
This is more of a question than a comment, but isn't it the case that sometimes garbage collection will succeed where reference counting will fail?

I've used a kind of reference-counted pointer in C++, but it'll fail if the reference graph isn't basically a DAG, (e.g. if you have some kind of circular reference). Do garbage collectors catch this when reference counting won't?
Studios (temporarily?) gain upper hand in Blu-ray DRM battle
The Simplicity of Kallow
I'm pulling for the studios on this one, because it would be a much more interesting outcome from a CS perspective.
Yes, indeed, SmartSleep works great. It gives you a pref pane interface for toggling between sleep, hibernate and 'smart sleep' -- which hibernates if the battery is low, but sleeps otherwise. I've been using it for the past ~6 months. Without it, my MacBook would take nearly two minutes of disk activity before sleeping; now, it's sleeping happily within 5 seconds.
Obvious you should agree with a charity's agenda before you help them. The problem I was refering to was the charities getting advice about technology that isn't trying to sell them something.

Obviously consultants have to eat too, but a lot of charities pay the same kind of rates as SMEs for technology, which I find slightly depressing.
they are good citizens too - running hacker events from their office
Donald Knuth Does Not Use Email
How to buy a netbook
If at least 50% of your prospects aren't complaining about the price, then you're not charging enough.