skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The author seems to be equating "puzzle languages" with "languages that are very different from the languages I am comfortable with." In other words, it's a classification which is very relative to the experience of the observer.

The languages he describes as "not" puzzle languages are all spiritual descendants of C and Algol, which is a very familiar idiom to many of us.

I imagine that Forth is far less of a puzzle language for Chuck Moore, it's inventor, and that he might find Ruby a bit of a puzzle.
I'm not sure what "core beliefs" means precisely. But if it means beliefs you wouldn't discard even in the face of evidence to the contrary, it would seem good to have as few of those as possible.
I'm not sure what building a secure PHP support applications and building antivirus software have to do with each other. But then, I'm also not sure what antivirus has to do with security, so maybe you're right.
So what you're saying is that you'd be okay with using blackmail to get into TED?
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca2_1234032281
Negative feedback on reddit is like getting fired by Henry Ford: a badge of honor.

Not sure if I liked your essay so much because or who you are of if I agreed with it so much.

More likely, it stands on its own merit. You made an argument, used metaphor in a way that a fellow hacker could truly appreciate, and while you were at it, taught a little bit when we weren't looking. People like you, pg, Joel, etc. are using blog to breathe new life into an old artform, the essay. Keep up the great work!
Interesting article, but I don't agree with the simile. Internet didn't ask anything from NYT, and I don't think Internet is that boy. Internet is more like another tree, which most boys started to prefer
Don't take it personally. Reddit has a culture of flaming. The same thing would have happened no matter who submitted it. They're just like that there.
Yes, Mandela is a great example of someone who was able to change his ways from hate and violence to understanding and compassion. If he can do it, I guess there is hope for online flamers and trolls ;)
Does it really look like a competition for Intel?... When I read the article, my first reaction was: now they will control the whole "processing power". That's what people really spend the money on right now (in home desktops at least).

nforce + cpu + gfx == thin-client made by nvidia?

nforce + cpu + gfx + some cheap stuff (storage is cheap and home users don't really care about the sound) == PC based gaming platform?

Or if someone likes conspiracy theories: while working on their gfx chip they discovered something that's easily portable to x86 and will make a massive difference. Now they're secretly producing a new x86 chip that will change the cpu market as we know it...
It's bad form to ask him to defend his point when you're defending your own by reiteration. Why won't innovation in such a magnitude 'happen again anytime soon'?
Circuit Cellar Ink, Electronic Musician, Design News, Machine Design, EDN, Electronic Design, Embedded Systems Design, R&D Magazine, EE Times. (Many of these are trade rags, free to people 'in the biz'.)
Threat-of: sure. No harm done. The real criminals who make up 95% of society's leadership ("power elite" if you choose to use incendiary language) do worse on a daily basis. Gate-crashing is small potatoes.

The degree of corruption in modern society is so high that such a "crime" would be a blip on the radar. Of course, if you got caught, you'd still be strung up quite badly, since the upper crust want to keep "the likes of you" out.

The reason it's a good thing to do something like this is that such a "crime" changes the shape of society by force, but by nonviolent force.

Subversive methods such as hacking the guest list or bribing a gatekeeper are a lot better, though. I don't think I could bring myself to blackmail someone, even if I knew I wasn't going to follow through.

Actually following through and ruining the guy's life: No. Not acceptable. Doesn't do any good for anyone.
Usability Nightmare: Web Forms
Create a Language Compiler for the .NET Framework Using C#
On reddit some people made comments similar to yours, to which some other people replied that the author knows FP languages, and Erlang, and all this stuff.

Really, read his other blog posts :) He's probably more comfortable with "puzzle languages" than the C family tree...
What things cost in ancient Rome
Tesla ex Employee Startup: Electrifying Motorcycles
I don't think "critical" is the right word. Every single software layer you build on top of is "critical" (down to the OS doing malloc and threads correctly, etc). If something is both critical and already pretty bulletproof, it does not make a lot of sense to go there.

I don't have any generalization to offer, I personally make the reuse-or-build decision on a case by case basis.

There are a lot of factors (assuming it's something that is really a fit or near-fit in the first place):

- the scope of the library in question (feature set can be both too small or big, it depends on the situation if either of these things is a problem)

- the maturity (age, testing in place, testability)

- the subjective reputation/community factors can play a role

- the amount of time you have vs. the costs of implementing (duh)

- usually the licenses present a problem

- the depth of understanding I want/need to obtain (an important point that the article is touching on)
The problem is not the belief, but that strongly identifying with something can render you blind to (among other things) whether it really is providing for your welfare or not.

(Historical examples abound, but pg's example of someone who died over an argument about two brands of pickup truck is apt. What benefits might be experienced by the belief are outweighed by the evident risks involved in identifying with it so closely.)

