skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Step 1: throw all your newspapers in the bin, cancel your subscriptions and point all of the major news sites' URL's to 127.0.0.1.

Step 2: start reading scientific journals and other high quality sources of information.

Step 3: call all of your friends idiots for not doing the same.

Step 4: begin to hate your life more and more because you can't identify with the appaling ignorance that surrounds you.

Pessimistic step 5: throw yourself off of a tall building.

Optimistic step 5: build a rocket ship and fly to the moon.

Final disposition: you are no longer a part of society at large.
Lowest livings costs with highest quality of living. Stay in gorgeous, perfectly renovated apartments in pre-WWII residential buildings with high ceilings, right in the middle of the center and pay a fraction of costs of any other capital (even cheaper than any Eastern European capital).

Why is this true? Honest question, how can a great large Western European city cost a fraction of other, even Eastern European cities?

Was there a sudden glut of real estate recently? A lot of people suddenly leaving Berlin? But why would they leave if it so great? I am really puzzled by this.
Never mind conspiracy theory, we have evidence openly showing how our government is doing bad things for the "right reason".
How about Bitwig?
Excellent response. I would just like to add that I've heard it pointed out many times since the 2008 financial crisis that, e.g., China's extremely high savings rates have been a drag on its economic recovery. The level of consumption required for growth can't happen if the vast majority of your population is neurotically saving every penny for retirement because they know there's no safety net.

Another point that the article makes is that these savers are rarely making "investments" that would meaningfully help the economy down the road (a possible argument against nudging them towards consumption). They're "stuffing it under the mattress," parking it in the safest investments they can find (cf. lower-middle-class America watching Glenn Beck and then rushing off to buy gold from his advertisers). Or at best, they're entrusting it to a "guy" (as described in TFA) who does roughly the same thing for them, while providing a nice placebo effect that makes them believe they're "investing."
> Twitter in its early days made zero sense to end-users, and it was only through the effort of third party developers that it went mainstream.

Sorry if you've explained it elsewhere (I've not been paying much attention) but can you cite/explain that claim? My experience might be different, but most of the "normal people" I know of that use Twitter use it through the apps for their mobile (eg: iPhone, Blackberry) and they use it because that's the device they use, not because the apps are incredible and make Twitter appealing, the Twitter network is appealing. Based on this wouldn't the correct argument be that making Twitter available to everyone easily is what caused Twitter's mainstream success?

I think you explained the problem yourself: At day 0 Twitter made no sense to users and Twitter had 0 barriers to entry, all you had to do was sign up! How can app.net get over that problem while charging $50? If I'm correct that ease of access/use is what made Twitter mainstream wouldn't that mean you're doing the exact opposite of what made Twitter successful?

I really love the idea and hope it succeeds, but I don't see how you can appeal to anyone outside of the tech circle when charging for access.
ice cream vendors, flower salesmen, flashlight dealers...
> How about WebGL, 10x faster JS than just a few years ago, typed arrays, video and audio tags, WebRTC, etc. etc. ..?

I was not implying that innovation had ceased. On the contrary, I love seeing stuff like this appear. Even if doomed from the outset to not become standard or widespread, the potential from experimentation is what keeps things interesting.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but I find it hard to do a quick scan of stories. When I'm on the HN site, I can very quickly skim and find stories on the front page that interest me. Maybe it's the narrow width of the table? Can you make that adjustable by dragging the corner?

Otherwise, it's really slick & works perfectly well. Good stuff.
Which parts of the syntax are like Haskell? As far as I can tell, the syntax for calling functions is similar to Haskell, but that's about it. Maybe some of the operators are vaguely like Haskell's, except they're baked into the language instead of being definable by the user.

The vast majority of the syntax seems based on CoffeeScript.
i agree - loved posterous until they started the spaces thing

from there it went downhill, have exported by posterous blog into octopress - and havent looked back

if there are any other posterous people looking to jump to octopress i've setup http://p.ostero.us to make the move to markdown/hosted octopress painless

cheers

justin
-- http://p.ostero.us
So, in this scenario every user will be using a 3rd party client. This complicates things for a couple of reasons:

1) App.net's income per user is now 50% of the subscription price. You have to make that work financially for you.

2) The 3rd party's income per user is less than 50%. The most profitable 3rd party is going to be the client, so you've created a situation where interesting uses of the API that don't require user interaction are less profitable.

