skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hey no offense but I'm guessing that you haven't spent very much time interacting with children that aren't your own. In my experience children lie and dissemble and deceive before they learn to talk. Think about all of the crying and malingering they do to manipulate adults into giving them food or anything else that they happen to want. Think about the vicious competitiveness of every sibling rivalry. They do want to be loved, accepted, and encouraged as you say, but they are perfectly capable of figuring out their own ways of getting these things - and are often willing to bend the rules if they are not disciplined.
It never ends. Even at a "Name Brand" school you're still looking up at Harvard-Princeton-Yale. If you're there, you're looking up at the Rhodes scholars, valedictorians, and the "stars" of each department.

You have to remember that once you go to some top-rated school, you're suddenly in an environment where everyone goes to that school, and it stops being special.

Set goals that will get you to a place where you can do the kind of work that you really want to be doing. If you can achieve that, you're better off than most Ivy grads. A top school brings a few advantages, sure, but nothing that a little success can't cure, and certainly not happiness.
Except Tarski didn't really solve it, he just kinda swept it under the rug. The object language/metalanguage distinction introduces an infinite regression (since, the moment you want to talk about the metalanguage, you need a metametalanguage for those statements, which means you'll need a metametametalanguage, and so on).

And then Godel blew everything up anyway :)
Either, and occasionally both, my favorite example being 'this sentence no verb'. There's a big difference between being able to find a way out of a given paradox and in being able to generalize that insight to makes statements about computability (or proofs, in the context of mathematics).
I think I like Nevada.
I can't speak for everyone here who criticizes the credential-based university system, but you have actually touched on one of the reasons I do that. Credentialism creates artificial, unnecessary barriers that hurt the poor even more than it hurts the middle class.

You are looking at a story about a few of the "lucky" ones and declaring the system a success. What the story doesn't mention is the incredible damage credentialism causes in the first place.
The problem is that there is no X for which "X / 0" is defined, at least in the sort of traditional mathematics you're talking about.

But "the set of all sets which meet criterion X" is well-defined and is an extremely common thing to encounter. Similarly, "X is a member of itself" is well-defined and is fairly common.

So you end up with this definition -- the set of all sets which are not members of themselves -- which just puts together these two common, well-defined (at least, we hope they're well-defined) concepts and ends up at a contradiction.
Just curious - what's the problem with [2]? I only skimmed it, and I see that there is some controversy, but it seems pretty harsh to lump it together with [1]...
I'd love to see a "five years later" kind of study on these kids.

Are these kids going to do better than other kids who made it into college from relatively harsh backgrounds?

Are these kids going to keep their good work ethic when the teachers in college don't care about them?

I wonder if getting into college has become the goal for the students like it has for the teacher/principal at their high school. If I had to guess: I expect the results to be quite polarized: some kids will drop out and accomplish little, others will keep their work ethic and do well.
There are some interesting ideas there. I'm not in favor of the sometimes-suggested solution of splitting CA up into smaller states, but along these lines, I can't argue with the observation that our US senators 'represent' about 19 million people each, whereas a senator from Montana represents fewer than half a million.
I can't disagree with you more. I have spent time around other parents' children. Many of the kids are better behaved than their parents. Many of them are dismayed that the world treats them poorly because of their parents' bad behavior.

Lying is a natural. It is a gift that humans and few other species share. Every child that matures into a capable adult learns how to lie. They experiment with lying. They test their ability to lie. Children who don't learn to lie are emotionally and intellectually stunted.

It is effective parenting that instills in the child the knowledge that lying is only so effective. It gets you some distance, but when the lie is discovered you crash. People distrust you. They won't help you when you need it. Honesty has value as well.

If parents give in to the lies, because they lack the courage to punish them, the child pays the price later in life. If parents don't teach their children that lies and dishonesty have negative consequences, and if lies are continually rewarded, then that's what the child is going to learn best.

Parents who reward lies are doing their children a great disservice as well as the world who has to tolerate them as they grow up.
I invented ___ is way more compelling than I went to ____.
Starting Up, One Year Later: The Honeymoon
That article was awesome. Those excerpts sound more like something from The Onion.
Depends on what sort of metaphysics of propositions you accept, whether you want to deal with an extensional or an intensional language, and a whole bunch of other stuff that generally only philosophers and some mathematicians have cared about.

If you're interested, though, let me know and I'll see what I can dig up for you from back when I was studying this stuff.
Interesting...can you expound on this? Specifically on the "credentials" portion...are you talking about the granting of degrees, the barriers to entry to starting a university, or the barriers to attend university?
how much longer would the honey moon phase last, if you were in SV surrounded by other entrepreneurs?
Well its pretty obvious why he thinks that. Look at techcrunch.com and you'll see a big banner costing what, 100k/month(?) filled with microsoft and twitter.

