skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Lack of transparency is a huge issue. I remember when I started law school in 2009, the economy had just collapsed and we had zero information about how graduates were faring. The kind of stuff that's available today, at least from the better law schools, information detailing the precise number of students that went into which jobs, just didn't exist. For most schools it still doesn't.

That being said, the problem with law schools is just a microcosm of the problem facing higher education throughout the country. Skyrocketing tuition has meant that more and more of the lifetime increase in earning power obtained by a degree is being captured by schools. Indeed, these days for many people the net expected value is negative. But demand for higher education seems completely inelastic, largely perpetuated by the cultural myth that the way to improve our lot as a nation is for more education and better education. The fact of the matter is that more education isn't going to make well-paying middle class jobs come back from China, any more than it's going to break the cycle of poverty in inner city ghettos. It's just a smoke signal to justify ever increasing ranks of higher-paid teachers and professors.

Also, as ever, there are university administrators with their heads in the sand: "Sarah Zearfoss, senior assistant dean for admissions, financial aid, and career planning at the University of Michigan Law School, says law schools have growing increasingly aware of the major shift in the job landscape. 'We had not been doing anything different than other law schools,' she says, noting that graduates had gone on to prestigious private firms, nonprofits, and government jobs or clerkships. 'Our students were getting great jobs, but then the economy changed and we began to see some decline in offers.'"

The situation at the University of Michigan has declined from the point where nearly everyone could get a job justifying the almost $50k/year in tuition to the point where only 50-60% of the class can do so. That's the "new normal" and it's more than just "some decline."

Yes, people going to graduate school should be able to run the numbers, especially now that so much more information is out there, but in the face of administrators like these, is there any wonder why many choose to believe instead?
The number of law school graduates has always exceeded the number of computer science graduates (yes a comparison of a graduate degree to an undergraduate but CS majors rarely need another degree).
Ouch the fees for Timatic are steep indeed.

0 – 500 transactions: Included in Fixed Fee - EUR 499/yr

501 – 100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1299 per transaction

100,001 – 600,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1166 per transaction

600,001 – 1,100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1033 per transaction

1,100,001 – 1,600,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.0888 per transaction

1,600,001 – 2,100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.0816 per transaction

2,100,001 onwards: EUR (€) 0.0743 per transaction
I thought this was one of the more refreshing articles relating to gender issues to appear on HN, of late. Perhaps others felt it was just rehashing the same, tired issues. Who knows.
Great job on the website! I literally had the same idea a few months back - even thought of a similar title (DoINeedAFuckingVisa.com). Never materialized when I realized just how complex the immigration rules are.

But you know what they say about ideas and execution. Good on you for executing :)
HNKansai Meetup #6 in Osaka: Friday, March 29
Altered states of consciousnes and shamanism are fascinating subjects.

I have studied and have experience with a wide variety of altered states and methods for inducing them, from psychedelics to meditation, drumming, strobe lights, flotation tanks, sweat lodges.

Of these, I found psychedelics to be by far the most powerful. Nothing else I've ever tried has come remotely close to being even a thousandth as powerful. Unfortunately, because of their legal status, I haven't done them for a very long time. I do think they have a lot of potential for constructive use, if done by a person educated in their effects and use, in a safe, supportive setting, with a knowledgeable, trusted guide, with honesty, respect, and a concrete, positive intention. In fact, here[1] is an interesting article about using psychedelics as an aid to Buddhist meditation.

As for shamanism, I've read The Way of the Shaman back in a university course I took on shamanism and witchcraft. Right now I'm making my way through Shamanic Voices by Joan Halifax (which I strongly recommend) and Singing to the Plants by Stephan V. Beyer, about ayahuasca shamanism in the Amazon.

