skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Obama's limo contains, among other things, bottles of his blood
Facebook style notifications with COUCHDB (python)
It's even easier to get started with JavaScript.
Not in the really long term -- what about when the sun dies? Think humanity will make it that long?
i started with LOGO
The approach I'd use would be to find a problem he wants to solve, and teach him to solve it in a few languages.

One of the big "duh" moments when learning CS is when you realize that all languages consist of similar structures to let you get things done.

Not sure what his interests are, but I'd probably choose from:

Ruby or Python

Haskell or Lisp

Javascript

Maybe c or c++ too to remove the intimidation factor, even if it's just for Hello World.

After he can write simple 50-ish line programs in those three languages and knows a bit about how they work, zoom in on one of them and take things a bit deeper, and then a few weeks later zoom back out and see if he can "self-teach" himself those same concepts in the other languages.

This assumes he doesn't want to just jump in a build something for the web, in which case you have to decide how much HTML/dom/standards stuff to teach him (which is largely boring to newcomers) at the expense of doing some cooler programs.

Alternately, you might just want to use pygame and build a fun, playable game with him and not worry about too much theory until after he's having a lot of fun with it.
<i>Also, it's not startup funding is a better use money than college. A down payment on mortgage, money for travel, or even just an outright grant of cash is a better way of giving your kid a head start in life than sending them to an expensive college.</i>

I strongly disagree. For kids who are self-motivated, but not motivated to go to college, it could be better to give them money for mortgage, travel, etc. For plenty of others, the cash will just postpone the inevitable need to get their shit together and take responsibility for their life. It would be better to send them out on their own and save the money until their is evidence they'd make good use of it. For others, a little encouragement/push to go to college might be just the right combination of structure and self-responsibility that they need.
The point is, it wouldn't take months to launch.
I'm in as well.
Malware spread via Google Code
People do not move to, and telecommute from, Hawaii because they must do it to survive. It also is not cheap for them to do so. 1.3 million people currently live in Hawaii, though it would be cheaper for them to live on the mainland.

If Hawaii can attract telecommuters, perhaps Earth orbit can attract telecommuters.
Immigrants (and other groups which have reservations about the dominant culture in public schools) use private schooling for similar purposes in many countries. I think this is one more reason why having university admissions settled by objective, transparent examinations is such a good idea.

There are a number of Japanese public schools in my region. There is also at least one school for Koreans descended from South Korea, one for Koreans descended from North Korea, one for Brazilians, one private school which is primarily used by parents who think the public school curriculum has gone soft ("They NEVER would have let students out on Saturday back when I was a kid! How do you expect them to learn like this?!"), and two or three religiously affiliated private schools.

There are a number of academic and cultural reasons to choose the private schools over the public schools. As you may have heard, Japan has historically had issues with acceptance of people from non-dominant cultures. If you go to the Catholic school, you don't have to actively hide the fact that your first name is Tomas (as in, Saint) rather than Taro, which at least one lad who goes to my church is forced to do to avoid teasing at a public school.

So how to judge the private school Tomases versus the public school Taros once they both apply to the same university? Well, you could compare their GPA at vastly different institutions, after having your admissions officers use their personal judgment in deciding "OK, that Catholic Theology course is clearly not academic in nature, so we'll discount his grades from that" or "A Korean high school can not possibly be as academically rigorous as the best public school in this prefecture, minus three points". And then you end up replicating the biases in your admissions office.

Or you could be transparent about your admissions process -- not over the course of a day, over the course of a generation:

1) Our school tests for these subjects and expects this level of mastery of the material.

2) Here are ten years of tests to show you what kind of questions we ask.

3) Here are the kinds of scores which have resulted in admissions to the university to particular departments for the last ten years.

4) The only requirement we have for you to take the test is that you have a high school diploma issued by an accredited school. Your GPA, your courses taken, your school's pedagogical choices, and whether you start every class with a prayer to the Flying Sphagetti Monster do not matter to us. We admit the students with the highest scores on the tests. Period.
I don't think he was naive. Philosophers think quite a bit about what it means to create for yourself a bubble of X in a larger sphere of anti-X: living a meaningful life when life is finite and all memory of you will be eventually erased, for example. Just because death allowed for the natural selection that evolved humanity doesn't mean that you can't be against it. Just because corporations created the opportunity for him to thrive, doesn't mean he can't speak out against them.

For another example, just because the GPL is a work of copyright law doesn't mean its goal is not to abolish copyright law. The professor knows that the more students he influences toward anti-consumerism, the closer he'll get to living in a socialist world where he can sit around and read philosophy all day. Or maybe he won't need to; philosophers are really only needed to answer existential questions and problems--if they managed somehow to perfect the world, their job would be "done", similar to a doctor in a world where no one falls ill.

