skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Interesting people are everywhere and nowhere. You find them one by one.

Feeling alienated sucks but you might find that not belonging to just one group is one of your strengths. It can give you a unique perspective because you have a wider range of experiences. It can also increase your tolerance for change and uncertainty. People that stay in groups tend to want things to stay the same and you don't meet interesting people in Berlin or Beijing by staying the same.

And you may want to reconsider your thoughts about psychologists. They are a great resource for figuring out how you feel because they're trained listeners and neutral to your situation. Sometimes you need to try out a couple before you find one that you find helpful.
I figure they must, but I find it odd that I never hear the name pop up on sites like this and Reddit.

Have they made many console games? The only one I knew of was Alien Hominid.
i've been waiting for this. congrats on the launch, guys.
Democrats sneak Net neutrality rules into 'stimulus' bill
If I could send my teen self some advice, it would be to relax and simply persue the topics that interest me. All else will fall into place.

Hope this helps :)
It's a very good book indeed. Also a little bit overrated, I would say. The book deals with deep concepts (e.g., recursion) but some people miss the "point" and try to mystify the book as if it were deeper than what it actually is.

I also found it a bit overworked at times, LOL. But then, anyone who has programmed for a while knows about recursion and other topics covered in the book, so one's way of thought is molded in such a way that many of the concepts are not that hard to grasp. I would guess that the author tried to write a book that would appeal to a vast multitude of people, so he sacrificed conciseness a bit in order to attain such goal.
Create a pet project or two, contribute to open source. These will show what you actually know, where as a certification will largely just become a way for people to game the system.
Interesting people are everywhere. You find them by BEING one. And by listening to everything.
A better title: 9 interesting Linux commands and 1 reason to absolutely avoid CentOS.
Agreed emusic is great.

On your last point; now we have another study, from a somewhat biased organization that believes strongly in, relies on, and supports, the "long tail" version of the music industry to support the long tail theory.

Another thing that may bias emusics data is that people buy a subscription to emusic. You practically have to try out new music once you get all the music you know. Compare that to a per-tune fee. It's a very different dataset in the way it was constructed.

Also, sales data doesn't lie. If amazon's and others data doesn't support the long tail theory, then why believe it? Faith? Just because you want something to be real doesn't mean it is.

Hopefully it is real though, as a lot of business models are based on it :)
It isn't the talent that is the worry. It's the morale. http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3paulgraham.com+morale

PG says, "Startups live or die on morale." I would say any business lives or dies on morale.
I don't know if this is because of the new fix, but for me submission pages won't load. Any user's submission page just freezes. Safari 4, OS X 10.5.6.

Edit: never mind, working now. Possibly an Internet malfunction.
You seem to be claiming that if artificial intelligence does not exist at a human level, that it therefore does not exist at any level.

Right now it doesn't - not at any level. There are no AI's that can self-program. So it's hardly a strawman argument. There are some that can learn the specifics of pre-programed concepts, but none that can self learn a new concept. That is something that most animals can do, but computers are not even close.

Yes, human olfactory nodes do not have any intelligence at all - but not because "they are not at the level of current human general-intelligence", but because they can only do the single function they were created to do, and can not learn anything else.

There are lines in intelligence - it's not a continuum. The first line, to use your example, is being able to recognize any human face after being programmed with a sample of human faces. The second line is to be able to recognize the concept of face of a different species, i.e. the concept of the "front" of a creature.

AI has not even reached the second line.

A next major line (I'm sure there are others before that) is being able to learn to self-program. This means: use only the IO of the program, and using that teach it something new, without sending any commands that change it's programming. I don't think AI will ever reach this, even though animals can do it to some degree.

A further line is being able to create something new, not simply respond to requests. This does not mean a refinement of an existing technique, but something totally new. Not even all humans actually do this, it's in the realm of genius.

I skipped the line separating animals from humans. But it is a line, it's not a matter of degree - there is a jump from non-sapient to sapient.

Even the most retarded human is noticeably different from the smartest animal.
Ask YC:Domain Registration?
I'm not too happy with GoDaddy constantly trying to upsell me on just about every damn action I take on that cluttered site. Though, that call a week ago regarding my recently renewed domains was a nice gesture, I still find them overall to be too in your face. What do the folks here use for domain registration?
My point is that it's not a determinate process.
So we just finished a new round of optimizations as part of our ongoing quest to prove that with sufficient caching you can .....

