skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Concentration is an ability to remain focused on something. It does not have "results" other than the ability to retain that focus for a longer period of time or with fewer distractions.

In terms of understanding my mind, you seem to be very focused on absolute, objective outcomes. It is not that simple. What questions would you ask? And how would you measure the outcomes?

A lot of questions you might ask can only be evaluated by answers your own mind gives you, and you often can't tell if those answers are objectively correct or just rationalizations.

What you can do is observe what you feel (physical sensations, or internal feelings), how you react, what you think, what brings out specific thoughts etc. and try to bring more of your actions under conscious scrutiny and control.

To go back to my example about impulse control and chocolate: If my mind tells me I deserve that chocolate, is it right or wrong? There is no objective truth to that, because the only arbiter is myself, and if there are rules that says I shouldn't have chocolate, they are rules I set myself and rules I am allowed to change.

What meditation as a tool helps with in situations like that, is teach you techniques to "catch" your mind in the act of rationalizations to let you slow down and consciously evaluate those thoughts before accepting them. Instead of accepting that "yes, I deserve that chocolate", I might think "hold on, I have decided to diet; I can have that chocolate, but I'll feel disappointed later that I had it". Or I might go "yes, I do actually deserve that chocolate; I've done very well on that diet, and as long as it is just that one chocolate, it is an acceptable trade off". Neither decision is still correct or incorrect.

It might feel trite and underwhelming, but we tend to walk through our lives following hundreds of impulses a day that we don't question, or even are aware of: We go one route instead of another to get somewhere. We pick one outfit instead of another. We pick certain meals. We say certain things instead of others. We smile at someone, or ignore them.

A lot of the time there are explanations for these actions that are plain as day if you pay attention. You can go through your life oblivious to the reasons, and thus not influence them consciously. Or you can pay more attention and more consciously decide which decisions to take.

The latter is not more correct. But in my experience it feels more rewarding, as I am often able to catch impulses for me to act in ways that counteract goals that I have set myself, and change my behaviour.

One thing I noticed, for example, was how I'd impulsively do small things avoid people to reduce social interactions with people I didn't know well. This at the same time as I was trying to improve my social skills. Consciously paying attention helped me catch those impulses as they were happening and override them.
Using vi keybindings, <esc>v does the same.
The military comment strikes me as uninformed. Military officers [1] I know tend to be above average in understanding our rights, liberties, freedoms, and responsibilities.

[1] Edit: And enlisted men and women!
The context is embarrassing. A contractor who worked with the NSA became so disenchanted with the work they were conducting that he gave up everything he had to bring it to the attention of the public. Now a US Army General has been forced to justify the actions of the agency to the staff that remain, to suck up to them, and implore them not to revolt as Snowden did.

The content is embarrassing. The constant references to 9/11 and to terrorism more generally. People have for years poked fun at this particular proclivity of officials, and the statement reads like a parody.

The references to "foreign intelligence" are embarrassing. To those of us who are foreign to the United States, having widespread violations of our right to privacy justified by the fact we are "foreigners" is despicable. It might placate some US citizens, but this episode is a diplomatic catastrophe for the US, and rightly so.

The very fact gross human rights violations are being justified in the name of "security" is embarrassing. The fact officials are not in damage control mode, acknowledging the gross misconduct they have presided over and seeking to rectify matters, but are instead seeking to continue business as usual.

Everything about this statement is embarrassing.
Here's A Heavy Dose Of Reality For New Mobile Payments Startup Clinkle
Am I dreaming? The USA is not a democratic society. The will of the people is not only unrepresented in the government, but the legal means by which the will of the people would be imposed are totally dismantled. Furthermore, it's not a free country by a long shot. Do you know anyone that does not have to live relying on centrally distributed energy and food?
Sorry for the delay in answering and thanks for the comment. This is a good question.

Our video is indeed starting a django project for you - we take a step further and let you do that in a click without having to set up a virtualenv, and it's all hosted. This is the basics, but the idea is to move your development onto a hosted server that is the same or much closer to your prod environment.

Ideally, this hosted environment can offer you much more than what you get by installing a different version of everything you’ll be using in production onto your laptop.
Those schools have rigid qualifying examinations. The chance to get in is low.
> Your comment about the military is so rude, though, that it was difficult to write a temperate response. You ought to feel ashamed of yourself.

Sadly, I suspect one day you'll have to recall this statement.
Costs to the US?? What do you mean?? But people have been blathering for weeks on HackerNews that the US spying on anyone who's a foreigner is good and right and expected! Surely they can't have neglected to consider that there's only so long you can fuck with people's liberties, whether within your own borders or without, before the lie is revealed and the system build around it crumbles.

