skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think your analogy is valid:

Knowing how to cure all diseases would be a very high goal that stands above what doctors accomplished up to the present time.

The challenge that I gave is below what physicists "know" today.

When a physicist studies Qunatum Mechanics, he knows that on the macroscopic scale, QM will behave like classical electromagnetism. The problem that I raise, is that physicists don't know classical electromagnetism well enough in the first place. They can't calculate motion of macroscopic objects. I don't think it's wise to try to study QM before they solved that challenge, the same way it won't be wise to start learning Special Relativity before you studied Newtonian Mechanics.
Unfortunately, the industry we provide a service to is mired in local authority politics, so I can't disclose here. I'd like to be able to say "fuck, that is ridiculous" without someone picking up on it someday and killing my business as a result. We're proud of the product but the industry itself is very cutthroat with only a few players. It was hard enough to carve out the market we have. So, this is my personal account. That being said, it's a great market for some of the same reasons. Our current contracts are 8-10 years (but it takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get them.)

Having said all that, I still disagree with your Solaris vs. open source argument in principal. You don't have to have a huge amount of customers to be doing well to me. If 95% of the people are using an open source product but you still have 5% clinging to you because they love it and you're profitable...is it really so terrible?

Of course, if you build a business, you want to be mutable anyway. You can't just sit around hoping product X will feed you and your employees without some sort of proactive business development. As part of that, you always have to be prepared for someone smarter and more agile. You play to your strengths. If you have market share, you leverage it. If you have agility, you leverage that instead.

Edit - One of the things that doesn't get discussed around here often enough, is the ability to form and execute as proper business. Your product is not (or more accurately perhaps, should not necessarily be) the entire definition of your business. Any business that expects to be around in the future must generate income. Competition is always going to be there in one form or another. If that competition happens to be people who like to work for free making open source products, it could be a mountain to climb to compete directly. The business may have to adapt in other ways.

I'll give an example of that. Everyone in our industry used to provide an embedded software component that required an OS that had a license associated with it. One of our competitors pitched an idea to build the same software using Linux. It very likely could have crippled us had they managed to deliver something at a much lower cost. So, we went through negotiations and tried to acquire them. Those negotiations failed but we realized that they really weren't close to that open source solution at all. We jumped at the chance to develop our own open source product and it is now in pilot locations. Nobody else in the industry has even blinked and we can suddenly cut some really outrageous costs out of our equation.

So, the beauty of open source, is that it's open to everyone.
A FASCINATING point that runs contrary to this whole awe-yourself-in-front-of-the-omniverse-bullshit is the curious mathematical abstraction that a single human brain contains more _potential_ structural architecture than there are atoms in the universe. This always felt like a big "fuck you" to that "humbling" sense of insignificance the universe seems intent on drilling into my skull....
First of all, we do have proof the world exists. We don't have proof your boat-as-metaphor-for-God exists.

Secondly, all you have done is restate the "Boeing 747" argument. Which only shows that the person arguing doesn't understand the science behind the other side.

Atheists do not believe there is a God because there is no convincing proof that one exists. They believe it in much the same manner you do not believe Santa Claus exists.
"Regardless of whether Collins is right or not, I hope that everyone can see how this pitiful system of "science" we currently have functions to eliminate anyone who disagrees with the worldview provided by scientific naturalism."

I just listened to a Richard Dawkins TED talk, where he cites the overwhelming number of atheist scientists as an argument for the truth of atheism. Ignoring the whole "appeal to authority" nature of that argument, it ignores the possibility that scientific institutions might discriminate (either implicitly or overtly) against religious people and winnow them from their ranks.
And did they find anything? As in something that a non believer would accept?
I apologize for saying physicists are ridiculous.

I hope that people who reply to post will state what they think is the status of the problem I raised. Do you think it's solved (give a solution)? Unsolved? Unimportant? Explain.
Maybe Wolfram can analyze your question, and then turn it into a google search.
"he still makes remarks to him knowing answers to something that is a current problem."

I was unable to parse this sentence. What remarks is he making to whom, and what is the content of those remarks?
You have GOT to be joking.

That's not a proof, but a parable. Worse, it's an ignorant parable, which can be defeated by: "Then who made God?"

(And let me head off at the pass the whole "God was always there" argument. If God was always there, then why can't reality have always been there?)
Why not just build something people will pay for?

Quit building little one-day hobby projects that don't do anything useful, and instead build software that people with money will pay for. It's not that difficult a concept to understand, yet every day you see another half dozen unjustifiable little web startups appearing with no hope of ever making money.

