skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> So how do we keep from just substituting another time sink for tv? How much time do we waste "web surfing" in the evening when we could be doing something else more generative?

It's not necessary. I personally just do what I want, whenever I want, and don't concern myself with "productivity". If I feel like watching TV for days, hell, I do. Other times I feel like creating something: well, I just take out my Emacs and start coding for hours. If I feel like working, I'll work and earn money, if I don't I just quit and spend money.

That's the good part of being a grown-up. You get to do what you want :)

Life is too short to waste it on meaningful things. And usually meaningful means "following what other people say" anyway :)
Slicehost provides fixed virtual private servers and Mosso seems to be more similar to EC2.

Besides the pricing model I don't see any difference. A crucial difference between Slicehost/Mosso and EC2 IMO is that Slicehost/Mosso doesn't have "ephemeral" stuff that can go away at any time.
I'm guessing that, by posting here, you are probably interested in a programming/tech career. While it's true that you can get hired without any formal education, the unfortunate truth of the matter is that you probably won't, especially in this economic environment.

Get your GED and get into higher education. If a uni. won't take you immediately, take some classes at a local community college and look to transfer up.

College is much more enjoyable than high school -- you might actually learn something ;)

I'm 22, in a university, and already regretting not focusing more on my studies. But I know if I don't get them done now, it'll never happen.
I really thought that said 'Microsoft Founder's Dead' for a minute.
I can't figure out why you got downvoted for that comment. Maybe someone from Zango is watching.......
That entirely depends on how you define "the poor" and how you quantify benefits. Is the military a social program? Police? National defense? How do you quantify one person's portion of that?

If we're talking purely about direct social programs like welfare or housing vouchers or medicaid, then homeless people will definitely receive more benefits than they pay in taxes, and people earning $30k year will almost certainly not.

If instead you include all that other stuff like defense and highway spending and assume everyone receives a roughly equal share of those benefits then the argument becomes pointless; the average person pays less than 1/300 millionth of the overall tax revenue but receives 1/300 millionth of the benefits.
Lord of the Cloud: Gelernter, Markoff, Shirky
Now we just need a good, cheap OTA DVR. I've read that the DTVPal isn't that reliable.
I know, but easier said than done...

By "severe anxiety" I mean I've distanced myself from everyone I used to know, and I never go out much anymore. And a few years ago I woke up to 2 shrinks and 5 cops in my room at 9am, which ended in me being taken off in hand-cuffs under a mental health order. Thankfully they concluded after a few days I wasn't in fact mentally ill, but at that point it struck home, and I started to loose the weight I put on over the years, which is step 1 to "recovery" (so far, so good!)

Excuses, I know, trust me, if I could go back in time, I'd go back and "suck it up" earlier, to save myself a ton of headache thus-far. :-)
What an odd thing to say. I guess if you're confined to the Ruby/Git communities, it might seem like no one else has any passion, but still...

There's a ton of fantastic work being done in Python and on the JVM, and quite a few vocal fans of hg. I mean, Scala and Closure get a ton of play here. People are doing fantastic stuff with Django, Twisted, Stackless (and bragging about it). There are lots of people (me included) that would probably be using hg full time if it weren't for Github.

It's really important to keep yourself from being cloistered in a single environment, I think. It's awfully easy to miss cool stuff elsewhere if all you give a crap about is Ruby, and probably detrimental to your own learning.
but that doesn't alter the point in this case

Uhm, yes it kind of does. In that if they had know how taxes actually work, they would have worked.
I think it's pretty clear from the text above that I'm part of Pearltrees (not a tech guy though... hence "the team"). It's also clearly stated on my blog.
Some of the feedbacks above are very useful. There are bugs that we are working on to avoid some of the issues stated above.
There's a lot of truth here. I had to begin my schooling at a branch campus because I wasn't accepted at my first choice. But it lit a fire under my butt. I worked hard, took summer courses at a community college, and ultimately transferred up to my first choice (and finished a year early, no less).