No, I won't buy it. I stand with HackerNews here. Spy on foreigners FTW!
I also don't quite think incorporating a fan into the design would increase it's efficiency. A quick google trip for PC Fan power usage gives me 1-2 watts for a 80mm fan. Small 5mm LEDs at 20mA and 3V should, calculated via rule of thumb, be at roughly 60 something mW. It just doesn't quite add up.

Evaporative cooling could work, but if you are planning on even including 20ml of cooling liquid, you could just as well put a CR2032 battery in there, which'll power the thing just fine.
Let's try and see how it works.
Even a Dyson sphere can't just swallow the star's radiation. It makes use of a potential gradient, which means it would have to radiate away some energy on the outside. This would probably show up as, say, a brown dwarf. Still, if it's not in our direct neighborhood the chances of us discovering it are even lower.
Seems interesting for designers or for photographers who mainly subscribe to image centric content.

It definitely deserves more up-votes!
I wish there would at least be screenshots.

For instance, I read a lot of webcomics through RSS feeds, this is a service I could use, but I would need to see how it looks like first.
Oh is France the magical country with no blood on its hands? France, I suppose has never been a part of supporting brutal African dictators or anything like that? You're not even serious. On some level your "post Eiffel tower" or whatever nonsense you're talking about might be sort of funny but it seems you are more addressing how relevant France has been on the world stage than anything else. If you really want to play this game, we can just, instead, talk about how proportionally relevant France has been in the rest of the world since the time of Napoleon.
Executive Pay by the Numbers
This sounds like CALEA, to me. Inasmuch, it doesn't surprise me, even if it doesn't entirely please me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

The questions I have are whether they are indeed doing it wholesale, e.g. widespread "phrase monitoring" and whether they are archiving (particularly, wholesale) the content [1] without a target/content specific search warrant in place.

P.S. Also, whether they are doing it to political and/or economic ends.

--

[1] We already know about the disposition of the so-called "metadata".
Thanks for the comment, we'll post some screenshots in the following hour.
Unless you are planning on keeping warm in those environments, which would make strapping heat sinks all over your body a bad idea.
And Germany. Free trade is win-win, definitely when two countries are similarity developed.

Not going forward with this would be stupid and benefit no one. It's not even a threat.
A demo would be nice. A message that tells you upfront that this doesn't work without importing stuff from Google Reader would be nice as well.

I've just created a new account and I'm stuck with the import screen. Now what?
Simple yet addictive html5 game
The ninth and tenth amendments have yet to see their full application. With 'strict constructionists' in the supreme court, it may occur sooner than later.

The enumeration of rights was practical. Without a concise list of important ones to point at, I think we would have been worse off.
> the most plausible explanation for me is still that we happen to live in a historical dark zone.

I am no expert, but I remember reading somewhere that our Sun is among the first generation of solar systems that were born with enough heavy elements to make life based on carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, occasional iron etc. possible.

That there first needs to be some generations of starts going nova so that the stars have generated the heavier elements, and then the supernova explosions have to spread these around to that then the new interstellar clouds have enough of these element when they collapse to next generation stars and solar systems.
What is the real you?

To me, getting rid of attachments means to reduce the impulses that controls my actions "behind my back". It does not mean not caring, but it means noticing that you care, and noticing how that feels, and noticing what the impulses tell you, and then making a decision based on that information rather than just blindly following the impulses.

Often that means acting differently than the impulses tells you because you recognize that other goals you have are better served by not giving in.

Personally I don't believe that means I am abandoning myself, but on the contrary that I am living up to my belief of who I am and who I should be much better by (slowly) ridding myself of compulsions that made (and makes) me unhappy by getting me to act in ways inconsistent with how I want to be.

A lot of human pain and frustration is down to the inconsistencies of self - how we want to do that coding, but end up procrastinating all day and then afterwards feels guilty about it, for example. Maybe that procrastination was nice, and good for us. But we (or I am at least) are happier when we actively make that choice.

I still don't believe I am good at it, but I hope I keep getting better at it.
I googled "converting PDF to text" and "converting PDF to html". A tons of services already exist out there. Apparently, it's not something new. How do you plan to compete? Are you planning to focus on data extraction rather than conversion?
I don't think grandparent comment was meant to imply 1 person business. (You are correct in your math assumptions). I just think they mean "small business funded organically or built from the ground up". Besides "1 person" can also mean "1 person and subcontractors" so where do you draw the line at "1 person" anyway?