- Build something good.
- charge money for it.
- Sorted.
Unix Network Analysis
Ask HN: Back problems
With many of you coding for multiple hours a day, presumably hunched over your keyboards for a portion of that time, I'd imagine back pain being a relatively common problem throughout the hacker community.

For those of you with back pain, knots, lower back pain, etc., how do you deal with it? Are there any exercises or movements that help alleviate whatever pain or soreness your backs might be experiencing? Have chiropractors or acupuncturists helped?

I've had back pain for years now, and although contorting my body to snap my spine provides immediate relief, it hasn't really provided any long term alleviation. In fact the problem has gotten much worse.

Thanks.
http://www.scribd.com/images/rails.png
Unorganized private action can easily outweigh government action.

With easily provable externalities like toxic waste, private lawsuits can take care of the problem. Other issues like CFCs are easily regulated.

Cap and Trade solutions for climate change are, say, 5 orders of magnitude more costly. With that comes added demand for certainty. The more rigorous the demands for certainty, the greater the indication that a single governmental solution is inappropriate.

A third runway at Heathrow _should_ be a private decision, by a private company that owns and operates an airport. Runways are also completely irrelevant in this discussion.
Their brand alone costs good few millions. There's also an accumulated goodwill, naturally acquired (mostly positive) hype and lots of curiosity surrounding the title.

"Giving up" here just doesn't make any business sense.

In other words - "we should all try" consider the circumstances when deciding to lose hope, admit loss, etc. YMMV.
Nice!

I particularly liked the bit about Butler Lampson being the first to understand Paxos, mostly because I'm current in his distributed and concurrent systems class. It turns out that when Lamport wrote the paper The Part-Time Parliament, Lampson told him that nobody actually understood it. To prove him wrong, Lamport called a few colleagues and asked them a few elementary questions about the algorithm. They all got it wrong. That prompted him to write Paxos Made Simple.

It's good to know that it's not always my fault when academic papers are entirely inscrutable.
> I like well formatted text that doesn't require user intervention every time I go to a new page. That's sort of the entire fucking POINT of web design.

I totally agree. Unfortunately, many commercial pages present poorly-formatted text framed by blinking or brightly-colored distractions. I exercise a bit of user intervention to load the print link -- I just want the text, and I can size the column(s) easily.
As opposed to "irrational" I would be willing to settle for "unscientific." There might be knowledge unattainable through observation and experiment, but attainable through revelation from someone not subject to our limitations. Such a belief is obviously unscientific, but I do not think "irrational" is accurate. I think you would need to find some incompatibility between premises and conclusions to claim that.
Microsoft does away with the patronizing "Windows Genuine Advantage" name.
Today Is Odd Day: 5/7/9
Very true, although perhaps what Steve is trying to say here is that the opportunity cost of a business plan is (in his experience) a lot higher than most people think. Maybe you win several thousand dollars, however, if you spent that energy on developing an actual business you'd likely be much closer towards the realization of your goal.

"I have seen students spend well over a year refining a business plan competition pitch" - I think this is his main gripe. If you can do it without much additional effort why not.
or, use http://excess.org/urwid/ , which contains awesomeness.
Clocks, Kids, and General Relativity on Mt Rainier
Researchers once did a study to understand why the French aren't as obese as Americans even though they eat food that have a relatively higher fat content. They based their study on an idea they had about internal and external cues.

Apparently, Americans are more likely to use external cues ("there is still food on my plate") and the French are more likely to use internal cues ("I don't feel hungry anymore") when it comes to deciding when to stop eating.

http://vivo.cornell.edu/individual/vivo/individual20060
I strongly disagree.

Statistically speaking, most CS majors are doomed to salt mines (or a change of profession entirely.)

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/83dzc/dear_redd...
Nice parody.

I think it's not a valid comparison though. Proving the Collatz Conjecture is not essential for understanding the Riemann Hypothesis, or any other such subject. It will probably not advance the proof of RH at all.

On the other hand, knowledge of the problem I raised, motion of charged macroscopic objects, is crucial to understanding Classical Electromagnetism, which is crucial to understand QM, which is crucial to understand most of modern physics.
I get horrible back pain if my chair is not positioned correctly(it doesn't take much maybe an inch off and I start to feel it). Find a guide on correct positioning and try to follow it.
Does an iPod Help You Concentrate? (And Other Questions About Attention)
His point wasn't the professional options. In response to a poster, he said: True, but what I want to emphasize is that the CS way of thinking is extremely valuable outside of the software field.
Hi James. No worries, thanks for replying here :)

The gem in question was curb (http://curb.rubyforge.org/) - I suppose it might a particularly tricky one, due to libcurl dependencies. (I'll email you with more details)

I understand the issues of supporting a free beta and hope to give Heroku a try on my next project. You really did some impressive work.
Try stretching out your hamstrings. A lot of lower back pain is actually caused by shortened hamstrings pulling the pelvis and lower back out of alignment.
Way more about paths at UC Berkeley than you'd ever want to read.
Exactly.

