skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think that if people followed your advice academia would essentially be deserted and not only by students but by teachers as well. :)

I don't procrastinate because I don't care, I procrastinate because there are multiple things I care about. A few of those happens to be playing games, reading hacker news, having a god awful many feeds in my newsreader, drinking beer and having more then one project at any time. Although I have the personality type that does things at the end of a deadline and I know people who aren't like that think of us as lazy and unstructured but it's not like that at all.
I found this to be extremely insightful once: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/

I also doubt there are many (if any) that has a job that's interesting all the time. :)
A 5-figure for full source is, in fact, quite ridiculous for a CMS in the same league as Vignette (nobody likes it, BTW) or FatWire.

With the added benefit of being 100% Java-free... Wow. It's a winner.
Where was I "bitching"? One time production costs are still costs.

We're hoping to be recompensed for our time and effort and recoup our costs plus some profit to invest in the next film. It's how all business works.

$5 a month is a very low number. I work in a cinema, your $10 to see a film just about covers cost.
> When saying this on HN your karma will be heavily dropped ...

Doubt it. The bootstrapping ethic is very strong here.
You climb? Where at?

I always wanted to pitch the idea of having a YC meetup at a climbing gym.
Have any other insurance companies released an app like this?
It's a constant feedback loop.

Post something.

See how people react.

Fine-tune your communications strategy.

Repeat.

---

You're correct in that there seems to be a fairly fine line here between "humor" and "useless post". I think part of this comes from the fact that we've all been online for more than a minute and have already seen/heard most of the standard comments and jokes. If you can come up with a uniquely humorous post that is also on-topic and enlightening on some level, most people will appreciate it.

Timing can also be important. I didn't see your "What's the difference" post. But, if that was an early comment at the top-level, it could be regarded as useless. If it was a response 8 levels deep to a heated argument where people are starting to split hairs, and you step in with something that can cause people to take a step back and actually see the forest, it can sometimes go over well.
More interesting to me is expense per employee:

http://zentu.net/snaps/exp.png

(Disclaimer: I studied accounting)

Amazon, Google and Apple also have the most expensive employees; the cost-per-head is almost 900K.
After losing $1.45 billion due to illegal operations in Europe, I'm sure kicking AMD out the x86 market won't warm them to the anti-trust commission.
Yahoo Makes A Twitter Clone…In Portuguese
It's possible to upvote [dead] comments, but not reply.
Chemists see first building blocks to life on Earth
Bash tips for power users
Computer Programming Quotes
"1955 was the best year for geek births"

For outliers, maybe, but for the rest of us, NO!

I was born in 1955, on the same day as James Gosling, inventor of Java.

But I was not an outlier. I was pretty much a regular person from a middle class family who went to public school and aspired to be the first in my family to graduate college. Here's the problem with being born "too soon":

I graduated high school, college, and graduate school without ever having touched a computer. Think about that. Neither of my colleges even had a Comp Sci department. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, far from the leading edges of Boston and California. Nobody, I mean nobody knew anything about computers. They were giant machines that sent your electric bill. Period. Unless you were fortunate to be close to the geek counter culture of Northern California or had parents with millions of dollars, forget it.

I graduated with an MBA and got a job as a restaurant manager (1978 was a lot like 2009). Then I picked up a COBOL book and practically memorized it for a difficult to get programming interview. I got the job and the rest is history.

I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had been born 10 or 20 years later. But it's a wasted thought. What if I had been born 10 or 20 years earlier. I'd probably be a retired car dealer now.

The great thing is that now it just doesn't matter. I took a while to get here, but I can't imagine doing anything else. Maybe that's why I'm here so often: making up for lost time.
To the people who voted parent up: You do realize you are encouraging comments like this that doesn't add anything to the discussion or the article, right? It's only mildly better than "first".

To the commenter: There's an easy way of saying you found something interesting; vote it up.

EDIT: Oh, I completely failed to consider that it was sarcasm, thanks for pointing that out. I did notice the commenter only had 5 karma and figured he was just new but yeah sarcasm seems more likely.
This has been long predicted... since people who are pro-choice would be more likely to be having abortions or not conceiving in the first place; while those who are pro-life are more likely to have children of their own and pass their beliefs on.
We ideally treat each other as we have always been treating each other: with respect. Let's not forget that this is an internet forum, there won't always be orderly and enlightening discussion. I think bringing extra undue notice to a violation of conduct like people posting unrelated content or misinterpreting comments just kindles the off-topic discussion.

Sure, I've said some silly things that I meant completely in a light-hearted way to only be down-voted into oblivion or offend someone else. You just take it as an experience and move on.