The only thing I would add though is that many of these businesses were not started by the person running them they were passed to a family member who got something that they could expand upon where the risk had already been taken.
PRISM is GLIMMERGLASS?
What a lovely sound-bite.

What was it, aside from "mob rule" of the majority, that passed amendments 14, 15, 19, 24, and 26 to the Constitution? Those would be the amendments that specifically expanded the freedoms of minorities (on the basic of race, sex, wealth, and age)

EDIT: oh, and I mean the supermajority & state level process required to amend the Constitution.
I'm not sure about the entire bitcoin community, but I myself own a 100 or so btc and I'm not that worried by the issues raised. The distribution of bitcoins and distribution of mining compute power seemed to be well understood at the bitcoin 2013 conference as well.

There is no good reason for the "1%" to dump and run. Bitcoin is either going to give you 10000x returns or it is not. In that sense, investing in bitcoin (either in actual btc, in mining hardware or in bitcoin startups) seems similar to angel investing. Yes, some may make money in speculation and day trading, but there's still no incentive to sell out if you hold a significant %, as your real stake is in the possibility of wide bitcoin adoption.

Everyone knows that only a small % of bitcoins are actually used as currency at the moment, and further it's understood that a decent percentage of that use is for illegal activities. That's why there is excitement about startups that might engender greater circulation and wider adoption as currency.
Wikipedia contributors ‘should be proud’
Right after posting this I discovered Profanity (http://www.profanity.im) which looks just about perfect; except that it doesn't allow multiple accounts in a single process or support OTR chat.
Hash table example in python
True. If your ISP won't remove your IP from the blacklist, you could probably use a commercial service (a la Amazon's SES) for outbound SMTP while running your MX and mailstore at home. That would have somewhat different privacy tradeoffs, but it's not that different if you expect most of your email recipients to be hosted elsewhere... I may try this.
> Most life we eventually discover might be more exciting to entomologists.

You say it like it wouldn't be fascinating just by itself. About 70% of Earth's surface is covered by water and more than 90% of the ocean still remains unseen by human eyes. We don't even know what incredible creatures could be living deep in the ocean let alone on another planet!

Oh and by the way, even the fact that we can't have a "decent conversation" with other species doesn't mean they are not intelligent (whatever that means). Most people would considered dolphins stupid but it seems that they could be communicating with each other using some kind of sono-visual language and maintain quite complicated social structures.
In full sun a car can easily have 1+kw of heat gain. Combating that with AC takes a lot of energy especially when you consider how long a car may be sitting out in the sun. But, cutting down on heat gain either by parking in the shade or having reflective shades can get you to close to air temperature fairly easily. However, combining would make things a lot easer.

So, if your willing to go all out and spend a few thousand on modding your car. Automatic shades for every window, a fair sized solar array on the roof and an independent AC system designed for continuous operation.
Booz Allen Hamilton hiring quantum information physicist
Before this is over, I suspect that folks will migrate to LTC over BTC. Currency concentration is one of several reasons.
One of the things I have noticed is that 'managing' things is a skill unto itself. And some very successful people I know operate by helping people with skills connect with people who need those skills, and then creating a structure where a fair price is paid for the access.
The more electronic "stuffs" the greater the chance of an issue with it.

What engines are you referring to in particular? Any brand in mind? Some manufacturers have been making diesels for a long time despite the emergence of common rail I'd suspect they would have most of this resolved now unless it's planned obsolescence
"Soldiers are, in a sense, slaves"

Except that in the US, military service is voluntary.
So, you think Germany would pretend to be pissed off enough make moves against the US, instead of making their usual hollow threats that go nowhere?
The black space is at about 3 Kelvin temperature. A Dyson sphere would necessarily (the star inside would heat it) have a much higher temperature than mere 3 K above the absolute zero. Thus it would radiate heat according to whatever its temperature, and be quite distinct compared to the cold back space background.
Simple node.js script better console.log for debugging
One thing I will add to the discussion of someone running a 1 man "type" business (which would include both 1 man and 1 man plus some helpers part time, sub contractors, 1099's whatever) is that while the upside is capped the downside is also clipped.

If you have a 15 to 40 person business with lots of overhead and you have a few bad years you can lose lots of money. Because of that overhead.

But if you are running a small operation out of a small office (or even your house) you might not have a big top end potential but you also aren't going to lose much either.

