skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> He claims it's "ridiculous" to expect people to save responsibly. Yet it happens in east asia, and it happened historically in the west.

Social Security is the most effective anti-poverty program in the history of the US. Before SS, old people used to reliably end up destitute in far greater numbers than today. I don't believe your claim that responsible saving, to an extent to allow people to reliably retire in comfort, happened historically in the West.
Yes, it's a helpful article when we put aside the mention of "spooks and feds" and humorless tone. Because it does discuss common problems. Like: "By implementing continual and non-related postings that distract and disrupt (trolling) the forum readers they are more effectively stopped from anything of any real productivity."

I've frankly often imagined that government agents just amuse themselves by passively watching activists infight online. (In fact, intervening would probably be discouraged because it ruins bets on who cracks next.) There's more than enough hobbyist trolls, entryists and egomaniacs to add that single drop of blood into the water, to get the carnage started. Many wisely exit the forum, while those who remain have their time and energy stolen forever.

Virtually all (or at least most) of these problems are easily preventable ailments. Sensible moderation goes a long way.

(Of course, activist groups are commonly infiltrated, and those infiltrators may prod people into doing foolish things. One joke is that social movements would collapse without infiltrators, because they're the only ones paying dues on time. Just important to take sensible steps, rather than overreact.)
The cheap bottles of JD, IMHO, don't taste so great - but the more expensive bottles (I guess they're aged more?) are pretty good!
This is a mind-bogglingly simplistic and broken argument against patents. The main argument is by analogy and argument is patents suck because they prevent the sharing of ideas. These are both horrible ways to argue against the patent system. I guess it's garnered a large number of upvotes because of the author?
It's slightly less effective.
Fantasizing, man? Now listen the real story. I survived 2 currency crashes, when savings of the whole 2 generations of the family were effectively nullified overnight. The euro is now damn close to such crash, and the US dollar as well. From my exp and from the good advice of my granny, I can only tell you to invest into good tools, safety matches, soap and food stash. Everything else is just fiction.
Can we avoid this future?
Most of the top colleges for CS have their curriculum and course catalogs online. Use that information to map out your own path.
I just wanted to let you know that I think that's awesome.
Seems like the compartmentalization issues described could be solved by code names for everything. "Are you working on Unicorn?" "No, I'm working on Puppy."
Don't you lose the compact advantage of Lua in the conversion?
Saying that "you'd have to know the future" is just an overly dramatic way of talking about risk, and her points are overblown for effect. I could see your argument in a thread about healthcare, say, but we are talking about personal money, on top of any (current) insurance or social programs. There is no universal personal risk elimination system that smooths out risks due to the stock market, personal circumstances, etc. and makes sure we are never forced to live a less comfortable life than we anticipated.

Even if we decided to compensate all retirees for lack of savings or income, to say it's obvious or easy to do so is obtuse.

The current model for retirement savings, which forces individuals to figure out a plan for their retirement years, whether through a “guy” or by individual decision making, will always fall short.

Surely "a plan" is the very least we should be expected to have regarding our finances, not some unjust burden thrust on us by outside forces?
Dont use credit money. Never lend on interest. Go, teach your kids now.
> I have no idea why the first time people encounter personal finance is either a college course or when they realize they have bills to pay as an adult

Oh, it's not a college course. It's the rep from the credit card company with a booth at college orientation giving out free t-shirts if you sign up for a card, one that has a $90 annual fee, a 25% interest rate, and a couple dozen other gotchas.
I often think exactly the same thing about terrorists. What kind of half arsed nutbag thinks "I know, I'll strap some explosives to my underpants and get on a plane. That ought to do it!" ?? If you wanted to do serious damage in a reasonably guaranteed way (i.e. not having to get past strict security checks), why not just walk in to a crowded arrivals hall and detonate yourself there? Same goes for large railway stations, shopping smalls etc. I mean, it doesn't take much imagination.

