skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No worries. Thought about what you wrote above and here's my take on it: First, in defining boundaries of a system, we inherently create an "inside" and "outside." By drawing boundaries, everything which adheres to a theory is "inside" and everything else is "outside." I am not sure what you mean by capitalized "Truth." If you mean it in a spiritual sense, then a theory that Jesus turned water into wine cannot encapsulate the opposite theory that Jesus did not turn water into wine. The "Truth" is that Jesus turned water into wine, so both notions cannot be part of the Truth.

In defining rational as "logical steps that can be replicated with enough of a probability that it can't be a one-off event," we can take a look at Tibetan monks who can withstand freezing temperatures and control their body temperatures. From a quick look, this appears to be a mystical power. In freezing temperatures/snow storms, I would freeze to death while a monk can meditate for hours. However, these monks can replicate these feats in such a way that they can train others to do this (even though it may take years). Going back to our water to wine example, only one person, according to history, has been able to perform this feat. The fact that it cannot be replicated with enough of a probability leads the event being label as non-rational.

For some things as enlightnement in zen/buddhist world views, there is no rational way to go from non-englightened to englightened. However, the event has been replicated enough times that you could argue that this is a rational thing can and has occurred.
Digg need to take a page from Google's book and realize they need to fix their ad system.

At the moment it's showing me adverts for women's weightloss products, digg really should be able to figure out I'm male.

Worse yet it's showing me US only adverts (when I'm in Europe). Half of Digg's userbase is outside the US (quantcast data) - they're wasting 50% of their inventory.
By setting up ip geolocation targeted advertising they could significantly improve their CTR.
http://www.istheinternetdown.com/ seems to be still available...
The only problem with your 10-hour workweek is that, as living expenses go down and people try to stop working, wages drop also (because workers won't complain as much if the cuts won't put them out on the street), so you'll still have to work two full-time jobs to keep your cheap house surrounded by endless farmland.
I always bounce around between Emacs, Vim and TextMate I've tried IDEs but their typically not native code, have shitty keybindings, are slow as dog crap and need to be custmized with entire plugins rather a few lines of elisp, python or whatever.

If I had to choose between the 3 I'd go with Emacs and I don't know how much more productive but well in the range of "enough". We code everyday in mostly the same place so learn your tool and enjoy it.
I agree. Pandora has literally changed my life. I am a musician as well as a coder, but I have recently fell in love with jazz fusion. Billy Cobham, Chick Corea, Tribel Tech, etc... but I don't have a friend who is really in to jazz that would be my portal into this world. With Pandora I can just type in "Billy Cobham" and have a whole new world of music that I want to hear come right to me. This has increased my practising both in time and quality. I just has opened a ton of doors to me. I would happily support them because their service is that good.

What is sad is that because their service is that good, the radio lobby in America is after it, big time. They hate losing any control they have over the current state of music and Pandora is a "threat" to them. If it's 10, 20 or 50 years, soon wireless will be everywhere and there will be no need for them. They know this and they will fight it. Hopefully we can win this one.
To his credit, he is putting his money where his mouth is. Bill Gates didn't have an operating system, and this guy has no peer-reviewed success study.

Would you prefer he said "I've done 10 years of research at Harvard and Oxford, and concluded that everybody is just faking it. Do not listen to important-sounding studies from impressive-sounding universities!"? :-)
Can I purchase and download books from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or any other source with a 1M+ library of books? If the answer is no, then it's just a toy for hackers.
"Emo Technology"?
Really bad timing on HuffPo's part; Creative Loafing, which not long ago bought The Reader, is in the midst of a painful bankruptcy.
It depends on the language. With Java, I get a huge return because the IDE can take care of so many mundane things like getters and setters. Java also sometimes has odd names used in its standard library (for example, you use queue.offer() and queue.poll() to add and remove things rather than something like 'enqueue' and 'dequeue' or the standard push/pop. An IDE prevents me from having to deal with looking it up constantly.

