skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
From the time I spent in the USA I think there are at least two parts to this. There is a certain degree of triumphalism based on the outcomes of the Second World War and Cold War but more interestingly (or perhaps importantly) it is used to convey a sense of optimism and foster nationalism that is targeted at immigrants and intended to get them all pulling in the same direction. Nobody wants to move to a country and hear "Welcome, but it is probably as crap here as the place where you came from".
"We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK as it is part of our international service and is not funded by the licence fee. It is run commercially by BBC Worldwide, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the BBC, the profits made from it go back to BBC programme-makers to help fund great new BBC programmes."

I presume there's some sensible logic behind the decision not to serve this content to the supposed beneficiaries of the BBC in the UK, but it's not obvious to me. This non-explanation explanation just makes me glad that I don't own a TV or, thusly, pay the license fee.

But I'm rare in that I'm a liberal who would be perfectly happy if the BBC ceased to exist.
Blogging should not be seen as an act of procrastination. Unless this act is occupying the whole day, the whole week. Blogging is a sane act of self development or this is how I see it. Most people lack the skill to communicate properly and blogging can be a potential tool for any entrepreneur and hacker.

To anyone who is doing a startup, blogging can be an interesting exercise in general communication. Blogging, in short words, will make you become a good storyteller. You will develop your communicative self so you describe anything in a pleasant manner and it will help outline greatly any part of your project.

I read many texts and business plans (in spanish) and they are pretty boring most of the time because the team has a big lack of writing.
How to run an Arduino (clone) on (AA) batteries for over a year
I send people to this video all the time.
The article's from 2003, but the hype began sometime around 2000 and it was revealed in 2001.

This and Transmeta were these two ultra-secret projects at the time, with big names, a lot of speculation, and no accurate leaks until they were officially unveiled. Neither really panned out.
The UK education system is just as bad for ‘international’ students.
"First they came for the Yemeni, but I was not one so I thought nothing of it.
Then they came for the Afghani, but I was not one, so I didn't mind.
...
Then they came for my neighbors, and I hid.
...
By the time they came for me there was no one to stop them..."
Curious weekend changes in browsers marketshare
This is an adventerous claim.

But maybe they are right, maybe giving up reading the Guardian and similar news sources makes you happier. I for instance prefer fpif.org, fas.org and a random selection from news.google.com to stay up to date.

"Out of the ­10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life, asks Rolf Dobelli."

I used to spend at least 2 hours a day on reading news. (Only a part of that consisted mainstream news.) At least every month I felt I read things that totally mattered towards my personal life. Maybe because I did read more scoped news and really tried to understand the issues. Papers like the Guardian are just there to make Joe Average happy and feed his average interests. It's good to not approximate yourself with Joe Average. Anyone ever wondered why Twitter got so popular as News Reader?
That's just free riding, though. If everyone gives up news, this approach will no longer work.
They didn't eat out because they could afford it. They ate out because they didn't have time to cook or because that's the only real meal they have time to eat.
So basically successful tech people don't really work, they let other people work for them and get all the credit.
I always expected Internet Explorer to be much more used during business days (because that's what people have at work) but it's good to see some data around it.
"a strategy which goes beyond typical invasive ads"

Well, at least they are honest about it.
And what if "socially useful" - which effectively means whatever the current public opinion is - is ... wrong ? We are the very same people that once believed the earth is flat, and the people that proved that walking in a straight line between two points has to be less efficient than walking in a circle (the ancient Greeks. Why ? Because a circle is perfect. Despite proving that the shortest distance is just that straight line), were probably smarter than us, at least on average.

Then it will just be a big net loss to everyone.

Socially useful actually working is predicated on people's rational thinking actually producing good outcomes, and ... well, look at our history. The argument that "this time" we'll be right seems a bit unlikely to be true, doesn't it ?

The good thing/massive problem with capitalism is that it's an "intelligent" algorithm in it's own right, and the conclusions it reaches (the balance on your and everyone else's accounts) are guided by the algorithm, which doesn't care about morals, especially not about the fickle current version (we're < 40 years removed from the prevailing opinion being that skin color determines your worth. In lots of regions that's still true, like large parts of India, or the vast majority of muslim countries).