This is how persuasion works--appeal to a person's identity and you can convince the mind of almost anything. If your interest lies in thinking as freely as possible, then "keeping your identity small" is a good strategy.

If a person reacts "irrationally" on such an issue this may be because they do not judge their resources sufficient to change course.

Example? I wasn't aware that changing one's mind required any resources.
Crime is an inevitable result of division and exclusivity through monetary means.

In this case, TED is keeping knowledge exclusive. It's a shame really. Why don't they just live broadcast the presentations to the world?

With all their presenations and lectures on benevolence and making the world a better place, why don't they share the content with the world immediately? How much better would the world be if they had access to the information at TED? There's a lot of good stuff there, why hoard it all for the intellectual and wealthy elites who are invited and can afford it?
The flow is indeed very fast. We switched to Euro just about one month ago and already around 25% of my coins are foreign.

Though not all flow is caused just by individuals. National central banks can transfer among themselves coins and notes to prevent shortages of cash.

Cash Logistics in Austria and the Euro Area [pdf]

http://www.oenb.at/en/img/mop_2007_q1_in_focus_07_tcm16-5638...
I'm not sure a biblical literalist would necessarily reject natural selection -- the fact that species change over time to adapt to their environments can be proven through direct observational evidence, not just inference based on fossil records.

She might object to the thought that unguided processes such as natural selection produced all life on Earth, however, and may even correctly infer a certain amount of philosophical bias / involvement of some people's identities in their arguments for such a thought.
Ask HN:  Easiest video embedding service (besides YouTube)
I'm recording screen captures of my product, and now I want to put it on my website. I don't feel it's suitable to share it on YouTube... it just seems a bit unprofessional.

Are there any services that take a video, and wrap a standalone player around it?
History is a fascinating topic.

It's a bit hard to make sense of this without seeing it converted into current units ($/lb or something).
Complicated things are hard to explain in a readily accessible fashion; I've seen that ability called "genius".

What most nongenius explainers do is make up a different and less complicated story, which is not actually true, and explain that instead.

Decoherence is too complicated? Make up some other story about "quantum physics" and explain that instead.

Nonstandard models of Peano Arithmetic are too complicated? Make up some other story about Godel's Theorem and explain that instead.

The best one-line explanation of the financial crisis that I ever heard was as follows: "Mere stupidity is never enough; people have to pile stupidity on stupidity on stupidity."

Reality is a lot more complicated than this.
By reading one-liners, or depending on them to see if you're going to read the article, you're missing all the little stuff that separates the good from the bad.

Yes. Welcome to the cruel world of information overload, where I don't have time to read 95% of the brilliantly crafted content that is being created on the Internet, to say nothing of the stupid stuff.

Yes, judging books by their cover blurbs and reviews is haphazard, even cruel. Yes, you miss out on a lot of good detail. Yes, it remains absolutely necessary.

I have to judge what to click on by: The title, a skim through the comments, and the link destination (which I actually find most significant -- I clicked through on this and read the real thing specifically because it had Powazek's URL on it, and his last article really hit home.)

Incidentally, "sometimes it's useful" is a terrible post because it has no content and is banal [1], not because it is short. There's a distinction between empty sentences and brief sentences! The summary we're all pointing fingers at had a lot of content, even if it wasn't anywhere near as pleasureable as the actual article.

Meanwhile, a parenthetical note: The flagging system is for things that are "spam or egregiously offtopic". And if you live in a happy land where you seriously believe that "how to avoid working in unacceptable situations" is egregiously offtopic for hackers, congratulations! I hope your amazing run of luck continues, for your sake. Because, in my world, Powazek's advice comes in handy on a monthly basis.

---

[1] Just about any comment on a site can be useful sometimes. Even "first post" is useful: It demonstrates that the comments are working and that the comment moderation is very sloppy.
How to be a better programmer in 6 minutes
the screenshot shows the image with a url where it was hosted originally, but the text of the article suggests that you're supposed to be uploading images.

so is this an image bookmarking site like ffffound.com or another image uploading site like tinypic.com or twitpic.com?
Love the flowery language.

Yep -- anybody who thinks government can control prices should take a look at history. This kind of thinking goes back a long ways.

Wiki has the result: "However, the Edict did not solve the problem, as Diocletian's mass minting of coins of low metallic value continued to increase inflation, and the maximum prices in the Edict were apparently too low. Merchants either stopped producing goods, sold their goods illegally, or used barter. The Edict tended to disrupt trade and commerce, especially among merchants. Sometimes entire towns could no longer afford to produce trade goods. Because the Edict also set limits on wages, those who had fixed salaries (especially soldiers) found that their money was increasingly worthless as the artificial prices did not reflect actual costs."

la plus ca change...
this belongs on Reddit, not Hacker News.

hate to say I told you so. :-p
dr. dobbs about 15 years ago...

