skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A variety of reasons. First and foremost, the side effects were typically worse than the benefits. For example, I was on Effexor XR for a year. The side effects from that included a lovely bubble sensation in your brain, sort of a cranial pressure that literally feels like your brain is growing too large for the skull it's contained in. The worst side effect, though, hits when you forget to take it. You get these things called "brain shivers" where moving your eyeballs causes an electric shock sensation in your brain. The more days you miss, the worse this gets, to the point that you are unable to get out of your bed because the slightest movement of your head results in a mildly painful shock.

Zoloft, on the other hand, is much more mild, but didn't really put a dent in it.

The benzo's were helpful, but are highly addictive. I still carry Klonopin around with me for those times when it's real thick, but I only use it as a last resort.

The most beneficial thing, for anyone suffering from anxiety, is CBT therapy as it teaches you a set of tools for navigating the anxiety and minimizing the impact of panic attacks. To me, that's far more sustainable than being a guinea pig for Pfizer. With CBT, you learn how to tackle it head on and come out on top. It takes some time, but it's doable.

For anxiety, in general, I see the AD's being used until you get to a point with CBT that you can handle it without. The long term impact of AD's are still unknowns, and their efficacy is constantly challenged. If you can get control without that dependancy, the better off you'll be. That's just my opinion though.

As for the marijuana, it took some trial and error to discover what worked there. In the last six months or so, I smoke significantly less than I used to, in fact I haven't smoked probably in the last three months, save a few times at parties or hanging with friends and playing Killzone 2. It has it's own set of problems though, but in contrast to all the other medications I've been on, it's been the most effective with the least side effects.
First, it's dangerous to give up psychotropics without a doctor's plan of attack. People that commit suicide and who take them are often found to be going cold-turkey when the incident occurs.

Second, I've found that when I've lived where pot is legal, that it has a similar effect for me. When I was really tightly wound at the end of the day, it helped me relax, shift my perspective and I could usually fall asleep in minutes.
Good luck.

I suspect that a 1percent loss of neurons would probably still create a reasonable approximation for who you where. You might forget some childhood memory's etc, but the human brain is extremely redundant (unlike software) so it's not a error prone as we might think. IMO, The real issue would be avoiding creating lot's of false connections lest we wake of with even more fake memory's.
Biology is very much a show-me science and I've always wondered about Society of Mind ... what's his proof?

I mean seriously, is it all just reasoned out? Is it like philosophy?
The other two are both still on the front page, but here you go anyway:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=531424
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=531880
Somewhere, stallman is laughing heartily.
High-powered mathematicians take on free will
It is unfortunate re the negative point. My story shared was to expose a distraction from focusing on being depressed.. find a another point-of-view. I intended to share the possibility of how one can focus on the negative or the positive aspects of one's day in every moment. Reflect and find balance during your day. Start by noticing and articulating the positive moments in your day, what did fill you up? Start with simple things. Did that toast for breakfast taste wonderful. Did you look out the window and see the sky.. beautiful or amazing. Learn a new language. Re-program your thought patterns. Re-compile how you see your day. It is not always about the BIG goals and changes. Aiming for BIG all the time will deplete you and leave you emptied. Take the time to find balance in seeing life, life has tiny moments too. Like writing code one character at a time... just might add up to a more fulling life.
An interesting fact of history I learned (sorry I don't have a reference readily at hand) is that about one-third of European immigrants who settled in America eventually moved back to Europe. That experience of a different culture probably promoted many of the social changes in Europe during the nineteenth century. Among my own ancestors, I have ancestors whose family name reveals that they were people of moderately high social standing who came to America en masse (whole towns moving together as "colonies") because they dissented from Bismarck's policies upon the unification of Germany, particularly his state control of religious organizations and militarization of the country. I have about equally many European ancestors who simply left Europe because they were wretchedly poor, leaving the two countries (Ireland and Norway) that experienced the greatest population loss to emigration experienced by any European countries. They all had to learn to be more self-organizing once they arrived to North America than they had been in Europe, because the social and economic structure here was still developing.
To be fair, this is kinda how many b2b companies work - not just this one. At my work, we get vendors that promise everything, charge a ton and we set up all our data in their product, deliver on less than half of what they claimed and by that point it's too late/expensive to move away from them.