Listening to 4 to 7 Hz drumming (per Harner's recommendation) has been a bit of a disappointment to me, although I haven't done all that much of it. Three or four sessions (at about an hour or two at a time) have resulted in either me falling asleep or some feelings of intense pleasure (much like I experienced in some deep states of meditation) -- but certainly no visions, much less "shamanic journeys". Overall, I think I'm more impressed by the effects of meditation so far. However, I intend to experiment more with drumming.

My one experience in a sweat lodge was literally torture. I'm not nearly masochistic enough to travel this path of inducing altered states of consciousness. There have got to be better ways.

My one flotation tank experience was interesting, and I would continue experimenting with it if it wasn't so expensive (about $40 a session). I'd liken the experience to something between meditation and dreaming or hypnagogic visions. Unfortunately, my consciousness was already slightly altered when I tried it, so I can't comment on how a "pure" flotation tank experience would be.

If I was ever fortunate enough to have another psychedelic experience, I would definitely like to try drumming, playing simple musical instruments, or singing -- as is done in many shamanic contexts. From what I've read, these may be effective ways of navigating the realms one is transported to.

Having the aid of an honest, experienced and knowledgeable shaman would also be very valuable. Unfortunately, I've heard that they are hard to come by these days, when Ayahuasca tourism and monetary considerations have enticed many less scrupulous individuals to pretend to be something they're not.

[1] - http://psychonautdocs.com/docs/stolaroff_buddhism.pdf
Show HN: My weekend Project - Almost Flat UI Theme
iirc and as far as I know, the mother did the kickstarter, the mother "spammed" twitter, and said it was for her daughter. That's not what I'd classify as the daughter "earn[ing] it".
The issue is, in popular culture, law is viewed as a relatively easy way (compared to medicine) to enter the upper middle class. This is outdated, but the fact remains, and it's re-enforced by many people in high ranking positions having a background in law.

Many people, particularly groups of people traditionally excluded from professional life, really have no idea about the reality. The information is out there, but if you've always been told that law is the safe, smart thing to do, you might not even know to look. Known unknowns versus unknown unknowns, and all that.

Most people fall into their work not out of a rational economic analysis (which is pretty damn hard, even for people who do it for a living) but out of impressions born of the zeitgeist. When someone chose to study CS or become a programmer (or whatever it is that you did), he or she probably didn't go through heaps of research about its prospects and then read a couple of books about whether or not those would continue in the future. Most likely, he chose to do it because he enjoyed computers, had friends with big salaries out of school, and knew there was a bunch of money flowing into companies like Google. Through luck of the draw, that decision worked out.
The fascinating thing to me about the ops 101 rule you describe: 1) it's so obviously correct, but 2) for some reason, almost nobody has a good backup plan that they actually follow, where they actually have a process to periodically validate the restore procedure works. So few people actually do this, that I've come to think of this as a basic rule to understand, but an apparently advanced one to actually follow.

You hit the nail on the head regarding overabundant cleverness. A lot of developers are too clever by half, too.
Well, when you win the lottery and are able to actually buy that boat, perhaps you can budget in the cost of a car to pull it?

This "aspirational" angle to buying big cars actually explains a lot, like a fat kid drinking Gatorade or out of shape guys wearing tracksuits to the mall, "just in case". After all, if you're driving a big car, no-one will be able to definitively say you don't own a boat..
You can scrape HN as long as you respect the robots.txt[1] and don't retreive more than a couple of pages per minute.

Have you considered just pulling the data from HNSearch's API[2] or the one by iHackerNews[3]?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/robots.txt

[2] https://www.hnsearch.com/api

[3] http://api.ihackernews.com/
One would hope that the excess would be applied to something worthy - like maybe funding scholarships to RPG camp for underprivileged girls?
The downside of awards program is gaming the system
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1089.html#e...
You definitely right that being the overall best is more complicated than being the best at one specific thing. However, doesn't the idea of "female perspective" reintroduce the exact same gender bias issues?

