skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Without your health you cannot do work therefore health must come first.

Most of the hackers/programmers I know lack a mind-body connection. They live in their minds and are wired to their computers. Many forget that they even have a body--for hours, weeks, months. This can have disastrous consequences later in life.

They are practising "deprivation chic"--they get a feeling of satisfaction out of self-deprivation. Because it hurts they think they must be doing the right thing.
<http://nymag.com/news/features/48887/>;

As a 27-year-old entrepreneur and cancer survivor, I can tell you that deprivation chic is just stupid. The long-term sacrifice of one's health is never acceptable.

It is possible to find a work-life balance. But many people get a sense of validation from working for work's sake. It's easier for many to program and blog and run a business than it is for them to cultivate personal relationships, exercise, and enjoy recreation. "The Business" is a great excuse to validate an imbalanced life.

That said, it's possible to be productive and successful without sacrificing health and recreation and personal relationships. It just takes a bit more creativity.
I'm something of an optimistic incompetent when it comes to ad-hoc solutions, so it's kinda nice to see a gallery of things that are ugly and useful, or ugly and likely dangerous.
China Bans Gold Farming
>"The FDA has done far, far more good than harm in this case."

How sure are you of that? I am certain that the organization is structured to make many more type II than type I errors, and I would guess that type II errors cause at least the same magnitude of harm and they are, by their nature, much harder to measure.

Random paper on the topic:
http://repositories.cdlib.org/pep/96-2/
this article is garbage -- it seems like flamebait link-whoring at its worst.
I'll support this submission. Yeah, it smells Diggish but its creative everyday practical "hacking". Many of the pictures remind me of physical implementations of so much code I've seen over the years. It works, but ain't pretty.
Health is Wealth.
This is all done at the threat of being replaced by a PHB's 16 year old "whiz-kid" nephew who "knows a lot about computers" and is "always playing with those things".
Yes, the design will improve with time, that's for sure.

Would a flat fee for participation sound better? How about "Pay $9 to bid in our next auction" ... and get away from the donations and non-profit approach?

The reason for selecting your own car is so you end up with exactly what you want, from the dealer you want to go to for maintenance and repairs. Do you think it's better to name a specific car, and therefore remove the winner's right to select his own car and dealer?
"I don't want it to be legal for scientists to perform borderline unethical treatment on my citizens."

Huh? You've got it completely backwards. What is really unethical is retarding process, and not allowing people to have the best possible medical care. If there's a huge breakthrough in medical technology - and stem cells appear to be such a breakthrough - by denying it to people without an excellent reason you are causing untold, needless suffering.

"Go to China for that, it's really that easy."

I never thought I'd see the day where an American told another to go to China to get the innovative medical care they need because the USA was too bogged down in bureaucratic mire. Is it opposite day or something?
Reading this honestly just made a huge smile come across my face, and a bit of a tear start coming into my eye.

There might be hope.
Looking for Beta Clients
Hi,
I developed an enterprise visual datamining software. Currently I am looking for beta clients. I can support 1 or 2 beta clients right now. If you are interested please let me know. You can send me an email at info@illiondata.com
Sputnik: a tool for identifying differences between browser implementations
To be fair, a lot of the success comes from the size of the audience of him and Joel.
I enjoyed it. Who is he trying to flame? Annoying flash advertisement companies?
Not at all. I took out the part that says "we will run an auction every time we've accumulated enough donations" because I thought it was too much info to begin with. Plus I thought the 'once a day' plan might encourage more people to participate.

My real plan is simply to run an auction every time we've accumulated $22,000, so $20K for the winner's new car and $2K for the company. That's about as simple as it gets. Should I say this instead?
For me, the title is the icing on the cake. I can vividly imagine an airplane mechanic duct-taping the plane wing, dusting off his hands, saying "There. I fixed it."
sounds like you need to train your body to be happy with less sugar... gradually reduce the amount of sugar in your diet - could lead to diabetes
This sounds great, in theory, but I'm a little suspicious about this is a political stunt rather than something that will provide real value.

