skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Good catch to find this article. My dad's old set of the first printing of the Great Books came into my house recently after he died.

"From the start, The Great Books of the Western World project was a paradoxical undertaking. Hutchins and his evangelising colleague Mortimer Adler were elitists on a democratic mission, popularisers who made few concessions to popular taste. The texts came unadorned with any historical or biographical materials to situate the reader, but such orientation was besides the point: Hutchins wanted the reader to confront the texts of Aristotle, Dante and Aeschylus naked, as it were, without any guidance or forethought."

My biggest problem with the Great Books of the Western World has always been that they are the books of the WESTERN world only. I am a westerner myself, and I can't think of a lot of titles in that series that are wholly unimportant, but there is a lot of Chinese literature available in good English translations with at least as much worldwide influence and historical importance.
I too am on an H1-B, and as far as I know, what you say is true. Once your I-485 has been approved for a period of 6 months or longer, you can move companies, though from what I hear, it raises a few questions when it comes for the INS to finally approve your petition.
"I think that's why colleges are abandoning the SAT test as criteria. Some top-notch colleges don't ask for test scores at all"

What is the evidence that colleges are abandoning the SAT test? What top-notch colleges do you specifically have in mind that don't ask for test scores at all?

Some comments on trends in college preferences for test scores can be found in

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/harvard-university/57965...

of which the immediately relevant part is a statement by a Harvard admission officer at a public meeting, "There are a lot of students with A's, and test scores help us distinguish among them. Standardized tests are comparison tools. The better predictors are SAT II Subject Tests and AP tests. They are more important than the SAT I or the ACT. You may have read that colleges are expressing doubt about standardized tests, but I'll give you a clue: We won't be cutting back on tests. We might require five SAT II tests. Those are less coachable than the SAT I."

The largest number of colleges that are publicized as SAT-optional might in fact better be characterized as admission-requirement-optional, as they admit most applicants who apply at all, and in many cases have explicit open-admission policies.

"a very bright girl who also took a dozen SAT practice tests, got a 1600 on the main section. I had no practice tests and got a 1510. In the end, the numbers are so close as not to matter."

This is a good point. Students who obsess about a perfect SAT score simply don't understand the theory of estimating mental abilities. Any one instance of taking the test is a sample of learned behavior, and no such sample is exhaustive.

Because almost all students make mistakes on the SAT, and because all colleges desire to fill their entering classes each year, all colleges everywhere gladly admit students who made mistakes on the SAT.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/41382...

And yet, a perfect SAT score does not guarantee admission at any college.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/377882-how...

So really students worry far too much about the SAT when they could be doing something important like reading a challenging book about a subject they like or pursuing a personal project that satisfies their curiosity.
I am more interested in not dating one but more interested how to get dates if you are entrepreneur.
Oh, I meant that the whole thing was not too long ago, WW2 and everything, in the scale of human progress. (I know all about Bletchley -- crypto is part of my day job :-)
Congrats, zhyder!

A few quibbles from someone who likes free things :~):

SVG download & more document formats: make these available for the free accounts. All the other bullet points are things a cheapskate like me isn't concerned about not being available in the free version.
It seems that the behaviour fuelling those "Ponzi bubles" is <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200812/financial-bubble... in our basic psychology</a>.
This can be another facet of the "uncanny valley" of web applications [1].

When you are in the "web" mode, you operate asynchronously - click, do something unrelated, return to see the result.

When you are in the "desktop" mode, you expect instant reactions. If it's just a tiny bit slower, you feel something is broken [2].

Now as you make your site more ajaxy and faster, user expectations change, instead of perceiving fast website, they perceive slow desktop application.

[1] http://billhiggins.us/weblog/2007/05/17/the-uncanny-valley-o...

[2] http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html
Maybe we should add this to the growing list of blog posts on http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/ that show where Paul Krugman has been dead wrong in his area of expertise.
It's difficult to be correct if your area of expertise is predicting the future.
i imagine because google says you can't.

http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/commontasks.html

"Due to recent changes, App Engine no longer supports mapping your app to a naked domain. If your domain registrar supports URL redirects, you can redirect from http://yourdomain.com to e.g http://www.yourdomain.com or http://appid.yourdomain.com."
http://www.google.ca/search?q=site%3Aangry-economist.russnel...

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones :)
If Google News and mainstream media cover it, as well as all sites that bash Microsoft, is it really hacker news-worthy that a Microsoft product fails at something?
hire hot people and you get to meet their hot friends.
"It's difficult to be correct if your area of expertise is predicting the future."