If you can justify hiring for "female perspective", what about the companies who only want "male perspective"?
I believe this is true, and I have a theory that these public spectacles are fuelled and perpetuated primarily by the simple fact that anyone with well reasoned, rational responses tend to keep quiet in fear of being drawn into an ugly discourse - leaving the metaphorical inmates to run the prison.
Revamped Cyprus deal to close bank, force losses
I'd get tired of someof those, but the Locknet one is great. Very good. Almost alarmingly simple execution, and conveys the sense of locking something. And authority. Big subtle message.
First Clip From 'The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smog' Released
I can give you my personal path I took when learning a few years ago if you don't mind starting with rails.

Start with Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial [1]. I went through the rails 3 version with zero knowledge of ruby and you should feel very comfortable with the basics when you are done.

After that I read The Well-Grounded Rubyist [2]. Having used some ruby now I found the book easy to get into. It's a little dated but should still cover everything you need at this point.

Lastly I read Eloquent Ruby [3]. I highly recommend this book and is easily my favorite programing book.

[1] http://ruby.railstutorial.org/

[2] http://www.amazon.com/Well-Grounded-Rubyist-David-Black/dp/1...

[3] http://www.amazon.com/Eloquent-Ruby-Addison-Wesley-Professio...
If you are making those comparisons, you should also wonder about the quality of those customers. I.e. people who stay with you still are probably profitable customers.
I am going to be honest....condoms suck. Pure and simple. Trojan ultra-thins are the best, but still not the same. Although not getting an STD makes wearing one worth it.

I am still waiting for some type of spray. A spray that could be applied before intercourse that essentially protects your "sheath" and provides a barrier. It would allow you to have condom-less sex with out the worry of STD's. It would not help with contraception, but with the vast amount of females on the pill they have that taken care of for the most part.

Maybe one day, but until then I'll take a condom over an STD or pregnancy any day of the week.
Armenia is the first country in the world to make chess mandatory in school
"JavaScript: The Good Parts" is a fantastic book, but anyone telling you to read it if you're coming at JavaScript as your first language is doing you a horrible disservice.

It is a fantastic book for learning to avoid being bitten by all of the stupidity in JavaScript if you're used to programming in sane languages, but it isn't a tutorial or "Learn to Program" book by any stretch of the imagination.

To be completely honest, I'm a bit horrified people are learning JavaScript as a first language at all. The language does indeed have its "Good Parts" and it is incredibly useful because of its ubiquity, but I just wonder how many young brains are going be hardwired to think some of the design choices (the way block scoping works/doesn't work, equality, lack of modules, etc, etc) in current JavaScript versions are normal, when in fact they are very unfortunate.
The Decline in Illegal Immigration From Mexico-Becker - The Becker-Posner Blog
Rebuttal from Posner: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2013/03/mexican-immigratio...
Very mature neya. Feel free to actually address my points on their merits without resorting to ad hominem attacks. That way everyone wins.

And I comment on lots of different things but have a stronger interests in Apple and Database. So sue me I guess.
The little girl selling lemonade is out there in the hot sun hustling lemonade, even if mom helped her make it or buy the ingredients. This KS, on the other hand, was obviously written entirely by the mother. That's the problem. The kid didn't do anything, and I doubt she's going to wind up with $20K in cash in her pocket.
Using C++11's shared_ptr and weak_ptr smart pointers
How is the state department an authoritative source for Chinese visa requirements? They change them about every 6 months anyways, the invitation letter is a new thing they started last year.
So an Irish citizen still needs to obtain a visa then?

I've been multiple times, always got the visa before hand, am married to a Nepalese citizen, still needed a visa.
Did you find any practical purpose to the "altered" states of consciousness?

I would also like to suggest substituting the word "altered" with "disturbed". Would you mind telling me your thoughts on this (whether in connection with the above question, or not)?
This is part of the reason why I decided not to apply for law school despite scoring well on the LSAT (176). I couldn't commit to working 80 hours a week at a big law firm to pay off 250K of debt unless I was sure I loved the work.
This is awesome.
Where did you get all the data from btw?
Fair point. It got me thinking about privacy at least.