With Python and Ruby, I find a text editor sufficient and usually I'm doing web work with those languages which is perfect for vim/emacs over SSH.

PHP tends to have a huge library of builtin functions and it uses positional arguments (you can't call a function with arguments out of order denoted by keyword like python). I've found an IDE to be helpful for PHP in the past. SQL isn't a big language. As such, I can't see an IDE helping. JavaScript, with libraries becoming the preferred way to code, doesn't seem like an IDE could do much unless it understood the library.
The problem with Microsoft's software platform
So you think that you've got it bad? It could be worse if you're an ASP.NET programmer.
These statements (especially the one about "meaning") show how religion affects a person's view of science. For it to <i>mean</i> something to be human, there has to be someone who intends for it to mean something. Once you accept that God is imaginary, the problem of "meaningless humanity" disappears.
In defense of name squatters I have to say it is easy to become a squatter without any evil intentions. if you have any idea for a service, you are practically forced to reserve a name first (or risk investing the effort to implementing it in vain). If then for some reason the implementation is delayed, bingo, you have become a name squatter.

At least the writer of that article sounded as if he was planning genuine services for those names, rather than just hoping to sell the names for profit eventually.
#slicehost #symfony #propel and of course #startups
Pretty much agree with most of what you said. IDLE and Vim are my gotos for Python. PHP I rely on PHPDesigner(mainly for the tooltips for argument order) and syntax check.

And JavaScript the library is key(jquery for me). Though a good syntax checker would be nice. I think I spend too much time debugging semicolons in JS.
"Free markets contrast sharply with controlled markets or regulated markets, in which governments directly or indirectly regulate prices or supplies, which distorts market signals according to free market theory."

I'd say my assessment is pretty right on.

david

App Cubby
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com
The bottom line is that you need to work with something that you can extend. To suggest that the IDE/Editor designer is going to be able to anticipate all of your needs is silly. Instead, learn something like Emacs which you can extend with Emacs Lisp. Heck, Eclipse is fine if you take the time to learn how to write Eclipse plugins. Eventually you will reach a point where you start running into unique situations for which you require a unique solution. Being able to code your own is the only way to go.
This is an interesting device in a category where I'm interested in seeing devices bloom. However, the phrase

ships with an MP3 player

worries me. The gratuitous MP3 player is the designer's badge of failure. I never, ever use it -- I have iPods and iPhones for that! -- and it just clutters up the interface and the documentation and dilutes the designers' focus on the task at hand. (Note, for example, that this thing is going to ship without Linux or Mac support for creating PDFs. What's up with that? Perhaps Foxit could have cut the MP3 feature and used its budget to hire a Unix person?)
Why is their stock valuable? What's the business model that's going to make their stock worth owning?
Most web startups don't do much with computer science, and a computer science degree generally doesn't prepare you to build a web startup.

It always smacks of an inferiority complex when a group a people who largely thus-far haven't actually been successful in business snipe at people who studied business and suggest that all of their skills are meaningless.
MySpace Puts The Hammer Down On Project Playlist
My thoughts exactly.

Steal from the Times? The WSJ? Ok. They might give you a pass for a while if you send them readers. They don't know what's going on.

Steal from an alt. weekly that's broke as a joke and hustling to stay alive? Poor form.
>For one thing, your text editor can be used to edit anything that is made of text:Python, PHP, Javascript, SQL, C, Ruby, Perl, Lisp, Haskell, Erlang, Java, shell scripts, config files, HTML,

Yes, I get that. Funny, I actually do use Excel a lot to edit a lot of these things and don't think I could improve my productivity in any of them more than 10 or 20%. My real question is how much it would help me in the language I spend 80% of my time in(Python now), versus an IDE that was built specifically to help people writing Python.