The differences of opinion between people and "the system" are not really different from the differences between a dictator and it's subjects. Except, of course that the capitalist algorithmic dictator has several advantages. First, he cannot go mad (before you disagree, read up on a few dictators. It'll put things like the Iraq wars and the patent system in the proper perspective). Second capitalism has actual, real information to base it's conclusion on, and nobody can unduly influence it's opinions for long. Third this dictator doesn't care about race, social status, ... (imho conservatives are not fair when it comes to race and religion ("the poor are immoral" argument), liberals are not fair when it comes to social status ("the poor are dumb" argument). I don't want either to stay in power for long).

We're switching to a world in which the vast majority of the population is useless, economically. There is no reason for them to be alive, no value in it. There is no way to prevent our capitalist dictator from realizing this is so, and it will -my biology book uses the term "correct". That's the real problem.
PHPStorm is great for php and javascript development, highly recommended! If their corporate licensing prices were more startup friendly, I'd get a copy for everyone on my team.
I often agonise of this, especially on a CV. e.g. I know how to use (say) a certain programming language a lot better than people I know actually being paid to use said programming language as their full-time job. On the other hand, I know my knowledge is really quite limited and no where approaching an experienced developer--certainly at present I could code up a smaller project or a prototype, but probably no more than that. So what could I say on a CV/resume without being misleading, but also without underselling myself in a job market where the people you're competing against are quite happy to exaggerate or outright fabricate?
An interesting thought experiment to do.. get really smart friends to read this piece after stripping Harvard , Bezos, Jobs and almost all the names .. replace them with variables X_1,X_2 etc.. perhaps a good thing to do for almost all such pieces.
Wooah. I used to live in Reading. Small world.
The author of TFA mentions it: http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011census/hlo/District_Tables...

It's all in PDF though.

EDIT: There's a 230 MB zip file here. Not sure what it contains: http://www.devinfolive.info/censusinfodashboard/
Actually, that's not completely true.

afaik, India - which is one of the largest democracies in the world follows the legal process in almost all the terror related cases. The fact that they try to adapt their laws to keep up with terrorism is a different story.
Ask HN: for those who successfuly launched on HN, how many attempts did it take?
John Cleese on How to Make Your Life More Creative
> I like how everyone here takes this guys word for everything.

It's not very different from the alternative, which is taking the word of whoever put/keeps him there without trial.

Now one of these parties is well-known for enacting cruelties on human beings in situations exactly like these, and the other we really don't know anything about, at all.

Therefore the only right and humane thing to do is to give the latter some benefit of the doubt.

> After all, the US government likes to round up random people around the world and put them in max security detainment

Well yes, such fuck-ups have happened before, as a matter of fact:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/jan/14/usa.germany

And that's just the first example I pulled from the top of Google. There's many more. So truly, there is ALL the reason to assume at least some of the Gitmo prisoners are innocent and kept simply because they are the result of a fuck-up nobody wants to own up to.

> but I also wouldn't bet money on a Gitmo prisoner's "honest" word either.

Why? What do you know about why they are there? There's been no trials, they are only prisoners because the people keeping them say they're guilty of something. So you can't use the fact they are prisoners to decide their honesty, that would be circular reasoning. Both parties have an interest in lying that is almost completely independent of guilt: One has been kept in a secret prison for 11 years subjected to inhumane treatment, and the other side wants to keep a lid on the whole Gitmo thing (maybe even especially if they weren't guilty).

Also, 11 years, man. As I said, you don't know what he did, you don't even know what he's being accused of. Stepping aside from the (very real) possibility of him being completely innocent, what if he did do something, maybe it was terrible, or maybe it was something small and stupid that in no way warrants being locked up in Gitmo for 11 years. And in a year from now you'll have to argue that all those people are guilty of a crime that warrants at least 12 years in a terrible prison, and the year after that, and after that, etc. All the while not having a single clue what these people did, what they are accused of.

It's pretty obvious that at least one of the sides here is guilty.
It's great to see more D3 based mapping projects - it has made it really easy for anyone to get hold of geospatial data and munge it with stats, all with very little learning curve.
>>>In fact I am wondering at the moment, if this posting needs a stronger disclaimer

Don't worry about that. We are discussing strictly economic policies and ideas, not politicians/dictators. Thanks for the reading.