Guess we'll find out when the actual data sets open up this fall. Definitely a step in the right direction, but I don't know if they actually "get" open data.
Modern programming is all about abstracting away detail to allow the programmer to concentrate on the structure and other stuff that matters, but it seems to me (and I may be wrong) that increasingly we find things that look the same, get used the same, generally behave the same, and then are different in a corner case.

I agree. I would paraphrase this as: Leaky abstractions cause bugs, and unfortunately all abstractions turn out to leak at some point (I think someone else said it this way before, but I can't remember who right now). EDIT: Found it - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...

This doesn't mean we shouldn't use abstractions of course - it just means each abstraction comes with a cost.
Looking for some feedback on my new site...
Check out my site, and let me know what you think. I've been told, it's the facebook of dating.

Anyhow, check it out, for bad or for worse...

http://mikesandmegs.com
I haven't seen the comments you mention (nutrition threads bore me) but:

As a hacker I'm interested in figuring out what is the optimial diet for maximum vitality and longevity

As a hacker, I'm interested in the optimal trade-off between effort and reward. My life expectancy is about 78 years of age. I am willing to engage in behaviours that would stop me dying at 50 (eg. I wear my seatbelt) but I am less interested in sweeping and often poorly substantiated claims that would make me live to 80 (eg. live on raw foods).

Also, as a scientist, I find many of the claims made in support of great nutritional benefits dubious and overrated.
Everyone knows there are some sites/blogs that do all of those things. They are all over the internet and of course they are annoying and everyone hates them except the people who get a few cents each time someone clicks on them due to one of their articles being linked from reddit/digg etc.

Doing a cheesy/obvious top ten list is only intended to end up on Digg... and now it seems to have become enough to end up on HN.
The beta password is "goldfish"
I guess the 'real' issue here is whether or not restaurants are knowingly using non-vegan ingredients and lying to their customers (i.e. committing fraud) just to turn a buck.

Restaurants lying about what is really in their food should tick _everyone_ off vegan or non.
There are some 3 or 4 main things that more than 80% of those visiting the website are looking for. Those 3 or 4 items should be easy to find.

I have this complaint for most university websites. The first time I go to most university websites, simple things like links to department websites, list of faculty, tuition information are so damn difficult to find. site search generally sucks. and navigating the site can be so much pain. I just don't understand why they have to make it so hard!
I feel that you either have missed the point, or you're not explaining yourself clearly. Dismissing Archimedes' principle simply as "boats that float in water float in water" seems rather ingenuous.

Archimedes' principle says that the weight of water displaced by a floating object equals the weight of the object. The Falkirk wheel exploits this in a design-critical fashion. The chambers are full to the brim of water. When a boat enters the chamber, some of that water is displaced.

What's critical, though, is no matter how many boats are in a chamber, including none, the chamber still weighs the same. Hence the wheel remains balanced no matter how many boats are in it.

For those who don't know Archimedes' principle, and I've found even for many who think they do, this comes as a surprise.

"Why," they ask, "are the chambers still balanced?"

Perhaps you just think this is all obvious, in which case I concede your exceptional perception. And in my experience, exceptional it is.

Why the Falkirk Wheel remains balanced under apparently different loads is not obvious to most.

I think it's genius.
I've always found
http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
useful for when I want to see if it's my DNS or similar issues or the site is actually down. Not 100% accurate but gives a second opinion.
The way Python does it is intuitive to someone coming from an imperative background. But someone coming from a functional background could easily fall into the trap of reasoning with generators as lazy lists. To me, it's not obvious that

map(fn, g)

should have a side-effect on g.

I'm not saying I agree with the guy, but to call it magic is misleading.
That's not a very interesting observation. Part of the reason that successful open source projects are, presumably, statistically far less than unsuccessful ones is that the barrier to entry in order to start an open source project is basically non-existant.

Any 12 year old who gets an idea for a game can put up a project on sourceforge. However, proprietary software has steeper barrier. Typically, it comes from people in an established company if not an entrenched bureaucracy.
It's more interesting to choose projects that have achieved certain milestones (beyond one man-week of labor as you put it).