But you make a good case and I'll probably go harder into emacs(I do use vim a fair amount now, and will try TextMate when I get that mac.
Amazon did release the Kindle's source code awhile ago - They had to since its Linux-based and has to comply to the GPL. That seems pretty open to me, even if its not by choice (Though you could argue they chose to use Linux knowing what GPL entails)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&...
Only one question to the author, which I left on his blog:

So, going by your argument, would you like to be treated by a doctor who got in via option 2?
I use IDE's that have vi keyboard mappings so I get the best of both worlds. Visual Studio and Eclipse both have vi plugins.
I don't believe that you can honestly say that the author's valuation of "celtics" over "bc_fan_news" or any other name does not come from the potential for misidentification and association with the Boston Celtics brand. It may not be the most thorough attempt at deception, but it is reasonable to call that a form of impersonation.

From a "libertarian/free market" perspective, why the hell should I favor the guy who made a stupid mistake in thinking that he owned something that he didn't? Your tangent on domain squatters is irrelevant, given that the rules of each system are completely different. Twitter usernames are not a free market, and it is utterly stupid to have thought that they were.
That's the difference between lying and bullshitting.

Most consultants lie, claiming that they can do X to get hired to do X. But they do so with the knowledge that once they're hired to do X, they'll be able to learn it very quickly, absorb the business situation, and apply X in an intelligent way.

Saying you can do X when you can't is lying. Saying you can do X when you know you can learn it over a couple of weeks is bullshitting. Both are dubious, but one at least delivers acceptable results.
You fail at reading comprehension.
I for one am not so interested in buying DRMed PDFs anyway. But I guess I am a hacker in that sense.
Tell HN: Thanks for everything and have a safe holiday
It seems that everyone I know here on HN has a trip home to family this weekend. Just wanted to say thank you to the whole community for provoking great thought and discussion and for all your advice, not just to us at Dawdle but for the advice you give all the startups here. It makes everyone stronger and hopefully more successful.

Drive slowly, take your time, and don't forget to tell you parents/siblings/whoever that you love them when you come back to your office/apartment/cage.
That would be the "ineffectual" branch of my argument.
Do rocks make you sad? Or is it the conchoidal fractures?
Firefox on Linux is broken
"Founded by some of the world's leading experts in machine learning and semantic web, One Llama offers a unique approach the world of personalization and recommendation combining the best techniques from collaborative filtering and machine learning."

Who are these experts?
Wired Picks up the Story, interviews HuffPo Co-Founder who called it "an editorial mistake and says this: "Generally publishers are psyched to have a link."

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/12/huffpo-slammed.html

Gawker's Take: http://gawker.com/5113964/arianna-huffingtons-scuzzy-copying...
I agree too. It really comes down to what helps you the most and what the best tool for the job is for you.

I've seen people use Eclipse for Perl, which make very little sense to me. Sure, you can use it, but personally I'm at least 10x - 15x more productive if I use vi.

But for Java, Eclipse is awesome. The ability to find what methods are available and other great tools Eclipse provides blows a lot plugins/extensions out of the water.

There is no one editor to the rule them all... :)
Wozad just launched in beta, looks like a valid Adsense Killer
Why on earth are those three types of student all in the same class?
A Reader’s Guide To Browsing Rails Source » Pathfinder Development
I would advocate a system similar to that used in trademark infringement cases.

From http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm

If a party owns the rights to a particular trademark, that party can sue subsequent parties for trademark infringement. 15 U.S.C. §§ 1114, 1125. The standard is "likelihood of confusion." To be more specific, the use of a trademark in connection with the sale of a good constitutes infringement if it is likely to cause consumer confusion as to the source of those goods or as to the sponsorship or approval of such goods. In deciding whether consumers are likely to be confused, the courts will typically look to a number of factors, including: (1) the strength of the mark; (2) the proximity of the goods; (3) the similarity of the marks; (4) evidence of actual confusion; (5) the similarity of marketing channels used; (6) the degree of caution exercised by the typical purchaser; (7) the defendant's intent.