However, I don't see it as a conflict of interest. He bases MS and twitter as much as anyone.
I feel inferior reading this article instead of coding.
"Children come into this world innocent."

I really wish people would not use words like "innocent" in this context. Exactly what do you mean by your statement? Do you mean they are not guilty of a crime? What crime, the crime of being adult? Or free from moral wrong? A few minutes watching a young boy pulling wings off flies will disabuse you of this misconception.

I just can't stand this nonsense about children being these pure little angels who can do no wrong. A blank slate, yes, perhaps. Words like "innocent" are just plain inapplicable and say more about the speaker than they do the kids.
Yes, children lie and cheat. But children that are not loved/given affection probably won't even learn to talk, and become emotionally damaged. There has been an interesting study on the effect on absence of affection on monkeys. It didn't turn out pretty.

Kids who are loved are cruel, they lie and they cheat. Children that are not loved are simply even worse.
It wasn't always as dysfunctional, or the debts as yawning. CA's fortunes tend to swing with the economic winds. When things are good, you can make a ton of money here, and that tends to make people forget what it's like when things are bad. This is also how our property market came to be sooo overheated.
I understand why some people love these kinds of stories. At first glance, it looks like a great story. But when I think about it, I see more senseless credentialism. To oversimplify, I see a large class of people being unnecessarily held down, with everyone cheering when a select few are permitted to rise back up.
So what? This is not a new condition, so one would have expected it to have some significant impact by now if this was really a factor to anyone outside of the "I got mine so screw you" set. Yet California's economy is still overwhelmingly larger than that of any other state in the nation. If the costs of operating in California were not outweighed by the benefits you would have expected businesses to flee the state and not be replaced; this hasn't happened yet and the odds favor California coming out of the recession at the same pace as the rest of the country.
Nothing has "killed" music. There is still plenty of music being made and listened to. Record labels- organizations that existed to finance the manufacture of media and marketing of music are dead, because the marginal cost of manufacturing bits is low, and marketing doesn't require payola to hundreds of radio stations anymore, etc.
I attended an elite prep school, took two years off and then enrolled at my local state university. A few thoughts:

1. You are the future leaders of America: I heard this frequently, and never understood the import, really. I get uncomfortable when too many people agree with me, let alone do what I say. Why would we all aspire to leadership? And where does that leave me, stranger to my own cohort?

2. The gap years between high school and college were great. I met a Stanford-cum-Oxford philosophy grad who had dropped out and was traveling the world. I had just had a few philosophy classes in senior year. So while he rolled the joints, I asked about Hume, and Popper, and Watts. Yes, I forgot most of the details.

3. Any decent university will have a few excellent professors somewhere, starving for good students. Be one! On account of my time off, I tested out of all the lower-level requirements and went directly into upper-level seminars with at most 10 other students but usually 2-3. I attended and presented at conferences as a sophomore. It was awesome. I already had a decent education from high school, but damn did it get better.

4. Many of my friends and family were quite concerned about my choice of colleges. A middling state school? I often felt the need to explain or justify myself, though in retrospect it would have been better just to talk about all the exciting things I'd been doing, rather than apologize for poor appearances.

[edited for style]
I go to a "name brand" college (Carnegie Mellon, you can disagree if you'd like) and there are LOTS of CS majors who don't know anything. Likewise I've worked with people from state schools who know exactly what they're doing. Anyone who associates eliteness with where an undergrad degree was obtained is wrong.

The only plus side to name-brand colleges is well known professors, but most of learning is self-motivation anyway.
As a wiser man once said, "the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

California has big problems, but remember that it is also the 10th largest economy in the world (at least it was in 2007 according to the CIA factbook). These problems, given the scale of California's operations are never fatal, and usually quite temporary hiccups.

The state also tends to march to the beat of its own drum, which is not entirely unique coughTexascough, but this intensifies the criticisms of California's idiosyncrasies, and it's left leaning government expenditure programs.

The Bay Area, for all its business hustle and bustle, owes its origins to this, dare I say, quite Commie mentality. It's the blend of this socialist and capitalist ideology that creates an original mix of creativity and business sense.
All of the above, combined with the legal privileges conferred on holders of credentials, which necessarily result in legal barriers for those without credentials.

Not to mention the credentialism (a focus on credentials rather than actual ability) that is encouraged throughout society, which adds more obstacles even where legal barriers don't exist.

While this hurts everyone, the poor are especially affected because it's more difficult for them to obtain credentials. Offering more and more state assistance to try to help them obtain credentials is akin to holding someone's head underwater and providing some dirty air once in a while.
I'd like to see someone clearly articulate the difference between critical analysis of something and just plain bitching about it. Unfortunately the internet I have here is permeated by the latter and contains very little of the former.