Really, I think that the 'geek' stuff is now either online or dying out rapidly, as someone else here remarked yesterday the print industry is dying. I know it isn't quite there yet but I expect daily news, weeklies a and monthly periodicals to succumb in that order, not sure about real books though, they may hang around for a lot longer.

The more timely the delivery of your content the bigger the threat from the online media is. Sure there are plenty of magazines left, but it remains to be seen how much longer they will last. It would be an interesting poll to see how many of the people frequenting HN still get their media fix in paper format.

I've cancelled my last subscription to any 'geek' magazine other than Scientific American years ago. And even that is available online now...
The question this raises for me is, what habits of mind are important to keep your downsize your identity? One idea is suggested in the essay: if you find yourself thinking, I'm an X, but tolerant of Y, that's a warning sign. Any others?
"many programmers consistently overestimate the utility of understanding something as opposed to merely shipping it and moving on"

I agree and want to add that it's not just overestimating the utility of something that is a problem but underestimating the quality of something because you did not write it. Of course that can really be true sometimes but more often not. You need to investigate and make the decision process more fact driven.

I do disagree with that statement in the case that you're just plain interested in something: no reason not to satisfy your curiosity if you have the time. You will probably learn something even if it is not the most practical thing in terms of the here and now of your project. The latter is what I thought we're discussing here though, the actual practical things to do under time pressure.
All I know is that he didn’t want money. He wanted access. Cash isn’t always the most important currency.
"the most important mechanical tolerances in atomically precise fabrication are (with a caveat or two) proportional to the lattice constant (unit cell size) of the material in question"
what news came out on sept 15th? wasn't that a month before the stocks started crashing. and why do money markets have a 250k guarantee when bank accounts have 100k?
Broadband, NASA, Science and Higher Education got cut from the stimulus bill
Trying to Live on 500K in New York City
Having recently moved to France, I was surprised by how many people are comfortable with Linux (especially Ubuntu; I've had so many conversations with non-technical people about how they use it instead of Windows) and how common it is to see people using it in public (netbooks and laptops alike). It's not a surprise that the government is becoming more comfortable with the idea of OSS as well.
How many delusional entrepreneurs have you met? How many have you met that have poured their life savings and dreams into an idea? I've met a quite a few in the few years I've been doing this, and sometimes the stress will make a person break. Entrepreneurs with big exists have been glamorized in the media like rock stars, and therefore startups (and the dream) have become popularized. Maybe John Lennon can write the soundtrack to the entrepreneurs worse nightmare.

While I wish I could agree with your mockery about this, I think you're undermining very real threats that sadly exists in this day and age. It's even scarier when you consider location-aware, real-time social services... It won't surprise me if you see more of this behavior as the economic squeeze unfolds.

Not trying to sound like a CNN report, just saying there are valid reasons for concern and caution.
Yea I'm a little confused also as to how this got to the fp so fast.
Wow this is a really great article. Thanks!
Where I work,there's some kind of creeping vine, that's planted in the intersection of 3 cubicles and has spread beyond all of them, almost reaching the printer.

It takes up a lot of space, but it shares that space with the cubicle walls, so in a strange way it takes up very little space.

I guess what I'm saying is be creative.
Very nice link on the melting copper clusters.
My mistake. I changed it to "a biblical literalist."

Whether it was intentional or not, your [2] paragraph there seems to reveal part of your own identity with the scientific community, primarily because of the way it was phrased. It reads as if the scientist is completely and entirely committed to the rational, while cleverly mentioning that those identifying with religion clearly toss the evidence out of the window.

Of course the literalist does this because his world-view does not permit it, but this sophistry ignores the larger picture that both the scientist and the literalist hold equally irrational worldviews -- one in scientific naturalism and one in the Bible + scientific empiricism.

Both world-views are far from grounded in complete rationality and both world-views function on powerful assumptions that hardly qualify either individual as completely rational, a distinct difference from how your paragraph depicts the two individuals. I think robg states it best here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=396215

Of course, I am a Christian and have my passionate identity tied to this discussion, but it was interesting how you chose to portray the scientist as rational and the religious believer as irrational. Was that intentional, or was it a little bit of personal identity peeking through in your writing?

This is not my attempt to "read into" your writing, but given this context of personal identity (which we know both consciously and subconsciously shapes everything we do), I was interested to know if your writing here was shaped by your own identity. I'm pretty confident it was, given that you're definitely not trying to deceive anyone here, but you are certainly providing a slanted view on reality.
Ask HN: Should I pay $50 for a positive App review?
In trying to promote my recently released iPhone app, I sent emails to several App Review sites with a blurb and a promo code for a free copy. One of the sites got back to me and said they have a huge backlog of apps to review, but they could guarantee mine a review for $50. Furthermore, if the review wasn't positive, they said they wouldn't publish it and they'd give me my money back.

