skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Exactly. California is, hands down, the innovation capital of the world, and has been for decades. Whatever lunacy the political winds are blowing these last few years doesn't undo the accomplishments of the last 100 years: the movie industry, microchips, software (both desktop and internet) to name a few. Entire sectors of the world economy were born there. More than a few cultural movements started there too if the argument can be extended beyond business and tech innovation.

What is really sad in California is the cost of higher education. In the mid 80s, U.C.S.D cost me about $400 per quarter (which covered health insurance), plus I had to come up with another $300/month on rent. My summer job as a Domino's Pizza guy (at $10/hr after tips) and my part time job throughout the year as a high school teacher's assistant ($7/hr) covered most of my expenses for the year. Folks worrying about California should be looking at the cost of education, and the impact that that might have on innovation.
Scan Your Books And Search Them On Google
Frankly, I'm not sure Wired will make it to the end of the year.

The magazine has lost 50 percent of its ad pages so far this year, ranking among the worst off of the more than 150 monthly magazines measured by Media Industry Newsletter. Only Portfolio, which Condé Nast shut down last month, and Power and Motoryacht fared worse.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/business/media/18wired.htm...
And if you submit a paper generated from that to a top CS conference or journal, it will get rejected.
That is why it's such a problem graduating into a down economy. If you can't get a job in your field, when the economy turns around, say it's in a few years, you will actually be at a disadvantage compared to fresh graduates. Fresh grads get a lot of slack, especially at big firms, they get put onto "graduate training schemes" and "fast-track programmes" and so on. In many companies there are only two entry routes, graduate or experienced. The experienced hires do the work, and the managers are from the graduate scheme. If you miss the window of the first and aren't yet the latter, you're a bit stuck. It's not the end of your career, but it's a disadvantage that will take years to work out.
And those who believe they are "above" the vast majority are too arrogant to discuss the issue rationally. Simply, if you believe that IQ measures intelligence, you lose 80 IQ points.
The problem with this technique is that everyone thinks they're right. You would be amazed and appalled to learn how opponents of, say, evolution think that they are the knowledgable few and you are the "sheep" who has been brainwashed by the scientific "man".

There is little to be gained from this kind of mano-a-mano debate, IMO, and much to be lost in terms of time and emotional energy. The intelligent person of programmatic means would be wise to consider how better he might make use of his time, for example in constructing appropriate systems to enable larger scale, and more effective, destruction and undermining of the ignorance in the world.
More than one accident (the 320 that ran off the airport here in São Paulo a couple years back comes to mind) happened because the computer thought the pilot needs it to do one thing while the pilot was trying to do another. Many pilots regard the Airbus avionics as overly complicated and prone to unexpected behavior since that 320 crash right early on.

During a crisis, the last thing I need is a tool acting unexpectedly.
Interestingly, my impression is that this is exactly the strategy that Asian-Americans _don't_ use.

While I completely agree on your argument, I don't see many people driven by the beauty fo the craft itself. My guess is that competition and shortcuts are simply much more effective in quickly reaching success.

The sad fact might be that it is perfectly possible to master a field or craft without a passion for the subject. Simply because passion is not competitively passable.
It's not satire: it is metaphor.

Post-modernism (in the sense of this type of thing, anyway) arose and mostly deals with literature, where imagery, symbolism, and metaphor are the main carriers of meaning rather than spelling things out literally. Also, its purpose isn't so much to interpret the work itself as it is to look through it and see what it says about the writer and the reader. In this case, it's the same thing applied to science rather than a novel, and while it might not be very relevant to fluid mechanics, it might be saying something worthwhile about scientists and gender roles (in a stylised and heavily symbolic way) once put back into context.

That said, 90% of everything is crap and I've no doubt that this is too; it does certainly seem to be on the surface.

Edit: I'm different than that other 'crux' who is also standing up for postmodernism here. Odd coincidence!
I've never used ISPconfig. How does it compare to Plesk or Webmin?
Yes exactly. It's easy to learn a new language or API. But it's not easy to learn CS on your own. It's not like you can just sit down and read Knuth from cover to cover. And it's not easy to learn domain knowledge on your own either, you have to be around practitioners.
For a bootstrapping entrepreneur, LLC is clearly the way to go. If and when you do receive VC funding (which is difficult if not impossible to do these day), you can do a tax-free transfer from a LLC to a C-Corp. In the meantime, it allows you maximum flexibility. The only big concern with LLC is that any income is taxed as personal income (not investment income) and therefore you would need to pay payroll tax (about 15%, before Federal and State tax). Also, the annual franchise fee is calculated based on "gross" income and not "net".

