skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Seems like have you have done great without that piece of paper. What degree would you like go for? A BS majoring in CS?

Or maybe think about learning some of the things you missed out on by not having the time to go to college (mostly non tech stuff I guess).

Perhaps a degree is really just a well thougth out education plan more than a certificate. You learn this list of things and you are "educated" to some level generally (a liberal arts BA & BS) with an emphasis on some subjects (your majors). More advanced or vocational degrees would be more focused plans on a single area.
XP is on it's last dying breath, and Microsoft realizes it. Others should too. The fact that's its last build was released 4 years ago, and the original 11 years ago should show how old it really is and how important it is for people to finally ditch that outdated OS.

It reached EOL almost 3 years ago now! It's just insane to me that people still use it.

It's also only at ~21% install base, so it's not the biggest loss ever to not support it. Just entices people to upgrade to Windows 7/8, and actually be secure.

Anyone defending XP now should stop. It's a horrible idea to actually use the OS in the present day, especially with the much better alternatives out there right now.
None at all. Save the $700. You don't need to spend it now unless it's literally on fire and burning your hands. Learn to save. You'll be glad you have money piled up when you leave the family nest. It's a tough world.

Have an old desktop? Use it. "Portable" and "development" are contradictory terms anyway. No desktop? Find a cheap/used/refurb one, $200 tops. Web development has one of the smallest demand on CPU power; you'll be just fine with an old desktop, you'll learn how to manage computing resources efficiently, and that will make you better at your trade. You're just 17... you have decades of learning ahead of you. Learn to drive the family car properly before you allow yourself to crave for a race car.

Unless you just want a shiny toy to look cool at Starbucks, and don't care if it's a worthless piece of junk in a year or two. In which case, yeah, Apple.

ObDisclaimer: Been there a very long time ago.
From what I understand it's part of the conditions of getting the mechanical license through HFA. It might be conceptually absurd, but that doesn't mean that's not how it works.
It's very possible that Google subsidizes the cost of Nexus 4s that they sell where T-Mobile does not.
As a law-abiding citizen I feel deeply alienated.
Don't buy Windows. You will encounter so many problems you're going to wish you had saved for a MACBOOK PRO (:
As a mediocre person I feel threatened.
Set-Cookie: adCanvas=Paper_Owl; Path=/

That would do it.
I guess it depends on if they were able to previously publish that spoken word poem as a song, and if you are in turn licensing it through the Harry Fox Agency.

If it's instead just lyrics that you write a melody to and it is unpublished so far, then you could be co-writers before the song is published.
What are you talking about?? You know what, I make a conscience effort not to engage in serious dialog with people who need to use swear words to make their point like a 14 year old on a schoolyard - especially those that ramble on about "the government". Relax, this is not about Uncle Sam.
They blackholed the dns it looks like, but http://www.ussc.gov/ is still up.
T-Mobile's website goofs on the suggested retail price.

The T-Mobile store salespeople do know this, and will tell the straight story which is that you'll save the most money if you buy the phone directly from Google and are willing to wait for it.
I had a similar feeling few years ago. What worked for me: Meditation.

Why? Because it stresses on the now.

It's practical too. There's nothing you can do about the past. And sitting and internally whining doesn't help. Do whatever you're doing now and give it 100% attention.

In the end, if you're lucky, you'll realize the futility of it all! :)
Bad Startup Idea - Your next weekend project
Anyone tried Mindfullness-based cognitive therapy?
Guarded by the threat of 35 years in prison, perhaps.
To judge yourself by contrast to others is one of the most efficient ways of making yourself unhappy! Consider: if they are doing better than you, you are jealous and you think badly of yourself. If they are doing worse, then you may think better of yourself, until you realize that you are taking pleasure in someone else's misfortunes, a pathetic thing to do!