Most of CS also revolves around making things easier (correctly, of course) for yourself.

If there's a method that will get things done with less work, you are usually encouraged to take it, provided it gives the right output - nobody cares too much unless its completely slow or bloated.

That was the biggest reason for me over going into engineering - CS actually rewards you for thinking outside the box, and it thinking like that really helps most of the time.
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=574099
Of course, in much of the world (outside the US), today is 7/5/9, and 5/7/9 won't arrive for a couple months...
They were working on a lot of other things besides DNF so it spent most of that time on the shelf. It's not like they had a team working on this thing for 9 years straight. The real push to get the game released didn't start until relatively recently-- I think only in the past couple years.

DNF is actually a playable game. In fact, I know someone who played it and thought it was great. As far as I'm aware most of the remaining work was creating level maps and polish.

3d Realms didn't shut down because of this game. It's just one game in their portfolio, albeit one of the more recognizalbe ones.
The first four of these I wouldn't call "advanced"...
Build something cool, equity, & have an adventure doing it
Experienced web developer sought for “local” global web project.

Come and live a dream lifestyle overlooking a huge and deserted beach in west Bali, Indonesia for 30-60 days, in a very friendly traditional Balinese Hindu village. We sponsor you, all expenses paid (including travel), plus some pocket money. You get your own private bungalow overlooking the sea on a large, private, quiet, grassed property with pool. Full time chef and all other chores done by three other full time staff.

We are aiming at a time window between early June and mid-August to provide you some flexibility. If things work out after 30-60 days, then you become an equity partner and we work out terms. We likely continue our collaboration by distance (with perhaps regular “meet-ups” in Bali!).

We are two experienced entrepreneurs, now living in Bali. Jon is originally from the UK, past 15 years in Hong Kong. I am originally from New Zealand, 16 years in Japan. My public profile is viewable at http://www.linkedin.com/in/hamishmacd

We have each built working community websites from concept to completion with teams of coders, but we are not coders ourselves. We ARE very experienced at business execution. We want to find a good match as a third partner to be the lead back-end developer of a “local” global site. Our competitive advantage is a scalable business model based on our experience in global sales. “Local” still hasn’t been done well on the web – we think we know a way to do it.

You need experience in databases, scalable hosting, and creating clean & functional user experiences. Ideally some Web 2.0 / Ajax bells and whistles experience too. You will be able to choose the appropriate technologies to work with. Open Source tools preferred.

We understand you may have some prior work or consulting to keep going. You can work on that as needed, with the proviso that enough time and energy be dedicated to our project to create a working prototype that Jon and I can begin to sell on a small scale in September. We are want to start limited public expansion by November.

If this sounds like an adventure that appeals to you, with exciting work you are in charge of, and the chance of substantial payoff down the track, write me at edge.reason@gmail.com
At minimum, you are guaranteed to have a great time and an exotic life experience you will always treasure!
Its been done better:
http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/
Ship it and fix it, how not to over design
Twitter getting serious about search
because people are cheap.
Because you were taught so from an early age. Because everyone else around you believed so. And it is the sophistication of religion that makes it more believable over Santa Claus or flying spaghetti.
If there actually is any correlation, maybe it's because in countries where people 'spend longer eating' there is a better focus on eating good quality food (rather than any direct correlation e.g. wolfing down food means you are more likely to put it on as weight).

I lived in Geneva for a while and we would always take at least a one hour lunch. There is hardly anywhere to get 'fast food', even in the city centre. And I certainly notice less 'heffers' there than when I am back in the UK.
At least we are decently well compensated for our salt mine jobs. There aren't a lot of professions that aren't salt mines in today's corporate culture - so I'd much rather spend my time actually creating and designing something (no matter how pointless) instead of bashing my head against a spreadsheet every day.
"he runs what is arguably the decade's most innovative start-up, Zappos.com. Hsieh helped start Zappos in 1999 as an online shoe store" They seem to be defining "the decade" creatively in order to exclude google (founded in 1998). Yuck.
Welcome to Smashing Magzine.
Some people have a direct, personal, subjective experience of God.

'I can’t really explain what happened next. I was standing there looking at the statue, and then I discovered I was on my knees. I could hear an interior voice speaking to me. Not with my ears–it was more like a radio inside suddenly clicked on. The voice was both intimate and authoritative, and it filled me.

