skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I started out with Gentoo, maybe 10 years ago. It was the coolest thing, but later realized that I was spending a lot of time compiling everything and wanted these magical things called "binaries" instead.

So I switched to Ubuntu - Warty Warthog! I loved it because it was a minimal distro that was very useful and fit on a single CD. (I neither had lots of internet nor CDs available to me at the time.) Also, I never knew which options to select for a Fedora Anaconda install. So many packages - what do I want??

Then I tried Mint. It was neat, I guess, but never seemed appreciably easier than Ubuntu. I was hoping for an easier experience doing things like playing MP3s and displaying patent-protected GIF files, but I dunno, I never really got into it.

I did, however, get into the Cinnamon window manager!

Today I begrudgingly installed Ubuntu 12.04. It's more or less the only distro that anybody supports - you can get directions to install $foo (driver, software, Steam, what have you) on Ubuntu but other distros are hit or miss. And Ubuntu is more or less as updated as I care to be, a guarantee that I don't know I can get with other distros.

Mind you, I don't really like ubuntu nowadays. I'm not into Unity, I'm not into paid-results-in-system-search, and as a power-user, I was really unhappy when the switched from init scripts to upstart. But the community has widely adopted it as a 'standard' platform for their software, so, well, here I am.
I have downvoted by accident only once in my time as a HN user, and it was on an iPad.

These days, out of fear of clicking the wrong arrow, and because zooming in and out is a chore, I up/downvote sparingly when I am on a mobile device.
G-Cans: the World's Largest Drain
What bothers me personally the most is the way in which downvotes seem to happen. Don't get me wrong, a lot of users downvote in a good way, so it's not all bad.

Still, I often find grey comments that are brought in a completely respectable way. I feel like these comments are getting downvoted because someone disagrees with them, rather than because they are bad or toxic comments.

The opposite is also true, I often find comments with a positive amount of votes that are in the "internet jokester" style and don't really contribute anything meaningful to the topic at hand.
This is true, but I feel we need to try harder before reaching this conclusion that "oh, it's inherently too theoretical/has too many solutions, so you're just going to have to figure it out by yourself". Because even in the scenario that it did have too many possible solutions, wouldn't it be more helpful to provide at least one in addition to the theory? I think it would, as long as you make it clear that there are other possibilities out there and that this particular solution might not work for you.

The crux of the issue for me, is that intelligence research (to my rather limited knowledge) seems to be converging on the idea that people have different inherent [genetic?] constraints on learning ability. Not learning capacity mind you, just that it might be more challenging for certain subsets of people to understand quantum physics (for example) than others, and that that could be traced back to how much 'actionable' material they are exposed to -- if they're not exposed to enough, then they could easily be left behind and be blamed for not 'choosing' to get it. This is what bothers me. Especially since I know I often find myself struggling for ages with things that other people seem to grasp with significantly less information than I needed to 'get it'.
From personal experience, you don't realize until you are neck deep in it. And then you have a nontrivial choice to make...
My work environment is currently a chaotic mix of a variety of linux distros, most of them broken in some fashion. I was hired to club the system into submission, and am using CentOS as my base for rebuilding everything.

Work system is Fedora-XFCE, home system is Slackware.
Ethics and morality are exactly the same as legality.

Technically, I can lie to you. I just did, and it's legal, as I did not cause you harm in any tangible way.

It's legal but not moral. Many things are like that, and most are far less black and white or obvious. This is a difference you need to be very conscious and careful of if you intend to work... anywhere, ever.

Most of the companies you're likely to deal with -- whether it's in an employment situation or in a consumer transaction -- are so large that your interaction with them will be governed by policies, not by morality, and policies are set based on what's legal, practical, and profitable.
How is this news now ? Isn't this pretty much what every corporation does to reduce the tax load ?
I use kubuntu as I cannot stand unity.
Tools like kjots and kate are my daily use tools which run really fast and provides no non-sense UI.
That's not "no good reason really", that's a pretty good reason. There'a no requirement to have a solid ideology constructed around your choice of OS.
Fedora from f08 to f16, but switched to centos 6.4.
DNA molecules are pretty long. And this isn't a Nyquist law issue (I don't think) because there isn't a need to transmit coherent information. You just need to apply enough of a voltage to kick over the redox state of two iron atoms (midpoint potential ~ -20 mV) every so often.
> there's someone who claims that the author of the article is an incompetent idiot because they found a factual error somewhere in the article. Often this leads to a pedantic discussion of some insignificant details.

