skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sounds like your catch-22 is that you'd be willing to put in the programming if you knew it would pay off, but you're reluctant to put in the programming if it's not going to pay off.

So how about doing an experiment. The purpose of the experiment is to gather information, without doing any more programming. First explain to your players that you're going to run an experiment: you're looking for ways for the site to be self-supporting so it can continue to grow and meet the needs of its players. The experiment isn't going to affect game play, and that it's just an experiment: you'll take it down if it doesn't work out.

Every business faces the issue price differentiation between customers: some customers have little money and some have a lot, so how do you get the customers with money to pay more without turning away the customers who have little (or, in your case, no money).

For the experiment add a tiered membership: free (what you have now) and patron ($5/month). Both are identical in terms of gameplay (both for fairness and so you don't have to do any programming). By becoming a patron a member has their name listed on the homepage as a patron of Particracy (which is literally true). During new user sign up prominently display the patron option "you can become a patron for $5/month, or join for free". On the homepage above the patron list have a button "Join the Patrons of Particracy".

If anyone signs up, that tells you that there are people eager enough the support the game that they'll give you money even though they don't get any tangible extra features.

Next you might try running a Google ads campaign, max $5 total and max $0.05 per click, using a keyword of "political simulation game". This will deliver 100 people to your landing page. Track how many of the 100 become users (if any) and how many become patrons (if any). This will tell you how easy it will be to draw in new users when you have a way to make money.

Now you look at your conversion rate (is it 0%? 5%? 1%?) and get a sense of what it would take to get to $200/month (40 paying customers). For example, if your conversion rate is 1% then you'd need 4,000 customers to get the 40 paying ones. Then you can look at a) if you want to go for that, or b) do you think that doing things like more programming and adding the premium service you're thinking about might get the conversion rate up.

The point of the experiment isn't for it to make money by itself (though of course it will be nice if it did :), it is to gather information and to give you encouragement.
Well we have a PR5 so that might be one reason. What's your PR?
The inverted pyramid is effective at conveying information quickly, but generally essays are not breaking news, but instead rehashing or adding a new perspective to something old. In the later scenario, I don't think the inverted pyramid is as effective.
Botox for the brain: enhancement of cognition, mood and blunting of unwanted memories
Visualizing the United States Power Grid
This link (from the comments on the OP) is actually a very interesting yet simple explaination of the Y-Combinator.

http://mvanier.livejournal.com/2897.html
Tracking Swine Flu Worldwide
It is perfectly consistent to be in favor of soaking the rich at the national level but to be against such policies at the state or local level.

No, it isn't. Policies that inhibit growth at a local level also inhibit growth at a national level. The effects may simply take longer to become visible.
Google channels Digg, Reddit with "What’s Popular"
> Will a millionaire move from Long Island to Conn. to lower hes taxes? In general no.

I'm not sure why you don't think they would. It's not as though lots of people don't already commute from CT and NJ into New York. There's commuter rail, and probably less traffic than you'd get on Long Island.

CT's southwestern towns in particular used to have a reputation as the suburb for the wealthy (the so-called "Gold Coast" area), in large part because it didn't have any personal income tax at all. That's no longer the situation, but if NY decides to play the class-warfare game, the rich can take their money elsewhere quite easily.
Can you give an idea of how not expensive it is ? :)
They had some fairly decent AP classes at my school that were challenging enough if you took several of them. I remembered thinking the first 11 years of school were a waste, but the last two weren't bad.

I also highly recommend AP courses.
I think he is already doing that with : http://www.watchdog.net/
http://www.stopfakereform.com/ and
http://change-congress.org/
Great advice. You don't realize it, but you have opportunities being handed to you now that won't come so easily later. I miss school (high school & college) for so many reasons. Having lots of peers right there to talk to. So many activites. A library full of books. Sports and clubs. A wide variety of subjects.

A mentor once told me to take advantage of everything available to you on your "school buffet". That's what it's there for. It's a great opportunity to be exposed to many different things, easily, and for free. How else will you know if you like it? Sure, you may not like the class in English literature or the ballet or playing soccer in P.E. But try it anyway.

Years from now you'll probably be sitting in a cubicle by day and changing diapers by night wishing you could experience something new and different once in a while. Now is your chance. Do it.
"I'm introverted and spend most of my time reading or obsessively working on hobbies like programming"

You might want to read the book The Introvert Advantage by Marti Laney, "Caring for Your Introvert" in The Atlantic (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch) and Philip Zimbardo's The Time Paradox, which I wrote about here (http://jseliger.com/2008/09/01/the-time-paradox-—-philip-zim...).