Either we're very lucky that most terrorists are completely incompetent or the terrorist threat itself is hugely overblown. I think it's the latter.
You might be the exception, life is certainly not one size fits all. But take a look at how much you spend to work each week. For a lot of people it actually adds up to a pretty hefty total. A lot of people eat at a unsubsidized cafeteria, have travel expense such as gas / parking, which leads to more frequent repairs / maintenance, and work clothing costs.
Obligatory car analogy: Apple's position in tablets and phones is similar to Ford's position in cars. Ford will not sell you a car with a Chevy engine. Ford is in the complete car market, and an engine is an essential part of a complete car.

Antitrust law tries to be reasonable. This means that for those things that are the main or essential components of a produce, the manufacturer should be free to choose those components.

If antitrust law looked too deeply into individual components, costs for everyone would go way up. Imagine the manufacturing nightmare if, say, Dell had to worry that if they used capacitors from Dielectric Laboratories in their motherboards, they might get sued for not also offering the choice of capacitors from Johnson Dielectrics, ROHM Products, or Illinois Capacitor.

For tablets and smartphones, internet browsing is practically one of the defining features of the product. A typical consumer who bought a tablet and found it had no browser preinstalled would be about as shocked as someone who bought a Ford and found no engine installed.
Read my third point more closely. I said players who "never take normal jump shots and have atrocious free throw percentages". I think you can figure out the guy I'm talking about.
If public funded retirement doesn't work, and private funded doesn't work, and individual funded doesn't work... what are we left with?

Cure aging. Seriously. The fundamental problem is that we have a rapidly increasing number of people who can't be economically productive due to physical and often mental decline, and who are very expensive to keep alive. Arguing about who should pay for all of this is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.
Excerpts:  Birth of a Nation, The Debt Game
I'll give you a couple of examples.

> is sleep a cause or a result of some other underlying
> factor? - Not sure what this objection means, exactly, yet.

It's simple, really: Say most PD patients present with sleep dysfunctionalities. What conclusions can we draw from that? Three, actually. That PD causes sleep dysfunction, that PD is caused by sleep irregularities, or that both are caused by some unknown cause X. Based on correlative data, all three are equally likely. You, however, immediately jump to the sleep causes PD conclusion -- critically, without mentioning a mechanism for how that could work.

If you investigated PD a bit further, you'd realize that there's dozens of confirmed comorbidities (e.g., depression, cognitive issues, hyposmia, etc.). That doesn't tell us anything about anything.

> Amphetamines are drugs associated with pushing your
> brain to operate without sleep, and they're also
> associated with causing Parkinson's Disease

Well, you know what else amphetamines are associated with? Interference with the dopaminergic system at a massive scale. What's the key neuronal pathology in PD? Right, SN-focused DA cell degeneration. So it's exceedingly more likely that DA function plays the role of causal link here than lack of sleep. Again, common cause.

Regarding genetics and Fox: We know that PD has a genetic component; there's promising mouse models and solid epidemiological data. Fox is one data point. His lack of family history doesn't suggest anything at all.

In summary, your whole argument rests on a flawed logical strategy. You're connecting three semi-confirmed factoids (increased PD risk among amphetamine users, amphetamines lessen the need for sleep and are taken by traditionally sleep-deprived groups) by positing a direct causal connection; namely, amphetamines -> no sleep -> PD. All this while ignoring much more sensible connections (e.g., via dopaminergic systems).