EDIT to add: Having now read, I see there is nothing there for sane people to duplicate. Thanks.
Google Kenya domain defaced by TiGER-MTE - Hacking News
Thanks You! missed that.. However I was hoping for un-aggregated(house level?) data..
Referencing this post and your first:
The fact that bitcoins can be divided until 10^-8 is mainly the feature where the idea was relying. Your state of the power plant compare was right, but as bitcoins get divided the number of transaction will rise causing the blocks to get higher. sure they will settle at a current level, but this will provide the stability in its value.

the problem of the value is already present at the moment. Taking that simple example of the 10000BTC pizza, the Pizza service, if they still hold that amount, are now millionaires. but thats the point with every currency. but they use reforms to handle the problem, which requires an authority to control it, which will not be possible with btc.
I'd be much more interested in Medium as a blogging platform, if they instated a ban on memes in posts.

Hard to take someone seriously when they use the modern equivalent of lolcats to make a point.
I think we've just not done a good enough job of providing resources to teach people design.

Notable exceptions like http://hackdesign.org/ excluded, It's either 'go to uni for 3 years' or 'figure it out yourself'
Ask HN: Ideas for Ethics.PW?
I recently registered ethics.pw domain. I have had a little introduction to professional ethics, and really loved the subject.

Although I got the domain, I am not sure what to do with it. I was thinking of hosting a wiki or discussions board or simply a redirect to wikipedia page for ethics.

Any one has better ideas?
Seriously asking, for this code example (I don't have enough CL experience to tell from this sample): are these optimizations at least generally CL specific, or are they tailored to SBCL specifically? would the same performance benefits apply to Clozure CL or to a bytecode compiled variant like CLISP?
In times of war it is guilty until proven innocent, did you take a look at the UN link?
Two powers who are "at War" can take anyone into custody that they think is "aid and abetting the enemy" and they do not have to release them until the war ends.

In times of war most civil liberties are suspended, we can discuss the fairness or "rightness" of that, but until we can all calm down and talk instead of hit that's the reality that we live in.

The same way a soldier gives his life to his country and with that signs away his freedom, the same way that war suddenly makes murder "legal", war gives a government body the "right" to take away what one would think are inalienable rights. I laugh at their indignation because they think they can pick and choose which parts of war to keep, but the reality is it's all or nothing and everything in between.
My thoughts exactly.

I've worked with far too many freelancers that claim to know something in order to get business, only to then realise that what I'd paid for was hacked together; the kind of work that I wouldn't hire if this freelancer had come in for a full-time role.

This advice works, but only in certain jobs/situations. If you're an internal developer then this is an entirely reasonable thing to do, but more often than not some poor person is going to have to go through your awful code. It's this attitude that adds countless hours of fixes onto a system several years down the line.
I find it interesting that you referenced http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali... at a time in the United States when two states have in fact legalized Marijuana.
I think this simply highlights the point that change for the better is possible if the people want it enough.
What does this mean for Gitmo? Could we apply the same sort of sidestep? I.E. a small forward-thinking community with a not terribly overworked prosecutor petitions to have them tried there? As I remember from back in 2009, the biggest issue was that our congresscritters were screaming "Not in my back yard!" in regards to the evil terrorists, which when you think about it from their perspective is quite a reasonable thing to do. Are there any places here in the U.S. that would actually take and try the Gitmo detainees? (gotta love Newspeak... prisoners)
Awesome post indeed, thanks!
Well, calling a spade a spade... Our point is, that when you opt to receive certain content (like say, goals or runs being scored in sports) you're more likely to value a brand for providing this info than one simply spamming you with adds. It's up to the company sending you push to send you only push you want to receive, otherwise it's just spam which might make you a former customer. We only supply the tech, companies/individuals decide what to do with it.
Well your database is a black box technically speaking. It's very hard to scale it horizontally and it is very expensive to scale it vertically as time goes on.

Logic suggests that you should keep as much processing functionality outside something which can't be scaled cheaply or easily and push it to cheaper front end servers.

On this basis, anything which implies more work than collecting and shifting the data over the wire shouldn't really be in the database. Parsing / processing JSON is one of those things that's going to eat CPU/memory.

Fundamentally there's nothing wrong with storing JSON inside the database and processing it externally, but processing it inside the database is a big risk.

I've seen the same thing over the years with XML in the database and more recently people adding CLR code to SQL Server stored procedures.
Yeah, nazis got a trial .... after the war, but when does a war end? When both sides agree to end hostilities.

So as soon as Al-Qaeda agrees to end hostilities all those in Gitmo will either be freed or tried. This is life not some stupid movie or game, we don't get "do-overs" and "I'm sorry"'s. If you associate with a regime that another stronger power thinks is wrong you're gonna have a bad time. (and the UN allows it)
I cannot comment on Synnefo itself, but Ganeti is a wonderful software. I have been using it for more than a year in production (June 2011) without a single issue. I even built my own PaaS on top of it[1].

