skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Is it just me or is ubuntu getting worse? I really thought it was good when it was gnome 2, and then they moved to unity, seemingly targeting netbooks. Now nobody has a netbook, and they are talking about phones and other such nonsense.

I generally run an ubuntu vm on osx, because i love the linux command line ecosystem, but as time goes on I find myself needing to customise more and more just to get a sane base configuration.

I really don't understand why ubuntu doesn't focus on their niche - giving developers a nice dev environment and then slowly working to stabilise apis and turn it into a platform. Then they can think about other stuff. At the moment they are trying to compete with companies that are much larger, with much more budget.
Yeah, it's a clever idea alongside a polished app. I wish I had been able to do something this cool!
Ask HN: How can my sleep become more reliable?
I have a severe problem for my professional career, and it is my unreliability of sleep. I want to fix it, and want your suggestion and help.<p>It has not been that way for more than ten years since my highschool day.
Being interested in programming and being in dorm where little regulation existed for my high school and college days gave me pretty
wimsy and on-demand sleep schedule, which brought me occasional sleep deprivation.
Many of you in programming would understand the disaster with habitual sleep deprivation.<p>To force some sort of self-regulation, I made the network and light to be turned off at 10 o'clock automatically, but my family started to complain about their inability to control those utility.
So I had to create another control mechanism for turning back them on when they needed, but I ended up abusing this mechanism, which made the whole self-regulation meaningless.
Yes, I am pretty weak-willed, but that is why I am asking your help on how I can become a person with better will-power with sleep.
I tried many will-power related suggestion or regimen, but I seem to always end up coming back to the state of unreliability whenever an unexpected event with pressure happens.<p>I have pretty high ideal for my performance, and I am not satisified that I am not such person who can achieve it reliably.
At nights, the thing that I am not doing what I am supposed to do makes me depressed,
prevent me from me getting things done, makes me unable to sleep, and eventually ignites the vicious cycle of stress, regret, depression, and sleep-deprivation.<p>Recently, I discovered that I am at the stage of pre-hypertension.
The most likely cause of this would be the stress, and I get the most of stress when I do not have enough sleep.
I am in a situation where I need to get more things to be done, but I seem to do less and less thing with the same time. Please give me some help.
That's me, and ADD.
> The sheer flexibility and number of choices for each and every part of the linux desktop world makes the whole experience chaotic, inconsistent, buggy and complex to setup and maintain.

I think that's what vendors like ubuntu should be for. They should focus on stability and planning.

Instead they just keep doing their own thing for a audience that might very well not exist.
Hot MLM Startup 2013 Huge Residuals Millions Customers Hot Seller
D-Link Router Backdoor Vulnerability Allows Full Access To Settings
It doesn't undermine my argument. I said they compete on quality. Unions can be just as tyrannical as a monopoly. If German companies didn't produce better cars than cheaper countries there would be no reason to buy them and very few people would.

Added to my above comment:

"For clarification sake I'm saying that the mass of people at the bottom of an organization can have demands that conflict with the survival of the business. It's good that there are smart people who fought their way up the bureaucracy through a meritocracy. They generally won't make a decision that will obviously drive a company straight into the dirt while this is distinct risk in unions with entitlement issues."
The article says "bendable and unbreakable". I'm not clear on if the phone is fixed and curved or actually bendable?
Is 'Web 2.0' Another Bubble? 2006
It's been two to three years away for about ten to fifteen years now.

You're right, but just don't expect it to be there in two to three years.
Time to make a Connect 4 iPhone case.
Can you cite any relevant law? Case law or regulation?
This is from The Tale of The Adopted Daughter, which appears in Time Enough for Love. It's a really beautiful piece and the ending gets me every single time.
Also council tax is paid only by the resident, not by the owner, so it's not felt by foreign owners if they are renting it out, or even if it's empty.
VAT and sales tax have the same effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VAT#Comparison_with_sales_tax
I don't know if I'm ok with using 83% (125/150) of all my Monkeysphere slots on "work".
Even theoretical scientists actually make product and those are theoretical results they can prove on paper. Those proofs are products and are delivered to the next level of assembly - the applied scientists whom we call them engineers.