I think it's important to note that comments can point out (even minor) factual inaccuracies in an article without being dismissive or insulting. I find that type of comment tremendously valuable for articles with topics outside of fields I am learned in.
I used to use Debian for everything until I started working with OpenStack, and now use Ubuntu because it has releases in sync with OpenStack releases.

So now I plan to have OpenStack running on both the server in the office & on the laptop that has a KDE desktop on it, too. It'll be nice because I can take my Windows 7 VM with me when I take the laptop out.
> The acquisition price is artificially being inflated by investors who are trying to squeeze Yahoo, who is trying to "turnaround" its profitable business. The $1.1.bn price is already "too high" for Tumblr's true underlying value.

That's the market. If Yahoo thinks tumblr is worth $1.1B, then Yahoo will pay $1.1B; if not, then they won't. How the price got there (by some artificial inflation or whatever) is irrelevant.

> Yahoo has no track-record of successfully acquiring, integrating and generating value from such acquisitions. Broadcast.com ($5.7bn), GeoCities ($3.6bn), Inktomi ($235m), Overture ($1.6bn), del.icio.us ($20m), Flickr ($?m), and the list goes on.

All the acquisitions cited are 8+ years old. And it is hard to say whether the recent acquisitions (within the past, say, 5 years) are doing well or not.

(I would also vote against the acquisition, but for other reasons)
Unfortunately, the distro whose philosophy I like the most has a package manager that I like the least. Therefore, instead of Arch, I use Ubuntu.
Study: Men's Biceps Predict Their Political Ideologies
That education in critical thinking would be a waste, due mainly to the sorts of businesses and products people like us develop and push here everyday.

People are less and less able to work with each other at a high level (consider the inability to deal with blue-collar banter at conferences, and the common situation of ignoring each other to tweet or use phones).

People are not interested in acquiring new knowledge (they may, perhaps, cache relevant results from Stack Overflow or Google--usually not).

People do not want to think critically--think about how much effort we put into making our tools as simple and intuitive as possible, and how much we emphasize convention over configuration, and how much we spend on advertising to make people want our stuff.

There is probably no next horizon--there's just bullshit makework to help people function in a token economy spoonfed ads by Adsense on their iJiggers.
Brittin told the PAC last year that “nobody” in Google’s UK office was selling advertising on its website. When he asked to give further evidence last week, he admitted “a lot of the aspects of selling” did take place in London but the deals were “closed” by staff of Google’s Irish subsidiary.

The distinction is crucial because if deals were finalised by London-based staff, Google could be deemed to have made profits on the contracts which would be taxable in Britain, rather than low-tax Ireland. “It uses a concocted scheme to avoid tax. It’s a smoke-screen to distort where the substance of its economic activity is really taking place,” Jones told The Sunday Times.

He said he attended meetings where Google’s London sales staff closed deals, including winning contracts from eBay, the online auction site, Kelkoo, a price comparison website, and Lloyds TSB. He showed The Sunday Times contracts, invoices and correspondence between Google and its customers in Britain. One 2004 contract had the address of Google’s London headquarters next to the heading. Clients would be sold deals by Google staff in London, who were in charge of sending out contracts and receiving signed documents back from clients. In addition, British clients paid money into British bank accounts for Google services.
I've found that regularly wiping down the rollers with denatured alcohol seems to "restore" them, so no, I've never replaced the consumables, and I've run hundreds of thousands of pages through it.

The real problem is dirt gets behind the glass window and makes streaks on the scan. It's all sealed up and I can't figure out how to get behind it and clean it.

The other thing is, you can often find lightly used models on ebay that are cheap because they are missing things like the tray, hopper, and power brick. Just get one of those, and move over your other parts to it, and you've essentially got a new one ready to rock.
Nintendo has been "dead" a few times now, but they've been going since the 1800s or something when they made playing cards. They also have the capacity to come up with crazy new stuff nobody ever expected. Maybe they're not doing well right now, but I have a hard time believing they're "dead."

On the other side, we have EA, best known for insulting people and lying about DRM, including their ex-customers, who they like to imply are homophobes. They haven't managed anything more inventive than tired Madden retreads and they're best known as a company for having their devs toil away in the EA slave mines, where they make minor stat tweaks to Madden for 26 hours a day.

As a gamer, I know which company has more credibility with me. It's not EA.
Arduino Announces New Wireless Linux Board
New Arduino Robot Available in the Maker Shed at Maker Faire
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I wish I could read the article myself.