It's why I don't trust enterprise vendors. They make their money of few, very high margin sales. They claim things like "support packages", but really that's just a way to let IT managers pass the blame onto someone else - your users can blame the vendor rather than blaming you (even though you chose the vendor)

It's dangerous to work with any company to whom losing you as a client would radically alter their finances. To illustrate the difference: if I cancel a 37signals-style app at $40/mo, sure they loose money and they don't want that, but it doesn't really alter their financial picture. They don't need to lay off staff or adjust salaries or anything. If my business terminates our contract for one of our "enterprise" packages, that company is losing $50,000+. At that point, they might need to let people go. Someone is probably losing a huge sales commission that will significantly impact their life. They're going to do everything to prevent that. Since actually creating a quality product is difficult, they tend toward lock-in and promises. So when the IT manager is asked "why are we still using this horrible product?" they can say, "it would cost so much more to transfer out since all our data is in it and we can't get it out without essentially re-doing all that data entry" and, "they've promised XYZ that will fix things in 6 months." By the 6 month mark, the IT director can pass the blame onto the company saying, "how was I supposed to know they wouldn't deliver?" if anyone still remembers.

I'm sorry you got snagged by such a bad company, but there are many worse companies out there. Always beware of any company that can't lose you as a customer. People think that means they'll get good service from them. Really, it means that they'll use any underhanded trick to keep you on the hook hoping that you won't take the steps to rid yourself of them - for example, once you give functionality, it's very hard to take it back and if we had offered lots of options and moved down to 4 within our firm, we'd never hear the end of it, right decision or not.
It can't be both? The percieved benefits of protectionism, combined with the squelching of unsavoury opinions and other content must be very appealing.
Your experience conflicts sharply with mine; maybe you're thinking about a different tier of ISP.
Actually, you can blame this one directly on political fear. Recently, video footage of Chinese police savagely beating prone Tibetan protesters got posted onto YouTube. Next thing you know, WHAM! Blocked.

There's a lot of precedent for this, too. The government blocked the whole iTunes store when a music single with the word "Tibet" in it hit the front page. They frequently ban news sites whenever news from Tibet (especially negative news) hits. It doesn't last forever, though. After things simmer down, they'll usually lift the general block and just keep targeted blocks on specific stories or pages.

I'm hoping YouTube comes back soon. Sometimes domains that were totally banned spontaneously become free and clear. Any blogs hosted by Wordpress were blocked until this last week. Now, no problem. Same thing with Andrew Sullivan's blog, and half a dozen other sites. I think it's just to keep people guessing.
I think you are likely correct. I kill quite a few neurons with a night of heavy drinking and indeed do "mis-remember" what happened in reality.

Brains are very redundant (as you mentioned) and they are also dynamic. The way I remember an event now will probably be different than the way I remember the same event 10 years from now.

Thanks for the wishes of good luck. I figure its worth a shot, although I have doubts that it will work. Plus, being burned to ashes or being put under dirt does not really appeal to me.
This is from the FAQ on the EcoDrain website:

When my drain clogs, I use chemical and/or bacterial
cleaners to unclog it. Is it safe to use these with the
EcoDrain?

The EcoDrain is corrosion resistant and it is as safe to
use chemical and bacterial cleaners with the EcoDrain
as it is for the rest of the piping.

The FAQ also says there is a non-stick coating to help prevent buildup inside the unit.
I think because of the rambling style and punctuation, and lack of paragraphs, it looks like some sort of spam comment.

Try using paragraphs more, and your posts will be more likely to be upvoted.
Yes, now do that at several million packets per second.
This is hardly big news. Sites rotate in and out of being blocked all the time. wikipedia, wordpress.com, news.bbc.co.uk, etc. have all been blocked at one point or another.

The only mainstream site that's been consistently blocked is bbc news. Interestingly, no US news outlets are blocked. It always makes me wonder why.

Also, the major cities tend to have more liberal access policies than more remote areas.
Netflix Finds Value In Contrarian Approach
Ask YC: I want to build a SNS, Should I start from Ning/Forum?
Hello YC,
I think SNS website is a kind of forum.
If I don't have special features for the target community yet, should I start from Ning or Forum(vbb,phpbb..etc) to save time and test the market?

Thank you.
We have 10 EC2 servers. We use a front end proxy for traffic management, and multiple App servers behind it. We have 2 db servers (master and slave), a couple memcached servers, and a mail server.
Interesting article - I was affected by the apps outage which only lasted about 1hour, so it was not that big of an issue. I suppose more than anything, the biggest concern for Google are software bugs as opposed to hardware issues...

Puts perspective on when we make updates to our production server! Although the scale is obviously exponentially larger for google, outages and bugs makes us all stress out in a similar manner ;)
That's why ISPs automate this process, with homebrew tools and by instrumenting their backbones (with things like 1:1000 netflow).
I think you have already honed in on the basics: "You have to actually do it". If it seems like there are too many things to try and they all look appealing, you just need to understand yourself better and self observation will help you there.

You are wrong to suggest that we grow to like anything life forces us to do. If you have an analytical mind, a job flipping burgers or pressing buttons as a tester is never going to satisfy you. You might be able to change the job to something you like more (e.g. write test scripts) but that's a whole other topic.