Sure, one could test this. But that's faint praise -- it's still far away from what cutting-edge PD research does right now and for good reason. BTW, Higgs and Einstein developed their ideas from deep knowledge of and appreciation for state of the art research at their time; both knew their stuff and went from there. You're displaying very basic knowledge, tendency for random sourcing, and ignorance of fairly basic scientific principles (experimental logic esp.).
Samsung Omnia M: Windows 7.5 Mango Mobile Phone with High Speed 3G
It depends on where you live, how much you want to spend, and what sort of fit you're looking for. Barneys will have a selection of mid-range denim -- brands like APC and Naked & Famous. If you're in SF, NYC, or LA, there's Self Edge, which specializes in higher end, more obscure stuff but still carries great value brands like 3Sixteen. Also in NYC is Blue In Green, which carries a ton of stuff. You can always look at Revolve Clothing or Context Clothing online as well. There are tons of options, there are many local boutique places that will carry good brands, and it gets deep really quick. Let me know if you have any questions.
In light of the claim that everyone overstates their case, I've wondered if one would be well served by deliberately exaggerating to counteract the "charitable interpretation" you mention.
Forget about "Mathematics" and study "Statistics", man. You will never need the Maths stuff for your job.

And notice I am an Algebraic Geometer, not a funny CS. http://pfortuny.net

Enjoy the knowledge but do not strive for what you do not need unless you do it just for fun (which does NOT look so to me).
Which is why instead of having a dunk and an ineffective overhand free throw, they'd be better off having a dunk and a less ineffective underhand free throw. But guys like Shaq and Dwight Howard are too "macho" for that, so they cost their team points.
We've been traveling with our startup for about 4 years. Berlin is by far the best city of all the ones we've visited, though Amsterdam is very close in terms of being a nice place to live.

Living on the eastern side of the wall, rents are cheap.

The main thing that keeps us from relocating there more permanently is the immigration issue, but it looks like this may be resolved, at least partially.

One thing though, you probably do want to learn German. While many germans speak english (even more so in the startup scene) a lot of germans don't, and day to day life involves a fair bit of basic german.

But, certainly worth the effort!
The ones that get me are the ones where we're strictly not allowed to do something yet it seems that if it was actually dangerous terrorists would be doing it. The most oft-talked about example being using a phone on a flight, another being a flame in a petrol station - if that was dangerous, surely terrorists could target 10s of them with no preparation other than recruitment?
The problem with that is that if someone leaked what a codename related to everyone would be exposed. So if I could tell you everyone working on Unicorn, and then someone let slip that Unicorn was code for iPhone suddenly everyone on the iPhone team would be known.
Antwerp 2012: Polina Stepanova
I may be wrong, but personal myth is not a Freudian concept and it used to beoften associated with dream analysis... a long time ago.
Latest funny ep of Totally Socks webseries (risque)
The latest (risque) episode from the comedy webseries, Totally Socks. Chicken Little presents Socks News, with coverage on Penelope's latest diet, 'Count Drac-Ass the Movie' and Willy's latest music video, 'The Worm I Am'.
I love how the "true sparrow story" is purportedly the one where the people who were already millionaires made a profit somewhat less then they had hoped.
i just want to add to the chorus that you were unlucky. i have a degree in physics and a phd in astronomy. no formal education in cs (apart from a class in fortran on an ibm mainframe back in the day). it hasn't mattered at all - in fact, i can get better (more interesting, higher paid) jobs.

and to be honest, with "outsourcing" i think "an X that can program" is going to become even more valuable than "ordinary" programmers, not less.

it sounds like you've been very unlucky.

(i have put a lot of time and effort into making sure that i know the computer science - and the practical parts - too. but it sounds like you understand that.))
Abstinence is probably the best treatment. But, as you mention in a reply, there are many addicts who become lost to us. Those are the people that I think a more intelligent drug policy would help. They can start with re-entering society and, if they find abstinence is the right destination, they can go there.

I don't think unfettered access to the drugs is the right thing. Just like any medication, it should be monitored by a doctor (but one trained to work with addicts, not one trained by current DEA tactics). But destroying people's lives because "drugs is bad" is certainly the wrong tactic (not saying you are arguing that). Portugal has shown some great improvements since leaving that mindset behind[1].

1. http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.ht...
The Hate App — Warn the world about the worst places in your area.
"So far I am not aware of any reason for young people in residential neighborhoods in the United States to have what are called "assault rifles" for legitimate purposes, and I certainly would be glad to know that none are in my (crime-free) neighborhood."