Notice this commenter's idea: "[...]the academic part of high school is not challenging enough for you, but what about the other parts? Are you on one of your school's sport team? Are you part of any clubs? Did you try to take on some kind of leadership position at your school? How big is your friend circle?"

High school still offers many, many challenges, even if you don't realize it; for me, working on the school newspaper and joining the book club made a tremendous difference in how I perceived much of life.

"I was just wondering if you guys had any experiences or suggestions to share about school."

School is a game. Make it your mission to learn how to crack the game, which doesn't mean you have to neglect your "real" education, as it sounds like that will happen chiefly on your own time. And what you consider "wastes of time" aren't always: they're opportunities to network, or to learn how to flirt, or to learn how to get away with things, and so on and so forth. These are important skills too, but many nerds ignore them for too long.

A final book recommendation: try Curtis Sittenfeld's novel "Prep." It's not about someone in your situation, but it is about someone who, I think, finally learns how to "do" school. If you're as analytic as your post implies that you are, it's possible to learn this. Anyway, the personal website I linked to above has my e-mail address if you're interested in hearing more.
I think you are being too extreme here.

'For another, your friends are chosen by accidents of age and geography, and not by you.'

this seems patently false to me, you hang out with the people who energize and care about you whether you are 16 or 25...

I mean, yes it's true that high school is boring and has many flaws, but it really doesn't take up that much time, and you can get a lot out of it. Classes can be boring and stifling, but I would argue that going to college without at least calculus isn't the best idea if you plan to have a lot of time to learn all the cool math you want/need.

Also, as some previous posters mentioned, until you're kicking everyone's ass and winning math/programming competitions, I don't think it's fair to say that school is too easy
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Another name to this excessive individualism is: 'narcisism'. There are people who defend that way of community organizing: http://perlmonks.org/?node_id=669062 (this is an example from the Perl community - but I hope it will not be taken against Perl - as a part of that community I just know more about it's dark corners - also note how many people in that thread disagreed).
Consider yourself lucky. There are plenty of paths open for you. (And that is why is difficult)

If I went back to high school? I would really focus in sports. It would teach me discipline, team work, and a lot of social skills.

After that, Try to get in a good college so you meet a lot interesting people. Follow your curiosity.

...keep hanging out in HN. Lot's of talent here.
It's a way of learning and creating that lends itself well to individual study when more collective forms of study are not designed for learning and creativity.
Ah okay, thank you for the link.
Agreed, but I dont think many high income individuals will pull their families even from Westchester to Conn. to save a few $K. Also taxes follow your place of employment/business not residence. So someone who has to commute to Manhattan isnt going to save anything.
Edgar Hernández Hernández? This virus not only replicates itself, it replicates your last name too. We're all doomed!
Alt text has been updated to more accurately reflect the images.
I had similar grudges about my school, but money and location didn't favor me, so I just bore it grudgingly. From what I have heard about the US, I am assuming the following might actually be possible:

- Convince your school to miss classes if you demonstrate great scores and promise to keep them

- Convince your parents to let you take a year off, promising to continue where you left off later and use the time to pursue your interest of study. You will either confirm your suspicion that school is a waste of time or gain completely different perspectives. Either case is a win

- Homeschooling. I am surprised your parents haven't come up with this option yet. I am not familiar with the US educational system, but can't you just study on your own and appear for qualifying exams that you would have normally taken after high school?
I agree that I am stating my argument at a relatively low intellectual level (but maybe not "the lowest"), and I also agree with you and PG that in general we ought to avoid personal attacks as a form of disagreement.

However, I think you've mistaken my intent. I don't agree or disagree with the article. Honestly, I have only skimmed the article, and I don't plan to read it carefully, because I am convinced that the writing is sloppy, and that makes the article, in my judgment, not worth reading. I would presume you feel differently.

I had hoped to spare fellow readers the disappointment that I experienced, clicking on the article, hoping to find insightful commentary on running shoes, but instead finding writing that appeared to me to be unexceptional. It certainly seems this has been ineffective. I don't know; maybe you all loved the article, and I'm the one missing out. I'll stick with the heuristic of "Articles that lead with unreasonable claims are not worth finishing."
I wish it had vertical splitting.

That said, I've probably had at least one screen running somewhere in the last fifteen years.
Yeah, I'm a huge screen fan. I think it's probably the most important single app I ever learned of. There's nothing quite like being able to do attach to a single screen session from multiple locations, or leaving a heavy duty screen session running for weeks on end on a remote server. In linux just being able to log out and back into X without losing the terminal session is very useful (though I think it fouls up $DISPLAY somehow so starting X apps stops working).

