skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
A lot of random ideas came into my head when I read this, so this post may not be very organized, and I may write another, better one, later.

Rather than suggest a particular activity, I would say broaden your world view (this, typically, is one thing where being white and born in the US usually puts you at a disadvantage).

Most societies develop norms that people take for granted. In a sense, the norms aren't! They only apply to that society and like minded ones.

There are lots of social problems in the US. Homelessness, hunger, obesity, medical issues, prison population (highest per capita, I believe), etc. Many Americans take a number of these issues as granted: It is assumed that a given society will always have these problems, and that they can't be solved.

Simply. Not. True!

These problems are almost always a byproduct of the values of the society. To solve them, one needs to adjust those values, preferably without compromising others of equal or greater importance. And it's hard to realize which values need to be adjusted if one only looks at one data point (i.e. the US society)!

Go out there. Travel. Try really hard to understand other societies that are very different from the US. Don't limit it to simply observations. Understand their concept of human relations and note down the similarities and differences to those here.

THEN try to address the problems you see here. Trying to solve them without doing the above is many times harder: You'll be trying to use a bad framework to solve problems (it'll be a bad framework because likely that's the framework that created the problems).

(This is not, BTW, to say that everything is wrong about the US, but likely if there are problems here, it is a result of the culture).

I hate to put some controversy here, but it does sadden me that this country has become so used to engaging in wars and conflict over the decades that average Americans I encounter are fairly apathetic to the violence that the US engenders elsewhere. It's just taken for granted.

If you travel elsewhere (depends on where, though), you'll find that people don't take violent deaths so cavalierly.

This is just an illustration of my point. Grow up in the US and you may end up becoming a very empathetic person who's always anti-war, but you have the cards stacked against you. You need to reflect on other frameworks of thought before you can decide overall what your values should be.

I grew up in Saudi Arabia. A very repressive society. Yet I am 6-7 times more likely to be imprisoned in the US than I was there. Really think about these points!
According to the economist Bjorn Lomborg AIDS prevention (not healing) is the number one thing we should do. You can see his presentation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtbn9zBfJSs
It seems to me you are missing the point of living in a modern economy - one with currency and the free exchange of goods and services ;)

Yeah, you could go to medical school and "make a difference". However, I'm going to guess (perhaps wrongly) you're not going to go into it for the shear pleasure of medical research, but rather, because you simply want to "help people".

You "want" a lot of things, day to day. Food, shelter, entertainment - the works. But you are not a farmer, nor a construction worker, nor a writer. Instead, you simply do whatever it is that gives you a reasonable tradeoff between marketability and enjoyment. You specialize. You become a programmer and make money (looky there, a lot of it!). Now you can use this money to pay others to full-fill your needs, and the people who receive your money are in turn specialists in their own field, and they can do a FAR better job at providing [food|shelter|entertainment] then you ever will.

The desire to "help people" is no different. You have a desire, and you have an ability to make money. Other people have the ability to satisfy your desire, for money. Pay them to make it happen.

If you go to medical school, you will spend ~$200,000 on it, and more importantly you will forgo MILLIONS of dollars during the time you are studying instead of doing what you're good at (startups, programming, investing, whatever). A million dollars can provide scholarships for 5 bright and promising students who each have a much higher chance of coming up with something that will "change the world" then you do. It's simply a question of efficiency.

Having said that, you do get to be involved at least to some extent. As consumers, we pay others to do the bulk of the work for us, but we still have to make some important decisions: What do we buy? Who do we hire? Who do we delegate responsibility to?

Incidentally, these are very much "investment" decisions, so your background in this area will serve you well. "Invest" in a charity program. Set one up from scratch if none of the existing ones are satisfactory. Gather motivated and qualified people. But beyond that, the best thing you can do is keep working on the things you are best at. A "Web 2.0 AJAX social network blah blah blah application" might seem petty and trivial in the greater scheme of things, but it gives you more power to change the world then most people can dream of.

Imagine you really were a medical researcher and you find out someone you love has cancer. All-nighters can only do so much. You still need to run tests, hire assistants, get software and equipment. Chances are, you won't be able to cure the disease on your own anyway. You'd feel just as impotent.
The bigger question is, "Whose customers will still be in business 10 years from now?"

The dinosaurs that don't survive won't lose to other big boys or foreign competition; they'll have their lunch eaten out from under by up and coming smaller more nimble competitors. And what software will those competitors use to grow? SAP? Oracle? I don't think so.