This is an important subject. For those of us who are interested, I have written more on that in the following.

http://www.startupforless.org
Rethinking Alcohol Use By The Emerging Adult
Right, and it seems most of the college hating HN crowd are focused on solving a problem that they can with the knowledge they already have, and then profiting from it, thus not requiring a college degree.
Let me rephrase his strategy here: If someone comes to you with an emotional argument antagonize them and eventually they'll start acting rational.

I'm sorry but not only do I think this is a bad idea I'm hereby calling b#llsh#t on the author. There's no way he made sheep noises at a guy who is emotional about gun control and from that changed the guy's mind.
You mean, heavy use of ad hominem attacks followed by a return to the topic? Yes, I'm sure we've all done that.

And I'm sure we all have plenty of experience showing that insulting your interlocutor is not a successful means to convince them of anything whatsoever.
Perhaps a description of the business and product would be in order?
People Choose News That Fits Their Views
You can just sit down and read Knuth from cover to cover. The problem is most people that don't get a CS degree also avoid reading Knuth on their own.

I think one of the large gaps between those groups on average is those without a CS degree think theory is useless. When you are forced to learn the theory you end up using it constantly. However, when you see a theory without the associated experience it seems useless. So it's hard to know what to study on your own. For most people it's the rigorous nature of a good CS program that forces them to put forth the associated effort.
From my reading, the author's epiphany was to shift the debate away from substance towards a contest along the linear social dominance hierarchy by trying to out-alpha his opponent, making him his beta bitch. How shocking that this came from the gun-fetish demographic.

(And I say that as a supporter of the 2nd amendment.)

I feel that this technique is orthogonal to the topic of the debate. A more dominant and rhetorically skilled opponent might have similarly stopped the debate in its tracks by insisting that the author loved guns because he was a chicken.

Then, regardless of the response, reply with "Bock bock bock b'cak!"

This is the author's moment of enlightenment? I don't want people like this on my side of the gun debate.
What do people find when they Google your name?
With an S-Corp, you can pay yourself a "reasonable salary" subject to payroll tax, and then pay distributions to yourself over and above that. I've been told this is an audit flag, and it doesn't seem worth it for the minor gain.

There are also complexities to issuing equity from an LLC.
Now, the average TC article is about Twitter.
Why is this a problem? These people should just allocate their time to the new opportunities created by the downturn. I have several friends who are unemployed recent grads and they seem to be just sitting on their asses, sending out resumes, waiting for the economy to turn around. Why they aren't starting their own projects or seeking consulting work (I believe consulting / temping is somewhat counter-cyclical?) I can't quite figure out.

Seeking employment at a large company is only one investment strategy and perhaps not the best one right now given the fierce competition caused by the downturn.
The Chattering Classes are now the Twittering Classes
Most companies I worked for gave MS Windows to their employees, but the web applications we developed would be hosted on Unix/Linux servers.
going back to the original statement of "Examples include credential requirements for many different occupations, licensing laws, and job eligibility."

Licensing laws cover plumbers, electricians, massage therapists,barbers, air conditioning contractors, auctioneers, boxing (judges, promoter, referees, boxers themselves, managers), cosmetologist(and their schools), tow truck drivers, moving companies, temp agencies, elevator contractors and inspectors.
It seems that all that this does is shift the effective grant of title of nobility from the university to Consumer Reports or to the insurance company or to Yelp-for-doctors.
My favorite part of his technique is that he starts from the premise that arguments like "criminals will use your guns against you" and "the weapons available to citizens are insufficient to repel the police" are "factually and historically ignorant babble". It's a good thing we had people like him "short-stopping communist counter-coups in the Baltic states".
It depends. I've found that there are certain "career resets" you can push to get a fresh start on your career. Grad school. Law/business school. Founding a startup. Nobody cares if you waited tables or bagged groceries for 2-3 years if you manage to get into Harvard Law afterwards.

In my case, I graduated and took a job at what I thought was a startup but turned out to be a slow-growing small business. As Marc Andreesen says, "these are great places to go if you don't want your career to go anywhere either." So I quit and founded a startup. It failed, but I learned enough hot skills to prove to my interviewers that I hadn't spent the last year and a half dicking around. Then I got into Google, and once you have Google on your resume, nobody cares that you spent two years working on JSF webapps for a company nobody's ever heard of.
I work in a university department and the situation is exactly the opposite. When a new grad student arrives, they're set up with a Scientific Linux machine (a version of RHEL modified by CERN and Fermilab).