The alternative is to replace the relative standard of your peers' success, with an absolute standard. That could be your own past (how far have you come since x; what have you learned since x; what wisdom have you gained since x, and so on) which has the advantage of showing you ways to go forward. Or it could be a national or global standard: how wealthy, how comfortable, how skilled are you with respect to the average U.S. male of your age? Which will probably at least be flattering.
Shady:

> $199.99 After Discounts

> For a limited time, when you purchase a Google Nexus 4 on T-Mobile.com or through 1-877-387-4324, you may qualify for a $300 instant discount and a $50 mail-in rebate card.

Also:

> Supercharge your Nexus 4 by adding unlimited data on a nationwide 4G network, only from T-Mobile

So does that mean LTE was officially activated or is that another marketing ploy?

In the meantime, it's been out of stock since day one here.
The narration seems to be in the style of v for vendetta, quite amusing to see such a portentous message on a hacked site. They've also made entire site editable.

http://www.ussc.gov/index2.cfm
Oh what a coincide! I work on the software, Viva, that the volunteer translators use at Kiva :)
Link to video for when site is inevitably repaired

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...
What am I talking about? Your assertions of an " eye for an eye" reaction and lynch mobs are offensive and absurd. Actually offensive, not "offensive" like a mildly taboo word.
Ah, sorry, I should have been more clear. I've actually gone through the readme a few times, to no avail. I'll triple-check it though.
فيلم الحفلة 
فيلم الحفلة
فيلم الحفلة
فيلم الحفلة
http://www.yallamoviez.com/2013/01/Film.Concert.YM.html
Smart good Samaritans still use dead drop email addresses.
That Wikipedia article appears to have been whitewashed.

So much for justice.
Nevertheless, the price most people pay is some factor of the list price and that can be very steep.

For example, here is the price page for the Harvard MBA:
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/financial-aid/Pages/cost-summary.aspx

Harvard do not give more than 50% scholarships.

So we are taking about 54K over a 2 year period, just for fees, excluding accommodation, food and health insurance.

That is enough to keep all kinds of people out. And this is for MBA, a course that has a relatively high probability of leading to a job. The effect will be much more acute for Art History.
TMobile has been calling their HSDPA+ network 4G for a while now. LTE on bands supported in the USA is not possible on the device.
Obviously you don't need a license for your own work. JC's license would be for the lyrics and nothing else. Everything else is his.

Image I author a book that contains the lyrics as a component. I would need a compulsory mechanical license, right? But does the rights holder own my book now? Of course not.

The melody in this case is not a derivative work. It has nothing to do with the the original work (i.e., lyrics).
So, unlocked from Google is $300 or $350 but locked from t-mobile with contract is $200

https://play.google.com/store/devices/details?id=nexus_4_8gb

T-mobile is going to have to go to free-after-rebate to get customers.
I grabbed the page in case that goes down too:
http://pastebin.com/8sezs36b
The secret service is going to knock for some reason or another anyway, so stop living in fear and live your life.
There are lots of great comments on this page. I'll offer something different, which is a critique on this section of your post:

> Efforts taken at this point to turn things around would be futile, whether that means going back to school or picking up a new skill; I would be in competition with others who've been practicing their trade for many years.

Emphasis mine. This is bullshit. In three major ways. First, just because someone has been doing something a while, doesn't mean they're very good at it. Just because someone started 10 years ago, doesn't mean another person can't surpass them within a single year. Practice does not make perfect (it does usually make good enough though).

Second, I'm going to assume you kind of sort of like programming, but if you don't then I'll suggest that as a new general skill for you to pick up. Every year job-n00bs graduate with a CS degree and yes, some of them do in fact get a job programming--even some of the incompetent or just somewhat-worse-than-mediocre graduates. Yeah, if you pick up programming, you'll be "competing" with them for the basic jobs. Yeah, some companies have age bias, a lot don't. And maybe this year you don't get a job you want. So focus on improving the skill that company wanted over the course of the following year (a great thing about programming is that "on-the-job" is not the only way to improve your skill), and when you try again, you're still in competition with a fresh crop of n00bs, but now you have a year of practice on them. Some people are always going to be ahead of you. Big deal, the demand isn't exactly drying up.