I actually don't think I've used the splitting feature, I'll have to give it a whirl.
Microsoft to Launch iPhone Rival on Verizon Early Next Year?
Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities
I can see that connection, but not for the reason you list.

To me, Python is most like Basic in that new programmers can get started with it easily, unlike, say, Scheme or Haskell.

(And I love Scheme, but I have no illusions that it's a 'long term' language. I think something lispy will still be around long term, just not sure I'd put my money on Scheme.)
Actually, if you download the current SVN revision, you can get vertical splitting (use it with Ctrl-A, then "|"). I use the SVN revision solely for that reason. Stability is generally not an issue with the SVN builds either.
The idea (for the interpolating case) is that drawing occurs between two physics states; say at time0 physics has state0 (position, orientation etc) and at time1 physics has state1. Then the state at draw time is an interpolation of the states (lerp for positions, slerp for orientation quaternions etc) with parameter t (where t is (draw_time - time0) / (time1 - time0)).

The non-intuitive thing is that drawing is always bracketed by a physics step in the past and a physics step in the future.
In response to your edit - agreed wholeheartedly.

To any Linux developer/admin who hasn't used it - if you want to push your terminal wizardry to the next level, make a concerted effort to learn Screen. Once you get the basic commands down (and these Ubuntu modifications should help the learning curve) it really does save a lot of time.
Your thought process is suffering from selection bias. You're thinking to yourself, "California taxes are high but lots of smart people still live there." Yes, those people do, because there are enough offsetting positive factors for these folks that CA is still a reasonable deal for them compared to the alternatives.

There are also plenty of smart and wealthy folks who live in Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Florida, in part, because the taxes are lower. As with any marginal change to a policy, you have to look at the effect on the marginal cases. You have to ask, "if taxes in CA were reduced by X%, what Y% more smart and wealthy people would choose to live there?" I guarantee Y > 0 for any X > 0.
What's wrong with, you know, a regular bicycle? Everyone says people need to get more exercise, and many people spend hours at the gym when they could just combine their workout and commute.

OK, so it's not so great to show up to work smelly. More and more workplaces are offering showers and such, and many gyms offer cheaper "shower-only" memberships.

The main problems with a regular bicycle (cargo/passenger capacity and exposure to weather) are just as present on electrics.
I disagree completely. If the iPhone SDK offered this sort of feature then people who want it (like me) could have it, and people who are not interested (like you) could pass.

The only 'protection' you need from apps like this is the freedom to choose them or not as you like. Crippling the platform is not the answer.
Ok, I'm going to try to help you out a little bit here with what I went through.

I left school after the 11th grade for what appear to be the exact same reasons. In the twelfth grade, I was 'homeschooled', I did a lot of independent study (AP English, AP Computer Science, Science-Fair, I attended the National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology), and I took three college courses every quarter. (Physics, Chemistry and Engineering).

It was an immensely challenging year, and I had a lot of free time to learn what I wanted, and work an interesting challenging job on the side. When I applied for college, my parents wrote a letter saying what I did, and I had college transcripts to back it up. In my state, if you take college classes as a high school student they call it 'Post Secondary Enrollment Options Program' and the taxpayers pick up the tab.

I also only spent three years in college for the same reason; I started feeling like I was wasting my time. That may or may not have been true, at college I could have applied myself more and used more of the resources around me (most professors are professors because they are very good at what they do...learn from them, not necessarily from what they teach in class).

Some of it is probably you, and some of it could be the place/people you're around. This is very hard to look at objectively.

People aren't unreceptive to high school and/or college dropouts. People are unreceptive to slackers, and underacheivers. Honestly for me it just doesn't come up much, unless people ask 'Where did you go to school?' and by then they've usually made up some sort of decision about what to think of me anyway.

Dropping out of school has not closed one opportunity to me. At least not one opportunity that I would have pursued anyway (probably some big corporations have restrictions on that sort of thing).

What it comes down to is this: Do what you want. When your guidance counselors tell you "If you had all the money you would ever need, what would you do?" Don't mistake that to mean, 'after high school, after college, after this certain point in your career'. That means "right now, what are the steps that I need to take to make that happen" and doing them.
"I actually don't think I've used the splitting feature, I'll have to give it a whirl."