I understand you have a metric ton of karma and are probably not getting used to being down-voted or garnering negative comments, but it happens. People are different and will reply uniquely to off-center comments.
Ask HN: An E-book that is also a PDF reader ?
I run a small blog on a very specific subject (compressive sensing to be exact) which is very much followed by a community of researchers and engineers from all over the world. One of the reason the blog has some success (i.e. in the quality of the readership) has to do with the fact that I am putting some time in analyzing near real time new preprints on the subject of interest to that community. I am doing this as a hobby. However for this to happen, I am reading these from a laptop or a netbook but neither of these solutions are optimal. I am looking for an E-book reader that can render math expression written in the different pdf preprints I get to download everyday. From an informal gathering of information on the net, it looks like Kindle 1 and 2 do not act as PDF readers. Does any of you have any experience with any other E-books when it comes to reading PDF preprints. I am also looking for the ability to read PDFs without having to do conversion of any kind as I read many papers every day.

I also know that I am not the only one in the scientific community that is looking for that product, so I venture that your guidance will help many.

Thanks in advance,

Igor.
http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.com
Knol's expert-based formula fails to unseat Wikipedia juggernaut
Customer Service - First and Foremost
I never thought the firefox icon was a particularly good brand. Right now everyone has gotten used to it, but as a brand symbol, it means nothing unless you look at it in a large format, which is exactly the opposite of the way most people use it.

If I look at the icons in my quick start list, far superior to the firefox icon are: Skype, Utorrent, FileZilla, Winamp, Eclipse, even iTunes.

Firefox looks like an orange circle on a blue circle. It's not a strong visual identity - it's recognizable now because most people know it, but on its own, it's poor.

For example, how would you describe it? Internet Explorer is 'The Blue E'. Firefox is 'The orange circular kind of thing thing with some blue dots in the middle'. If you say click on the 'Fox wrapped around a planet', your grandma will not find the icon.
The new Kindle DX has a large e-ink display and it can open PDFs natively, where as Kindle 1 and 2 needed conversion. Haven't used one myself, so I can't comment on the quality/readability, but it sounds like exactly what you're looking for.
Maruti Suzuki Launches Ritz: Yet Another Small Car in India
Formula for successful business
I'm much more excited by cheaper rents for residential real estate, or commercial to residential conversion.

For an under 20 person startup, a suburban house is actually a pretty ideal office; the only potential problem is neighbors complaining about parking and high foot traffic. In low budget mode, most of the founders live AND work in the same house, but even later, using the house as an office with crash space, while founders live in other houses, works well. Plus, rentals on high-end houses are way under mortgage costs, and cheaper per square foot than commercial real estate. Most of the features people want in a great startup office (private workspaces and larger rooms, great kitchens and bathrooms, rest areas) are present in a house much more than an office.

For a zero-stage startup, you have to sleep somewhere anyway, so pooling your housing costs and living together makes sense. And eliminating the commute is a big win.

Las Vegas, with the large supply of high-end houses, 24x7 things to do, and NV's favorable state tax law, might be a great place for a startup.

FIOS or metro fiber would be a big plus (or some kind of fixed wireless).

The only way I'd take commercial real estate early on is if the business requires a lot of big dumb company client contacts, or if a commercial landlord were willing to take a convertible note or something as payment.

I've seen a few angel investors who threw in use of a vacation home as office, too, which works great.
Because that was the year I was born.

So, what's my point? Most, if not all, of us were born during the golden era of geekdom (DOB > 1940). Picking the best year is probably a very personal and subjective exercise.
Repeat after me:

Offsite backups are essential
Offsite backups are essential
Offsite backups are essential
Offsite backups are essential
Offsite backups are essential
Offsite backups are essential
Offsite backups are essential

It's way way too easy to be complacent. If two of our servers went down we'd be deep, deep dark. This is a wake-up call for us - this afternoon we're preparing our data and this weekend it's going for a holiday offsite.
Could you memorize a book today? How's your memory? Upgrades?
Spending Money
False. In fact, just about the opposite is true for some people. I don't know if you're a procrastinator, but I am, and one of the things I've discovered about myself is that my procrastination is closely linked with my perfectionism. The things I really care about are things that I want to be perfect, so I put off doing them. Example, let's say I want to redesign my blog. I start off with a couple simple improvements in my mind. However, I really want this redesign to be perfect. Pretty soon, I've turned a small, simple task into a huge project and the burden of accomplishing it is just too large, so I put it off. Do I really care about this redesign? Yeah, I care way too much about it. If I didn't care, I'd just knock it out in a few minutes.