PG, can you please list the various optimizations? Thanks!
Gas to Liquids Clean Liquid Fuels
Linc Energy’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr Peter Bond said “This is another exciting development for the Company as we move to rapidly develop our UCG and GTL operations globally,
Star Tribune files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
AT&T Accused of Spamming Its Own Customers
Are you're kidding me? If I must really share. . .most sys admins encourage their users to come up with passwords that read like 'pornographic catch phrases' written in 1337 speak as means of ensuring system security while the end-user is less likely to forget their password since it's something offensive yet expressive.
I cannot agree with you more, I use namecheap they do put some crap in your face but it's nowhere near godaddys.
Do missionaries in Africa try tricks [pic] like this to convert people?
This post totally confuses me. What does the market for VC funding have to do with AI?

Are we even talking about the same things? Are you an AI? You are sort of acting like one (in this post), not responding to the points, but picking nouns from my post and finding info about them. (I'm joking - sort of.)

"....for which special intelligences" - is your definition of intelligence different from mine? Because none of the items on your list are forms of intelligence.

Yes, I am aware of the "special sub-processor" for recognizing faces.
If 80% of people are talentless or skillless (wow, a naturally-ocurring triple-L), what should those people do?
I think the type of friend you want is rare. But there is hope-- these people want to find you as much as you want to find them! Do what it takes to meet and get to know as many people as possible. I don't mean to befriend them all by any means but get to know them, try to understand them etc. Develop an interest in people and in relating to people IN GENERAL. Do not have expectations of amazing connections. Be in the moment. By that I mean you should be putting your full-self into the interaction. And you should be spontaneous and follow the intuitive flow of the situation rather than fixating on preconceived ideas you may have. Just like when you're debugging code. All focus on that person. What they are saying, how they are saying it, etc. Talk and respond. Monitor their feelings and adjust what you're saying and how you're saying it to make things go smoothly and interestingly for all. Monitor your feelings. Is this person making you feel slow, annoyed, sad? Or are they making you feel excited, "CAN!", surprised, etc? Take that information into account when "valuing" people. Someone who has different interests but makes you feel excited and enthusiastic is of much greater value than a carbon copy of yourself. Esp. if you're doing the same thing for them by a different magic mechanism. It's yin-yang. Lookout for that more than anything else. Good luck! And don't worry about feeling like a Holden. Holden's a good guy just a little immature. And being the catcher in the rye is a mighty good plan and one way to realize just what I'm suggesting. Not for everyone of course but helping the good and innocent can yield great satisfaction.
Is it really bad to be sad?
Top 7 alternative energies
What does the market for VC funding have to do with AI?

Technologies develop where they can earn a reasonable return on investment. If AI is developing first as facial recognition, instead of cow or everything recognition, it's because that is where the money is, relative to the amount of investment required. The return on an everything recognition AI investment might be higher, but the investment required would be higher still, implying a poor ROI.
Real World Apps in Days not Weeks
This is great. Stop groaning and start living! Yes, startups are stressful, a roller coaster ride, tough sail all of it. That makes it all the more reason to dance or do anything fun and carefree.

Just watching it made the mind so light. I am sure all those startups if they did dance in good spirit they would have had a great happy feeling too which is good. I would want to dance with them in 2009 ;)
Unfortunately you can hardly have it both ways. Most people only have one primary interest in their lives, and form groups around it. You don't seem to be like that, which makes you an exception. Of course there are other exceptions like you, but they are by definition hard to come by. So either you get really into one group, or a little bit into many of them, your choice.
See, maybe this is bias, but I don't think it's possible to be talentless or skill-less (hyphen, maybe?) entirely. The people I know who're talented are the people who ask questions. The people who're skilled are the people who learn how to do something. And I've never met people who can't do either. Only people who refuse to.

The people who I think are most talented - the people I try to emulate - are the people who never stop asking questions. The more you ask, the more comprehensive view you have of the thing, and the more you've got to master. There's nothing particularly hard to it.

The people who don't ask questions, but accept things as they are, are the people who comfortably fit into a niche. I think most people do this: they get to a certain level, then stop, and they settle in with people who've settled there. The people who are skill-less settle in with people who have that mindset. So they end up with some sort of a satisfaction.