Note that this has nothing to do with my own opinions. I like advertisements, strangely enough; I find they make television and radio feel "connected" to reality, in a temporal sense, in a way that just downloading old TV series and podcasts don't. It's the difference between an airlock and an open window; I feel "stuffy"--out of sync with the world--when I don't hear anyone telling me what brand of laundry detergent I should be robotically consuming.
For your brother, I would teach him C before Lisp.

C is mandatory, every programmer knows C, it teaches you about memory management, syscalls… it teaches you how you computer works. Once he gets it, he can start having some fun with the sexiness of Lisp, and he will make less mistake because he knows what's happening behind the scenes. Plus… it's really hard to learn C when you already know Lisp exists. I mean… first you ride a bike, and then a motorcycle.

For my brother, I don't think Haskell is such a good idea. Sure, it's a great language, but maybe too mathematical for his age (he just learned the Thales theorem…).
Agree...Also, from that link:
‘built the roads that got him to work each day’
and they built those roads without your consent like the stimulus package now, you will get it from your tax money regardless if you want it or not. How many cameras did those roads include so your government can watch you? How many $2,000 hammers? How many pay-offs to the political class were made for it to happen, behind closed doors? The argument you ‘owe society’ is false, what you owe is freedom within that society that let it happen and that is all. The greater the personal liberties are held foremost in society the greater the benefits that can be developed for your fellow man. How much good for society happened under Mao, Hitler and Stalin? The infrastructure that the Weimar Republic built centered on promising its citizens too much. This led to huge budget deficits that created inflation on a level the world had never seen before. I’d rather take my chances without everything the link says government gave me:-)
no brainer really, Google is really struggling in Russia, and everyone uses Yandex. It all comes down to usability. In USA everyone uses Google, so having it embedded in Firefox adds to the experience. Now imagine if instead of Google you had Lycos as the default setting.
The key question here is: why don't they release the code under open source, or public domain, and let the internet take care of itself?

The only threat from this situation would be the botnet evolving in unforeseen ways, thus rendering the code useless. However, the vulnerability described in the article seems not a coded, but rather a conceptual one: even if storm starts to use a new protocol, they -or somebody else using the insights in the source- could repeat the disassembly process, and re-run the cleaning method.
Is there anything to do in Hawaii?
Well, there's nothing that can take us out now, and I don't see us allowing anything to evolve that can destroy us. So the two options are:

1. We do ourselves in

2. We get hit by a giant asteroid
I really hate the syntax, and I may be lazy but I'm sick of memory leaks and stuff. I don't want to spend my time tweaking my program so that it won't take to much resources, etc…

I prefer languages that offers a certain abstraction, languages that allow me to concentrate on the algorithmic part of the program, the core of the application.
We can take the space elevator to work!
It's tradition.

Didn't we all start with basic, even if just for a little bit?
I want to be in... but I've 5 other courses to deal with...
I think the ability to "show" something is important for probably 90% of people - that doesn't mean they won't become deeply interested in programming in general, its just that they view it as a means to an end, and I think people underestimate how hard it is for beginners to make something that "works" in a cross platform way, enough to inspire them to keep going anyway.

In some ways I almost think javascript in a browser is enough, you have firebug and its shell, and you can immediately show hacking around etc..

Of course, there are some who the mathematical pleasure is really what they are after, in which case I would think haskell - and it has the bonus of a very simple syntax that really doesn't look like a "programming language" - at least what most people think.
I know many people in Russia use Yandex quite a lot. I actually prefer Yandex to Google when I search for something in Russian. When I needs something in English I uses Google or Yahoo though. By the way Yandex has a lightweight home page which I actually like more than Google's: http://ya.ru.

There are only for links on this page:
Upper left: make yandex a start page. Upper right: log into mail.
Lower left: yandex.ru - heavy page with news and links to other services. Lower right: page designer company.

Their web email client is very lightweight and fast. It works faster than GMail on my 5 years old laptop which is nice. Other services are Ok, too.

Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia with more than 50% market share. It comes as a default search engine in Opera Mini and as a Speed Dial engine in Opera Desktop (which has about 20% market share in Russia).

And they also provide an 'optimized' version of Firefox 3 from their own site (toolbar, home page, and default search engine). When Firefox 3 was released this optimized version was heavily advertised on Russian internet and I know quite a few people who use that.

And no, I'm not a Yandex employee. I don't even live in Russia now. I just thought it might be a good idea to tell about because there not that many people who can read Russian
Giving billions from one government agency to another doesn't sound like it would create real innovation to me.
Short summary: Judges can throw you in jail. Don't make them mad.
what about when the sun dies?