For me, I think the difference is that good criticism acknowledges that every decision is a compromise, and of course every time you compromise you're giving up something in order to gain something else.
They are free of moral wrong, like a lion who tears a zebra apart. Or like a shark who attacks a surfer.

Actions that are morally wrong to us are not morally wrong for those who lack morals. And if you can do no wrong you certainly can't be guilty. Therefore, innocent seems an apt label.
The rich love to assail Proposition 13 but without it a normal person could not retire in Califronia after working a lifetime in California. The other problems are as you mentioned and are obvious to everyone not in Sacramento.
It's impossible to overstate how much this game became the talk of the press lounge on the last day of E3. People are rooting for this game the way they rooted for Katamari and Portal. There's a lot of love for the depth of the database, but the gameplay has to make sure it doesn't feel like a gimmick by level 220 (or 270 - I've seen conflicting reports).
Any other students get crap pay?
Hi everyone, I'm a CS student and wanted to see if anyone else has ran into this problem pursuing jobs/freelance work. I often find that companies will only pay 7-10 dollars an hour because you are a "student". One company wanted me to debug their primary software product and fix it for them for 8.00 an hour. Anyone else find this issue in college?
"Many of the kids are better behaved than their parents."

Huh? Do you have any hard data to back up this bizarre proposition? Certainly everything I've ever experienced speaks rather forcefully against it. The bullying in schools, the ostracism of anyone different, the teasing. This is not learned behaviour, it is the default state, to be overcome by education and socialisation, not to be encouraged or preserved.

Methinks you are confusing the reality of children with what you wish or imagine children are. There is a reason "acting like a child" is not a compliment.
Oh, I agree whole-heartedly. To be honest, I didn't even know how important the class system had remained in this country until I went to university - I had never met a privately educated person in my life, and suddenly I was surrounded by them!

However, I do think that the emphasis on the prestige of one's university in this country (these days, at least) largely stems from a good decade or so of policies pushing perhaps less-than-ideal candidates into higher education. The replacement of vocational training with degree-level equivalents has in many ways depreciated the whole university process, leaving employers necessarily needing to look for the 'value' of a degree anywhere they can.
Awesome, heartfelt post. It really got me reminiscing about the good ol' times in hot, humid Boston that summer.
"I don't really care much for semantic arguments."

Semantics, ie. meaning, is the whole point of language. I do not think that it is useless nit-picking to point out that your use of words is wrong. The word "innocent" has a positive bias; you could not criticise someone as being innocent. But lacking "societal norms, customs, virtues or values" (from the article you linked to) could not possibly be described as a positive attribute.

Language means what it means. If you mean something different, say that instead. You can't wave away criticism by just saying "well who cares about word meanings anyway".
I didn't think it invalidated the effect. I guess I wasn't clear.

Contrast with this staged dance at the Antwerp Train terminal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k
I often wonder that myself. I have a feeling my life would have been more balanced, at the expense of less work being accomplished in the short term. Much "hanging out" goes on there ;)
It should be also mentioned that on most days it only takes a handful of votes to get to the front page.
I think you're talking about children of different age groups.
I guess no one else appreciates devo =(
Who said anything about blind corners? I would think it cool if like my GPS system my car knew the speed limit(and reading street signs in combination with storage would allow it to be correct, up to date and cover more roads than my rinky dink GPS system). sure it wouldn't know the speed limit the moment I turned a corner if it just relied on ocr but it might catch a speed limit sign I missed.

Right now all the telematics stuff is broken in to pieces you could do a lot of neat stuff if they were better integrated. You could use that preemptive braking stuff to decide I am in traffic on an interstate an find a new route.(Hint if the speed limit is sixty and I am with in a few feet of the guy in front of me and my current speed is below 5mph I am in traffic and the gps system should reroute me.)
I hardly goto an inferior college(UNC-Chapel Hill). But I am studying what is considered an inferior major(communications).

I love it! When I tell my friend of my major, they roll their eyes in disbelief. But then I tell them of all my classes with the basketball players and they are quickly envying me:) That aside, I am studying rhetorical studies and truly enjoy it!
Thank god! I've been watching Leo Laporte on Twit Live for over a year, but I recently stopped watching as much because every time I tuned in, I had to watch the Gillmore Gang, and that guy always was such a douchebag and I could not stand to here him belittle everyone and speak as if he was some god and everyone else was just little peons. He was annoying, and made me even stop watching Leo Laporte. Good riddance.
Red tape in orbit
Very handy [ robotics ]
Paraphrasing something I heard on NPR...

