skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
We only have to destroy ourselves once for it to matter.
Windows 7 may face 'Vista Capable'-like backlash
Hehehe, I had forgot completely about the Z80 computers.
Let's put it this way: _every_ home has a TV. Add mesh networking and you can actually wire-up whole cities with 20 bucks devices. This is soo cool.

Ok, I'm not saying this is what it does. For what we know, it could be completely crap. But, just imagine:

- You have 30 dollar box - so you can put about as much brain-power in it as a router.

- For really poor countries, LCD screens are a waste when you have TV. So, you just throw in a TV-out, which was cheap 20 years ago.

- From my experience in wiring relatively "wild" places, if you have boxes plugged in a power socket, the people will put the actual wire the place themselves. That's if you don't have OLPC's mesh networking.

This stupid-looking white box could do most for developing countries then anything else in the last 10 years. Except of course mobile phones.
No; the default is decay (as we see from the second law of thermodynamics), and we would have to explicitly inhibit decay in order to stop death. There is no evolutionary incentive to stop death due to aging.
Interactive Html Development with Emacs and Mozrepl
The buzzword did not yet exist, but the pattern of keeping stuff online did (even though it was not as popular as now).
I totally disagree with this. First of all, Joel is an idiot. I think this is fact. I think we all know this, and those of us who don't know yet will find out sooner or later.

More importantly, this whole "how to disagree" thing is about extending courtesy. Joel Spolsky dissing Kent Beck is like a four-year-old piddling on a real pioneer's foot. Beck did Spolsky more courtesy than Spolsky deserved just by responding at all.

A lot of people on the Internet don't seem to realize that when one person disrupts another's day with attacks or what have you, that other person might have other things going on that are more important to them than responding to the Internet crap, or which require so much time that no time remains for responding to Internet crap.

The subtext in "How To Disagree" is "you have to show me respect if you want to debate something with me." That's perfectly reasonable. But starting a fight with somebody out of the blue isn't about rational, adult disagreement.

Besides, dude, he's responding to something somebody said. It's not his fault you know about it. He didn't publicize it to you, and for you to judge him based on his failure to provide you with context, when it's you going to his site, that makes no sense at all. Be mad at Hacker News for linking to something you don't know about, or be mad at yourself for clicking links automatically and wasting your own time. I mean there's no logic in holding that against Beck at all.
"removing death" seems to the the absolute extreme position in this discussion. It also seems the most unlikely in the next couple hundred years. It seems that this is the thing you have the most problem with -- the selfish, immature attitude of wanting to never die.

I got the gist of what you were saying, but it doesn't track with me. Of course people don't want to die: that's the whole idea of being alive. Not dying. Sounds silly, but you can't be alive unless you really have an aversion to dying. Else you'd jump off a house roof or something to see what it was like to fly and that would be that.

If you feel some threshold is going to be crossed where we're non-human -- and we're not already there -- then I think it's up to you to define where that is. It would help advance the argument. We could discuss what attributes of humanity we lose when we cross that line. Otherwise all we have is the extreme case -- never dying -- and that's nowhere near being on the table as a realistic possibility.

I'm 43, so that makes me half-way there, more or less. Of course I could kick it tomorrow. Would I like to live to be 250? Well heck, I liked living to 43, and that's a lot more than my great ancestors could have done.

Imagine what somebody from 10,000 BC would think of us: living to 110 sometimes, having major parts like hips replaced with plastic parts. Artificial hearts, animal organ transplants in the near future, medicine that makes you frisky when you're 90. Seems to me we've already passed the point of being non or trans-human. We're already in this world that longevity research opponents describe.
My experience so far with BackType has been decent. I'd love to see it integrated with a service like Google Analytics since conversations are becoming a more significant part of analytics these days.
Death is probably what is driving us towards all our progress, after all if you live forever why do anything today, you might as well put it off until tomorrow.

Fear of death is a natural thing, just as natural as dying.

Long term my money is on the grim reaper, he'll just have to get a bit more inventive in case we breed out of control. If we haven't already passed that point.
Hi Tony,

Given that I had made my decision the timing was going to be harsh whenever it was.

Acquisition from start to finish can be quite time consuming, so I could have been +/- 2 months and the timing would have been equivalently good/bad.

Hard to say effect, nothing is confirmed till the money is in the bank :). Me leaving definitely changed the outcome. Happy it still went through; all parties are happy and Clickpass found a good home.
I wonder how many families in India have a TV.
I don't know that increasing longevity would decrease diversity, because increased longevity doesn't necessarily open up the "window of opportunity" for having kids.
Need a descriptive catchphrase under your logo. I like how you have lots of whitespace but it feels empty, need to add more content, especially on the right side.

It's not immediately apparent how your app is different from a blog...