It said, “I am your life. You think that your life is your name, your personality, your history. But that is not your life. I am your life.” It went on, naming that “life force” notion I admired: “Beyond that, you think that your life is the fact that you are alive, that your breath goes in and out, that energy courses in your veins. But even that is not your life. I am your life.

“I am the foundation of everything else in your life.”'

http://www.frederica.com/east-now-excerpt-1/

If you had this experience, would you still find God just "a historically and psychologically interesting phenomenon?" Understandably, this might not convince you, because you did not have this experience, so you have the right to be skeptical.

The Gospels are accounts of these kinds of experiences, except even more tangible. Instead of a voice in the head of one individual, the communication channel was an entire human life, and events incompatible with our normal experience of reality.

So, here are two potential reasons to believe in God. Either a direct, personal experience of God. Or the witness of others having this kind of experience, who you find credible.

You seem to be saying that no testimony could possibly convince you, without observable, repeatable evidence. A few billion people have a different view of the matter, and I guess we just need to amiably agree to disagree.
Viruses - Batteries Now Included
I liked the ads better.
You can make okay money with ads. I don't make "quit my other work and just live off the ads" money, but I do make "buy a nice new german sports car and have the ads pay for monthly payments" money. Which is nice. And that's just with one site.
> "if you know you want a technical major but you're not sure which, choose Computer Science."

I disagree. If you know you want a technical major but you're not sure which, choose Math. It is the common factor that all other technical fields share, and it will give you the most options. Major in math, then go to grad school in CS, Physics, Economics, or even Law. But majoring in either CS or Economics makes it difficult to go to grad school in the other one.

And most of the "benefits" of majoring in CS that he mentions don't actually require you to major in CS. You merely have to have an interest in programming, which is easier to pick up on the side. On the other hand, try teaching yourself abstract algebra.

Further, the analytical thinking skills that university-level math gives you serve you well in many fields, including computer science. But all that said, if you know what you want to do, definitely do that!
We can certainly look at the natural world for clues, but how would one use math or empiricism to get at God? Can you describe God mathematically in order to plug him into a formula? Of course this is absurd.

'Science' is just a fancy word for knowledge. We don't come to know our best friends, our mothers, our bosses, through the so-called scientific method. Nor do criminal investigators solve tough cases through exclusively empirical means. Would you ask a hung jury to just be scientific about things, and the answer will become clear?
This is getting good!

It appears SimpleCDN's is losing so much money, they are publicly admitting to blacklisting anybody who calls or emails them with questions they don't want to answer.

I was checking out their service, but now it looks like I am going to have to use a pre-paid credit card, and hire a lawyer -- they apparently bill people thousands when they check out their service!
Donations.

If you are employed to write software that solves a problem your company is willing to pay for, you receive money.

If you are self-employed to write software that solves a problem many people are willing to pay for, you receive money.

If you are self-employed to write software that doesn't solve problems, or solves problems people aren't willing to pay for, you will NOT receive money, and any means that you deploy to try and extract value out of people will be seen as a nuisance.

Free apps, especially online games, are like a street performer's music:

-they make you smile when it's good, and not look back if it's bad

-they're free

-you didn't plan for it, or travel far just to hear it, you likely happened upon it

-you may return to the street corner on your way home

-you will not return if you do not have time

-you will not return if the performer pestered you for money

-you may decide to tip the performer

-you will decide not to tip the performer if he seems dangerous, aggressive, or otherwise inquisitive about your private life

TO be fair, apps do these advantages:

-you don't have to physically return for a repeat experience

-24/7 performance

-very easy to spread by word-of-link

Use these to your strength, not to boost your ego to think that you are a "totally different" revenue model.

So how do street performers make money?

-receive donations

-not pester listeners for donations

-not being scary perv/stalker, or looking like one

-sell content not available for free

-sell content collected in a nice, convenient package/album

A lot of sites will list all the content they have, and when you click on certain ones, tell you that they are for "premium customers only". Why wait till the user clicks on it? To go back to my street-performer analogy, it's as if he asks if you'd like him to play you Pachelbel's Canon, and you say, yeah that'd be awesome, and he stretches out his hand. You feel deceived. You may pay out of guilt in real life, but in cyberspace, you just leave and go download the equivalent, from a well-reputed/professional/famous source, for free. Always tell the user this is paying content before wasting his time.

Anyone else?
"if you know you want a technical major but you're not sure which, choose Computer Science."

I completely disagree. I am not even convinced that a computer science degree is the best degree to have for a software job, but a computer science degree is useless unless you go into computer science.

The other degrees can yield multiple career opportunities math being the most widely applicable to different careers. Disclaimer: I have a degree in mathematics.