Third, there are plenty of fields that are dying for new blood. It doesn't matter if it's inexperienced blood, that can usually be fixed. And there are who knows how many unknown frontiers of thought and work left to explore. If you're really worried about competing with people who have decades of practice and experience, then find something that no one on Earth has been practicing for "many years", and do that.
T-Mobile is not particularly shady in my experience, just a bit disorganized about Nexus pricing.

T-Mobile is moving toward clearer pricing plans that are more like the rest of the world and much more straightfoward:

http://gigaom.com/2012/12/06/t-mobile-ceo-confirms-the-iphon...

For the lowest cost and most freedom, you can buy the Nexus 4 directly from Google or on Craigslist, eBay, etc.

(I'm not affiliated with T-Mobile in any way; I'm just a customer who buys a lot of Nexus phones)
Dudes. This is not at all helpful. Website defacements just create more of an excuse for a crackdown. If you're going to risk your life and freedom hacking things; make it worth your goddam time. Hack the prison industrial complex and get the evidence that shows that crimes are being created so that prisoners can be kept at a profit. Expose the email trails of corrupt judges who put away kids for kickbacks. Dox the modern plantation owners who order up prisoners to work at slave wages.

Putting a press release on a website where it doesn't belong has been done; it's old news. We know you can hack a drupal site owned by the .gov, we get it. Don't blow your wad on something obvious, get documentation that would make Woodward and Bernstein cream their pants over how many pageviews it'd get and publish that.

Hack the FBI and find out who was talking about killing protestors at Occupy Houston; hack Corrections Corporation of America and find out what they talk about during their board meetings; get their financials and spill them to the foreign press. Any or all of those would change things, possibly for the better. But this, this is a waste of your time and ours.
His name ended up on the newspaper in a manner different than that he expected.
It's a minuscule cost to the system that's well worth it to provide justice to this man. It's a cost that is the responsibility of the citizens of the United States, on whose behalf the government acts. The cost, per citizen, of this settlement is $0.002. I'm sorry to hear about your loss, I hope you'll get over your pain soon.

By contrast, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 have cost $1,416 billion, or $4,570 per man woman and child in the country. A hair over a dollar per day (think about that when you're paying for your Starbucks).

The responsibility for the acts resulting in this settlement lies squarely with Carmen Ortiz and her office. If you don't like to see your government wasting dollars on illegal, impudent prosecutions, while, say, letting major financial fraud go unprosecuted, well, say something about it.
WordPress WordCamp Phoenix Recap - EP18 - WPwatercooler - January 21 2013
Biegert & Funk QLOCKTWO W watch. Time display stages the moment
In your previous comments you wrote: "The owners of the hotel were warned repeatedly by local law enforcement and an intervention of local hotel owners; specific measures were suggested to minimize the problems at this place and weren't taken". But the judge's opinion says pretty much the exact opposite.

I respect your long track record of commenting constructively on HN. But as far as this specific case goes, I think readers would do well to be skeptical of your confident-sounding pronouncements.
I deal occasionally with regret. I think it's pretty natural if you spend a lot of time introspecting.

I'm sure there have been times were we all have dreamed of being able to go back in time and do things differently. Or go back and visit prior selves, tell them to do things differently.

Which brings up an interesting proposition. What if you could write a letter to your past self, say 2 years ago. What would you say? What would you tell yourself to do differently?

Write that letter. Be real with yourself.

Now, having written that letter, read it back. Except think of this letter as having been written by your future self a couple years from now to you in the present. Perhaps some specifics can't apply directly, but you likely will have found some things that you can start applying to yourself now.

This is an idea that has been bouncing around my head lately. I have not done it yet, but perhaps this weekend I will spend some time reflecting on the last couple years and pen that letter to myself.
This. I think hacktivism and subsequent whistle-blowing can do good, but this is pissing in the wind.
Only tangentially on topic (but more interesting that the actual content of the video I think), but I suspect no warhead reentry shield would actually be shaped as pointy as that.