I.E he's an engineer.
I use it also, having come from the awful world of MYOB. Xero, by comparison, is a dream. Account reconciliation is almost fun and I can get through a lot of invoices very quickly.
So it's not just a phone, it's also a self-defence device (as long as your attacker stays with his back to the sun and it's not cloudy or dark).
There is no way to tell the difference in a subway station, even for an instrument as loud as a violin. Moreover, no one goes to the subway to listen to music.
If you run Linux in a VM on VirtualBox on OSX you get the best of both worlds. If you are curious it is a great way to experiment.

The other point to make is that if you use terminal POSIX compliant tools (vim, mutt, tmux) and favour web applications over native ones you can create a highly portable environment so the choice of underlying OS becomes a subjective question of taste.
Couldn't agree more about KDE Plasma desktop. I've used most desktops there are and switched to KDE Plasma about a year ago (I used GNOME2 until then, don't like GNOME3 and Unity at all) and boy, KDE Plasma is by far the best desktop I have ever used. Looks great, has awesome usability (once you get used to it) and it is very flexible so you can adapt it almost perfectly to the way you work. Realy awesome.
Exactly. Ubuntu started out to be the mainstream distro that just makes the linux desktop experience smooth and free of worries, but instead they now build just another desktop experience on their own.
Even for Ubuntu you have Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Mint and-i-dont-know-what else...thats just the wrong approach imo.
I'm no crypto expert, but I would like to learn a little more about ECC. Are there any books or websites in particular that I should look into? I have a copy of Applied Cryptography and plan on eventually reading through more of it.

I only ask because it seems like there have been a lot of advancements in this field recently (from what I've seen on the internet).
The Power of Internet: Chandralekha’s Overnight YouTube Fame
> I came from Arch Linux to OSX. I find the tight integration between hardware and software...

I just went the other direction :). I agree, the hardware/driver issues are a pain. If you're using a desktop without wireless, you probably won't have issues. If you pick Ubuntu, any issues usually aren't too hard to fix.

If you're trying to install something like FreeBSD on a laptop with a non-broadcom card? God have mercy on your soul :(

That said, once you fix the issues, they're usually fixed for good. It's just the matter of the week of banging your head against the wall to figure it out. Relevant: http://xkcd.com/979/
Would be nice if each one of these would include some commentary whether the math is in fact sensible and/or correct.
Of Course Harvard’s Larry Summers Hates The Thiel Fellowship
Innoz Makes it to Limca Book of Records As Largest Offline Search Engine
Dangerous Knowledge: Cantor, Boltzmann, Gödel and Turing documentary
Thank you so much for the kind words about Beeminder! (I'm a cofounder.) We do indeed view it as a more flexible version of the Seinfeld hack.

I agree that the Seinfeld hack (aka, "don't break the chain") can be incredibly powerful -- but only once you have a long chain to not break. So there's a catch-22 until then -- you can sometimes keep failing again and again indefinitely, never building up the motivating chain. And that problem repeats every time the chain breaks. So you're always in a precarious situation where one bad day can precipitate many more bad days, where you go down a slippery slope of "one more day won't hurt; I'll get a new chain started tomorrow".

(Extreme bias warning) With Beeminder you can commit to maintaining a certain average, like 3 posts/commits/pages/whatever per week. So it's not all-or-nothing like the Seinfeld hack. You can build up a safety buffer and then take some time off, without the danger that that will lead you down a slippery slope of sloth. With Beeminder's yellow brick road you've precommitted to not let your overall
average dip too far.