My feeling is that a lot of science jobs will rely on the Linux/Unix platform. Backend or system control type things are on Linux and a lot of personal computers are OS X.
Luckily in the software industry that's an easy problem to solve. Get a job that pays the bills. Create a website/webapp in your free time and call it a business of which you are now the CEO. Learn and apply all the relevant tools and techniques.

Assuming it never generates enough revenue to get past the "hobby" stage, a few years from now you it will still have value in your resume. Someone who worked on their own project for years is always an attractive candidate for a programming job (at least to us).
If this article is true, than what kind of people would choose to read this article?
You go to Knuth when you have already learnt the vocabulary, tho'. If you can't frame your problem in the language everyone else in your field uses, reference materials and search engines are of very limited use. You might not even be able to discuss it with your colleagues except by them basically taking over the problem and studying it from scratch themselves.
Google really needs to market its lesser-known products better.
These three groups may help debunk the myth of success as a simple product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories.

I must have missed something. Couldn't he just as easily have said "These three groups may help confirm the fact that success is a product of intrinsic intellect, for they represent three different races and histories, with different average levels of intellect, which strongly correlate with their outcomes."
Offshore Development & Fundamental Political Risks
Baa baa baa.

I mean:

This guy needs to grow the hell up and read a book on rhetoric.

Appalling.

EDIT: Oh, it's ESR! That explains a lot.
Compare & vote for search results of Bing, Google and Yahoo in a blind test
I agree. I have written about my own experience which is for an LLC to elect to file tax as a S-Corp (filing a Form 2553). It is the best of both Worlds.
Exactly what I mean. While it certainly is not useful in a rational debate, it could be useful (under some circumstances) to short circuit an irrational one.

I'm interested, since many debates are (unfortunately) irrational.
5 very detailed posts analyzing Google Wave
Consulting/temping is very much pro-cyclical. The consultants and temps are the first to go when the economy goes down, and the last to be hired back.

Playing devil's advocate here (your suggestion is exactly what I'd do, and it's worked fairly well for me), but...

One reason they don't may be that it's almost never rational to start a new project over sending out a resume. The resume offers the possibility of immediate monetary payoff for relatively little work, and while the chances are low (particularly in this economy), they're certainly higher than the chances that your new project will succeed. The latter has no immediate monetary payoff, requires lots of work, and has risks that are so varied that you don't even have a framework for evaluating them.

It's only when you put a lot of these risks together in sort of a "career portfolio" that it makes sense to take them. Any individual project will probably fail, but together they give you the skills and experience that will a.) get you hired and b.) let you succeed more often with these independent projects.

Alas, in my experience most people don't take such a long-term view of their careers...
OMAP Zoom:MID Supports Andorid + 720p HD Video encode / decode
Obama's marriage was on brink of collapse, says book
How many people hire consultants with no experiences? What would they consult on?

Anyway, personal projects are better than nothing but they aren't a substitute for commercial experience, which is about a lot more than just coding. It comes down to not knowing what you don't know. Employed programmers deal all the time with people saying "can we do X" where X is something you'd never considered and might require some research to figure out, and the actual code is simple when you come to write it. People working alone can't help but approach from the angle of "I can do Y, so that's what I'll do".
I'm kinda wondering what the variance is on these numbers. I'd imagine that the doctoral numbers have quite a few tenured professors and industrial researchers making six figures, but the median is shifted downwards by a large number of postdocs making $30-40K.

If having a masters basically guarantees you a salary of $60K, but getting a doctorate means you have a 50% chance of making $30K and a 50% chance of making $100K, I think a lot of people would rather get the masters...
I'd amend your statement. There is little information to be gained from this kind of debate. You can, however, gain position, status or resources from this kind of debate.

In the real world, it is often necessary to deal with irrational actors. I don't think it is a bad idea to learn how to hack people's irrationality for your own ends. It is evil to short circuit rational debate, but if the debate is already irrational, why not learn how to win it?
If you are reliant on programmers/developers Canada is a great place to make a start up. Very tech-friendly and all those health care costs are offloaded to your workers' personal taxes. Toronto has high property tax, but very near by Mississauga and Thornhill have a ton of smart people and very low taxes, Waterloo is good too. Best of all these guys cost far less (in USD) than Seattle or Silicon Valley programmers.

Most of the governments in Canada (National, Provincial, and Municipal) are solvent, even in net-present-value terms, and crime and corruption is astoundingly low.

If you are hoping to sell off the company quickly, incorporate both in Delaware AND Canada and figure out how to sell the services through the Delaware office, so when it comes time for the acquisition you can easily be bought out by American interests.
I wonder if there's a potential web app here. Something like Crossfire was for TV, just less "fueling the argument" and more "getting both sides of the story."
Most informative quote:

"So when you hear about efforts to save newspapers (and, by extension, journalism), understand that answers that don't return the possibility of double-digit profits and perpetual top-down control aren't even considered answers. They're not even considered."