Today I regret rushing (that's a different conversation) but my point is that it's fully possible to make a change late in the game. And if you're 17 it isn't late at all.

What I'm saying is don't stress so much. There are a surprising number of opportunities for those who are willing to take the transfer route to a degree. But you've got to do it one step at a time, so (if you're sure it's what you want) get your GED and go from there.
Why can't he learn how to code?

Instead of Rock Climbing or getting blasted for DiggNation or going to tea houses/spots he could mess with coding until he "gets" it.
Please get your GED (so you can avoid high school) and apply to a college of some kind.

You're still young enough that it'll be easy for you to have a great social life there once you get the medicine or therapy you need to overcome the anxiety.
I am keen to see how long the twitter search as it is today seems to be relevant before it gets spammed enough and a tweet-rank algorithm needs to be used rather than a purely realtime algorithm.
Facebook Fund Incubator Program Deadline Tonight
Crowdsourced Startup Feedback from ChubbyBrain
TV doesn't make you relax, it agitates you to no end.

I tend to live overseas every other year or so, and whenever I come back to the U.S. I'm surprised by the abnormal, loud booming voice of the announcers and crass sensationalism. Why are BBC anchors so human, calm and collected, while CNNers come off as very emotionally involved, and almost nudging you to participate and mirror their reactions?
In those two cases, probably not. What does influence a lot of founders, though, is what happens to peers who try it. Their friend starts a startup and sells it a few years later. How much better off is he economically? Does he merely get enough not to work for a few years, or does he never have to work again? Tax laws make a visible difference here. In a smaller acquisition, which most are, taxing capital gains at the rate of regular income would very often make the difference between someone having enough not to have to work again versus just enough to take a few years off.
Stephenson is in a league of his own when it comes to this kind of story. Snow Crash was a terrific piece of work, where the main protagonist :) was a hacker deeply lacking in entrepreneurial skills. Cryptonomicon had a ton of stuff in it, even down to Bobby Shaftoe getting cracked over the ear with an oar when he was reunited with his beloved Glory :-)
They doesn't get it. It's not about just public repository hosting anymore -- it's about "social networking" for code. I know, this sounds like hype for anyone except those who used GitHub (or, maybe, BitBucket, but I haven't used it). It's different than just hosting projects.
Agreed. The program is overtly cost-conscious and I've made a lot of changes to bring out the 'caring and sharing' values of having guests to dinner rather than the aspirational ones. all the feedback from you and others has been studied carefully, and gratefully.
This is a sound plan if you want to go to college. I'd add to this that there are a lot of JCs that are feeder schools to some great universities, such as Berkeley.

I know two people who did the JC -> Berkeley route. One is still in school, and the other is in Investment Banking (either a big success or a miserable failure, depending on what you think of that career).
Bank Stress Tests May Lead To Removal Of Citigroup CEO
What I meant was that you can't assume that making the poor richer will decrease inequality, because many measures that make the poor richer also make the rich richer, so the gap between them remains just as big.
Having a teen-ager of my own who has severe anxiety when it comes to school (so much more than the typical "I hate school."), I can empathize with the "easier said than done." Honestly, I'd look at talking to a counselor and making a plan for moving forward. You are obviously bright enough that you can over come the challenges, but you don't have to do it on your own.

Good luck!
I find that "quality programming" is almost non-existent on TV which tends to create programs suitable for the lowest common denominator of possible audience. Which makes even scientific show dumb, shallow, pointless, non-educational.

Really, I don't see what you can learn from TV. Movies for an emotional response once per week - sure, but TV as anything but mindless time filler? Sorry I can't buy that.