If the rate you want to maintain is exactly 7 per week -- 6.9 is unacceptable -- and if you can sustain that long term, then "don't break the chain" is probably perfect. For everything else, there's Beeminder!
Procrastination is just being lazy. Laziness is a habit. That person overcame the habit using this method. Good for him, but this is a somewhat complicated way of doing it.
There was one in 2004. Brought in $300+ billion, but didn't create a lot of jobs, so who knows when the next one will be.
I think if you're a very basic user, you can get a consistent experience just because you can use the included desktop in Ubuntu or some other distro and not run into many problems. However, your experience will still be inferior to that of OSX since Apple has put more efforts into applications like Mail, iPhoto and iTunes.

If you're an advanced user (as all of the readers here would probaby be), you'll quickly end up in the situation you describe.
I can't speak for the OP, but check the salary differences between the two cities. The higher prices in SF may be offset.
You're not allowed to use their phones, either.

Here's a case[1] of a carload of US citizens being detained incommunicado for six hours at Niagara Falls for six hours, in a cold room. No explanation.

[1] http://www.onthemedia.org/story/my-detainment-story-or-how-i...
The advice given to programmers using an ORM or a database access library just doesn't work for programmers building one. He can't just "use" bind variables. He has to incorporate the concept into his code.

It is unfortunate that the Python DB-API evolved in the way that it did. It is only an API doc, and therefore every db library has to reimplement much of the same functionality, like the string escaping that prevents SQL injection attacks.

It would do a lot of good for a simple thin mapper like this to be more widely used so that more people can see what is involved in making things secure, as opposed to just piggybacking on a library that does everything for you.
I can see how a curvature on the vertical axis (like what Samsung did) would help fit better with the shape of the thigh, but this phone is curving horizontally. It would just create a weird bulge in your pocket, wouldn't it?
I think the point on outsourcing is hinted at I the other story trending highly today about the man living without money.

If you had to look a 9 year old child labourer in the eye each time you were buying your cheaply made T-shirt, or a worker how has just completed a 14hour day making component for your phone, would you still feel as happy with your purchase.

Yes not all outsourcing is negative and not all worker abused, but when you remove visibility of production from people you limit their ability to choose based not only on the quality of the product but also the morals of the producing company.
I wonder how this would affect learning in general. I.e. eating snacks while studying.
Aren't Sprint and T-Mobile using fairly different tech? Also, sprint is way over-sold
Not to distract from the Important Scientific Discussion, but Esalen is as wonderful today as it was back then. The hot tubs and showers have been rebuilt, and the scenery is just as striking. Out of this world.

If you're there over Thanksgiving, say hi.
One large reason keeps me from switching to Linux.

Software maintenance, features and updates.

Without financial backing, the apps for linux will never be as good as on either OS X or Windows.

I donate a lot, but my money can only reach so far - it seems as too few donate, though i'm sure many donate their time and that is also a way of donating - but still, the fact is that someone has to pay to keep software developed and updated.
Exactly. Spend some time in the foreign Soviet Bloc and this is crystal clear.
My configuration for Linux is so much of a productivity boost to me that I'm planning to make my next laptop a Thinkpad, just to avoid the hardware issues.

OS X just held me back. It was locking up at 20% CPU and 40% RAM usage, and I could never figure it out. Linux doesn't do that (especially since I threw a bunch of swap space on, now it's incredibly stable)

As for defaults, I find it's faster in the short term to start with defaults and work from there, but it'll just come back and bite you that you're using somebody else's workflow. I start from scratch (for the most part) with Arch, and build my workflow on top.

I've wasted probably two weeks to get my workflow configured perfectly, but now I can spit out code at such a rate that I find myself doing more projects than ever before.
That being said, Speedtest reported Hong Kong 3G speeds on my (recently unlocked) iPhone 4 that are better than any of the reported 4G LTE speeds of any carrier in the US (7-9 mbps download...it was great!)
Perhaps the 9 year old child laborer would otherwise starve. I'll gladly buy the T-shirt every time.