[edit: formatting]
The terrible title and blaming Dr Spock for our cultural woes almost put me off the article. Below the fold he starts to make some interesting points. By age 4, higher income children have been talked to nearly 4 times as much as poor children. The encouragement/discouragement ratio is 2 to 1 whereas for poor children it is 1 to 2. He talks about the soccer mom phenomenon where every minute of a child's day is scheduled with some activity. He thinks that with the move to white collar work, there is too much emphasis on status and social climbing.

I agree with the over scheduling criticism. Kids now have too many formal activities and too much homework. I also wonder if two income families and early day care adversely affect the kids.
And location or if telecommuting is OK.
"he voters can make policy through ballot initiative, and get it into the constitution"

This is the same case in Texas.
I think this study is flawed based on their sample which was college students. Anyone who has read something they don't agree with realizes it creates an emotional response. At the same time people tend to be more emotional when they are younger. Paticularly in College where most people see politics as a way to "change the world"

So a conclusion based on college students doesn't really impress me. Of course very emotional people are going to avoid things that cause a negative emotional response

I guess it does tell us that the emotional side of us seeks out like minded people but that seems like common sense to me. Part of being an adult is realizing your emotions shouldn't dictate what you do and seeking out thoughts you might not agree with. Not every adult does it but every adult should.
I think the 30K v. 100K goes into the difference between a career of academia or of business.
I totally agree, but those are the "nuclear option" if you will. $100,000 in debt, and spending as much again on an MBA is not to be undertaken lightly.

I appreciate my great good fortune to be graduating into the early years of the dotcom boom... But when the NASDAQ imploded I had 3 solid years experience framed on my CV in terms of "I have done X using technologies A, B and C accomplishing result Y". That's what matters a few years out of college and without it it would be very difficult to "catch up" or even to get a foot in the door.
Is the US Really a Nation of God-Fearing Darwin-Haters?
The problem with this, is that ESR may have cowed the guy into submission, but i now think that ESR is an asshole, and that he's not right.

I remain entirely unconvinced as to the correctness of his position. In fact, i am unclear what the full scope and description of his argument is, because he spends so much time trying to convince us that people who disagree with him are not rational.

Way to fail at argument.

In some cases it may be fine/appropriate to needle your interlocutors with non-logical appeals, but doing so does not win your argument. It shuts down the argument.

ESRs interaction there is particularly frustrating, since his actual argument contains no content. Going to a gun club is not a rebuttal to an argument, it's an attempt to indoctrinate others through means other than logic.

Firing a gun, and learning about gun safety isn't going to change my mind that an populace armed with firearms is a solution for... anything really. Besides, if we really wanted to start an armed resistance, or a guerrilla movement, we don't need guns. Al Qaeda didn't cause 9/11 with handguns, and Timothy McVey didn't blow up the Oklahoma City building with bullets.
I wouldn't call it "easy". To actually learn anything from it you would have to be 99% of the way towards really launching a business.
I agree. And, in subtle ways, even rational arguments are often won with appeals to emotion. Learning how to use emotion in an argument is a very powerful tool.
The Economist had a feature article a while back, which cheekily said IIRC

"[The British] like newspapers, especially those they agree with"
Competition leads to much waste, in the aggregate.
PHP + CakePHP framework

as one of the commenter pointed out about bad programming habits with PHP, a framework will give you guidelines on good coding practices. It'll also help you develop faster and it's also quite easy to integrate with the front-end. CakePHP is like Rails framework but for PHP
Investors Want Smaller Venture Funds
If pay is influencing you decision to go for a Ph.D you probably shouldn't do it.
DHH said (more or less, I forget the exact words) that Rails had no new ideas, just implementations of existing good ones.

Nitro, another MVC-ish Ruby Web framework released at the same time as Rails, always stuck me as being a much better approach to the same problem, and better engineered (thread safe, less "magic" and munging of core Ruby classes, a form of pipeline transformations somewhat similar to Rack middleware today), but for whatever reasons Rails managed to capture far more attention.

The big win for Rails was not the initial code itself, but in capturing attention and motivating people to contribute, to fix it up, and make it better.
Stop the Hate, It's Safe in Kuwait
That consulting is pro-cyclical surprises me - I always figured that large corporations had some people who weren't terribly efficient and that in a downturn they would be cut and their workloads would be outsourced to a 3rd party, whom the employer wouldn't need to offer perks and raises and who would have to pay full FICA him/herself.
Would the answer to this question change if the article is false?