You can randomly browse wikipedia and get exponentially more quality information than watching some dumbed down discovery.
The Geomagnetic Apocalypse — And How to Stop It
all I can say is:

AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Entitled "Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts," it describes the consequences of solar flares unleashing waves of energy that could disrupt Earth's magnetic field, overwhelming high-voltage transformers with vast electrical currents and short-circuiting energy grids. Such a catastrophe would cost the United States "$1 trillion to $2 trillion in the first year," concluded the panel, and "full recovery could take four to 10 years." That would, of course, be just a fraction of global damages.

Needless to say, shorting out the electrical grid would cause major disruptions to developed nations and their economies.

Worse yet, the next period of intense solar activity is expected in 2012, and coincides with the presence of an unusually large hole in Earth's geomagnetic shield, meaning we'll have less protection than usual from the solar flares.

The report received relatively little attention, perhaps because of 2012's supernatural connotations. Mayan astronomers supposedly predicted that 2012 would mark the calamitous "birth of a new era."

But the report is credible enough that some scientists and engineers are beginning to take the electromagnetic threat seriously. According to Lawrence Joseph, author of "Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation into Civilization's End," "I've been following this topic for almost five years, and it wasn't until the report came out that this really began to freak me out."

Wired.com talked to Joseph and John Kappenman, CEO of electromagnetic damage consulting company MetaTech, about the possibility of geomagnetic apocalypse — and how to stop it.
"88 is the only number known whose square has no isolated digits"

Anyone that can explain this?
Originally posted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=573919
I've got 2 issues with this post

1) Titles like "X to make you a better Y." It sounds fake and spammy and puts the locus of control outside of the reader/viewer/participant.

2) Top 10 lists which are little more than product referrer links, this one to Amazon.
I'm confused. This is news that you can get TV over the air?
And likewise, watching selectively is even easier with some peer-to-peer networking and file sharing sites. You can see almost any show you happen to fancy at the moment - and you get to skip the commercials or pause when convenient. Also, most of the time your watching habits aren't recorded by shady companies for unspecified marketing reasons. Even better, there's absolutely no chance of accidentally ending up watching something you didn't plan to, which is the main idea behind corporate TV.

Also - as far as this individual is concerned, popular culture is overrated.
The Jaguar and the Fox: Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman (2000)
I think FOMO is an instance of a psychological state described by that model. There are others, e.g., checking out a site because all your friends update their Facebook status with a link to it.

I don't know about "oversimplification," but it is a model. It's not meant to explain everything. :)
Interesting definition of thumbprint. Since when does thumbprint not refer to the thumb's fingerprint? Misleading title.
I wonder about DirectX / video-intensive compatibility.
It's a good move for Microsoft but kind of a sad statement on the computer industry in general.

Let me preface this by saying I make the purchasing decisions for my agency so I'm as guilty as anyone.
But the reality is we're all kind of lazy. Developers don't want to rewrite their programs, IT admins don't want to learn Linux and all in all people just want to tow the line. But with x64 processors becoming mainstream and Microsoft pressuring hardware makers not to offer XP drivers we as an industry all have to upgrade to something.

That will essentially be the basis for Windows 7's sales and that's why this feature is both a good idea and a depressing statement on us all.
Hulu is fundamentally a different video experience than a TV, though. Rather than passively watching channels and killing time, you're actively seeking out only your 'exempt' shows. It's a lot harder to fall into the couch potato trap.
Mathematics and the Internet: A Source of Enormous Confusion and Great Potential
The trouble with tiny Windows computers
Main advantage is that APC will be included by default in PHP6.
Oh hey Jesse. Feels good to not be limited to 140 characters.

One thing I wanted to say is that the viral model does a really good job at modeling user growth over time and the threshold model not so much.