(without reading the article)

One could say that Google is doing its part to avoid financing the war machine.
Thank you! That's the one I was looking for.
Flaky: datatypes for real world quantities (the open source library I work on)
I believe plumbers should have a college education. As I said in an above reply, I don't believe college education is about learning things that are directly relevant to any profession. It is about learning critical thinking, how to work with others at a high level, and how to acquire new skills easily.
It sounds like you're in love with Linux, more than specifically CentOS.
> How exactly did you arrive at that conclusion ...

Did a Google search for Vancouver rentals, clicked on the first 3 results, verified that it was Vancouver Canada and not Washington state, and then clicked around the maps/listings.

The first two links do seem to indicate Vancouver being cheaper than San Jose when eyeballing it, but you'd need a data export or graphs of dollars per square foot averages to be fully comparable.

BTW I picked Vancouver because it is on the west coast as is the bay area. Some indications are that Toronto would be a better choice, and perhaps compared to Chicago or NYC instead.

> ... according to The Economist, Vancouver is the most expensive city in North America ...

Note that they are measuring the cost of living, not the price of accommodation although the latter should account for a large amount of the former. You also have to be careful what is being compared - for example they list Colombo (which I'm personally familiar with) amongst the 20 cheapest, but that certainly isn't the case for a lifestyle equivalent to the bay area, and cars are eyewateringly expensive there due to import duties (around 5 times the price in the US!)
Really wish this was around elsewhere. Apparently no such service exists in the UK, so when I purged all my dead trees, I just scanned the bar codes as I didn't have the time to scan the whole books (or figure out how to automate it).
"I started out with Gentoo, maybe 10 years ago. It was the coolest thing, but later realized that I was spending a lot of time compiling everything and wanted these magical things called "binaries" instead."

I'm using Gentoo and I don't really notice this, but that's probably because my needs are fairly minimal and I take the approach of "if it's working, don't change it". Unless I happen to upgrade to something that requires a new version of a library that then breaks other things that were linking to it, setting of a chain of forced recompilation, I don't really spend much time compiling at all. (Amortized time compiling, in light of the library issue just mentioned, might still be high.)

Curious what other Gentoo users' perceptions of time spent compiling is.
Alex Limi is Ruining Firefox
JavaScript is now a required component in almost all modern web applications (GMail, Apple.com, Facebook, etc.) and this preference option is no longer applicable and should be removed. If anything, keep it in about:config.

Having this option probably causes more harm than good when someone accidentally disables JavaScript and then the web stops working for them in Firefox.

Reproducible: Always
Barney Jones is a devout Christian, you best listen to this man.
"a devout Christian and father of four," is this suppose to portray an image of NOW that he is no longer with Google and after working there "between 2002 and 2006," he wants to "do the right thing." PA CHA!

He's obviously doing it with his own intentions, whatever they may be. He worked there that long and now that he's no longer with them, just wants to be get PR.

Given my background in regards to Google (it's not positive), I'm not a fanboy of this "good," employee and am NOT AT ALL in favor of Google.
Seconding this... as someone likely to pick up emacs soon (for Clojure), a recommendation would be great.
I am normally enraged by a number of Google's business practices and am extremely hostile and critical of them when it comes to their evil and horrible customer service practices, among others, but this is about the stupidest criticism of Google that I've ever heard. This isn't even actually a criticism - EVERY individual and company works to minimize their own tax burden as much as they can. Google is not evil for not wanting to give even more of their cash to any government.

If Barney Jones wanted to report on what he viewed as illegal activity, why would he wait nearly a decade to come out about this? This is incredibly bizarre and stupid.
What is wrong with pacman?
geany when on ubuntu
Can you please mail team@tinkercad.com with your login email and we will look into it. Sounds like a bug.
It doesn't appear that this is what was happening here. They did the deals in London and then claimed that they were done in Ireland for tax purposes.

Essentially, they expected that no one would ever check whether a tax nexus was established in the UK. The fact that the UK didn't have any ability to check if this was true doesn't mean a law wasn't broken.
It's a somewhat hot topic in the UK at the moment.
I say that as a social science graduate. I think there's very little value produced in those fields. I don't really think they produce critical thinking.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have included the humanities. I think everyone should read the materials studied in those fields. I personally lean towards reading them on my own time, but for many a humanities education is the impetus to read many works they would otherwise never read.

Edit: I'll add that, while I didn't give a reason why I think they produce little value, you didn't do anything to refute me. You just gave an ad hominem attack.

There is some value produced in those fields. However, it is very difficult to produce a controlled experiment in the social sciences. Yet they have scientific and mathematical pretensions. I agree with Nassim Taleb that much of what they produce is uncertain, tenuous and misleading.