I also suspect the association with the iPad purchases was also an issue. Just don't think it's as big of a deal as others.
Habit Data of Successful Meditators
It does take some magic. Luckily there's been quite a bit of work done of the topic (eg, Lise Getoor & co http://scholr.ly/person/5486566/lise-getoor)- we should show some serious improvements soon.

In the meantime, I'll manually merge those profiles you've pointed out :) Thanks for taking the time!
I disagree. Of all companies, Google actively engages academia and works hard to maintain ties (e.g., faculty summits, research grants, etc.) They have a lot of collaborations and want to foster good relations so that good students will be sent their way. It's been a largely successful effort.

Scholar is a vital tool for a lot of members of academia, not to mention Google's own research and research-heavy engineering groups. A lot of faculty---particularly young faculty and PhD students---actively maintain profiles on scholar and use it to track their own publications and citations. The minor cost of keeping it running is a small price to pay, relative to the bad blood it would generate within the research community if it is shut down.
Durango's SDK leaked, always online confirmed for next-gen Xbox
Hello HN

The following Chinese Proverb will fit you :

人生不是赢在起点，而是赢在转折点

What really matters if you can grab the opportunity when it comes ... cause "opportunity" crops up when you not expected ! So prepare yourself, listen to your heart, and when it comes - grab it!

the full Chinese proverb illustrated @
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_53729c5e0102eeel.html

Good Luck !

DC
"a company that focuses on debt collection"

Oh, so a manipulative vulture. Makes sense now.
I'm not missing the point. I get what he is saying and I see where you are not getting it. You're confusing meditation with "nothing". The mindful experience of "nothing" is different than if you were just to fall asleep. You think you are doing "nothing" when you sleep, but you're actually doing quite a bit.

As for what I use lucid dreaming for, I don't use lucid dreaming for much of anything other than a benchmark for clarity of my mind. I don't make a whole lot of use for it. Sometimes I will put my body to sleep when it needs it, but my mind wants to stay active. Sometimes I will use non-meditative visualization techniques to work with dreams in order to pop open the shadow side, but that's not what we're talking about here either.

As for finding opportunity to do nothing, the thing is that in those states of consciousness, nothing is the base experience of reality. Everything else, the doing, the striving, the acting, are forms. It is similar to looking at this webpage and focusing on the spaces between the words than at the words themselves.

I take your inquiry at face value, that you are sincerely asking these questions, and they might come off as trolling but they are not. So I answer just as sincerely though you'll probably think I am coping out: There is nothing in the world that will convince you to meditate. If you are meditating for any "reason" at all, you're not really being mindful of the present moment. There is no "reason" inherent in any experience. That's not to say lots of people have various motivations and "reasons" to meditate, but when you are on that cushion, you let those go for the bullshit that it is.
Two questions:

- What do you think about the usage and portrayal of the sons here?

- What do you think of the $10K reward where the boys apologize?

Followup question depending on your answers:

- Do you approve of teaching about dishonesty by behaving dishonestly?

My own answers:

1) Disgusting and manipulative
2) I don't believe she would do that, but if she did then...
3) That's repulsive
No, really. It's an emacs. Features upon features.

SQLite might be the vim of databases.

Actually, BDB hash files.
Hm, right now we've got the same coverage as CiteSeerX (where most of our data comes from), and are working on expanding. What sources do you particularly think are lacking?

We've talked quite a bit internally about whether to include citations counts. It's a tough call, but until we're happier with our scoring it might make sense to help bolster result reputation.

Thanks for the feedback!
The whole thing is terrible, but I was particularly impressed with this:

>My Mom has to hire programmers and developers sometimes for her work. She's really glad I like computers and programming because she says as a business person she feels like she's held hostage by developers.