I've since learned that I have to force myself to accept the "good enough" solution, to work in iterations, and to do timeboxing (I use the pomodoro method) so that I just get started on something, without worrying too much about the big picture. Most of all though, it really does come down to just mental discipline, to recognizing when you're putting something off (which itself can be difficult to a life-long procrastinator) and forcing yourself to just do it now. Sadly, like a recovering drug addict, I'm afraid it's something I'll always have to fight against.
How is that related to hacker news?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_...
Unfortunately as of my last birthday that wouldn't work either. 0x30 :-(
SEO Dreck
Is there any specific reason why would like to be in your twenties again?
(re-run of a comment I made previously; device reads PDFs)

iRex Digital Reader 1000S, 699 EUR; https://www.irexshop.com/

10.2 Inch (diagonal) electronic paper display
1024 x 1280 pixel resolution at 160 pixels per inch
16-level grey scale
Mini-USB connector
Wacom® penabled® touch sensor input with Stylus
...

More data and opinions over at http://mobileread.com, etc.
Why was this down-modded?

It's a basic demographic fact that folks have been talking about for 20 years: there is a strong correlation between political values and average family size. Red state folks have slightly more kids, and they have them younger (which means that you pack more generations in per unit time).

If a composite blue state person has 0.9 kids per generation, and has 3 generations per century, then you get 0.9 ^ 3 = .729 blue staters in the fourth generation for every 1 in the first.

If a composite red state person has 1.1 kids per generation, and has 4 generations per century, then you get 1.1 ^ 4 = 1.46 red staters in the fourth generation for every 1 in the first.

Modest changes in growth rates can be HUGE.

It's always dangerous to extrapolate out 100 years based on 15 or 20 years of data, but the last 20 years HAVE played out much as some have predicted.

I'd also add that the proliferation of low cost ultrasound, which has let people see prenatal ( babies / fetuses ) has had a demonstrable effect on abortion rates. This is true even despite the fact that crusading moralist / Client #6 Elliot Spitzer tried to (and mostly succeeded in) banning
ultrasound for merely curious pregnant women.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/120792.html
In OO, isn't this territory covered by the "Missing Object" pattern? Also, aren't there new statically typed languages that define the missing object class for you?

A pernicious thing you find in Smalltalk at certain shops is finding lots of methods defined on UndefinedObject (nil) so that it can act as a Missing Object. (Like comparison operations.) The problem, is that this often results in not knowing what the heck to expect in a variable.

This is very bad. You can't change your mind about this! It can also break the system in insidiously subtle ways. (Sometimes things work because an exception is thrown!)
Thanks Yan

With regards to the Kindle DX, I think I am a little afraid of the DRM issues which for one reason or another might make it a brick because I am either in the wrong country when I am reading something or else. The DX is also not in the hands of users, as it will begin selling later this year, I am really looking for the point of view of an actual user of a real product that one can already buy.
The difference between a suspect and a prospect
People talk about punishing the winners all the time. The UK is considering a new tax for people making more than X. Pundits are starting to say "we don't need those malcontents who move away from high taxes"

In the US, half the election was about "families making less than $200K a year will not get a tax increase".
I find all demographic changes fascinating.

Percent of hispanics, Mormons, college educated, third-party-voting, etc.

Especially given that political and social changes are often influenced by technology (birth control pill -> sexual revolution ; ultrasound -> increase in rates of pro-life ; online video -> anti-police-corruption; etc.).
I said "practically"

My memory is as good as it ever was. So is my physical health. (I am extremely grateful for both.) I'm doing my best work ever right now.

To those who suggest you peak earlier in life, all I can say is take care of yourself and you may never peak.
Heh, when I worked at Microsoft we once had a division-wide developer meeting, and a business dev guy was doing a presentation on how well the company is doing financially. At one point he said "As you can see from this chart, your division is doing quite well, earning XXX dollars in profit per developer!" At that point we all just sort of looked around at each other while trying to reconcile the difference between our salary and the number, and he paused for a few seconds. You could see a bit of discomfort on his face as he realized exactly what he said and who he said it to. I never heard this figure given in any future division meeting :)
ableal.

It looks interesting but a little steep. Thanks,

Igor.
That's like saying don't conflate Tcl and Tk.
Poverty is often defined by the lowest quintile. By that definition there is always poverty. That's bullshit.

We should measure a society by how the poorest live and by the heights achieved. If the problems of the poor are about obesity and not hunger, we're doing really well.

If you have a society where the capable have an incentive to create, and do, you're doing well. If they're considering making a tax shelter or moving, you have problems.

That creative force is what makes it so people on the bottom worry about obesity and not hunger. Incentives for unequal distribution of goods raise the general level of wealth.