What about suspending the Fourth Amendment? Surely enough random house checks, possibly automated with cameras, could also detect possible criminal activity and save lives.

Traditionally, Americans are willing to pay something for their freedoms. Freedom always comes with both costs and benefits, and so long as the costs don't far outweigh the benefits, then (in my opinion) freedom should prevail.

If, in your judgement, the cost of allowing individual gun ownership outweighs the benefits so much that you think the freedom should be removed, so be it. But keep in mind that there are plenty of other freedoms that can be removed in the name of safety (e.g. 4th, 5th, and 8th Amendment).

I'd also like to point out that violence is low and decreasing[1]. So, the case to restrict freedoms is weakening. The newsworthiness of a particular event doesn't change that fact. Also, removing a freedom is no guarantee that you'll actually get the safety you seek; it's only a guarantee that the freedom is gone.

[1] See Steven Pinker's new book, "The Better Angels of our Nature"
Artificial jellyfish made from silicone and rat muscle (video)
We were there in the winter of 2010, which was called "the coldest winter in berlin in a century" at the time. Walking around outside on the coldest days, it was rather cold, but not that bad at all.

Certainly getting around on the u-bahn was perfectly comfortable and the s-bahn was fine too.

Really didn't mind it much at all.
I don't think that Firefox OS needs to grab a significant market share to be a success, as its goal is really to develop the relevant APIs, and to promote the use of apps written with web technologies. Even a minor success could lead others to adopt their APIs, and with 2 or more implementations, these might reach the W3C.

Where Firefox OS needs to get traction is with the networks, which is the first thing they've done. Anything which can be easily customised (and what could be easier than HTML+CSS+JS? will attract a lot of interest from them).
One huge problem with the evolution of the retirement system has to do with how retirement savings are vulnerable to outside influences. The stock market is no longer just investors deciding that a company sells a good product, and stands to increase in value so is a safe investment. The market has evolved into a massive casino of automated algorithmic trading ... with transactional activity coming from automated systems far outpacing the buy-and-hold activity that most individual investors are participating in.

Separately, you've got municipal or a private college's retirement plan that's broken off into pieces and handed off to hedge fund managers with the hope that they'll see a good-return on the retirement savings of their employees. Sometimes this works out ... and sometimes the hedge fund goes under, taking with it whatever investments the retirement plans had entrusted it to invest.

Then you've got too-big-to-fail financial firms that have ensured their own existence (because if they fail, they'll take the entire economy with them), pre-written their individual executive exist-strategies (golden parachutes / LEH, etc.), but have branches of their firms tasked with growing the money under their control. Maybe they'll succeed. Or maybe they'll make some bad bets and lose $5.8 billion dollars for the firm (JPM) ... and the multitude of mutual funds, hedge funds, and individuals whose financial security is in-some-way connected to their financial well-being. But hey ... they took a chance, and it just didn't work out this time.

Maybe on some other trading floor somebody makes a fat-fingered trade and blows $1.24 billion (Gold, 4/30/2012) ... subsequently throwing the market into disarray for a period of time while everyone tries to figure out if the economy is melting, or if it was just a mistake by somebody.

Meanwhile ... whether you're investing with the help of some "guy", or buying index funds, or going the individual stock route ... pretty much every choice you have is subject to the fuck-ups of people you don't even know exist. They control whether you'll be able to afford to eat when you've stopped working. Whether you'll be able to afford rent when you're no longer able to work. And if you opt-out and just choose to sit on cash, or invest in CDs (whose rates are currently comically-low) you won't approach anything near staying on-par with cost-of-living projections given inflationary trends.