Besides the undertones of Clients From Hell-ian "my daughter can do this for free", isn't this counterproductive? If the girl is getting horror stories about developers from her mom, won't she be wary of becoming a developer?
Definitely skip it. You'll learn them one by one later as you run into them in your code. Or by the time you need to use most of them, IE's quirks won't matter for you target audience.
My statement came from this source:

http://glpiggy.net/2013/03/20/identity-of-dongle-micro-aggre...

This source, much like the rest of the Internet, initially blamed Alex Reid, the man in the middle of the picture. Then this source decided that the guy to be blamed is the guy in the grey shirt. I made my comment following this source.

Then someone else, somewhere (no clue what the original source of that statement is anymore, but you are right, there are certainly comments to that extent floating around, and your post had that comment as well until it was deleted), stated that the reason why the guy at fault was fired from PlayHaven was because he was wearing his company's t-shirt, and thus was publicly representing the company, which in some way makes sense. The only guy in that shirt that was wearing a PlayHaven t-shirt and not the guy in the middle is sitting way far out, and not "right behind her" by any definition of that phrase.

My point is that someone who just saw that photo, without reading the extensive commentary around it, still thinks it's the man grinning at the camera - "right behind me" or not. Who is the right guy? I really thought it was the guy in the grey shirt, but even that is now under doubt.
How can she argue that she really only wanted $829 or whatever when she allocated 5 spots for $10,000 donation rewards? Doesn't add up. This is a shameless money grab and while I don't think it is illegal (and unlike some, I don't think it looks bad for Kickstarter, though it does look bad for people who blindly donated), it is certainly worth a public shaming, IMO.
"Microaggression" is the accepted term for all those things that are totally not a big deal and why can't you take a joke.

Very useful concept, particularly if you're not someone who has to suffer them daily and can't understand why one individual little incident is still an issue.
That article deserves a submission of its own! It's incredibly interesting and it touches something that most software developers value: simplicity and clarity. We're used to saying that naming things is the hardest problem in coding, and that matches completely with a philosophy of simplicity in design. A must read.
Well you could follow the link they have to the DC Chinese Embassy: http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/visas/
I like MERGE too, in the proper place. I'm not sure that the absence of MERGE constitutes "this terrible state".

It would be like a commercial RDBMS lacking boolean and serial types, necessitating reams and reams of repetitive, error-prone boilerplate constraints and insert/update triggers.
IMHO that is one of the main benefit of negative spaces (I didn't know the term but knew the technique): you actually hardly notice that there's "something else" and yet the logos somehow look nice. I'd say they look "soft", without knowing why.

Once you focus too much on "what's inside", it gets a bit confusing because you're seeing conflicting things (like the tree leave that is also people): but it's not a problem because it's not meant for people to really focus on.

And somehow it just works. I find several of these logos really very simple and great.

Now that this has been posted on HN I expect lots of startups to come up with similar logos ; )
So true, that was one of my favorite things about Backbone. I don't even really look through the docs anymore, just jump straight to the source. It's incredibly well done.
Law schools are almost always more expensive than undergraduate programs, aren't they?
Very cool. I'd add the ability to locate the nearest embassy/consulate based on GeoLocation.
To clarify: You mean "why you can't take a joke" as an ironc reference, or as a factual statement?
Is there anything like graphviz, which can give you a nice programatic interface to create UML/BPMN graphs? Graphviz output is rough, you'd figure that in 2013 we'd have a bit better looking graphs.
not sure why. Works right now. Try again?
I could be completely wrong on this. I suspect US labor unions are very different from Finnish labor unions.

While I don't have any experience in Finland, I have organized and conducted a number of trade show exhibits in London, Amsterdam, Munich and Barcelona. My experience in dealing with unionized labor in Europe has always been extremely positive. I could not find one negative anecdote to relate here. In sharp contrast to that I could write a book about the bullshit, abuse and cost I have endured at the hands of US labor unions at convention centers in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago and New York.

Based on these data points I developed this idea that European labor unions operate under different cultural and ideological principles when compared to their US equivalents. I could be wrong.