I want your platform to be successful, but I don't think this will contribute to it. You're going to spend a lot of time policing 3rd parties' attempt at gaming the system, which means time your not spending making the platform better. This is a rabbit hole you don't want to fall into.
Well, prostitutes and drug dealers if you're into that kind of thing.
It is not the responsibility of your degree to "secure you a job"! Please read _Ask The Headhunter_.
I don't understand why we are giving this guy the time of day. He contacted journalists, lied to them to promote a book, so now the journalists are helping him promote his book.

Rewarding the lying is only going to encourage more lying.
If you earn $100,000 at retirement, you need about $2 million beyond what you will receive from Social Security.

Sounds about right. And also why I have no plans to retire.
If I can find a job at some point because I'm too old, then I will start a business. And maybe that's why most startups are actually created by people in their 40s, 50s and older.
If it turns out to be the case, I'll still go to the interview but never work with that recruiter again. We've reached a point in tech now where processes are (nearly) tool agnostic; and to focus on that given the context of the resume (which the role based on my experience in the role with other companies), this is especially true. I don't need to rely on notepad to manipulate CSV data, I can easily use Excel, Sublime or any other tool that can open a comma separated file.

So I'm going to softly reject the notion that this recruiter was looking for someone who uses a specific tool. With the experience you mentioned, I can absolutely see why they'd want a certain toolset because perhaps their internal development lifecycle relies on features not present elsewhere.

If that's the case with a recruiter, it's entirely their job and responsibility to their candidates to find this out and outline it in a job post to explain this without inundating interested prospects with tool-speak. This could have easily been accomplished, but it wasn't.
Now that we're on the subject of bourbon I will share an observation I recently made. Have you ever looked up a bourbon brand on Wikipedia? Because if you do you'll almost certainly find a picture of the bottle, next to a monstrously large pour in a brandy snifter. Doesn't matter if it's shitty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ten_High.JPG, mid-range http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Buffalo_Trace.JPG, or the nectar of the gods http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pappy_Van_Winkle.JPG

The best part is that they're all by the same guy. A true American hero, if you ask me.
How easy is it to get a blue card compared to the old way of getting a work visa for germany? Would you say this is something companies are not going to worry anymore when hiring?
Dispatches from the twilight zone twixt sectors public and private. Highly relevant to hackers everywhere.
This Video From Space Station Is Amazing And Puts Things In Perspective
To clarify a bit, I appreciate most that this reporter is not over-simplifying these cases. In his own words, "Perpetrators of mass murder...are complicated." I don't speak in absolutes about emotion. I know most of these perpetrators have led very emotional lives. The pain they have felt is probably greater than almost everyone else's pain. But it seems to me that once they have begun to carry out their plans, they are well beyond making an emotional connection with anyone else. They have nothing left to lose, and you can't bargain with someone who has nothing left to lose.
What time of the day do you usually have each activity?
Morning	Afternoon	Night	Disperse throughout the day
[...]
Lunch
[...]

Um... is that a trick question, or is there a part of the world where lunchtime doesn't separate the morning from the afternoon ?
It doesn't help much that you're required to be licensed in the US to distill spirits at all (beer/wine brewing sans license is legal to a point, think a few states might disagree though), and the regulations involved make setting up shop a bit more difficult than setting up a still in the garage.
That was a very interesting post. Thank you.
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A degree in mathematics requires a very large amount of effort and discipline, especially given your other obligations. Is this effort best spent on a mathematics degree, or maybe you could spend this effort differently and get what you want faster?

While point a) is a good reason to get a mathematics degree, points b) and c) are not. For point b), machine learning and statistics are much more appropriate than mathematics, and for point c), it is worth knowing that machine learning requires a fairly small subset of the mathematics you'd learn in a math degree. For example, a math degree covers many areas of mathematics (such as a heavy focus on proofs, abstract algebra, complex analysis and topology) that have no bearing on statistics and on practical machine learning. Conversely, a math degree also does not focus on statistics and probability, which are essential for data analysis.

Thus were I in your shoes, I would only study the math that is necessary to understand statistics and machine learning, and would start taking a machine learning course. The only math you need is multivariate calculus, linear algebra, and probability.
The problem is that too many guns exist already in the USA. If guns had just been invented and only a few of them existed, or if we were a moon colony that had never imported guns, or if we were some country where, due to social/cultural/political circumstances very few people have guns, then gun control would stand a chance of working.

But we have to work with what we've got. The situation we're actually in is this: Even if we could get the massive political coalition it would take to repeal a Constitutional amendment, there are still millions of guns that exist in the USA.

There was an article on HN very recently about a site that allows buyers and sellers of guns to find each other and go through transactions using Tor and Bitcoin for anonymity. So I think it's fair to say that the advancing state of software and Internet technology will make it increasingly easier for people to obtain firearms illegally.