Geeks seem to have this funny blindspot when it comes to premature optimization if the premature optimization is something that would make for a good sci-fi novel.
See something like this makes sense for LinkedIn, who unless I am mistaken is already doing it well and making money off it. If you take a look at the Facebook Marketplace, you will find it is pretty diluted with spam and other junk listings (Last time I checked this was 6 months ago so I may be wrong now.)

If you look at who's using Facebook, most of them are using it to play games and spread PIRATE BOOTY not search for jobs. Although there is a small subset of users who would use it, I don't think it would be enough to monetize.
Is innovation needed, in order to colonize Earth orbit?

http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm
Much commerce depends on offering different deals to different sets of customers, to extract the highest price from each individual instead of relying on the "market price".

Airline tickets are a good example.

In such markets, there may be an advantage to consumers banding together to aggregate pricing information. If all users of priceline style "reverse auction" or whatever they call it shared bid info, it would turn it into a "treasurys style" auction where everyone got the best price that gave the seller the required volume of sales.

Another way to break the attempted segmentation of a market is to make the product fungible, so that a secondary market develops if there is any inefficiencies in the first market. It used to be common to re-sell unused airline tickets via newspaper classified ads, and airlines got rid of that after Flight 800 blew up (because of electrical failure) on anti-terrorism grounds. You can get back the exchangability of airline tickets through some tricks, and sell and buy airline miles on sites like points.com and flyhub.com, but that must account for a miniscule part of the market.

Back to deleting your cookies to compare amazon and hotel offerings -- wouldn't a firefox plugin that showed you what prices other people were seeing for rooms or books or whatever, when you browsed to that page, be pretty useful ? Maybe it could be monetized by commission or referral fees of some sort ?
Does anyone else feel that the play/pause button is backwards? For me, the button displays the "Play" arrow when the music is playing and it shows the pause button when it is paused. I know that sounds like how it should be, but I think that's the reverse of most other players that show the Play button when music is not playing, and, after clicking, the music begins and the button switches to give you the option to pause.

Also, I noticed that the album art was constantly flickering for me.

(I'm using FF 3.0.5 on OS X 10.5.6)
You can vacation there for cheap...which is a resource + there were indigenous people there from the start.

Space tourism could be an answer...but it needs to be a good bang for your buck. Right now you spend millions just to go up for a little time.
I actually had the idea to make a site like this last night. bookbuddies.com or something like that. You could start an online book group with a few people and have your own forum, but also see the forums of other people who are reading the same book.

I'm pretty sure http://www.librarything.com fulfills this need though.
It is 22,300 miles to GEO. At 100 mph, a trip to or from GEO would take 223 hours, or 9 days.
I guess we should go a bit faster then.
When a friend first told me about Ferriss and his book, I was quite skeptical. I got the book from the library (or my friend lent it to me), and ended up buying it.

Sure, some stuff is questionable, but there were enough interesting, practical ideas to make it worthwhile.

Ferriss is trying to make some points and sell a product, and he seems to be good at it, and his points are worth some consideration even if you don't always care for how he presents them.

Hate him? Steal the better ideas and ignore what you don't like.
Don't waste words and letters...it's called Minitrue
Depends how small the subset is. They have ~150 million users and should break 200 million this year. Several services serving small subsets could be enough to make a profit.
To change the subject, the real problem with the abundance of wealth is the abundance of debt that accompanies it.
For faster travel, rockets tend to be chosen. What, then, would be the point of a space elevator?

By the way, the top recorded speed of a Bugatti Veyron, the fastest production car in the world, is 253 mph - on the flat. Travelling vertically at that speed, a space elevator car (we might assume it is powered by a 1%-efficient laser-beam stationed on the ground and aimed at photovoltaic panels on the bottom of the elevator car) would take 88 hours (or 3.7 days) to get to GEO.
It hasn't been built yet, so it is only expected to achieve 350 kph.
To increase the number of hours a day, make a watch with hours that last less than 60 minutes. This way you will work more hours in a day.

To make time flow slower, make a watch where hours last more than 60 minutes. That way you will accomplish more in each hour.

I prefer the second solution. Productivity is more important than hours worked.
Your both probably right but priorities come from Public Sentiment more than anything else. So it's as much the fault of people not talking about it (which I'm guilty of) as it is the fault of anything else.
“We can put light where there’s darkness, and hope where there’s despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/21admin.html?hp

But it's more complicated than that. The government subsidized housing speculation through tax cuts, subsidized mortgage security speculation through Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac's implicit guarantee, created artificial liquidity through the Fed that allowed the stock/commodity/housing bubble that just popped.