Further, they teach students poor skills. The writing requirements encouraged bloated writing, which leads to the opposite of clear thinking.

I'm also a logic teacher (I work in LSAT prep). I see A students who have not learned how to think. I have seen no evidence that undergraduate social science degrees encourage better patterns of thought or erudition, the two most cited reasons for a liberal arts education.
This was a pure asset deal, no personnel moved to Autodesk. The team will continue working full time on Airstone.
Not a joke, but my first language isn't English so I'll own up to the poorly written part. I think I was trying to point out that it seems he copied the actual photographs of the magazines from somewhere because he admits to not owning them.
I'd like to know as well. I love the simplicity of pacman.
Awesome, this is great news.
Eh, not necessarily. In the 30-35 age range, if you're looking for an actual serious relationship and not just a fling, you'll find there are a lot of girls who spent their 20s getting their careers in order and amassing life experience, and now find they want a husband but all the decent guys were taken in their mid-20s.

I'd say that the teens and 22-28 range are hardest for guys, and 28-35 and 65-80 are hardest for women, with college being about equal for both sexes. In your teens most girls cluster their attention on the hottest or most socially confident guys, and from 22-28 guys have to compete with older, more established males for girls that are still somewhat attracted to the trappings of success. But once they get to their late 20s, most people realize that a.) if they want to start a family of someone roughly the same age, they better do it soon b.) the superficial things that most people like in a partner - hotness, money, success, popularity - don't really matter much when you spend every day with them and really get to know them, and what does matter are things like kindness, character, emotional stability, etc. and c.) most of the people who realized this earlier dropped out of the dating pool and got married in their 20s. Women have a much stricter time horizon than guys do at this point, so guys tend to have the advantage in the dating pool.

I've heard dating past the mid-30s is weird, with a lot of divorcees and a lot of folks with baggage from past relationships. I see a lot of age-unbalanced couples in this range, with guys in their mid-40s coming off a failed marriage dating girls in their mid-20s, or single mothers having a string of not-too-serious boyfriends while juggling childcare and a job. Then once you get to 65, guys again have the advantage, because women tend to live longer and so there are a number of widows while very few widowers. I've heard that single guys in retirement communities get so much ass, but for some reason nobody wants to talk about that...
That was the first thing I noticed about this post! :)
Same here, around 8-9 years ago... on a laptop. Things would break all the time for me and it was hard to even use any vanilla kernels on it. It taught me most of my basic linux skills, and the forums were a treasure of information (before they took a dive, not sure how they are nowadays). I often had to boot Knoppix (livecd) to fix things.

It was a distro that invited a lot of experimenting and tweaking.

I've been running opensuse as my main distro now for a couple years. Great kde support, very stable, gets the job done. For servers I gravitate towards CentOS.
This is very old news (at least a year or two). This is such common practice that there is a nickname for it. It is called the double Irish http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
This is exactly what drew me to it as well; I was awed by the opportunity for so much learning. Anecdotally I've found the focus of the front page has shifted a little from hard-core CS (my degree) and maths topics to more startup and web-development oriented projects and articles. However, there is still often one or two articles that give me the hn hit of old.

I don't often comment or submit links, and when I do I don't really care for the karma beyond hoping I've provided something constructive, but despite the shift in focus I continually enjoy the spirited, structured and technical discussion that hn provides. Like gregpilling I read it daily, and would like to thank pg amongst others for continuing to curate such an interesting community.
as a power-user, I was really unhappy when the switched from init scripts to upstart

Why? Personally, I much prefer the declarative configuration over the lengthy SysV boilerplate, and there's always pre-start and such if you want to insert some shell code.

By the way, may I suggest Debian Sid/Unstable? Most of the commands and package names are the same (for obvious reasons ;), it has a rolling release (so you're always up-to-date) and it's still on SysV init scripts.
Started out on ubuntu around five or six years ago, then I switched to debian about 4 years ago. And now I've been running crunchbang waldorf on my laptop for about two years, mint on my desktop for one and angstrom on my openpandora and debian wheezy on my tablet for about six months to a year. So mainly debian based for my systems, but then again debian is easy to use, easy to configure and just fun to use.
Ha. I felt like that's all I ever did was compile with Gentoo, and some how that was cool.

Now if Ubuntu would integrate systemd I'd stop considering fedora.
What is massive and immoral are the huge criminal organizations that spy on people, curtail their freedoms and extort money from them in any possible way to divert it to themselves.

Then, they reuse part of the money to mislead the people, convincing them that they are caring for their interests and that not paying the protection money is immoral and wrong.

They call themselves "governments".