The future for Software as a Service is bright indeed. Hostage Taking will be replaced with Quality.
They actually have search? I was trying to find an article the other day and looked all over for a search box. I finally had to resort to a Google site search.
Angel Investing Lags in First Half
- They don't like the idea that cut & paste of code snippets will break the code due to significant indentations. Counter-arguments include (1) you should probably beautify the code anyway and check for issues while doing it, (2) code snippets should be in modules with smallish functions.
Thanks, I didn't know that. That makes parenthesis optional unless you need to break precedence rules.
I also had a less than ideal experience while playing with Unbox. During setup it asks for your username and password, but does not verify that they are valid. I mistyped one, and as a result it was unable to download the item I had purchased. This wouldn't be a big deal except that there is no way to change your username and password through the software. I finally figured that the only way to change them was to uninstall the software and then install it again. Unfortunately, the uninstaller is not smart enough to kill the Unbox process before attempting to uninstall, so it hangs indefinitely. I had to make sure Unbox was completely dead before the uninstall would work.

In short, it took much longer than it should have to purchase and watch a video. And all of my troubles could have been avoided with either a simple verification during setup, or an option to change the password somewhere in the software (this may be missing because of DRM restrictions).

The quality of the video was fine, and the download was reasonably fast. The user experience was terrible, as was the UI for the Unbox software.

My parents (smart, but not terribly computer savvy) can purchase and enjoy media via iTunes. They would not be able to use Unbox.
Raytheon finally lives up to its name. (I've always thought they should be in the ray gun business with a name like that.)
How to Do Philosophy
Patterns of leadership; without a doubt.

The programing classes I took I was correcting mistakes on the teachers test. I know programing.

Patterns of leadership was a class about dealing with people (read 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' for an idea of what it covered). This was a class where I learned an incredible amount.
The man with the Y Combinator tattoo
That's actually a valid issue, and not really addressed by the article. Cutting and pasting does occasionally require some extra care.
Books as Software
From the article:

For decades, we treated software like books. We boxed it, wrapped it, bundled it up and shipped it to stores, where it was displayed on windows. While many commercial software products still share several of these elements, the high-street software store has all but disappeared. Its place has been taken by an increasingly agile deployment method, first from obscure FTP servers but now revolutionized in scale and convenience by the Web. So why shouldn't books move in the same direction?
Google Apps Packing a Punch
People's arms would probably get tired, but hell, I'd work out for a device that sexy.
"We have 3,000,000 users, now what?" startup asks
thank you for prioritizing my life. i couldn't have done it without you and your wisdom.
Rethinking platform advantage
Time to "monetize them eyeballs!"
Global Wi-Fi Hotspot Use on the Rise, Driven By Business 
This article from CIO.com details a report from a company called iPass that concludes global Wi-Fi hotspot use is increasing rapidly, due largely to how often businesspeople use it in airports and hotels. The best parts of the story are the two lists at the end that show the top hotels and airports based on Wi-Fi use. Who know Johannesburg, South Africa was a Wi-Fi "hot spot??"
I skipped philosophy and always regretted it, for the same reasons pg mentions (it seems to be the ultimate in reality)

In the last 3 years, however, I've picked up some great philosophy CDs from The Teaching Company. I spent 400 bucks instead of all that tuition, and I learned enough philosophy to really appreciate it.

I agree somewhat and disagree somewhat with Paul's essay. On one hand, pragmatism seems to be the only rational resposne to so much generalizing! And he's right -- philosopher's have continuously pushed the boundaries of language well past the breaking point.

But I think Paul overgeneralizes, which is ironic since that seems to be part of the claim he's making against philosophy. I view the field as really smart people trying to come to grasp ultimate truths on which the rest of science can be constructed. Many times they have succeede, like J.S. Mills, or Newton. Philosophy generates science.

But you can't take it too seriously. Philosophy is like a dance, or a way to play the tuba. If you're having fun with it, and you're generating something of value (I would agree with the life-changing criteria but simply making a buck from geralizing where nobody else did is enough for me) then you're a philosopher. Anybody who's ever sat designing a program where you get that "a ha!" moment, where you realize by generalizing in these few areas you've made a whole new practical and valuable thing, is right up there with Russell in my book. Anybody who has went through requirements sessions, only to have the code still not match the needs because of the slipperiness of language understands Wittgenstein.
As far as I know it does ... the 32bit limitations in Erlang are more about the OS then anything else.
Although unpopular with many people, Ayn Rand approached philosophy in some ways as you are proposing. She strove to discover general principles that, once grasped, change the way one acts. Personally, reading and understanding her philosophy has changed my life and the decisions I make a great deal.

For anyone interested, I have a site http://www.ImportanceOfPhilosophy.com that explains why I think philosophy is so important and which is mainly based on Ayn Rand's philosophy.
First of all, good of you to want to help the world. My suggestion is to learn a holistic healing method (Reiki is the simplest of the lot) and use it to heal whoever you feel like helping. I am a Reiki healer/teacher and have seen amazing improvement in people.
I couldn't read beyond the first section...let me know when the cliff's notes version is available and if its worth reading?
Chernobyl Slime Feeds on Gamma Rays
This will actually make cars handle worse unless it's redesigned in one of two non-trivial ways. The problem is camber: the side-to-side tilt of the wheel and tire. Bringing the top of the wheel closer to the center of the car is called "negative camber" while the opposite is "positive camber". Most modern cars have a little bit of negative camber, which increases as the suspension is compressed. The relationship of compression to camber is called the "camber curve".