A public policy should care a lot more about general wellbeing than emotional wellbeing.
I think a better resource on the topic is Dan Ariely, his 4 minute video on the topic at http://bigthink.com/ideas/dan-ariely-how-can-people-overcome..., and his book Predictably Irrational (http://www.amazon.com/Predictably-Irrational-Hidden-Forces-D... - specifically chapter 6). If you're able to take the time to watch the brief video, you'll more than likely buy the book - its amazingly insightful * incredibly useful even to coders.

obligatory joke about procrastination, mild chuckles all around
Axum - Ping Pong with Dataflow Networks
Erlang: Soundex matching
Bindun', I'm afraid: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=609893
Ableal,

one more thing, I just noticed the cool-er readers. In the specs there is:

"Formats JPEG, PDF, EPUB, TXT
Languages 8
Content DRM PDF. EPUB"

Does it mean that it does what I am looking for, it reads directly a pdf with no translation that could misrender the math in my papers ?

Igor.
New remote process starter module (Erlang)
Exactly.

Fantasizing about what it would like to have already finished my Great American Novel/Web Site/Open Source App gives me such a warm and comfortable glow that I am reluctant to spoil it by taking two steps into the project and looking around and saying "OMG this is total crap and I have no idea what to do next".

PS: And yeah, the pomodoro method rocks.
Max/MSP is commercial/proprietary ; Pd ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Data ) is a BSD-licensed alternative (Miller Puckette is the original author of both).

In the commercial arena, see also Reaktor ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaktor ).
Golden Rule. Treat others the way you wish to be treated. You even stated it yourself so you are most likely in the right place. I have noticed that you have to be careful telling jokes here. The people here are smart and they tend to like a joke that is clever...
Facebook to launch Verified Apps program
Everybody _he_ knew used WinAmp (in a time WMP was completely either useless or non-existent). About 40% of the people I know and work with would not touch Windows with a pole. Those do not make a significant cross-section of the market. Just like most people just lives with the OS their computer came with, most people just live with the browser that is installed by default either by the manufacturer or by their corporate overlords.

IE3 was the first "good enough" browser that came from Microsoft and, from 98 on, IE came bundled. For those who do not live in and for the web, "whatever comes with the computer" is what gets used. That was the last nail in Netscape's coffin.
Not really related to the subject, but if you follow your feedback loop you will quickly end up with nothing new on the site, but only everyone reinforcing the vocal majority.

Basically you'll start writing what people want to hear, instead of what you believe.

This is the main culture problem at many social bookmarking sites - whichever group was first basically "locks" the mindset, and no changes are accepted (at least not without massive co-ordination of some other group that wants to take over).

It's important to never downmod (and upmod) based on whether or not you agree with the subject!

People seem to do the right thing here, but mainly:

upmod posts that bring something new to the discussion, whether or not they are correct, and whether or not you agree with them.

Downmod spam and useless junk.

Downmod incorrect items (but only those that don't add something new, for example that don't clarify a common misconception or error) to -1 (but no lower).

Leave the rest alone.
Great comment, I agree 100% correct. It may sound weird, but I can only help to feel this kind of pain one day. The journey, at least for me, is just as important as the destination.
5 Reasons for Flex Developers to consider a Grails / Google App Engine Backend
I try my best to treat everyone here as though I actually know them. Of course, that means I end up deleting a fair percentage of the replies I submit, because I wouldn't say things the same way if the person was actually in a conversation with me.

Regarding the humor stuff, I just worry that the reddit style 250 comment pun threads will start becoming more and more accepted here; however, I wouldn't say it's a very large concern. I just bet that a lot of people have similar worries about quality here.
some people are simply idiots and make it well worth the "karmic hit" to poke fun at.

other times we joke just to be part of the conversation. like i would have nothing substantial to say about training squids to do things, but hey i would certainly point out the hentai moment.

anyone can certainly tailor their behavior on here to gain karma and acceptance, but i am of the mind that it is much more interesting for people to be themselves and see what happens, consequences and all
At least the look and feel they developed for Copland were re-used in MacOS 8 and 9...

It looked cool, in the late 90s.
You made your comment based on what you believe is acceptable. So did he.

Everyone thinks what they are doing is right, and "what is the difference?", although it may not look offensive, could have been the most hurtful 3-4 words he heard this week.

His reply was probably as inappropriate as you bringing back "The pussy" and hurt him again since you "think he still is a pussy".
The graph accompanying the article doesn't show a gradual change in the pro-life direction. The proportion calling themselves "pro-life" stayed in the mid-forties through 2001-2008 and then spiked this year.

And your model of different reproductive rates for blue-state vs. red-state people assumes that children have the same values as their parents. I know quite a few folks who were raised in red states and fled them.
I'm not sure I follow. I've built what I consider a personal brand as an ATG expert. I'm not "enforcing my success" on other people, I've simply built a site, blog, forum posts, cross links, etc... that establish my public presence as an experienced ATG architect. If you Google for things like "ATG performance" or "ATG security" my site/posts are some of the first results. If you google for my name you find a cohesive, professional, public persona. I want people to associate my name with ATG professional, and vice versa.
Tencent’s virtual goods revenues keep growing during recession