And I agree that you should choose a single brand for your site, either Glogger or PeerViewr. See here: http://blog.weatherby.net/2009/02/yes-master.html
How do you breed the jellyfish? I always thought you just catch them in the wild.
Most species have far more limited resources than we do (ie. that we have created for ourselves recently), and they exist in some sort of equilibrium. If old members of the population live longer, then the group will run short on resources and some will starve. If the old are not feeble and they don't die more than the young, then evolution will slow and the population as a whole will be less able to adapt to a changing environment over time.

Is this effect significant or not? I don't think we can guess at these types of things. Subtle changes in a complex system are hard to predict.
That's was the reason why google shutdown Dodgeball!

There were lot of other start ups with similar services that are going to struggle due to this service.
.
We draw the line in the same place it's always been: at stuff that's interesting to the intellectually curious. Designing a better frying pan would definitely be on topic. Perhaps not municipal pension systems, if most of the constraints you have to satisfy are political ones.
Notice the word 'many' above.

There aren't very many basic processes of aging:

* Glycation
* Mitochondrial decay
* Oxidative stress
* Pathological inflammation
* Organ decline

Perhaps I am forgetting one. Were you thinking of superficial aging-processes? Which ones?
How do you use Aquamacs on a MacBook without a right Control key?
If you liked running Emacs under X11 then you'll probably like Carbon/Cocoa Emacs. There are binaries available:

http://atomized.org/wp-content/cocoa-emacs-nightly/

http://aquamacs.org/nightlies.shtml
What cloud? She wasn't even paying for the service...
Short-term relief for NZ exporters
I've been using Emacs for 20 years, and fully converted my desktops to Mac last year.

I like Aquamacs OK with option->meta and caps lock -> control like you have. With that setup, it's a bit of a twist to get my pinky finger onto meta, but it's tolerable on my Microsoft Natural keyboard.

The biggest nuisance is that I can't figure out how to bind function keys. I liked having F2 = goto-line (rather M-g g) and F3 = compile.

After 20 years of Emacs, I've actually started to like Cmd-c and Cmd-v rather than C-k and C-y.

Also, the scroll wheel on the Mighty Mouse works pretty well in Aquamacs. Though you do have to clean the scroll wheel (by rolling it around on your pants) every few days.
Better Marketing, Messaging & Business for 2009
It might or might not. We have women having children now at ages that would be considered absolutely ancient 10,000 years ago. As we extend our lifespan, we seem to stretch out everything ... childhood, child bearing years, productive years, etc. My point is that, it doesn't matter, since we no longer submit to evolution's rules, anyway.
Whether or not working from home is good or not really depends on your situation.

I have a 40 minute commute to and from work which I use to read the papers or a book. I have an official 'work-from-home' day (Wednesday) and the option to work from home other days if there's nothing at the office that requires my attention.

However, I usually just go in to the office every Wednesday and only sometimes use the work-from-home-any-day option.

I happen to like the work environment we have. I have a nice clean office space with a big desk, two large monitors, good lighting, a comfortable chair, a kitchen with food and drinks, a rec room with couches and a pool table and whiteboards everywhere.

I am frequently interrupted, but half the time it's by fellow coders working on different problems who want to bounce some ideas off of me. There's an unwritten protocol for programmers interrupting programmers where I work. You walk by and say 'hey'. You get a 'hey' back and if the programmer doesn't turn back to the monitor, they're usually open for interruption. Or they might suck you into whatever problem they're working on.. :)

The other half of the interruptions are from the operations, business, sales and management side. These can be very annoying and consume a lot of time, but I encourage them (up to a point). For one, they provide a good finger on the pulse of the wider company operations. They keep a level of transparency between software development and the other areas of the company. They're also good for social cohesion (a 'we' feeling as opposed to 'us and them').

Interaction just works better face-to-face. The pool table we have, for example, is rarely used for actual games. Usually it's used by two or three people that are discussing something and just making a few shots while doing it. Or just goofing off for a bit.

Of course, I also have to get some code done. I can manage my time and do this, but I also have a lot of freedom in this respect. If you're working with a boss who micro-manages you, eh.. well .. that's a different story. (I suggest getting another job. I've been there and it sucked).
I use Carbon Emacs because Cocoa Emacs has a black square in the center of the frame for the visual bell. Also, there's no visual separator between windows when you have your scroll bar/fringes turned off. Aquamacs is too exotic.
And because you will by default be lazier than you should be, sit back right now and think of some worst-case scenarios that would screw up the projects you're currently working on, and write down what you need to do to avoid those. Living out the disaster scenario in your head may preempt living it out in reality.

Because right now my backup harddrive broke and my checking account is in the red, my personal lazy backup system for day-to-day important files is Dropbox: http://www.getdropbox.com/

If I'm missing an obvious free solution that doesn't require me dragging folders into Dropbox every day or two, please let me know.
Just use a regular flat shovel or an ice breaker.