But hey ... we can't subject trading to regulation 'cause it'll stifle innovation! We can't institute a per-trade transaction fee 'cause it'll decrease volumes and penalize those providing liquidity to the market. In-fact, the market appears to be going the opposite direction ... towards even less regulation. For everyone that supported the concept of Kickstarter for startup-equity, just wait till the elderly start gambling their retirement nest eggs into what's billed as the next Facebook. It's a nice thought that startups can get access to an untapped market of small-time investors, but it's got the potential to amplify the already-bleak retirement outlook for unsophisticated investors.
What makes you know that that's the right degree for you?

When you say "math degree", I don't think of something that applies to machine learning all that much! :)

Math is a huge field, and undegrad math covers a big swath of it. Have you taken a stats course yet? I would consider just taking a stats course first, and then maybe asking anybody you meet with similar interests in data logging/analysis what the relevant courses are to take.

That said, looking over the summary on that page, it does seem more "applied" than most math degrees, which is probably what you want.
I think your post could do with a less harsh tone.

If you want empirical evidence of groups and organizations employing these tactics it might be better to simply ask or search for it, than to paint your debaters as paranoid bullshitters.

I think you don't get it if you ask: what value is there in derailing a conversation?

Ask instead: what value was there in spamming a certain religious Usenet channel? What value is there in getting a Wikipedia article deleted or locked? What value is there for a reputation management company in pushing away negative, but legit, search results for a client? What value is there in employing trolls to counter terrorists online? What value is there in the 50 cent army? What value was there in the Wikileaks slides, where it was opted that journalists would be smeared or false information would be leaked as to discredit Wikileaks? What value is there in persona management software and upvote squads? What value is there in controlling virality?
iOS is far from a monopoly. It's not even quite a majority
Never get into private health insurance in germany. The problem is that once you are there, you cannot get back. Also, switching insurances gets almost impossible once you actually have a chronic condition. Public insurances have to accept you.

The other problem is that the prices are on a steady rise - the only easy way for private insurances to raise profits is taking it from their clients.

The way to go is public insurance with additional private extensions - it ensures that you can cancel your (sub)-contract without fearing about your general healcare plan.
Interestingly, the journalist who wrote this article also wrote a terrible review of the Nexus 7 when it first came out slating the device with multiple inaccurate statements. He was roasted in the comments & had to append the article with a justification for his viewpoints.

I'd like to know what he thinks now.

Original review link:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2012/jul/13/google...
Fitboard connects fitness enthusiasts and professionals to achieve their goals
You're way off on standard Evan Williams ("black label"). It's very good, even if you don't factor in the remarkably low cost. Calling it "abrasive" or like an "industrial solvent" is way inaccurate. Maybe you're just used to very mellowed and sweet sipping whiskies. That's fine but it doesn't make brawnier whiskies trash as you imply.

As someone who mixes many of his Manhattans and Old Fashioneds with Williams (alongside Rittenhouse 100 rye), and who has tried it blind against Jim Beam black label, Maker's, and Daniels, I endorse wholeheartedly Eric Felten's take in The Wall Street Journal:

"It's a terrific deal. Most of the [inexpensive] bourbons I tasted were barely adolescents -- Beam, for example, spends about four years barrel aging. But Evan Williams is made of whiskey that has been in oak for five to seven years, and the extra age comes through. The nice spicy rye in the mash also comes through, giving the bourbon a dash of cinnamon that keeps the vanilla sweetness from cloying. Evan Williams is a good, solid, no-nonsense bourbon. "
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120916374801546109.html

I've had the single barrel. It's fine, very nice for sipping. But by no means would I use it in the drinks where I use regular Evan Williams. It's a little too mellow for a cocktail (although Esquire came up with an interesting one - basically a Manhattan made with Lillet blanc instead of sweet vermouth - I think they called it a Yellow Dog. You'll notice Lillet is much more meek than a sweet vermouth, even a relaxed Dolin. That way it doesn't overwhelm the soft nine-to-twelve-years-aged Single Barrel).

(update - here's a link to the Evan Williams Single Barrel cocktail - http://www.esquire.com/features/how-to-give-a-toast-0212)