Or think of it like this. If all T-Shirts were required to be made in the US by union laborers working 30 hours per week and each one cost $50, I'd probably buy a heck of a lot less T shirts.
So, if you are a US citizen that's being held for hours, it's okay for them to not let you communicate? Even to inform the people waiting for you why you're late?
If you want to try this out yourself, be sure to check out https://github.com/impl/libcurvecpr for a solid implementation of djb's CurveCP in an easy-to-implement & understand pluggable library.
Not at all. I'm suggesting that arguing that doing nothing is better than doing something is something people do to promote complacency, and has no place in the world.
Show HN: ProtectedText.com - The safest site on the web for storing your text
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He does? I don't have that impression.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/11/18/mustache-on-the-mo...
Collaborative database design
Exactly. And that's why you shouldn't lie but tell the truth.
I dual boot OS X to be able to use Photoshop. It's slower and feels awkward coming from Linux, though, so I try to limit my stays.
Same here but I don't really consider it a problem.

I work on personal projects a few days or weeks at a time and then after solving the first set of big problems I generally let it slip and lose interest. The source code lives on my hard drive and then one weekend next year or a few years later I remember what I had been writing and I come to revisit it. Maybe I rewrite the program or extend it up to the next level, or just look at it and think "That's where I was, mentally, in 2010; I think I've made progress since, I'm not the same programmer anymore."

I place no intrinsic value on finishing the projects itself because then they would start to resemble work and I want my hobby projects to be fun.

At work I procrastinate too but that's mostly doing the more interesting tasks or tasks with the highest impact first and the less interesting tasks only when really, really needed. So I don't basically procrastinate, I just prioritize.

I think procrastination is prioritizing, really.

And sometimes you prioritize complete idling over doing anything at all which I think just tells that you were trying to do the wrong thing because if you weren't you would have forgotten to eat while staying up doing it.
Diagonal measurements are meaningless. I can make an infinity-inch screen that takes up no space. All "6 inch" means is "no dimension is larger than 6 inches".
I'm rather disappointed by Onavo, despite getting in early and falling in love. They had a great product, but they kept having bugs and UX mistakes.

But good for them, getting acquired. Assuming this wasn't a burning-building acquire, which I sincerely hope it wasn't. I liked Onavo.
It's not fair to call this "the" libertarian solution just because this guy proposes it and calls himself libertarian. I haven't seen Rothbard or Friedman advocating wanton killing of government employees.
Feynman is great, but not as well-known as you would like to think. Even people who recognize specific widely-related events (O-ring in ice water, or Trinity through the windshield) usually won't be able to tell you who he is. Even in tech, I only occasionally encounter people outside certain Internet Echo Chambers who have read anything at all by him.
People who want to spend bitcoins on illegal stuff are just waiting for the next marketplace to emerge. Which should happen in a few weeks; the profit margin are known to be incredibly high and it can be done by a single developer.
Yes, that's the one. I have to reread that book, it must have been more than 20 years ago I read it.
Exactly the same thoughts here.

Also he's writing about what has pretty much always happened, people move to London when they are young. They get a good career, meet a partner, have children then after trying to live on for a while they move out to the 'sticks' for a better life.

This has been happening for years, only the very rich at the top can afford to live in London for good (while keeping a 2nd home in the country) and those on the lower end of the scale who either never owned, or who can not move to the country as they have service or manual jobs.

There are always a few exceptions, but this is a total non story, I wonder if they wrote another one a few years ago called 'the great wedding and baby boom - how now I've hit 30 I've found all my friends are getting married and having kids, they never did this before it must be part of a wider trend...'
It's really important for us to understand this reaction, so I'm glad you expressed it! It does seem super perverse on first blush. We've written about this a lot, actually. Eg, http://blog.beeminder.com/perverse .

Another counterargument is that any company has a monetary incentive to take your money and then under deliver on what you paid for. Beeminder, like most companies, is staking its reputation on providing some value that you'll be happy to pay for and tell others about (like the grandparent post here; thank you again!) and keep using. In Beeminder's case that value is making you more productive (or more fit or weigh less, or whatever graphable goal you have).