Also, this season I've been diligent about shoveling early and often. It saves time in the long run. Luckily we live on a hill, and our snow has some potential energy.

I'm growing to really hate New England weather btw.
That's a bad idea. Where is the power stored? Are you supposed to slowly carve through the snow? Also, I'd rather not melt the snow, as it turns to ice when refrozen.
It sounds like we've just had differing experiences. The lightbulb question is a good one.

In my experience, however, most questions are either riddles which you get or don't, or so contrived they'd be easier to explain formally. Good story problems are like rare gems.

Beyond that, phrasing something as a story doesn't solve the problem of people nitpicking, it just changes what they nitpick about. Just read the comments on a blog I wrote a year ago about the lightbulb puzzle: http://20bits.com/articles/interview-questions-two-bowling-b...

For me it boils down to this: I'm interested in good problem solvers, not good puzzle solvers. Being able to solve puzzles is at best a weak indicator of being able to solve problems. I'd rather spend my time looking for stronger signals.
Digital photo keyrings are around $10: eg
http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/2023270/art/vtec/digital-pho...

One guy hacked one (different model), and found its CPU was a 6502 (same as Apple 2e). I don't think linux runs on that, as no memory protection.
http://spritesmods.com/?art=picframe&page=1

http://picframe.spritesserver.nl/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Getting cheaper all the time - how long til it disrupts PC/windows/intel?
I wouldn't try to change the shovel. It works just fine. Maybe it could use a robot attached to it to automate the process, but both perception and mobility in snow are hard problems.

I would try to solve the snow-elimination problem. What the hell do you do with it all?

I think something creative with Fresnel lenses, charcoal powder, and thin films would work well.
Ask HN: Favorite board games?
I find that most of the hackers I know tend to enjoy board games, especially designer board games. I thought it'd be interesting to see what everyone is playing. I'm always ready to pick up and learn a new game that's been recommended to me. Do you play? What games are your favorites? Any really obscure games that you like?

Currently my favorite game is Carcassonne. Other games I usually play are Ticket to Ride and Settlers (of course). I just bought Memoir '44 and am anxious to play my first game of it.
Someone really ought to organize one of these for somewhere along the lines of Chicago of St Louis. I'd love to make it to one of these meetups, but all the ones I've seen so far have been too far for me to travel at the moment.
KFC has a cheap laptop too. I think its $4.

http://kids.kfc.com/
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/06/02/stories/20050...

It's from 2005, so you'll have to adjust for changes in population.

"The total number of TV sets owned by households in India is around 60 million".

TV ownership is about 3% higher than refrigerator ownership, it's a matter of priorities, information = knowledge = a chance to get ahead in life.
Hmm, not without space colonization to match the demand for real estate and natural resources.
Warren buffets advice for 2009
POSIX concurrency go through
I'm in Canada and I don't. I'll admit it's not the majority, though.
Wow, it's the buddy system for backup! That's a great solution to the psychological barrier: usually, no one but you can tell you to backup your personal data.

I went to a Christian college where everyone was issued laptops, so several of my friends used a special program to share their web histories with "accountability partners." Then they could monitor each other's porn use, ideally to keep them from looking at any porn. Having backup buddies reminds me of that (without the scary religious suppression of natural urges).

In fact, I might be better at making sure my friend shows me photos of his family than making sure I back up my own. Of course, that's one thing cloud computing was supposed to solve in the first place.
Ask HN: HN Gathering in Silicon Valley?
I recently moved to Silicon Valley and I am looking to meet some new people in the area. Having followed Hacker News for some time, I thought this might be a good place to find some like-minded individuals (e.g., entrepreneurs, developers, etc). If you are interested in an informal gathering, to network and share ideas with fellow HNers, somewhere on the Peninsula (e.g., Palo Alto) or in the south Bay (e.g., San Jose), please let me know. If there is sufficient interest, I will coordinate a day/time and location (so if you express interest, please make sure to check the comment thread). Thanks everyone!
With DoubleCommand, you can bind the right "Enter" key to be Control. (On my MBP at least... I assume macbooks are the same)
Not much. It's hard to tell, given that the definition is somewhat vague.
tl;dr: Microsoft lets Product Managers own features, and their PMs are just engineers with different hats, so as a result MS products are badly designed.

I find this entirely unconvincing. The crux of the author's argument is that because PMs have engineering backgrounds, when development goes up against usability (whatever that means) usability loses.

Well, I doubt MS makes a practice of hiring PMs incapable of doing their jobs. I also don't see why a technical person should be considered incapable of assessing usability. In my (admittedly limited) experience, non-technical HCI people are sometimes worse at designing interfaces than programmers, whatever the oh so amusing stereotype might be. As a counterexample: While MSFT has about double the PM:Dev ratio of Google, Google PMs nearly always come from CS backgrounds too...and I don't think the author would make the same accusations about Google that he makes about MS.
Risk, Settlers of Catan, Puerto Rico

Someone just set up an Atlanta startup community board game night where we get startup-minded folks to play strategy board games like these once a quarter.
This. This this this.