A very good point. I like the definition of "expertise" championed by K. Anders Ericsson, a researcher on expertise and how it develops. He defines expertise as RELIABLY superior performance to a degree that makes the performer a statistical outlier. In one of his studies, he discovered that there is no such thing as expertise in choosing common stocks in which to invest.
61-Second Minute Takes World into 2009
Just as a data point, I interpreted the article in the same way as petercooper - go to France, not learn French
.
This is what I've been doing. I've been taking one computer science course per semester, and picking a language to learn to do the problems in. Well, actually, more like 4 semesters and 3 languages (Common Lisp for 2 semesters, Python and Clojure 1 each). This is in addition to doing Java as my day job, and trying to learn it better, too.

This has occasionally led to more excitement than I wanted, like trying to push Python to do a processing intensive task and then switching to Java at the last minute so it would finish by the deadline. But for the most part it has worked well and by picking more productive languages to learn has even made some tasks easier than they would have been with my day job language.

However, my goal for the new year is to start a blog and write more. One of the first topics I want to write about is the programming languages I've used and what I've learned from them.
Ask HN: What will you learn this year? 
Every year, I pick a topic I want to learn more about. Not just by professional imperatives but mostly by sheer curiosity.
At one point, it was C++, Japanese, Monte-Carlo, Business, Politics, Economics, etc... This year, it's investing and finance in general and the financial crisis in particular (for obvious reasons).

With the new year still wet behind the ears, what have you decided to learn about?
Ya that's what you want to see, you're boss hanging off your friends.
"If you do that, Zed Shaw will find you and skullfuck you to death. I'm not kidding. He and I have made a deal with Satan, and this was one of the perks he requested."

Looks like Giles missed the memo that the ZSFA persona has been put to rest. Guess Giles will have to take on this role solo, now.
These sorts of of articles are never a good sign since in any ponzi^H^H^H^H^H investing scheme, delusion^H^H^H^H^H^H confidence is important. These kind of articles reinforce the reality they are describing, at least, they have the potential to do so.
Interesting question. I am not a biologist, but I believe I read that cells have a sort of "internal clock", modulated by certain enzymes. Normally cells reproduce in a certain way, but these enzymes deplete over time, such that at a certain point the cellular structures don't reproduce in the same manner as before. Hence, "aging". So, sure I am all for finding treatments for Alzheimer's and so on, but aging itself, as outlined above, is just really an evolutionary necessity. Stephen King treats this sensitive topic well in his novel, 'Pet Sematary', dealing with both the human resistance to, and the biological necessity of, death, including the aging process leading into that. Personally I find great comfort in the idea that even if however many millions of years from now, all or most mammals, including humans, will be extinct, some of our genes won't be, just as for example birds have some of the genes the dinosaurs had. The individual may be here for only a short time, but the genes she carries are far more transcendent.
URGH! I just lost :(
First Mac-Only "Social Learning Network" Launches
That $50 billion is likely to turn out to be not the amount lost but the amount people wrongly thought they had.

'Zackly.
Sorry Jeff, I understand the problem, but the language of the setup was wrong. Since a PERSON told you they have one girl, the GB and BG are equivalent and collapse to one case instead of two in the way that normal people talk.

If you had said that a mathematician or a statistician said they have one girl, that would be a different story.
Wouldn't it be a better idea to court european VC's than american because they might pay you in euros?
I bought my unit on boxing day 2007, so just over a year now I've had my 360 and no RRoD problems so far knock on wood

Out of all my 100+ friends on xbox live, I can only recall 2 having the problem (or at least telling people they had the problem). They had older units (early 2007 ish) and MS fixed it within a couple weeks - for another friend who had 2 faulty units they just gave him a new elite and apologized for his problems.
I thought I read someplace that sun spots had to do with the 1600's mini-ice age? Tying the fall of for example the Mayan civilization with the triggering of an ice age due to decrease in agricultural activity and associated re-forestation seems like a stretch.
Serial blasts in Guwahati, 5 Killed 30 injured | Computer World
Random was not meant derogatorily.
I don't know that his job is to predict the future. He's an economist, not a fortune teller.

Of course, science can help us to "predict the future", in the sense that we know the sun will rise tomorrow and so on. But economics is not a natural or experimental science. Surely it can help you make reasonable predictions, but the nature of methodologically correct economic predictions -- meaning not necessarily predictions that turn out to be right, but ones you can reasonably make -- is much different from those of physics.