Make sure you get an SVN build, so that you've got vertical splitting ;)
THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.
Đà Lạt ... Tour bụi 3 ngày : Ẩm thực Đà Lạt ( phần 2 )
JSConf was ridiculously good. I say that as someone who goes to a lot of conferences. Also I met a bunch of folks from HN, and that's never bad.
I've included links to most of this story on my blog:

http://cubiclemuses.com/cm/articles/2009/04/28/a-community-o...

Ruby Inside also has a rundown of things:

http://www.rubyinside.com/be-professional-or-be-edgy-how-con...

And you can see the original presentation slides here [NSFW]:

http://www.slideshare.net/mattetti/couchdb-perform-like-a-pr...

Edit: reformatted links for clickability
Learning How to Count (Avoiding The Fencepost Problem)
I dunno if I'd call that "advanced". More like "easier to use".

Don't get me wrong. It's nice (I personally disabled it because I want my apps to take the full terminal).
There's a lot of excellent advice in this thread, but I think I can sum most of it up by saying that the primary thing you need to do for yourself is spend more time way outside your comfort zone. It's fine to be learning geeky hobbies, coding, reading hacker news, etc... but that alone is not enough to be successful in life. You need to broaden your experiences and learn about things that seem to have nothing to do with what you think you're interested in. It allows you to recognize new trends and opportunities. I guarantee this will come in handy some time down the line. I always think of the story that when Steve Jobs dropped out of college, he went and sat in on a calligraphy class. Why on earth would a geek need that? Well, years later when Apple was building the first Macintosh he was able to draw on that knowledge when they were figuring out how to support fonts (http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html). I experienced this in my own life. I wanted to be a biologist, so I really got into my science courses taking extra biology classes my senior year. On the side, I dabbled in various computer-related activities, but I always felt like that was taking away time from my important biology stuff that would eventually be my career. When I got to college the field of bioinformatics started to emerge, and I realized I could use my biology skills with my computer hobby. Suddenly, all that time I thought I had "wasted" playing around with computers became my career. You just never know what the future holds.

Finally (and this is major), speaking as a fellow (reformed) introvert: you have a huge, gaping problem to address. You need to be able to easily and freely communicate and socialize with people. This is not some warm, fuzzy BS. It's a real life skill you have got to master. It's hard. It's painful. It's embarrassing at times. But, you have to do it. In "Hackers and Painters", Paul always talks about having the wind at your back in startups. Mastering social skills is an awesome hack that gives you the ability to make your own wind. People who can really network and socialize get things other people don't. That's a fact of life. Many introverts complain that this isn't fair. I always did. The reality is, social interaction is a pretty easy hack to get what you want in life compared to most other methods. It's worth the time and effort required to build up the skill. If you're hopelessly clueless how to interact with people, you could start off by reading "How to Win Friends and Influence People".
Pretty much nailed it. My official job has been frontend engineer for almost 2 years now and he describes all of the most frustrating things about this job. The perception that the deficiencies of the backend can be easily papered over in the frontend is something I fight about on a regular basis.
i guess my issue is (and perhaps this is because i haven't read up enough on the biohacking movement) that transforming e. coli shouldn't be sold as 'hacking,' which to me implies that you'll be free to kind of build and design whatever you can imagine. in reality, you are 'splicing' nothing (as transformation does not require recombination, and the bacteria will rapidly lose whatever plasmid was introduced if they are taken out of the appropriate media), and you are limited by whatever plasmids you have the good fortune of borrowing from someone--maybe GFP to make your bugs glow or something. i suppose there might be an analogy to be made here to the early days of computer science, when one could do very little with computers, but i still think that this technology, which will be great for getting people excited about science, should not yet be advertised quite so breathlessly.
Anyone who is serious about JavaScript, or their career as whole in web-related technologies, should go ahead and save money for next year's event. It was simply blinding how many bright minds were in one room...

@joemccannn
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Good point. There are generally two ways of thinking about this. Find your calling or learn to be happy no matter what you do. I think there is wisdom in both and they are not necessarily self excluding.
The kid in the article isn't the source, it's this one:

http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=28mion8&s=5
Historically people rarely had flat feet until they wore shoes their whole lives. This would lead one to conclude that flat feet are strongly caused by wearing shoes. This is reinforced by the fact that flat feet can often be cured by stretching and strengthening the muscles of the feet. You can see now that these ideas are making their way into the scientific literature, although they aren't actually doing the needed studies yet.
http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/121-1272/3024/

You are right that scientific peer reviewed research on barefoot native cultures (and barefoot running in general) is hard to find. But when you recognize that it is scientifically proven that shoes decrease cushioning and increase joint stress, you start to think we haven't progressed much from them. http://www.mskreport.com/articles.cfm?articleID=2980