I check Facebook a lot. Possibly too much. Partly it's because I'm in college and it's winter and so I spend most of my time sitting in front of the computer as-is, partly it's because I'm sure I do have a bit of an addiction problem. But for the last 6 months I've used it with only 50 or so friends: people who are close to me. One friend is in Argentina. Some friends are across the country. We keep in touch and tell each other things using Facebook. It's faster than using email, and it's less awkward than calling. (I hate the sound of a person over the phone, and some people I just don't talk to.)

But it doesn't turn you into a monster unless you let it. You don't have to poke or use applications. You don't have to incessantly update your status. Facebook doesn't force it. In fact, it punishes you a bit in that it adds clutter to the interface.

I find it kind of sad that this is the tripe Newsweek sees fit to print nowadays. I stopped reading their paper magazine over the summer, because I was astonished at how, in the two years I read it, it had gone from a pretty decent magazine to a publication interested in sensationalism and petty stories. It seems the trend has continued.
Aging is bad because it hurts quality of life. Right now, people live longer than their bodies can perform at full capacity. Most people would prefer to remain healthy for their entire lives. No matter how ready someone is to die, no one wants to spend ten years in a nursing home. So everyone could find a way to die before then, or they could find a way to stay healthy even if that doesn't increase their life expectancy. You can guess which option is more likely to catch on.

The argument over whether we should fight aging is one worth having, but only as a philosophical exploration. The reality is that we always have fought aging, and we always will, because those who think otherwise have a tendency to die first.
On the radio recently, I heard that Spain is improving its rail infrastructure so that all cities will be within four hours of train travel from Madrid in the next five years - that's 2014.

That made me realize that if Kurzweil's extrapolations towards a singularity are roughly right, the imminent-singularity± world will look a lot like the world looks now. Roads will be much the same, people wont have their houses rebuilt, office buildings will be similar. It will be all the technology inside that's different.

If you've read Vernor Vinge's latest novel, Rainbow's End, that feels like a fairly convincing future. Mostly augmented reality, fewer user serviceable parts, and improved medical technology.

±imminent-singularity implies a sharp switch. That's not how I think of it - it's more a series of concentric circles - singularity event horizons, future-shock waves emanating back into the past - that we are already in, and have always been in, where each one marks a point where enough quantitative change has happened to make a qualitative change that would be difficult to predict from before the change. The imminent-singularity refers to the fact that they are getting closer together, and as more of them happen in less time, the cumulative effects are that much stronger and faster, leading to a techno-sonic-boom.

The key changes to hurry along "the singularity" are changes to hurry along new and better kinds of thought. As Alan Kay(?) said, computers are tools for thinking, so I think it's right to look at computing/IT for the changes with the most impact.

Significant AI work will, I think, be software based, or biological designed with software. Significant nanotechnology design will be done with lots of aid from computers. Significant collaborative work will be done with the help of future telecoms infrastructure. Significant sharing and spreading of ideas will be telecoms related.

Plumbing, railroads, highways ... A new kind of collaborative shower? Trains that run even if there are leaves on the line? What kind of technological change do you think would make major differences? I think something along the lines of personal communications tech would make the most difference, e.g.:

- An open API for all train and bus timetables and up to date changes. Imagine being in an unfamiliar city, opening Google maps. It finds your location, you click where you want to go, it finds a bus/underground route for you, next few buses, option to buy a ticket.

- Local area networking such that you walk into an airport, your phone knows which flight you need so arrows appear on it and show you where to go in the airport. Over here, down there, to this checkin, then to that lounge.

The technological changes that I think will make a difference are in people and bureaucracy and communication, not in roads and rail themselves.
I can do that right now, in quick blurb format.

* Don't accept a friend request from somebody you're not interested in as a person.

* Keep friends with the people that have cameras. Memories are wonderful things to have, and your friends may have more pictures than you do.

* Don't update your status unless you've got something interesting to say.

* If you poke somebody, ask them out later that week. Do not poke somebody you've been friends with for longer than a month.

* Tag people in notes sparingly. Don't tag people who aren't fans of "pass it along" notes.

* Only add applications that add value to your experience.

* If you see a news story in your feed from somebody you aren't interested in, unfriend them. Possibly write them an apology if they're somebody you think you might friend again later.

* If you're friends with Scoble, ignore all these, tag in as many notes as possible, tag photos of your pets with his name so he sees them, and poke, SuperPoke, and Poke-a-mon him to your heart's desire.

Any publishers interested? ;-)