So if you outlaw guns in the USA, the practical effect is disarming responsible, law-abiding citizens, whereas anyone who's bound and determined to get a weapon and doesn't care about the law, can still get one.

(Presently I believe there is a federally mandated waiting period and check for felony records for those buying firearms, called the Brady bill; the idea is to make sure you have time to think about what you're doing and have a few days to "cool off" if you're angry about something.)

My state recently passed a concealed-carry law, whereby any citizen can become certified to carry a concealed weapon. The controversy surrounding that has made me aware of an interesting argument:

What if we go in the opposite direction?

If we assume most people are responsible enough to handle firearms, and a non-negligible percentage of the population carries concealed firearms wherever they go, then it's harder for mass tragedies to occur. When the crazed maniac begins his massacre, the would-be victims can start shooting back.

Concealed carry can also serve as a deterrent to violent crime like armed robbery. If you're desperate enough to try something like that, and you know you're gonna be the only one with a gun, you also realize that the worst thing that will happen is you get three squares a day and a roof over your head at taxpayer expense. Whereas if you know there's a decent chance somebody else will have a weapon, suddenly the worst-case scenario becomes a hole in the head, which might affect your calculations enough to change your decision.

That's the argument, anyway; I'd be interested if anyone can find holes in it.
The first amendment has nothing to do with this, as far as I know. The question of parody is entirely in the realm of copyright/trademark law.

Can you give more information about how parody is defined in the context of fair use here? My understanding is that Weird Al would be completely within his rights to make all of his parodies without permission from the original artists, and that he only seeks there permission out of courtesy and a desire to maintain a good relationship with people. The Wikipedia page backs me up on this, although we could both be wrong.
Tina Fey Hosted an NYC Tech Awards for Female Founders… to Get Out of House
It began as a stupid question (an error of mine).. And as expected people eat in the afternoon (82%). However, 5% eat throughout the day and 2% dont eat at all, which is interesting :)
Belongs on Reddit along with the comments here... (including this one)
I agree, but I think that being structured as a mandatory retirement fund is a political necessity. A means-tested SS where what you put in is unrelated to what you get out would be outright welfare and unacceptable to a large portion of the American political spectrum.

Ironically, stuff like means-testing SS and removing the cap on the SS tax are just the sort of things that would keep SS solvent for decades to come, yet those who constantly criticize it on the basis that it's not sustainable would probably never accept such changes.
Also, add a link to the news on hackernews. For example: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277901 for this one.
Yum, eating ice cream in a dark alley
Ask HN: Where would you send your mother to register a domain name?
While many of us, I imagine, would just do it for her, what if she wanted to register a domain herself? Where would you tell her to go?
Well, to be fair, every government uses or at least has plans for these kind of tactics. KGB/FSB, Mossad, MI6, DGSE, otehr variations of a DSS agency - you've got to be very naive to believe they don't conduct covert operations and planned assassinations themselves or through third parties. It's only shocking when it comes to light (or maybe because it comes to light, when it shouldn't?)...
just tap the next image, works fine for me...
People who are much smaller and/or less threatening than me, I suppose.

(But even a mouse can spook a grown man when he's tense and anticipating bad things happening.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crow_Creek_massacre is included in the list. It's dated to about 1325.
World War II, the Berlin Wall. Remember the Wall only came down in 1990ish. There is still a huge swath cut thru the city where it used to be, without buildings. The former east german side has many old buildings built up in the prosperous pre-war era, that are now rather inexpensive.

In the past 20 years things have improved quite a bit in terms of renovation, but it takes time for population to build up again, and thus the costs are still low because there is abundant supply.
I thought they had changed their name to Xe services. What sort of name is Academi for a private mercenary company?
The fact that you refer to "man-hours" makes me suspect you underestimate the magnitude of the problem.

The correct measuring unit for the things you're talking about is man-centuries (and not one, but several), as far as I can see, just for the first item in your list.

People have been making compilers targeting JS for several years now. Do you really think there are 200-300 people doing this full-time?
I feel uncomfortable posting this, but a related argument: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/07/how-media-sh...
I could not agree more with all your points. Source maps are the key, and i look forward to them very much.

I am a coffeescripter, and i already have mixed emotions about the extra layer of complexity it puts on my code for others to get up to speed. Taking it further from the actual language (javascript) just adds a layer of obfuscation that does not really help javascript and its community at all (and many of the times your peers). It may make you feel better about what you are doing at the time (e.g. i must have typed vars, or whatever you people say), but its just making you feel better, it still is javascript, and you still have to debug javascript across browsers - that's just that. You still need to know all the javascript, you cant just use X to js and only know X. Only reason i get away with coffeescript is when i know im modern browser world, not old ie and the greater world of browser bugs. Otherwise im writing javascript.
Is this at Rands? That's not what I gathered at all. To me, Rands was concluding that Apple is secretive to surprise the whole world, not Apple employees.