The people who impress me the most, in every single field, are the ones who are never satisfied entirely. The ones who constantly move forward. It leads to a mindset like the one in the OP: you feel dissatisfied with the people around you, the people who settle in. And while the whole idea is that you never do settle in with a group when you're like that, you do acknowledge the people who are similar to you, and you develop bonds like that. Those are my closest friends: the people who, to some degree or other, never stop pushing themselves forward. It's because they always change: they always stay interesting. And while all of those close friends belong to entirely separate groups, while most of them have never met each other in person, they're still a very definitive group in my mind. And I'd like to think that I belong to that same group in their minds.
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The majority is not completely talentless, or without skill. They are average. It's the definition. There is only one thing they can do: be what they are.
"Where are the truly interesting people in life?"

everywhere. My network of friends includes less than 10% that work in IT. Most are not geeks but are ok with the fact that I am as I accept and don't really define what they are. I just enjoy their company.

I had a friend that worked on the documentary series where they interviewed a group of people each year for, well, I forget how long, but a long time. I can't remember the series at the moment. The obvious question I had was "How did you pick the group of people to interview for such a long project? You need to make sure you pick potentially interesting people, right?"

My friend told me that my intuition was not correct. It turns out it didn't matter, everyone is interesting.
You may want to reexamine potentially self-limiting assumptions:

I always feel like the odd one out -- you may be partially imagining this 'odd man out' status; also, others you see as 'close knit' may feel just as tenuously connected as you do.

my close friends [are not] a social group... they are all from different groups and aren't friends with each other -- have they met? what if you made them a group around you?

I can't [talk on a wide variety of subjects] with anyone I know -- are you sure? what happens if you try? maybe they are so nervous about going off-script they're sticking to safe topics, too, and would welcome a change.

The peer groups I see are all so specialized... none of them are generally interested in everything -- are you sampling all peer groups? do you see them in all their expressions? is there a chance you've defined 'peer group' as 'sharing narrow common interests', and thus it's impossible for you to see other kinds of peer groups, even right in front of you?

I can recognize the flaws in how I handle friendships -- what if you're misdiagnosing the issues?

I don't have much hope in [waiting until college] -- consider the possibility 'everyone' else is right in ther advice, and those people who don't find close friends in the contrived HS environment do find them in college and other non-HS activities.

'The map is not the territory'; your analysis may have prematurely converged on counterproductive (but self-reinforcing) conclusions.

Stepping away from your exact words: you seem to think of friend groups almost like formal clubs, that preexist, with clear memberships and standards, that have to invite new people in.

Try instead the assumption that they are all ad hoc, popping in and out of existence, with ever-changing memberships, and open to anyone who shows up. You belong the moment you decide you belong, and others will assume you're 'in' unless you take explicit steps to opt out.
An alternate option is to give up some ownership of the patent for reduced cost and labor. Have you guys talked with IMSciences? They cut you a deal for a portion of the patent ownership and depending on the deal you cut can write most of it for you. (I don't work for them, nor have I filed anything with them but I have heard good things about one of the partners).
What if I am of average intellect, but am completely dissatisfied with it, to the point of being utterly consumed with a quest to not be as illogical and uncreative as I wish I didn't have to admit I am?

I believe the only thing I cannot do is be myself.
You can't not be what you are. At least, not yet :-)
Please don't post blatant advertising.
This just represents bad acquisitions on G's part. They should examine how cisco, for example, does acquisitions.
That's the thing -- I have to be. At least, I have to believe I can be something I'm not. Because if I truly am stuck with this brain, with this inability to be smart, as smart as John Carmack or Trevor Blackwell or Steve Wozniak, then I will be unable to realize my visions of the future, of potential creations, of new awesomeness, and the one thing I feel I cannot live with being is a consumer rather than a producer.

In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else.
It would be great to have a RSS for the saved items. Just to aggregate them in FriendFeed.
If it is already possible, I'm sorry, I don't have found it.
Oh, sorry! I wasn't trying to go specific about the detail, just some general feeling I have towards jQuery.

I guess I'd better explain why I feel so.

I was experimenting with JavaScript a couple of years ago before jQuery/Prototype/etc took off. IE6 was the absolutely major browser back then, but I was expecting JavaScript to work both in Firefox and IE6. You couldn't imagine how frustrated I felt trying to get anything work cross-platform flawlessly.

Then I came across jQuery. I think it was still in an "alpha" stage then -- the whole idea was awesome, but with many bugs (I even worked one out and had John patched it with my code). I was amazed at the way John solved the problems of JavaScript (personally I do not like JavaScript), saving a lot of trouble for me.