I would say that in this case, the OP's argument fails in just about all of those factors listed above. The true trademark holder has exclusive rights to market their product as they see fit.
The tests were taken before the war, though (if I read correctly).
I believe that consciousness is the ability for a computing system to continually maintain and update several simultaneous contexts. These contexts may run highly detailed simulations (including the core "where I am") or more abstract thinking (including the current conversational or semantic context). For a human being, the "primary simulation" results in a powerful feeling of self, perhaps because the here and now that you are feeling is also the here and now that you are simulating.

While sustaining these contexts, the system is able to explore related information and can choose to break focus on a certain context, or to open a new context. Usually, a discarded context can be quickly restored, such as in the case of restoring an interrupted thought. Perhaps, then, contexts are continually run, stored, and restored. I don't know. What I do know is that the primary world simulation (with its continual sensory update) is rarely broken without the system electing to do so.

That would be "losing consciousness" :)

Whether received through sensory input or through memory in the form of stored simulations or related concepts, the constant exploration of related information influences the context that spawned it (and often the other contexts as well). This allows the computing system to update its assumptions as represented in simulation or conceptual frame, and then begin anticipating and exploring possible future contexts.

- JHP
to increase productivity, you may need to 'do without'

do without mouse and hard-to-reach keys (F1-12, arrows, numpads)

i found ide is about using mouse and using those keys (like F5? to run) etc ... but i didn't use much ide shrug

in vim, you can take those keys plus backspace, alt and even esc (i map it to ^C because ^] hurts, not because of emacs) ... also xmodmap caps to ctrl

emacs still requires at least a meta key so that adds complexity. vim cheats by using modes :D

with fewer keys, the intensity = (strokes / #key) is high and that may lead to higher productivity

oh and of course, touch typing really helps especially the often untrained part like numbers and symbols.

i used 'typing tutor for mac' and trained streams of letters, numbers and symbols ... like 'aJ8@9)x|W,~2'
a) Some students have no idea what they are getting into when they register for a class. (This explains some of the clueless students who can't do any of the assignments.)

b) Some students who register for a first course in their probable major subject register conservatively, especially if they can't prove completion of equivalent courses. (This explains some of the students who easily do more than what is assigned.)

c) Some students have some good preparation (e.g., math) but not all the best possible preparation (e.g., previous programming experience). (This explains some of the students who seem to find the course just right for them.)

Further along in a computer science major sequence, students who neither get it nor like it will move on to some other major. Then the ability spread in any one class may diminish somewhat.
I am not so used to statistics anymore (in fact probably never was). I just wonder if there isn't a difference between comparing the IQ of two people (5 points difference maybe not significant) and comparing the average IQs of two "large" groups of people - since the average was 95, it means that there were also some with an IQ of 80 and some with an IQ of 120 or whatever. Meaning a difference of 5 point in the averages might be more significant than a difference of 5 points between two people?

As I said, I am not used to these calculations anymore, and it is too late at night now to do the research... Maybe tomorrow... Or maybe you can answer that question (guessing that years of playing poker make you quite experienced in such things...).
> You aren't really conscious, you just think you are. :-)

Sounds like a line from a movie by the Wachowski brothers.
There doesn't seem to be such a big chasm between humans and the most evolved mammals. It's more a difference of degree.

We have language. So do the dolphins, albeit less complex.
We are self-aware. So are chimps, dolphins, etc. Perhaps their self-awareness is not as sharply defined and perceived like ours, but it's there.

etc. etc.
amazingly best redirect page for leechblock: http://nowdothis.com
If anything, the sales distribution he shows is significantly flatter than a normal Zipf ("long-tail" or "scale-free" or "80/20") distribution, as you would expect in a free market; app #1 should sell 50× as much as app #50, not merely 10–20× as much, and 100× as much as app #100, not merely 30–50×. It's great that unknown developers can get free marketing by making it to the App Store's top 50 list. Maybe that's why the distribution is flatter than you'd expect?
it's broken: http://publishers.wozad.com/signup_confirm.php, the link that the confirmation email points me to, doesn't exist.
Seriously. I use an Aeron in the office, but at home I use a ~$100 staples chair. I don't really care which I'm sitting in much.