Some additional things I have learnt that may be useful for you are: (1) There is no one thing predestined to be your calling in life, there are several things you may like. (2) If you really want something, you'll usually get it eventually or find something that you like better.

It is useful to set a long term goal based on what you know you like so far and at least initially, while you are still in college, it is useful to state it broadly but don't tie yourself to a specific way of getting to that goal.

For example, I know I enjoy coding, technology, business and teaching. There are several combinations of these that could end up being my calling. The specific image I may have in mind is to work as an engineer / technical entrepreneur now and become a teacher later in life, but I am sure there are other configurations where I would be able to satisfy all of my urges (e.g. a venture capitalist who focuses on technology and guides entrepreneurs and writes code for fun a.k.a pg).

Your short term or "localized in time" options are always going to be restricted by your circumstances. You pick the best out of those options based partly on your understanding of yourself which will evolve with time (use pg's suggestions above/below) and (rarely) on your current needs. (e.g. You may have to choose a higher paying job to repay some loans even though you like the other one) but if you keep your long term goal in sight and don't lose hope on that, you'll be able to steer your way to it even if you get diverted temporarily by short term needs.
The Sun for Tech Jobs Rises in the East
I appreciate the paragraph, and punctuation suggestions. ;-D
A Self-Writing To-Do List
I can definitely empathize with this. I don't know exactly when I stopped feeling the way the author describes, but it happened somehow.

I think living in California has been good for me - there's definitely an emphasis on living well here. I find it easier to take pleasure in the simple things now - hiking especially. Also I often get this "wow, I'm living in the future" feeling these days, which always makes me very happy.
That has to be one of the shortest, least informative articles I've ever read about YCombinator.

Budget cuts at FastCompany?
Not very consoling for an unemployed NY programmer. But I'll take any good news I can find.

"Demand in New York is off 44 percent versus March last year. The decline is not surprising given the number of financial services firms in the N.Y. area. However, there are still more than 5,000 open positions in New York on any given day, making it one of our larger markets."

When Dice talks about 5000 open positions I wonder what percentage are duplications from multiple recruiters and agencies posting the same position.
The Project Plan at http://code.google.com/p/unladen-swallow/wiki/ProjectPlan is way more interesting than the linked Google code page.
Dean Edwards on Callbacks vs Events
Jessica wishes the world to know she is 8 months pregnant in that picture, not just fat.
I can speak for myself. Wellbutrin made me paranoid, and Lexapro and Effexor had less serious but still life-altering side effects. Neither were worth the minor improvement in mood. (Further, they just make me incredibly apathetic.)

I'm glad that anti-depressants work for others, but I'm not willing to spend years going from side effect to side effect just to find the right drug which will probably stop working after a while.
OK, thanks. In Germany the Baader-Meinhof name is firmly associated with terrorism. (And that's where the phenomen got its name from, too.)
I wonder if this has any connection to the huge popularity of the "grass-mud horse" online, particularly on youtube?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/12/world/asia/12beast.html?em
Cocos2d for iPhone: An open source framework for building 2D games for the iPhone
OT/separate question, but how would you recommend a new company venture into the enterprise software model? There will always be a first customer a startup would need that would be critical to the finances/bottom line
Yeah I only submitted it because I thought it was cool that YC landed in Fast Company (I'm a subscriber). And I didn't expect to see Paul, Trevor and Jessica while in my porcelain office yesterday.
Interesting article, however I would say that five lines of C++ code per neuron is pretty optimistic considering the amount of work going into modeling a neuron in the blue brain project; http://seedmagazine.com/designseries/henry-markram.html

Also I remember reading in Code Complete that the space-shuttle software had zero defects per 500,000 lines of code by combining formal development methods, peer reviews, and statistical testing. Not really sured how they 'proved' there were zero defects, but I'm sure you could get the number far lower than 1 per 100 lines.
It's from the style-over-substance part of Fast Company. In the magazine, the photo is full page with the article superimposed.
Ask YC: How much to charge for iPhone app development?
I have a client that I pitched an iPhone app to, and they are pretty interested in the idea to develop their brand.

I wanted to know what the standard iphone app dev price would be? Do you guys charge hourly? With a flat rate? Or what?

Right now, I am thinking a flat fee of $50,000 or $100/hour for 4-6 weeks (how long the app development should take). Are these reasonable prices?
A worthy goal, though I would have rather they just work based off of Python 3.0. By the time they achieve real, substantial progress, the momentum should be securely in 3.0's favor.
hourly. unless you need to develop a portfolio for yourself, always charge hourly, but be very clear on the scope, expectations and cost with your client.

charging by the project decouples your time with your income, which devalues it.

imho, of course.
But what happens if (especially in this environment) you can't raise money? Are you now legally on the hook to repay the loan?
The same figures could well apply to many hosting companies though, and they don't have the insurance. Just an example.