California is the 8th largest economy in the world. We have the world's most productive agricultural region, two of the world's top universities, the largest port in the US, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and tourism.

WHY THE HELL CAN'T WE MAKE IT WORK?
I REALLY HOPE 4CHAN GOES AFTER MIKE ARRINGTON!!!!!!!!!!
Running on air
Automotive technology: The connected car
Solar-thermal technology: The other kind of solar power
Their tone on the matter in general is not great from an editorial point of view. It sounds almost petulant. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/if-you-didnt-get-a-pre-...

I wonder how the "old media" organizations that are syndicating blogs like TechCrunch feel about these sorts of incidents going out under their brand in places like Google News.
Brain scan: Father of the cell phone
Yes, but once you've done so the problem loses the property of having one set that is preferable to the others.
This is an interesting argument. Do you have an alternative method in mind for aiding people to figure out who might be qualified to perform certain types of skilled labor?

For example, imagine that universities can no longer confer the noble title of medical doctor. How shall I determine who to select to remove my gallbladder?
The article says that direct democracy in California is dysfunctional just because people don't approve new taxes and more spending. Therefore direct democracy is good only when the people just agree with politicians.

Actually direct democracy seems to be working. Cutting spending is the right thing to do instead of increasing taxes:

How rich countries die
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/03/16/how-rich-count...

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonge...

On the other hand, I find chocking how a lot of libertarians say democracy and freedom aren't compatible (I'm thinking of an interview with one of the founders of Paypal that was recently in HN). You get actually the opposite: the more democracy, specifically the more direct democracy, the less oppressive a government can be.
Did Aging Evolve To Prevent Epidemics?
In "The Intellectual Situation" front-matter of Issue #6 of n+1 magazine about our "Book Review Nation" the following statement was written about the modern literature critic:

"...what separates us from, say, Edmund Wilson? It is not taste; it is not even erudition. The profounder difference is the ability to place the products of literary work into a system of belief that appeals to something outside the literary work and the literary culture that produced it. This--not the status of the outlets for reviews, not their forum in newsprint or online--is what marks distinction in reviewing."

I think there is a general truth in this statement.
Yes it's painful but it's important
No doubt you don't like them, because those definitions are instructive.

The first one, "free from guilt or sin especially through lack of knowledge of evil" is exactly what I am talking about. Think about the axioms implicit in that definition:

1. evil exists
2. there is no inherent evil, evil must be learned
3. we can therefore prevent "evil" by restricting knowledge
4. guilt and sin exist

And so on. These are exactly the kind of suppositions that people use when arguing against, say, sex education in schools. To protect "innocence".

You might think all of this is just irrelevant bickering but I think it's extremely important. "Innocent" is a highly loaded term, straining under the weight of its inherent assumptions - it's not a word, it's a whole potted worldview. I think it's useful to point that out. I've done that now, and the prosecution rests.

And since we're linking to wikipedia, here's one for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_Hypothesis
Third time lucky [ re-marketing biotech ]
Ask HN: list of companies, and business models?
Below is a proposal for a very minimal (in terms of development) site, which might still prove to be educational for all of the HC community:

For entreprenours, and investors in the startup community, Businessmodels.com (temp name) is an open wiki with a list of the most successfull online / web based companies, and their respective business models. The wiki aims to answer questions such as what basic proposition does the business operates in, what was the critical differentiator to competitors, and what can we learn from them.

Putting together such wiki would allow us to take a fresh perspective on what seems statistically advantegous, as well as note trending, and market shifts.

I'm not quite sure, if such resource exist per se, so this thread is dedicated for eyeballing the concept.

Do you think it has editor magnet potential, and would you contribute to it (anything other, than your own)?

(Please keep it constructive)
No, and I'm not even from a non-name-brand college. I am confident in my abilities and seem to be adequately respected among my peers who know me. That's good enough for me.
On the pulse
Taken your medicine?
Mapping a better world
Photoacoustic imaging: The sound of light
A stitch in time [ nanotech ]
I have read about some of those. Unfortunately I must have missed or misunderstood something since I can't think of anything they offer that makes them worth adopting over Unix. It wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened. The idea of the World Wide Web wasn't all that impressive to me when I first saw it, partially because I'd already been using networks for almost a decade before it and was completely adapted to using arcane file transfer commands. It could be that there are some ideas in those systems that are just as revolutionary and I've missed them.

Could you perhaps choose one or two of the ideas you think make those systems fundamentally better than Unix and elaborate on them?
In that hypothetical situation it might be interesting to see both upvote and downvote numbers to gauge a 'controversy' vs. complete lack of interest (on both submissions and comments). Or perhaps listing 'score' and 'votes'.