Although you would think a more aerodynamic shape would reduce the drag and therefore heat of reentry, the reality is not quite so simple. In fact, the opposite is actually true. As you make the reentry shield blunter (increasing the drag coefficient as you do so) the heat load the shield needs to take actually drops. The reason for this apparently is that blunt reentry bodies form a sort of cushion of air around themselves that separates the shockwave caused by reentry from the reentry vehicle itself, insulating it.

I suppose sharp pointy warheads are more theatrical though.
> Hacker News isn't a hivemind.

Are you sure?
I should see that movie, just so I'll get all the references these hacktivists keep making to it.

Also a lot of War Games quotes and clips in this one, for some reason (?)

It plays like an intro for a videogame (warheads??). It's all so over the top. Is it too much to ask that people hijacking a website show some subtlety in their craft?
Apparently, Bill Ward earned $15k for re-appropriating a design from 1919.

http://www.quirky.com/products/36-Broom-Groomer-Broom-Cleani...

http://www.google.com/patents/US1315310
Impressive UI and use of github api, very nice work. Maybe have the readme show first instead of the comments box. It would make a nice UI for Components[1] or even npm.

1: https://github.com/component/component/wiki/Components
Lots of good advice was already given here, I'll just add my two cents.

> You may say that I'm not speaking rationally, but reality can validate every one of my worries and regrets.

If you're thinking rationally, then you should realize that regrets are useless. Only the lesson that you can learn from the regret is valuable. All this energy that you are wasting on regretting something is energy that could have been poured into honing a craft.
The most important thing perhaps, is to optimize not for the arrival, but for the journey itself. Whatever your goal is, do something little that will bring you closer to it, every day. But this little something, you must enjoy. (Of course, if you feel like you can do more than "little" and still enjoy it, do it !). If you enjoy programming but feel like you don't know a lot about languages or some technology, then get started on that language or that domain you don't know and that scares you (be it C++, Haskell, AI, 3D...). Practice some of it everyday.
It works for other domains as well : eating healthier food, exercising and practicing sports, practicing a musical instrument.
The 10 year rule is really scary but don't forget that with every year of practice, you'll feel like you've learned a lot. It's not some kind of hard threshold, where you learn with great pain for 10 years and at the end, you get a flash of genius and you instantly become a master. It's progressive, and it compounds.

Embrace the mistakes. Mistakes are part of how we, humans, learn.
I can definitely relate to your feeling, because I have had a lot of regrets concerning my life choices as well. I realized a few things about it : I would have done some of these mistakes at a later point in my life most probably, and making them earlier taught me a lesson earlier. Some other stupid mistakes were due to character flaws of mine, and eventually I realized that I should strive to change these flaws as well. It's not easy, but I'll give it a try. Anyway, there is no point on dwelling on the past. If you'd like to be at a better place, start moving towards it, it doesn't matter if it's 100km away and your first steps are only 1cm. The steps will be exponentially longer with time — and maybe you'll realize your goal is not where you envisioned it at first, but it doesn't matter because it's easy to change your goals once you have gained momentum. As humans, it is also a natural tendancy (and imho a good thing) to always keep your goals challenging. For example, as an amateur guitarist, over the years I have come to discover that there are always more challenging pieces of music to play, and more extremely talented guitarists whose mastery I would yearn for. But I still enjoy playing at my modest level.

You are in your early 30's which is still very, very young.
(My taekwondo teacher, now a 4th dan black belt, started taekwondo in his late 20's. He is very impressive, and looks 10 year younger than he is.)
Github, but for photography.

That's not actually a bad idea.
Generating music with GarageBand and CoffeeScript
Perhaps it is primed, but this guy is out of touch. Asserted that "no social dating site has gained meaningful traction." Really? You forgot OKCupid. Never once mentioned them in the article.
What exactly is the data in the warhead links?
> Do any of you have any experience with this?

Um, YEAH. And just started seeing a counsellor about it. I don't think there's anything wrong with me (or you) but I want someone to talk to about it.