A folding chair though..that's just plain crazy.
I just finished helping to teach an introductory programming class as well (HTML and JavaScript -- one step below the Java class). I also observed a surprising range in the ability of the students to grasp programming. Hardest class ever all the way to easiest class ever.

Another funny thing I noticed is that many students had the idea that they could get credit for non-functional code. They would treat it like a math class and hope that we would pop open the hood and look to see that they had the right general idea.

I guess I can't blame them too much though. I've been a programmer for so long that I've acquired the unforgiving attitude of the machine. I certainly wish my computer would do what I mean and not what I say.
Well adsense and wozad both do not work without Javascript...
Keep in mind though, a large part of modern science is a monism - it tries to explain everything starting from a single principle.

I'm not saying that's right or wrong, I'm just pointing it out. A monism works beautifully, as long as its basic assumptions are true. Unfortunately, the converse is true - a monism cannot detect whether its axioms are true or not. The more it keeps digging, the more it appears to confirm itself.

It is quite possible that the fundamental assumptions of materialist science are true. It's just that, if they are not, chances are the system will never detect its own incompletitude.
I want to thank every one here on HN who is smarter than me. I am on the low end of the spectrum here on HN, i have only the basic programming knowledge and i have just a little more than a year of experience, and being surrounded by all the smart people on HN i have learned a lot and i am thankful to all that are smarter than me! I also want to thank some of the people that have downmoded my comments, some of them were stupid and i deserved it. Some of you were just assholes and downmoded me because i didn't conform to your view to the world, but you were the exception, most of the people that downmoded me were right!

Happy holidays to HN from me to!
Long live the DSL.
Reincarnation is of secondary importance to buddhism, and indeed it gives the impression of a "bolted on" feature that was added later on to, presumably, satisfy the masses.

The most strict interpretations of the buddhist doctrine actually posit the unreality of reincarnation.

(n.b.: I am not a buddhist)
Questions for Obama’s Science Team
This reminds me of a class in C I took last spring. Some people fell so hopelessly behind that they probably "borrowed" a good bit of code from other people for projects. On the other hand, some people turned in an almost commercial-quality video game for their final project. I got an A, but fell somewhere between those two extremes.
Quantcast says they have 8.2M monthly active users in the US. That's really impressive...

http://www.quantcast.com/pandora.com
I remember some non-CS majors in an assembly language course. About 5 or 6 people walked out 30 minutes into the first class--a behavior too seldom seen.
http://www.symfony-project.org/
Why Do Undersea Cables Seem To Get Severed In Bunches?
I snuck into the roster for an intro to Object Oriented Class when I started grad school, which was taught in Java.

I took physics with the engineers in college and this was about as hard conceptually for me.

But it was one of those things where it was hard until I stepped away for a while and then came back to it. Then it wasn't so hard anymore. Just too much info to take in at once I found.

Loops were the hard part. Oh man. Loops. that took forever to "get."
The data includes 1988-2006. Many-Eyes is just trying to hide the data (click "view as text")...
"Rather, it means to realize that one has indeed done the one or other thing that was interesting, even if at the time it was just a job."

This is exactly my experience, too. It's hard to "play up" what I've done, because once I've done it, it seems like anyone could pick it up right away; things I've done are obvious to me, so it's hard to figure out what to say about them. Actually, the same thing applies to commenting and documentation: once you know enough to write comments, it can be hard to figure out what to write to speed understanding when you or someone else next looks at it.
The Anti-Greenspan
Interesting note about placement of email address field adjacent to password field in light of contact importing becoming a defacto step in signup processes.