Therefore, Krugman and other economics and financial pundits should rather refrain from making unsupported predictions. I think they get away with it because most people don't understand economics and also due to selection bias, as most of us pay attention only to the ones that turn out to be right.
Uhh, no. Ever heard of Anita Hill?
Keeping costs as low as possible long term.
SVG download is important as a Pro feature coz it enables data portability, which I expect businesses to care a lot about. The document-format limitation you can work-around by printing to PDF first.

But hey, you've been a supporter from the start. I'll send you a promo code for a free account (once I can do that).
Believe it or not - Using a solar oven in reverse lets you cool things.
I want to learn more about marketing and SEO. I have the basics, but I want to take it a step further.
Getting attention (and cash) from VCs and angel investors
I wonder if at least part of this phenomena cannot be explained by observer bias.

People complaining about their students are usually the ones with superior performance compared to the average student. Usually, top students become graduate students, top graduate students become professors. They are also more likely to have friends like them.

Couldn't it be that complainers were simply not aware of the extent of how bad students really were in their "good old times"?
Ask HN: Tips for a student going to Europe?
A few friends and I (three of us total) were planning on going to go to Europe over the summer this year. We want to go to Sweden, England, France, and The Netherlands.

We're all in college and pretty much broke.

We want to spend a week in each country (probably Stockholm, London, Paris, and Amsterdam respectively), but we're not sure how we'll be able to afford the trip.

We don't exactly want to backpack across Europe and stay in hostels, so any suggestions for other stuff would be nice.

Also, stuff to do that's not touristy in those countries would be nice as well.

Thanks for the input and Happy New Year!
not exactly, people want to think there is some huge conspiracy run by evil geniuses...the reality is actually much more horrifying. The people running the show aren't evil geniuses....they are just as stupid as the rest of us.

Most of the decisions made by these financial geniuses, can pretty much be summarized by a series of if then statements, that they learned through out their lives
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"the reality is actually much more horrifying. The people running the show aren't evil geniuses....they are just as stupid as the rest of us."

Yep, that is more horrifying to a lot of people who want experts to do their thinking for them.
Lots of mathematics, abstract algebra, computability, topology, linear algebra. Also, I want to understand more about theoretical computer science.
This kind of problem comes up all the time in a poker tournament. Each person has a different number of chips in front of them, and when they reach the final table, since so much money is at stake, they want to make a deal. How do you determine a fair deal when each person has a different number of chips and prizes are radically different for first, second, and third place. Fun problem. Answer: The independent chip model

Gambling to the rescue
What kills me about this sort of thing is how easily a system of (let's give them the benefit of the doubt) individually intelligent actors develops catastrophic emergent behaviors. Even if each person involved makes savvy decisions, if the resultant whole is unstable then everyone is still screwed.
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That's not the whole picture, tho'. Lots of jobs have been created in Ireland and Holland, which have been the recipients of vast amounts of EU subsidies (the UK and Germany are the only net contributors to the EU budget). That's nothing to do with the Euro; that subsidy could have been paid in any hard currency and gotten the same result. Unemployment in France for example remains stubbornly high. Germany isn't doing so well out of the Euro either, once the mighty Bundesbank tuned its economy with Teutonic efficiency, but no more.
The end of an era: Steve Jobs's greatest Macworld video hits, 1998-2008
Just updated the webpage ( http://www.dabbleboard.com/pro ). Looks better than before, but will refine it further. If you still get to read this, do let me know what you think of it now. Thanks!
Interesting theory, I'd never thought of every possibility, especially in this context, where we are talking about a person, I was thinking about human psychology or behavior when I first read that article.
Update: I've clarified this (together with redesigning the page). Let me know if it's clear now.
Update: just redesigned the page as you suggested. Also changed the flow so that it goes to "Sign Up" rather than "Log in" after you pick a plan.
You can get a Europe wide rail card for a remarkably low cost - and rail travel in Europe is (largely) fast and comfortable. There are also low cost airline options (check out Ryan Air and FlyBe on-line) although sometimes they use airports a little outside major cities.

Hotel prices in Amsterdam are not too bad, Paris more expensive and London and Stockholm might well boggle your mind - still good quality, centrally located, comfortable hostels do exist and are well worth checking out.
If stories are true, Microsoft has some the most code-reviewed software in the world. The levels of bureaucracy they have got to go through are tremendous.

First-generation Zune software was so bad that it made iTunes look good. On the other hand, there was a seismic rift between first-gen Zune software and second-gen. The new Zune client software has got one of the nicest, prettiest UIs on my system.