I disagree with "Efforts taken at this point to turn things around would be futile." I'm living proof. I bounced from job to job for 10 years, then lost a job in finance in 2007 at 33, went back to school, got out in 2010 at 35 and now have a job as a software engineer. Yeah, I'm competing with young turks 10-15 years younger than me. Yeah, sometimes they're better... but a lot of the time they aren't. It turns out I actually did learn a few things bouncing from one job to another, and people do see that.

Is it the best job I could have at this point in my life, am I as rich as I could be, as if I had done everything "right"? NO. I threw away a bunch of fucking brilliant opportunities earlier in my career. But is it a good job that will give me a platform to build a satisfying career in the next 20 years? Absolutely.

The really hard thing for me at this point is figuring out where I really do want to go. In my case, a lot of the bad decisions were to do with "grass is greener" feelings -- I'd see one job that looked cooler than my current job, go out and get it, then decide it wasn't that cool and bounce to another one. So now that I've finally recognized that, where the fuck DO I want to go now, and how do I figure that out?

I think that's really important. Calling it "finding your passion" is bullshit, though, because it's not really about passion -- it's about making a sensible decision, taking everything into account including financial situation, family responsibilities, and the realities of various careers, as well as, yes, what you like to do. I'd love to be an astronaut, always wanted to, but -- life sucks -- it ain't gonna happen now. Not that it is 100% impossible, but I'm not willing to make the sacrifices it would entail. But there are great, exciting, satisfying things I can still do.

Another thing that's hard is making sense of the past while still keeping my focus on looking ahead to the future. That's what I'm trying to do now. I don't want to keep repeating broken patterns, so I feel like I need to think about what I've done in the past and understand it, to some extent, so I can see what I did wrong and how I can make sure not to do the same thing again. I think I've identified some of those things, but that's the main reason I'm seeing the counsellor -- I want to talk out my analyses of my past decisions and try to understand them and use my "lessons learned" for the future. I don't think completely ignoring everything that has gone before is right -- I did that for a long time and ended up making just the same mistakes 10 years later. But obsessing about the past is (obviously) not helpful either. It's a hard balance to strike.

So, you aren't alone. Very much not alone, I think. Hope you're able to make some sense of things. You can ALWAYS turn things around.
I do also have this from time to time, but not very often. It does not occur to me when I have things to do that are meaningful to me. Like working on a cool hobby project, having fun with friends, thinking that my work is fun.

Maybe your life is really boring right now, so you have reason to be frustrated. This is good, isn't it? This probably means you need to change something. Obviously what you do, but maybe also your attitude. You should rather look forward and think what you can do and not what you could have done.

Not sure what you are interested in, maybe you want to go rafting, learn climbing, learn Vietnamese, learn to cook food that others can eat, create a funny website, go to another country, go to the Military, run like Forest Gump through the US, or maybe walk through the US... So much stuff to do.

Also stop whining, maybe you need to watch some more Clint Eastwood movies. And in addition some documentaries about refugees in Africa or child soldiers. Afterwards you feel more sorry for them than for you. What also helps, talking a cold shower in the morning (or hot-cold ;)), making some push-ups, eating breakfast. You'll feel much more vital afterwards. (Speaking from experience.)

Anyway: stop comparing yourself with others and don't forget that they paid a price for being so disciplined.
First of all, the responses to this post are breathtakingly good. This is one of the best threads I have ever seen on HN, and I am proud of the community. Take time meditate on the content here, because it is gold.

I have little to add, save this: try to think less and do more. That may sound strange and counterproductive, but I've found that the mind is a complex, dynamic thing, and without proper calibration, it can go into bad loops, like a broken record. You're experiencing some of those bad loops now. Your mind needs recalibration. "Doing" is that recalibration. You can't think your way back to the straight and level. You need experience with new things. Don't fear, don't think, just do. Constant effort, being too busy for fear or introspection, is the proper environment for a correcting mind. At least, it works for me.