When the tire is being deformed by cornering forces, negative camber helps more of the tire stay in contact with the road. When traveling in a straight line, negative camber reduces the tire's contact with the road and increases tire wear. The reduced contact is visible on the left rear tire in the fourth photo.

One solution is to design a suspension with a very fast camber curve and allow minimal compression when cornering. This is similar to what most sports cars already do, and has a couple problems of its own. Such a suspension design is more limited in the distance the wheel can travel upward and has somewhat less traction on bumpy surfaces.

Another solution is to have a separate motor to adjust camber. That's expensive and heavy, but would probably work pretty well.
Did I say something wrong/unacceptable?
I am veggie all my life. Coming to the US was a huge culture shock not being able to find veggie food. Especially if you start your life on the East coast. But I thought people who grew up eating animals can never give up. Whats your story?
This pair of sentences is confusing: "All societies invent cosmologies. Occam's razor suggests their motivation was whatever it usually is."

I can't figure out what the second sentence is trying to tell me. That societies' motivations for inventing cosmologies are their motivations for inventing cosmologies? And what does this have to do with writing in verse rather than prose?
Ugh, Booze Mail. Success is success, but man, how depressing is it that this is popular? It's the "According to Jim" of web apps.
I meant the presocratic philosophers were probably driven by the same motives that drive people in any other society to make up stories about the origins and nature of the world.

I'll see if I can rephrase that...

Edit: I did. Clearer now?
It wasn't a deliberate choice. I just got grossed out by factory farming.
A True YCombinator Fanatic (pic)
There's some similarity. Only this time, the big companies are buying up the little fish early in the game and absorbing them into operations -- which is probably a much saner thing to do than everybody betting they have the next Google.

We're seeing the beginning of "retail startups", where we can spit them out like six packs of Coke, fund them, get them bought up by Amazon or whomever. The industry really wanted to get to this point in '99. They've made a lot of progress since then.
i think him and his team have done a great job with facebook. although he does lack on the public speaking front, he does compensate for it. bill g. was once just an inarticulate, uncharismatic, scrawny geek, but numbers show that he hasn't done too bad for himself.
Google Plans Pacific Cable, Wireless Bid In The UK
The Y combinator
One of the ways I (and others) knock Ayn is that she didn't have an effect on later developments in philosophy. But she did have an effect on people's lives. By pg's definition, is she more relevant -- or is she reheated Nietzsche with some Stirner stirred in?
Val's Chicken Legs:

This tastes great, takes little interactive time to prepare, and stores for at least a week. A cheap and tasty way to cover much of your protein intake or a week.

Ingredients: 4lb chicken thighs or legs, 1 14.5 oz can chicken stock, 4tsp kosher salt, black pepper.

Preheat oven to 375F. Throw chicken in to the baking pan, skin side up. Rub skin with salt and pepper. Pour chicken stock in (should half-cover chicken). Tightly cover the pan with aluminum foil. Back for 1 hour 25 minutes. Remove, put chicken into tupperware, defat the stock and put it together with the chicken. Refrigerate (but serve hot). The dish will remain at prime quality for at least a week in refrigerator.

Total interactive cooking time: 15 mins, no cleanup if you line the pan with foil.

Preferred ingredients: Whole Foods Rosie organic chicken thighs, Shelton's Chicken Broth With Salt and Spices, Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt, freshly ground Penzeys Whole Special Extra Bold Indian Black Peppercorns.
Introduction to Marketing and Securities Law.
how about facebook taking over as the "ultimate social environment" to whatever it is right now?
reason why i throw that out there is because it has many functions all in one: email, photos, IM, etc.
Occam's Razor is a pretty lovely bit of guidance, if not philosophy, that's both general and useful. My college had a great books curriculum, and the few books from the last 100 years changed my thinking as much as all the earlier ones combined. Rawls' veil of ignorance is especially elegant.

One note about modern philosophy, though. One of my cofounders enjoys reading about neuroscience, and I was talking to him about modern philosophy a few months ago. He suggested, quite wisely, that in a few hundred years, the early 21st century work that philosophers read is as likely to come from science-oriented guys like Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett (i.e. the meaningoflife.tv cohort) as it is from traditional philosophers.
Sorry to post twice, but this is a pet topic.