If you want to understand the quality of Ganeti, go and take a look at an example of design document[2]. The quality of the documentation, the time spent in defining the requirements for the next release incorporating the feedback from the users together with the quality of the code and the human quality of the people at Google driving the project make it a pleasure to use this software.

If you are not interested, I anyway always recommend people reading the documentation of this project just to know that one can produce such good documentation.

[1]: http://notes.ceondo.com/mongrel2-zmq-paas/

[2]: http://docs.ganeti.org/ganeti/current/html/design-cpu-pinnin...
Agile: Ingredients of a successful sprint.
Whilst internment was a pretty nasty thing, I don't think that what went on in British prisons is comparable to what goes on in Guatanamo Bay.

The point was that whilst nowhere is perfectly just and or free, there is the perception that the USA promotes itself as being so.
For myself, It's a strong desire to learn something new.
I can be sitting in a noisy place and tune out my surroundings, staying focused on the matter in question, as long as I can read the words I can put them together in varying ways until they all work together.

Sometimes I sit here for 36+ hours straight.
I just can't give up until the task has been completed.
The tasks are taken in small portions, and I do take breaks, but not as often as I should.

However, if I have no appreciation for the goals of the project, I can procrastinate in the same manner as I focus.

It's a dual edged blade, and you can cut your own line if you're not careful.
Having a strong desire to achieve your goals should be your priority, and having a vision for the long term is crucial in order to carry you forward through those times when you are less than motivated.

Balance is key, as is moderation.
I find the Pomodoro technique simple and effective.

http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/
Exactly. You seem to have done a better job at making my point :).
Generalizing title is generalizing. The title actually proves the point it's trying to make: that news often skew towards less details, dramatized, click-bait-y. Of course news are bad for you as most of the information is not directly important to your immediate life and usually the information is presented in a very toxic way which creates a certain mood and actually, an addiction to the certain "SMH" behaviour.
Tim, it's ok, we get it, you love your own book. Calm down babe. ;)

Joking aside, the book has some very interesting ideas and personally has inspired me to seek change in my professional and personal life. Although, a blueprint everyone can follow word by word it's not.
I believe I get positive value from HN. So while it's a good way to procrastinate, I'm think HN is a good news source to learn about new stuff, new frameworks, neat projects, etc.
Test
FAQ isn't clear. Seeing if I can post <a href="http://www.google.com">HTML</a>
Also the reason why Gorilla glass, which is mechanically similar (even though the production process is different), is extremely impact resistant but can fail catastrophically if nicked.
Why Mac Equals Your Refrigerator
Wow, this is interesting. I love how it was used as a party trick for centuries. I could see this being used in a sci fi story to great effect.
I have no idea. There's another CSV file: http://www.devinfo.org/indiacensus2011/stock/data/CSV_DataFi...

which takes like 300 MB after unzipping. MS Excel couldn't load it ("Too many rows and columns"). Heck, even Matlab failed to read the CSV. ("File format not recognized")
'MURICA as it's finest !
Well done !
How is this true online?

On the internet, monopolies are natural for social networking, online auctions, classified ads, and search. Each of these require the user to go to the site with the most ads, friends, bidders or sellers, or results.

How do you think the government created an E-Bay, Google, Facebook, or Craigslist?
A combination of these have often worked for me.

1) Stop drinking alcohol (after about 3 weeks I find my thinking is a lot clearer and more I'm interested in learning/working).

2) Change your work location - drastically if you can but often the next room will do.

3) If you're working alone find a space where you can work with others in the room, even if the tasks are completely separate. (or vice versa)

4) Get those big tasks that weigh on you out of the way. Realize how much better not having them around will make you feel, and that should be enough incentive to get them done.

5) Tutor somebody.

6) Stop thinking about work/study all the time, clear your head by listening to stories, I like radiolab from WNYC because it's not too tech. (Something like this would be in lieu of meditation which would probably be better long term.)

7) Wake up earlier.

8) Reward yourself for tasks. For me this used to be ciggies, which then transitioned to cups of tea.

9) Start your day with small easy tasks. If you're thinking about a productive day in terms of 10-12 hours you are likely scaring your sub conscious. Success is 20 minutes of work early in the day. Make that your goal. Everything that comes after is a bonus, and fun.

10) Switch careers (this is what I eventually did)
Serial killer? :)