“Tonight, I propose a new tax cut for homeownership that says to every middle-income working family in this country, if you sell your home, you will not have to pay a capital gains tax on it ever — not ever.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/business/19tax.html

The one regulation that they removed (and shouldn't have) dealt with leveraging requirements.
Bob ends '100 day protest' after a month, trashes his room, lies on floor crying
At McDonald’s, the Happiest Meal Is Hot Profits
Yeah... you aren't supposed to learn how to play music by yourself.
IIRC, before Land Reform Zimbabwe was the only African country with a net surplus of food. Zim used to be called the bread basket of Africa.

Putting aside the ideology of Land Reform (that's a whole other minefield of a topic), the execution and economic policies have been woeful.

Another post quoted one issue which was that large tracts of land were broken up, which broke economies of scale. However, it was flawed in a lot of other ways.

The original owners of the land were highly captialised. The people receiving the land often had no experience in cultivation, and even if they did, they had zero capital. They couldn't buy seed, machinery, expertise. The money and expertise required to turn this around pretty much fled the country.

So large farms that produced vast quantities got broken up into small farms that produce almost nothing.

At one stage Zim was in talks with China to have Chinese workers come over and work the land. I don't think that ever came to be, but China is a big player in Zimbabwe still - a lot of tourism, aid, weapons and immigration (several million?) comes from China.
Btrfs and Squashfs merged into Linux kernel
Peter Norvig's collection of quotes
The problem I have with this is that it's short sighted. It's the same sentiment that kept Europeans trapped on their little continent for centuries before the Americas were discovered. Humanity needs to realize exploration will always be an imperative.

As for the financial aspect I’d point out that every time humanity has ventured out and explored the world around it the profits have been huge. Whether it's the technology from the space program or spices from the Americas exploration has always turned a profit.

In this case being able to create a self sustaining enviornment in orbit is the first step to creating a self sustaining enviornment that can move beyond our orbit. That in turn is the first step in humanity's continued exploration of the universe we live in and the value of that is immeasurable.
This means that Google search is not as invincible abroad as it is the the US. I bet others will take a cue from Yandex and start search engines in other countries where Google (or Yahoo) is vulnerable (there are many from what I understand).

Why do so many Russians prefer Yandex over Google?
Somebody downvoted this entire thread; no clue why. I've never tried Hackety Hack, but it looks like a really interesting tutorial set. Thanks for the tip!
The article isn't about internet commentators in general. It's about internet commentators in China.
Ubuntu and Its Leader Set Sights on the Mainstream
I agree! The poignant guide is perfect for having fun in the reading about it part.

And Ruby has a number of other benefits:

* Easy web frameworks if he wants to get into that (Rails, Merb, Sinatra, Camping, etc)

* Definitely fulfills the "beautiful syntax" part

* shoes for really easy GUI apps (that are portable, so he can show it off to his lame windows-using friends)

* Built-in powerful regexps for that pattern matching you expressed love for

* It's generally something that you'll run from command line, helping with the learning about Linux part

* Lots of cool libraries out there

* Object-Oriented, which at least for me was a very easy thing for me to grasp (especially compared to functional, which I'm currently trying to learn)

* Awesome
I agree that comparing GPAs across different schools is weak.

But I think standardized tests in general are only useful up to a point. Beyond measuring aptitude in subjects like math and science, schools should also take subjective criteria into account. Life is far too complex for any test-score to really measure potential for achievement.

Other things to look at might be:

- overcoming personal obstacles with courage and determination

- creative occupations or pursuits; sports; drama; art

- entrepreneurial projects, whether for- or non-profit

These factors are so diverse that it will never be possible to standardize the way that they are ranked. Yet they are absolutely crucial to really understanding where a person is at.

The "cost" of this is that students "won't know how to prepare". Well, perhaps youth will need to be creative and actually think about how they might set themselves apart from their peers.
I'm SO in :D:D
Gold is somewhat impractical. Having access to a lot of foreign currencies (on the black market, if necessary) is a substitute.
> Think humanity will make it that long?

Whatever is around in six billion years is going to be as different from us as we are from bacteria.
From what I've heard the land distribution was even worse than that -- farms were more often than not given to party hacks rather than poor farmers.

The problem seems to largely have been that the land reform wasn't actually an act for social justice so much as a populist political move. Egypt's attempt at land reform seemed much better planned:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_land_reform#Law_Number...
Go with Python. I taught my 7-year old nephew Python in an hour, but failed to teach him javascript. There's just too much to type and explain.

Also, it's easier to explain to someone if you have an interpreter going and they can see the results.
50% of survey respondents plan on increasing iPhone integration