I don't think it's possible for a company the size of Apple to have all employees know the secret and not have the world know the secret. Google proves, time and again, that when most employees know what's going to launch that it leaks. I wish it weren't the case, but it is.
Code spelunking in the All New Basecamp - Nick Quaranto - RailsConf 2012
There's a lot more to the browser than JS.

And you don't need to do better than JS in 1995. You need to do better than JS _today_.
Nice, mean, clever, stupid, etc. have no religious connotations. "Evil" and "sin" have heavily religious connotations, even if their etymologies are not entirely rooted in religious traditions. President Obama, who used the word "evil" this week, also said this was a time for "prayer and reflection". It's hard to be elected president without making these kinds of religious references.

Denying the presence of evil, as the term is often used, has nothing to do with words such as stupid, clever, etc.
I think you're only making this argument because it doesn't apply to you.

If you were rich, that would be because you cared to generate wealth on that scale. You worked your bollocks off and created vast amounts of wealth at the cost of blood and sweat and your life. I am not rich, but I am earning decent money through my business now and trust me when I say that every penny the government takes on the money that I earned through my hard work creating something from scratch is painful.

I shudder at the thought that when I die, a large percentage of what I earned would be snatched away from those I love "just because the state can".
Please, please, please do not hand the development of new drugs over to the government.

Also, if you're going to make an odd blanket statement that ends up being a lynchpin of your argument like "patents in software are trivial" at least try to unpack it or back it up somehow. Microsoft (for example, via MSR) dumps a sh ton of $ into research to come up with some ideas that end up being software, so how is that different than the biotech scenario?
"For Roy Furchgott, the reporter from the New York Times, this kind of lie can be hard to catch — Holiday sounded just like all the other record collectors he had talked to, and it was hard to imagine why someone would lie about something so mundane."

This whole thing reminds me of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment
The 6,000 Year Trip
The product for any news organization is always something that is interesting for them to print. The problem isn't someone who obviously can easily found to be a fraud. The problem is someone who is not so easily found out because there is no easy paper trail or time is short. You're not going to get an affidavit or a notarized statement. There is always some trust involved (like when you pickup your dry cleaning for example..)

Generally with something of an important nature (not vinyl records) I would think think there is a certain degree of investigation. Of course the fact that someone says they are at Harvard, and a medical professor does not mean that someone couldn't fake being them and write from a gmail account or even a university account with a different name. I would think that would be fairly easy to social engineer actually. That's really the danger here. Or to create a history or a website pretending to be someone important.

Ryan has a certain amount of credibility and while apparently a simple search would have pulled up his reputation we don't really know how many people recognized that he was a fraud, only those that fell for his manipulation. And if anyone saw he was a fraud did they report this or just "move along" because they were busy.

Articles that quoted him, well, I just looked at a few (to see what he said) and they've already been updated and his name redacted in all but one that I checked:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57369829/6-embarrassi...

So has this one:

http://todayhealth.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/27/1024...

And this one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/technology/personaltech/ho...

(Didn't take the time to check the others).
I think the OP means that it's not something non-developers want/care. Even if twitter went mainstream with 3rd developers, it was still apparently something people wanted.

PG also advices is that you should make things people want, people as users who use the app. People don't care about the tech or how nice it's for developers. If you build something that people like to use, and have nice API terms, people will use it and developers will develop on top of it.

Probably the only reason why people would care is that the apps and the whole network would be better, but that's huge chicken&egg problem.

If you look at the state on Windows Phone platform, Microsoft is even paying to people to develop on it, but no-one still care's because there are no users.
Hearing the words "compiling to Javascript" here, from Google, and elsewhere drives me nuts. Generating code in a dynamic and uncompiled language is NOT compilation! It is just a type of translation. If you want to make up a word, call it "relanguifying"- I don't care- just don't call it compilation.
Honestly, that's probably why they changed it again. Blackwater was a comically villainous name to begin with.
Nope, i've done more php than ruby in my life, ad hominem is irrelevant you know ?
The Web’s Primetime Broadband Traffic Jam
Well, php is more accessible than ruby. I don't care about the language war, i use whatever gets the things done
Twitter devs are being systematically intimidated, acquired and shutdown. There are credible rumors that the most popular 3rd-party clients will be summarily de-activated soon. What are they supposed to do now?