I feel like the threshold model is more useful if used to model an increase in likelyhood of viral conversion based on penetration into their social graph. (i.e. users with more friends active are more likely to convert from any given organic/viral message they receive).
I'm not terribly creative with code I write for others. Since I've been doing a lot of Java recently, using Eclipse, I stick with

// TODO:

Which has the added benefit (in Eclipse) of creating a tiny blue box in the vertical source error/warning/status bar (I'm not sure what it's official name is) so I have a visual cue to see where I have unfinished business (Kludges are unfinished business that you might get to next day or never, but even if it's a glorious hack, if you think its a hack and not a "proper" way to do it, its still unfinished business. In a prior project we used to use "glorious hack" as a special comment to use as the first places to investigate when something broke.
Wolfram Alpha Getting A Public Preview On Tuesday
I think the #1 reason is that like they mention git is a second class citizen on Windows. If git was more integrated with windows they probably would have chosen it.

I like git, Mercurial, Bazaar but my favorite recently is Mercurial. Both Python and Google Code switching to Mercurial. The funny thing is Mercurial might win because of this. Google code played a huge role in SVN becoming so popular.

Both Mercurial and Bazaar are Python based. Git is C based and written really for *nix in mind only.
We had a solar flare in 1859 of this magnitude. It caused telegraph wires to catch fire and would have fried the electrical grid, had we had electricity. Something like this could shut down civilization as we know it for years because replacement transformers and the like have multiyear lead times.
I'll join the chorus saying GED, community college, senior college. If you're a fellow Rightpodian, A-levels, then college. But... If it sucks drop out, if you don't want a post grad and you get a good job offer seriously consider taking it. As far as crippling social goes two things really help, hanging out with people like yourself who you can actually talk to, and serious alcohol abuse. I kid you not. The fastest periods of advancement in my social skills come down to alcohol. You make more mistakes, faster, which is the way to learn.
Show me a programmer who has never implemented an ugly terrible hack, and I'll show you someone who has never shipped any code.
TV != news programs.

TV can most certainly be relaxing, it all depends on what you like to watch.
Ask HN: Please include your Twitter ID in your profile so we can follow you.
I assume that a significant percentage of HN users have Twitter accounts (I wonder how many). I would follow many people who post here if I knew who they are on Twitter. I just put my Twitter username in my profile, do the same if you are interested.
Yep, but since I am more interested in developing my own abilities than in trying to convince others (of anything), I make a conscious effort to be more skeptical of things I would like to believe, than of things I disagree with. Unfortunately, no one has enough time to double-check everything, or even most things.
Proximity to Fast Food a Factor in Student Obesity
Very poor research. Where is the data after 4-5 hours? I bet the early person does better then.

It's not that night owls have overall better concentration - it's that they concentrate better at the end and the early birds do better earlier.
VMWare workstation plays video perfectly in WinXP VM, I don't see a reason why MS couldn't do the same.
Shame you don't see more of this around, it's really one of the most elegant artistic expressions I've ever encountered.
It's a fascinating example of working under constraints, as if the artists said 'No picturing living things? No problem!'

I think one of the big reasons that the Semitic scripts in general haven't caught on in western design is that they tend to be very 'dense', particularly the calligraphy. It's easy to point to a Kanji symbol and say 'Ohh that's Kaze, that represents Wind', whereas Arabic calligraphy tends to look like just a cursive jumble without knowledge of the language. Couple this with the strong capacity to offend by including the wrong religious symbolism, and you have a recipe for disaster without considerable special knowledge.

I'm a pretty quick transliterator of Arabic, but some of the Calligraphy (and, for that matter, many modern squared out fonts) is still quite challenging. Hopefully as the Arab world as a whole grows wealthier (by Median not Average) the design tools will catch up and allow for more of this stuff to filter in to the western design world.
Hey Siqi.

Yeah, I don't have a clear idea of how these two models relate to the things one would typically measure in "the industry." That's one thing I'm trying to figure out because I believe fields like SNA, sociophysics, complex systems, etc. can help us understand how to build better, more interesting, and more sustainable social networks -- but AFAIK there's no communication between the people forging new social networks and the people researching them.

But I do know this: Facebook has focused on density from very early on, which is a key factor in the threshold model. Their strategy has always been depth first, as opposed to many FB apps, which I think are breadth first. That is, they go viral, but they spread far and wide without spending time building sufficient density to become self-sustainable.