I think that in order to generate the second-gen Zune software, a lot of the bureaucracy must have been chucked. Apparently too much. It's really too bad. I suppose that we have will have to make hard choices between stability, features, and beauty forever.
I'm not sure what you mean be equivalent, but the relevant point is that a family is twice as likely to have one boy and one girl than have two girls.
Make it a blog post of some sort? I'd read it.
We don't exactly want to backpack across Europe and stay in hostels

Why on earth not? That's half the fun! I was relatively shy and antisocial on my European tour and I still have two or three hostel stories to tell.

And if you want to find a critical mass of people who know how to tour Europe on the cheap, why are you avoiding hostels? Were you planning to look for fellow bums in the lobbies of three-star hotels?

Having said that: There are relatively cheap pension rooms / B&B rooms / zimmer around, and you can leverage the economy of scale of having three people that are willing to share a room. There are also persistent rumors that many European countries have awesome campgrounds. Though you might have to haul sleeping bags around.

I toured Europe by following the general advice in Rick Steves' general-advice book. His reader demographic probably skews a bit more "middle-aged NPR listener" than "college student" (advertising via PBS specials will probably tend to lead to that), and sometimes he comes across as a bit of a nerd, but then again so do I. His advice was pretty solid. If you don't like meeting fellow tourists who are clutching a copy of his book, don't go to the specific hotels and restaurants that he recommends. (This apparently also goes for all the places mentioned in, e.g., the Lonely Planet guides. Guidebooks are excellent guides to finding your fellow tourists.)
Some similar talk here

http://solutions.amazonwebservices.com/connect/message.jspa?...
Also: Russ Nelson is a smart, nice guy, and a good programmer, but to my knowledge, he is not an "economist" in the sense of someone with a degree, or employed in some capacity in that field. His bio doesn't mention economics at all: http://russnelson.com/bio.html

That's not to say that what he has to say is wrong, but it's a bit odd to attach the 'economist' label when I'm not sure he has really earned it any more than many of us with an interest in the field and a bit of reading under our belts.
No, it isn't. Definitely not yet. While the dollar's reputation has been damaged by the Bush years, the dollar made its way through two world wars and the cold war without the problems that most European currencies faced. As Warren Buffet says, "It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." And it's true that while the dollar won't be seen in the pre-Bush light for a couple decades, it's not as if it's been replaced (yet). The euro has done well in its 10-year history and has been wonderful for Europe (both stimulating trade and creating stability - I'm a huge euro supporter), but it's only existed for 10 years in what has been a relatively safe economic time. This is the first real test of the euro and we are far from seeing how it is faring.

Exchange rates aren't a good way of measuring a currency, even though they would seem like one. The fact is that currency valuations are usually tied to the interest rates you can earn in banks of that currency. The ECB (European Central Bank) has always kept interest rates high. That encourages people to change dollars into euros and deposit them in European banks which drives up the price of the euro in foreign exchange markets. However, high interest rates also discourage the investment in businesses that drives an economy. So, one can't say that the euro's strength benefits its people.

And that's what you need to do: to look at how a currency is serving the people under it. The Federal Reserve has proven over decades that it can effectively fight both booms and recessions. In a recession, one needs to expand the money supply. That makes it easier for borrowing and therefore investing and spending - exactly what we're seeing missing from our current situation. People have stopped borrowing, investing, and spending because of the high cost of it (compared to boom times) and so by making it easier to do those things we can mitigate some of the pain of the recession and make the whole recession shorter as we more quickly encourage business to return to normal.*

The ECB has lowered interest rates, but the ECB's policy has always been to target inflation and not mitigate recession. Partly this comes from differences between Europe and America. Europe has had many currencies in the past that just free-fell. Inflation was terrible, currency unstable, etc. Likewise, governments have large social programs in Europe and high unemployment is seen as a way of life rather than a disaster. For example, in Germany 8% unemployment is amazing. In the US, we call for politicians' heads when it hits that level. But European countries are more capable of handling such unemployment without huge upheaval because the social programs keep people at bay and without as much worry about a paycheck.

*This is the consensus of mainstream economics in the same way that the existence of global warming is the consensus of mainstream climate scientists. Yes, you can always find those who will disagree with anything.
Oops, forgot the most important advice: Keep most of your money, your credit/ATM cards, and your passport on your body, out of sight and in a difficult-to-access spot -- get a money belt of some type. Pack very little, and don't pack anything you're not willing to lose. I've had stuff stolen on two out of four European tourist trips, but the second time all I did was laugh and go shopping.
It is very clearly mirrored in backgammon theory, where touneament players memorize "match equity" tables and use them to govern their use of the doubling cube.
In the UK, instead of London, you might like to consider going to Manchester or Edinburgh instead. Both much nicer cities than London (IMHO).
"loosing their ... jobs" ? Ouch.