A bad year might mean breaking even or making very little but your probably not going to lose your shirt (at least in 1 or 2 years if you have built up a reserve).
Sounds like I will need to program
a big red button for my server farm:
I see a knock at the door with
an FBI badge and then push the
big red button. Boom -- my
Web site starts putting up
circulating arrows indicating
an over busy condition;
the last
of my data for an incremental backup
gets encrypted and shipped, in pieces,
but with considerable redundancy,
to 10 undisclosed, secure, foreign
locations; and all the data on my
server farm is erased by being
written over. Then I open the
door with the FBI guys!

Or, I have a really nice looking
server farm, totally neat and
squeaky clean, behind nice,
spotless glass walls, with
doors controlled with finger
print scanners. So, I let the
FBI in to that glass house
and let them have all the data.
When they come back the next week
and demand the private key for
the RSA encryption, I object
and delay but finally give in
and let them have the key.

Meanwhile, there are some
optical fibers running to
a hidden basement of a run
down, ugly, old building
where the real server farm is!

When the FBI/NSA/CIA/DHS
decrypts the data they got,
all they see is "Mary had a little
lamb.".

Meanwhile, back at the farm,
everything's been moved to
Iceland with backup sites in
Switzerland, the Cayman Islands,
etc. And I'm out'a here on
my private plane/yacht/submarine,
whatever, to my own
undisclosed, secure, foreign
location. Then my Web site
goes live again!

Unfortunately such things may
not be entirely a joke.
Thanks. It doesn't sound hugely convincing. I guess people do harden PHP+shell scripts, but it sounds like work to me. eitland thinks Kolab can be run without it, at the expense of not having a webmail interface, which would be OK.
Do you consider Bitlbee with IRSSI a hack? I use that and it works fine for me.
You're right, the first alternative is disgustingly long-winded. Let's automate it.

Create a new shell script called `empty` somewhere on your PATH:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
exec >"$1"
printf '#!'
which "$2"
chmod +x "$1"
cat

Next, add a new shell function to your ~/.bashrc:

save-history() {
history -p "$1" | empty ~/bin/"$2" bash
}

To save the most recent command in your history to a shell script called ~/bin/phplint, run

save-history '!!' phplint

You have to single-quote the '!!'; sorry about that. I'm using bash; maybe zsh has some way of making this easier to use.

Having said that, if you're happy (I'm speaking generically here, not specifically to twic) relying on your history, then more power to you. It doesn't work for me because I haven't worked out yet how to keep my shell history straight between several shell sessions on the same PC, let alone syncing it between different PCs.
Better yet, you can use git-annex with tahoe-LAFS. Now you have a distributed, full-encrypted Dropbox replacement.

http://git-annex.branchable.com/forum/tips:_special__95__rem...
I agree with most of what you said. I want to nitpick one thing though. I don't agree that "the ends justify the means" is a valid argument. It's not an argument at all, it's a premise in the argument at hand.

And, as you alluded to, the majority of us here seem to disagree with the premise, making the overall argument invalid. Probably not the case for the rest of the country th ough. I'd like to think that we represent the "thoughtful minority", but doesn't everyone.
I don't get it. I liked A Dark Room and Candy Box, but hated Frog Fractions, which is completely unrelated.
Why the US doesn’t use cyber-weapons to attack its enemies more often
The words of a liar...
He lied about NSA capabilities, instead of simply saying "No comment."
Now we're supposed to just overlook the past lies?

They knew that what they've been doing is wrong and this is in no way believable when one considers the amount of lies coming out of the US government these days.

Secret judges. Secret courts. Secret police. Extrajudicial assassinations. Torture.

Sounds like a Nazi regime.
I have City associated mostly with high cost of living and lower life standard. In City I would probably spend 60+ hours/week in office and on commute just to break even.

Outside of City a can have big house for my family, spend 3+ hours/day on my hobbies. And even make enough savings for 1 year runway for my startup :-)
Glad you saw my point. Unfortunate you chose to ignore it.
This paper highlights the only real concern I have with BitCoin over the long term: that it's possible to engage in class warfare.

If you believe the socioeconomic pyramid to hold true, the middle and lower classes will always outnumber the top 1%. And by achieving this power of economic majority, they can gang up on the "elites" by means described in this paper. I'm not going to get into the messy debate of whether it's justifiable; just that the capability exists. Maybe this paper won't do it. Maybe one that comes out in 30 years will, under the correct economic and political climate, finally incite people to make this happen.

Or you could argue that the top 1% would have been prepared by using some of their wealth to gain control of the means of production (mining machines) and secure an economic majority. What's to guarantee they won't rig up some positively reinforcing rules to ensure their prosperity at the expense of the general public?

Currencies run on immutable rules. BitCoin has had a good run so far, but its kill switch is already in the collective hands of three people: the leaders of ASICMiners, Slush, and BTC Guild.