Later I moved on and was not involved with JavaScript for quite a while. But I still kept an eye on the evolution of jQuery. I was really excited by the animation effects jQuery provides (how could one possibly achieve that in such a language with broken support? He must be a genius!). As for the 1.3 release, I think "future detection" probably solves the cross-platform issue once and for all. That's what I meant when I said the word "patched".

Forgive my broken English -- it's not my mother tongue :|
Oh yeah, if only I had known... ;-)
If you can be something better, then you're not what you think you are.

Are you just speaking hypothetically, or do you really think you are unable to be smart? Because if you do think that, chances are you're wrong.

> In short, what I am is an overpowering urge to be anything else.

Join the club.
I think that mashup already exists. last.fm lets you stream and buy tracks...
Thanks very much for the shout-out.
Namecheap seems to be a popular choice.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=339823

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=186369

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=150561
Good friends are hard to come by and therefore finding a whole group of them at once is pretty improbable. On the other hand, there's something interesting and something worthy in each and every person if you only drop your expectations and demands first.

Secondly, friends are also like women: you'll find a good one when you've really reached a point of frustration where you find yourself swearing that "This is enough of suffering for me! I do NOT need a friend/girlfriend to be happy and to feel fulfilled. If I have to, I'll go by myself just fine, thank you!" OTOH, nobody wants to befriend someone who really wants a friend, maybe just any friend. You can't seek for friendship, it will seek for you.

Third, you should make up your mind about what you want. What do you want from your friends should you become blessed with one? What do you want to talk about with them? What do you want to do with them? Unless you know what you want, you'll just keep bumping into friends or "friends" who want to do their stuff. Nobody is going to come and probe you for subjects that you might want to talk about, everyone just settles for some topic they know you know too. Also, being occasionally brave enough to talk about what YOU want to talk about is a great device to weed out people who can't or won't align with your interests. For example, if you want to talk about life, start doing that and you'll soon find out who will bounce back and who simply can't handle it.

Generally, whatever it is that isn't working will just keep happening again and again until you find a way to change yourself, causing different and possibly more desirable things to keep happening.
What are your favorite, but lesser known Linux commands?

fuser, strace, ltrace, nc come to mind offhand.
Then try and understand that there's no such thing as average intelligence, only different intelligence. People learn different things differently. Part of it's context, background. Part of it's just how minds work. Jobs had a foster father that was apparently very aggressive, and he inherited that trait. He had an open mind, certainly was good at learning from things, but some of his personality he got from the people who raised him.

Nothing is immediate. Everything takes years and years of work. So whatever you want to do, start now! Begin learning. Learn everything. If you ever have a question, or wonder why something is the way it is, ask! You'll learn more, more, more, and eventually you'll find a question without an answer. That's when you begin work.

Forgive me for being immodest and talking about myself, but that's the story I know and I hope it helps. When I was really young, I was surrounded by books, and learned how to read when I was 2 or 3. I'd read quite a lot by middle school, and so when we were asked to write things, I wrote by copying a lot of the things I'd read from different sources. Some people called it a matter of intelligence, but it wasn't: I had just read a lot, and so had a wide palette to blatantly steal from. At the same time, I had computers around since I was an infant, but I'd never really learned about things like forums until I was about 13 - which from some stories is pretty damn old online! From there, though, I learned a lot about communities, and tried making my on site two years later. It was all a matter of timing: if I'd discovered forums at 19, my first site would have launched a lot later. As it happens, now I'm working on a site for writers, and I'm combining a lot of the things I've learned in the past to make it happen.

Passion's the real key, and from what you've written you've got that. Now you need to make that passion last. You can just go out and start trying things, but be warned in advance that they won't seem impressive at first. Each one gets a little bit better. And the more perspective you've got, the more this happens. Something you thought was perfect seems awful once you see things other people have made - I know this happens in both writing and web design, and I'm sure it must happen in every other field imaginable. It'll take time; nothing happens overnight. Not even for child prodigies: Mozart spent 6 years immersed in music before he became a prodigal violinist, after all, and he had a father who'd spent his life learning the craft that Mozart learned and then mastered.

Never let generalizations stop you from getting something done. Don't worry about intelligence. Worry about doing things, thinking things. Let other people compliment you after the fact, and if you get things done they will. Focus your effort on accomplishment and you'll be guaranteed to succeed.