Software is applied philosophy. Where else can you deal with everything that western philosophy offers, from classification to epistemology to the philosophy of language and science -- and at the end of the day produce something that has immediate value for someone? All of this working, real-world stuff we're doing, from heuristics to machine learning and meta-programming -- it's all applied philosophy.
I'm currently a philosophy of science and molecular biology double major, and I have to say I agree with Paul Graham's criticisms of traditional philosophy. None of it really makes sense, and is generally nothing more than someone's opinion. Yet we hold philosophers such as Aristotle in high regard.

Philosophy of science is different from classical philosophy in that it focuses on more concrete aspects. One of the best classes I took was the philosophy of artificial intelligence. We discussed what it is to be conscious, and how we differed from a computer, it at all.

Other classes focused on the history of evolution or relativity and studied how these theories were formed and the arguments from the scientific community against them. While a lot of the readings are books or essays by people simply giving their opinions, I've learned to consider what they have to say, but that it is OK and in fact encouraged to disagree and give your own opinion. Since philosophy cannot be "proven" like a mathematical proof, another's opinions are not any more correct than my own as long as both are formed logically.

What I took from philosophy was not the opinions of the "great philosophers", but rather was the ability to think about things logically and confidently make my own opinions on them.
Saving lives is a noble cause. But the problem of humanity is not to save lives, rather NOT to deliberately take lives of innocent over political and financial gains. If there is a software that can stop the next war, that is what humanity needs.
How is it possible you had enough energy to type such a pointless complaint, but you couldn't be bothered to read a couple of pages?

Would pictures help? Maybe some cartoon animals sounding out the words for you?
First Look at Lenovo's Ultra Green A61e Desktop, with images
Active suspension is the natural language processing of automotive industry -- it's a good idea, and can be made to work well enough in the lab, but just isn't as good as conventional suspension with the same cost.
Sounds more like math than philosophy.
lol.

I am big PG fan, but the non-startup articles don't appeal to me, this in particular.
I agree with you. Ayn Rand basically says:

-People are self interested.

-This is not a bad thing.

I think those are pretty good axioms to build upon. I don't think Rand came up with a grand unified theory of human behavior but she started from the right place... As opposed to our Greek ancestors...
Here's $0.02 from a BioTech programmer.

I've always wanted to change the world. Ever since I was a little kid I wanted to cure something, create a better world. I never wanted anything else.

I never considered med. school - not my skill set. I always knew I was good with computers and that was going to be how I changed the world.

I got a degree in CS and have been working for a bio-informatics startup for the past 4 years.

The Bio stuff is HARD. I work at the bleeding edge of research software and progress is excruciatingly slow.

Here's the chief reason why - money. The cost of starting a web based thingy is crazy low compared to a regular brick and mortar start up. The cost of a regular old brick and mortar startup is crazy low compared to a biotech startup.

So there's the first part of the money problem. The second part is who sets the tone.

The money that sets the tone is mostly the big pharma, VC money is tiny. Big pharma is doing its best to serve their shareholders. That means a lot of lifestyle treatments and few break though cures.

Why so few break through cures? Because taking a basic discovery, like say a new bio-marker through the regulatory purgatory cost something like $150 BILLION.

Don't quote on on that number, I may be off by a few billion. Big pharma is clogged with promising discoveries, but they chose to roll the dice on only a few of the most profitable looking.

How do you change all of that and make a better world. Simple:

Drastically bring down the cost of basic discovery.

How do you do that? That's not so easy.

1. Regulation is a bitch.

2. Bio-tech hardware had not been commoditised like PCs.

3. Testing "in silico" is currently more of a gimmick then a replacement for "in vivo" testing.

What are my plans given this situation?

I'll keep pounding away at my current job, bleeding edge scientific software does not pay a lot, too few customers, and those are usually university/government. The private sector money wants process improvement, not so much research.

Someday I hope I get the opportunity to work on protein folding. That will require a lot of CPU cores with very low latency between them. So all I need is a few years on some seriously big iron. Anyone care to fund a promissing young programmer with a crazy dream?
Fair enough, but please, no 'lol'ing here. Remember:

loll: To hang extended from the mouth, as the tongue of an ox or
a dog when heated with labor or exertion.
MIT Student Arrested with "Fake Bomb"
Another useful thing to consider are attr_protected and attr_accessible. See http://manuals.rubyonrails.com/read/chapter/47

Also, see this Rails security blog: http://www.rorsecurity.info/
EFF's Web 2.0 Compliance Bootcamp. Avoid getting on the wrong side of the law or your users
Web applications don't follow Moore's law (Google developer)
pg: Are there any philosophical texts that you'd recommend?
BoingBoing's got a ton of info: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.ht...

Ultimately, there are two lessons learned here. The first is that Boston Police are overreacting to these LED deals. Fewer small lights, please! The second is that what happens at MIT should stay at MIT. That sweater wouldn't get a second look from most people on campus.

edit: There's a big difference between a "fake bomb" and "device that looked slightly bomb-ish."