First of all, is this standard practice in the App world? I had seen reports that this is common on domain registrar / hosting review sites but had no idea iPhone app review sites were working on payola also.

Second of all, is this a worthwhile investment? This is my first app and as an independent developer I don't have an advertising budget to speak of, but positive reviews seem to be really valuable for gaining exposure, and this site ranks high on Google searches (this was actually one of the selling points they mentioned). Maybe $50 is a small amount compared to how much traffic this might bring? On the other hand, I don't want to do business with a site that is dishonest to its readers, and there are other review sites out there that may run a review without asking for cash in return.

Thanks in advance for your advice!
The best you can do is probably go by wages, which are also included.
Wow, marijuana news is hitting a feverish pitch lately, especially with that most-winning "Olympian pothead" making news.

I am glad to see studies like this being performed. If you are a pot smoker, keep in mind that taking smoke in your body in any form is unhealthy.

I suspect that eventually one state (Nevada?) will attempt to legalize it and the house of cards will begin to fall in the US. Until then, big business (pharma?) who controls Congress isn't going to let it happen without a fight.
Isn't it a bit hard to do that without a detailed, possibly subjective study of what the scarcities were in Rome? The dollar isn't anchored to the value of ten asses anymore, and salt is basically free.
Very interesting read! It seems that once again, those that don't study history are bound to repeat it.

It's noteworthy how teachers were paid 'by the pupil', and how architecture is apparently lower on the social ladder than rhetoric.

An advocates fee for a pleading works out to teaching 5 pupils geometry for a month. Some things never change!
The defiant tone of the author suggests to me that this was a bit of a screed piece by someone who feels threatened by any move that could change the balance of the wintel duopoly. I agree, Intel needs challengers.
I have the Truth and the Truth is you don't matter (to me).

What matters is what works. What editor you use doesn't matter, use whatever works best for you, but don't identify with it. What car you drive doesn't matter, drive whatever you like, but don't identify with it. In very few instances is one set of beliefs objectively better than another, so don't identify with a belief that is not.

Religion versus atheism is such a case; faith (belief in the absence of evidence) makes you stupid.
Also a very good point. I don't live a life of fear. I just gaily lose possessions from time to time.

On my second trip to Europe I had my $400 digicam pickpocketed in a touristy Paris metro station [1]. That made me sad, so I decided to stop carrying around $400 digicams in touristy places. On my third trip to Europe I carried a $10 disposable film camera in a day bag that I had gotten for free as a donation gift. The bag was stolen (from behind the desk at a museum, where I had checked it) on the second day of my trip. And I laughed a lot (the most difficult part of the whole thing was convincing the despondent museum staff that I wasn't badly hurt by the loss and didn't want to accept a cash settlement from an obscure but interesting museum) and I had a lot of fun shopping for a new disposable camera and a nice new cheap bag which I use to this day.

---

[1] Montmartre. Home of some fine pickpocket talent -- back then, at any rate.
Ok... but why are you being so ironic and offensive? Was I a jerk? I am being nice to you, and disagreeing in good terms. No need to treat me like that.

I was going to craft another response to you, but really, you're demotivating me with your choice of words. Welcome newbie to reality? Congratulations? My sake? Your world? What's up mf, can't we talk normally? At least agree that we disagree on these summaries?

Gee... cool down. If you like the summaries, upvote them... by the amount of positive votes they're getting lately, they seem to be pretty popular... but I was just trying to understand why it looks like they're here to stay and at the same time say why I don't like them...

Edit: I typed this reply before you added more text to yours, so it looked like all you were doing was mocking me :p
Looking at those numbers, Obama has done NYC out of an awful lot of taxes. I wonder how much schadenfreude will be left once that trickles down to services that ordinary people take for granted - or who will make up the shortfall.
Microsoft reads your emails too. Any service that has junk mail filters does. Gmail just does it more effectively.
"But if you may can you please give an idea of the next significant business innovation?"

You're asking me to predict the next significant business innovation as big as the Internet?!
Yep. That's the ticket. When you see something happening over and over on a website, sometimes it means that the users are struggling to invent a missing feature.

Of course, sometimes that feature is one that makes certain users give certain other users money in exchange for counterfeit Viagra. But not, I think, in this case.
According to one comment in the original post, it was Lehman Brother's filing for bankruptcy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers
I love Gmail, but still wonder if this is the hotmail deal all over again. Hotmail was once great as well. To mimize risks, I use my own domains as addresses and take frequent backups.
How much is a denarius worth in today's US dollars?
This isn't enough reason for me. You could encrypt your emails if you don't want google to read them.