There's some formula like engagement = density*activity buried in there that I can't quite pull out.
I'd love to see this guy try to answer James Randi's speaker cable challenge.
I remember enjoying Neuromancer by William Gibson
Thanks, I see you have a couple of my favourite books The C P rogramming Language and Masters of Doom. I'll be reading the rest of your blog. Love the clean design!
Agreed Snow Crash is very good. It along with Diamond Age are my favorite of his works. The Baroque Cycle is too long for what it is and might have crushed my spirit to read his work any longer. I advise avoiding it unless you are an avid fan of his.
Former Facebook Executive Van Natta to Be MySpace C.E.O.
Thanks for the context. I don't really follow the news closely, and this post (and it's corresponding upvotes) were a little puzzling to me.
What isn't clear from the article is why they have multiyear lead times...is it a materials or manufacturing constraint that can be overcome by incredibly desperate demand? Planes and bombs took a long time to deliver before WWII, but we needed them so badly that we converted factories and started cranking them out with remarkable efficiency.

Granted, it would be harder to do that without a proper power grid, but I sometimes wonder if people misjudge the ingenuity of our collective society in the face of monumental disaster.
I feel ambivalent.

Personally I don't watch TV at all but I do work for TV projects time to time. I started my career in a TV production (part-time CG programmer), and still get projects with some connection to TV time to time. TV industry itself supports quite a few jobs, and the industry depends on those who spend long hours watching TV.

That won't be an excuse to creating dumb content just to make people addict, but suppose all the people stop spending time on passive entertainment and spend it on "productive" activity instead, who will consume their "products"? I just wonder.
Is this really going to be that amazing, or is Stephen Wolfram just flapping his gums?
I'm sure you'll get plenty of comments on hacker fiction, so here's some "business" fiction:

* "The Bonfire of the Vanities" by Tom Wolfe. The classic novel of 80s Wall Street at its peak.

* "American Psycho" by Bret Easton Ellis. A pretty terrifying picture of greed and excess, again on 80s Wall Street. If you've seen the movie, you know what to expect -- only in greater detail.

* "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Some people hate it, but others find it an inspirational novel. The heroes are driven, smart, competitive entrepreneurs; the antagonists are greedy, pilfering government regulators. Whether or not you like this will probably depend on your pre-existing ideological preference.

I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting...
I read the Diamond Age, but I didn't finish it(Mostly because I read it in store). Someday, I'll finish it. What is really interesting to me because it feature an anarcho-capitalism model of society.
Good heavens. You mean that people really are claiming copyright violation on a makefile? Egads.

Now, i never really got the idea of source pollution if the source is never grabbed to begin with. All projects that rely purely on the GPLv2 have the same 'legal requirement', unless that code generates more code. Then, well, let the lawyers decide that one. I'm thinking of the license from gcc and like.
The Great Disruption: Newspapers versus New Media
Second for Atlas Shrugged. It seems especially relevant right now.
I dropped out of school when I was 16 and went into the normal workforce at 18(for an IT consultancy) after a failed start up.

Dropping out worked for me but it wasn't easy instead of university I spent those years on the very bottom of the ladder making contacts and getting a network going so that I could move up without the degrees and stuff.

I have enough professional experience now that the lack of a degree isn't going to hurt me going forward but I do feel like I missed out of the college experience.

I'd say you can make it without a degree but you have to be pretty good at networking to get your name and face in front of people that can help you out. If you're not comfortable out there selling yourself making lots of contacts with people who might know someone who knows someone get the degree and let it do the selling for you.
Virtualization technology is surprisingly efficient. Besides, XP is likely much less resource-intensive than Windows 7.
I liked Cryptonomicon, but more for the WWII side of the story. If you liked that part, check out Colossus by Jack Copeland. The Randy Waterhouse side of the story actually reminded me a lot of Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. Say what you will about Dan Brown, but I thought Digital Fortress was great.