Hosting companies have actual, real expenses, such as hardware dedicated to each customer.

I don't believe it's a rip-off anymore. Yes, you can still pay $1000 for a cert. You can also pay $100. Is $100 too much? For something you couldn't make for yourself without several million dollars or 'just' a few hundred thousand and 5+ year wait before being able to use it?

I don't know what kind of kool-aid you've been drinking but these are the structures that I'm criticizing. That's why I'm calling for legislation. Verisign and friends should be put out of business today rather than tomorrow. They have proven maliciously incompetent for long enough, really.

They should be replaced with one government-operated CA per country. The government has better tools to validate identity than any privately held company anyways.

Moreover this would finally enable Joe Sixpack to make meaningful guesses about which websites to trust. Countries would quickly grow a reputation for certifying scammers or not. Browsers could offer customizable CA ratings where, for example, a site certified by Nigeria triggers a popup warning.

The CAs could further establish multi-country validation for more trust. I.e. "this cert has been signed by USA and France".

None of this is possible with the current oligopoly of "Verisign", "Thawte" and friends. Despite their insane revenue they're not even trying to improve the situation. They're not just slowing progress, they're actively pushing it backwards with brainfarts like those colored address-bars.

All for the sole purpose of making the money-printer run even faster.
The C10K problem - scaling servers to 10,000+ clients
The basic premise of writing a model for the entire human brain in software is bunk. The general idea, as I understand it, is to write a piece of software that simulates the biochemical processes that happen in the brain, with the neurons themselves being represented by some sort of graph.

Basically, the 'brain-in-a-jar', except the jar is virtualized.
this is a test. I think you have already honed in on the basics: "You have to actually do it". If it seems like there are too many things to try and they all look appealing, you just need to understand yourself better and self observation will help you there.

You are wrong to suggest that we grow to like anything life forces us to do. If you have an analytical mind, a job flipping burgers or pressing buttons as a tester is never going to satisfy you. You might be able to change the job to something you like more (e.g. write test scripts) but that's a whole other topic.

Some additional things I have learnt that may be useful for you are: (1) There is no one thing predestined to be your calling in life, there are several things you may like. (2) If you really want something, you'll usually get it eventually or find something that you like better.

It is useful to set a long term goal based on what you know you like so far and at least initially, while you are still in college, it is useful to state it broadly but don't tie yourself to a specific way of getting to that goal.

For example, I know I enjoy coding, technology, business and teaching. There are several combinations of these that could end up being my calling. The specific image I may have in mind is to work as an engineer / technical entrepreneur now and become a I think you have already honed in on the basics: "You have to actually do it". If it seems like there are too many things to try and they all look appealing, you just need to understand yourself better and self observation will help you there.

You are wrong to suggest that we grow to like anything life forces us to do. If you have an analytical mind, a job flipping burgers or pressing buttons as a tester is never going to satisfy you. You might be able to change the job to something you like more (e.g. write test scripts) but that's a whole other topic.

Some additional things I have learnt that may be useful for you are: (1) There is no one thing predestined to be your calling in life, there are several things you may like. (2) If you really want something, you'll usually get it eventually or find something that you like better.

It is useful to set a long term goal based on what you know you like so far and at least initially, while you are still in college, it is useful to state it broadly but don't tie yourself to a specific way of getting to that goal.
NEW END.
The one thing I've found that has helped me the most is exercise. I wouldn't have believed it myself and most of the evidence I have is just my own subjective experience, but there is one incident that stands out where one day my boss mentioned that my attitude had completely changed for the better at some point. I didn't think it had, but apparently there was enough of a change for him to mention the observation. Of course, I can't say for sure it was the result of exercise, but I couldn't place it on anything else I had been doing at that point. It was enough to convince me that exercise is something I just need to do regularly.
Now that China Is the New Israel, What’s Israel?
Looks like my plan for my all-black outfit to have a "slimming" effect backfired :)
More detail here: http://www.startatspark.com/start/start-index.html
You're right about Turkey, it's no free trade issue here.

The bans are about our archaic laws allowing anyone to claim any site for being a threat to our national unity. And these lawsuits usually end up with banning the whole thing. At some point even Blogger.com was gone (probably because some smart-ass didn't like one post and issued a suit).

And as for the inaccuracy of the write up, Youtube's status is quite flaky because of all the lawsuits against it - one after another. Even we lost the track of what's going on there - let alone the poor guy :)
Is $100/hour a reasonable rate? I read that was the standard for iphone developers?