Eager to hear if that's convincing!
His cure is worse than the disease.

If everyone did as he did we would cause MUCH more environmental damage to the world.

Wood fire? There is nothing worse for the environment except maybe coal, and even that (in the US) is not necessarily worse. Wood smoke is a very serious pollutant, which in quantity would blacken the sky.

A rocket stove is pretty good - but it doesn't come close to the efficiency of a natural gas one. So he's using a worse fuel, and being less efficient at it.

Beeswax candles? Is he trying to find the most wasteful and most inefficient way to light something? And candles make smoke too.
The author was an evolutionary biologist who happened to be a Marxist. Apparently, like Ralph Milliband, one of those Marxists who didn't like Russian communism! See the other comments for a link to his wikipedia page.
A lot of startup will fail. Some bigger startups will fail at some point too. Corporate giants will fail and have to dissolve into smaller parts.

Do I think a new bubble is about to pop? Half and half, depending on how you think about it.

First, web 2.0 probably will continue to do well just because most people consider the Internet is a necessity. With government, business and education now moving to cloud-based operation, Internet will continue to be popular.

On the other hands, I got a lot of thoughts about buble popping.

Take Apple for example. Its market price can continue to last for several years as long as Apple continue to offer durable products as it has always been. Its market branch is now etched into everyone's head. It's like seeing MS Word - you just can't live without one (or a MS Word clone).

But competitors like Samsung is competing with Apple. The wheel is turning because Samsung offers more phone choices and in a way offers more features - well bigger screen, upgrade hardware spec, etc. So the Apple's dominant is being challenged. A company can't live on old reputation forever. It has to continue to surprise consumers. If Apple can't do that within, say, 5 years, and if its competitor offers more attractive products, I am sure the price will fall.

Blackberry is doom to dissolve anyway. It's just a matter of time. MS will have to give up some of its flesh to save its ass in the next 5-10 years. It just can't stay like this forever. People lose interest. Spending tens of billions on R&D produces little market attraction is a thing you don't want to end up with.

Google is boring too. So much criticism. Mozilla is facing challenge too: DRM or not? Mozilla has a long way to go. If has several years to observe the impact of DRM. Will FFOS take off in North America a few years from now? Will the market shrink more? How long more can Opera survive. Will Apple finally give up safari and say fuck that?

In the startup world, let's look at education. So many startups are building around education, offering either Coursea-like service or BlackBoard/Moodle like learning manamgnet service (I think Khan academy is in that direction, primarily for k-12, and I think Kewton too). But you got edx, coursera, udacity and a few other ones competing. Open learning seems hot but we start seeing some fragmentation. Who will win?

Twitter made some good money but also had some bad loss this year. Can it continue to do well next couple years? Are companies growing too fast?

So bubble will pop. Some will shut down, some get acquired, and some will win.
$30, "Unlimited" data and text, 100 minutes?
Under Capitalism, if a worker disagrees with how their boss allocates their time and labor, the worker is free to start a new business just as the founder once had to.

The worker is also free to seek superior employment, if they feel their worth is not being fully appreciated / utilized (and so on and so forth).

Workers aren't appreciated at Business X? Start Business Z that treats its employees better. There are countless examples of this in practice over the last 150 years.

Unions are also properly legal under Capitalism. That is, the free assembly of labor. If employees don't like how they are being treated, they can collectively negotiate to try to acquire more leverage.

That completely removes your complaint about allocation of labor and accountability. Also, your entire premise rests on the notion that people are owed a particular job - just try telling nature it owes you shelter and three meals a day. The reality is, the capital to fund that job comes from someone that had to first create it. The West is losing this century because it has become lazy and hyper-entitled.
he must mean people like this:

“He eats lunch when he arrives at work at 2 p.m. Then, like clockwork, he goes to sleep with a cup of soda on the table and the straw in it,” said Marvin Robbins, a union vice president.

http://nypost.com/2013/05/28/labor-big-a-real-heavy-sleeper/