As well, there are plenty of proprietary projects that have failed and you have never heard of and never will. Data about failed proprietary projects is much more difficult to find. However, open source projects are almost entirely transparent about that kind of thing.
"Temperature of what???"

I just assume climate researchers use a reasonable definition. Maybe "moving average of 100 years" or whatever (I don't know).

"However, there are an infinite number of points"

Not sure what you are saying? Seems to me a finite sample should be sufficient to get a statistical significant result. Are you saying "OK, the measurement at point x was 30°C, but how can you be sure that 1m north of it the temperature was not -10°C"? I think that would be a bit silly. Again, the average should be your friend. Maybe at some measuring spots you miss the temperature by 10°C. So what? On average, those errors should cancel out.

"Still, there are an enormous number of points at which you need to measure temperature."

As I said, I am not interested in the way to get there, just in the final information upon which to act or not. And that is one bit.

(Edit: although I also dispute your claim that there is an enormous number of points. To make up an extreme counter example, suppose you measure temperature in your home, and you notice it rising 10°C every year - would you really need other measurements to conclude that something is wrong? Like when it was at 100°C, boiling temperature for water, would you still say "but OK, it is still reasonably chilly at 80km altitude, so nothing to worry about"?).

"Last but not least: the atmosphere is some 80 Km thick. You need measurement at high-altitudes, too."

Again, I assume that climate researchers pick meaningful spots to measure. Maybe they measure at 80km altitude, maybe not. Maybe it is relevant to measure at 80km, maybe not. I don't see a point to argue about that kind of thing on a "popular science" level - that is up to the specialists. I suppose temperatures at 80km could be measured, why not? Maybe it can be done with telescopes or satellites - why do you assume it is not being done?

It just seems like a cop out to say "yeah, but it is so complicated we can never be sure". We are not 100% sure how the human body works, but we can still fix parts of it and detect some things when they are wrong.
AKA, Survivorship Bias:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
It does, eventually, digest beans, though. If the goal is sustained energy, then maybe it's not a bad thing that they aren't readily digested. The same may be true for whole grains, including brown rice.
I didn't think that your view would be changed. Quite honestly I'm not sure I understand the philosophy behind this. But the fact that there is only one model to the second order axioms of arithmetic (Peano's axioms with induction included) is a bit surprising to me.

We can't come up with a computable system for finding all mathematical truth but there appears to be a hardwired number system in the universe. It's not computable but it is unique. The natural numbers lead naturally (no pun intended) to the integers in a unique way. The integers uniquely lead to the rationals and the completion of the rationals is a unique object called the real numbers. The unique algebraic closure of the reals is the complex numbers. There is uniqueness at each step. This coupled with the utility of using mathematics to describe natural processes is...strange to me and some others.

I don't know what this has to do with your points because I didn't understand them. Not because you didn't write clearly but because I don't know enough philosophy. I'm a mathematician and know very little about philosophy.

Thanks for your input.
That's interesting. However, there are already several clones of SO and a couple that reproduce the vast majority of the functionality.
Linux for Children
I think that you just need to clarify what's going on.

Calling something non-profit carries certain connotations; namely that the proceeds will somehow benefit a charity.

My assumption is that you're trying to spin this as being towards a car instead of a raffle to win $20k for legal or tax purposes. You may want to talk to a lawyer to see what other options are available to you.
The "A Regular Expression Matcher" in Beautiful Code is a command-line wildcard matcher (from memory), and lacks parentheses and alternation. Useful, and probably an ideal example for the book, but much less powerful even than a mathematical regular expression.

See for yourself: http://books.google.com/books?id=gJrmszNHQV4C&lpg=PA1...
Icons for Interaction
Many people are vegan due to ethical concerns. If I'm only vegan because I'm appalled at the livestock industry's treatment of animals, but not that I necessarily have a problem with eating meat, what then?

You can't say that _everyone_ is vegan and/or vegetarian for the same reasons. Some people try to eat organic 'free-range' meat because it's certified to not have the animals pumped full of chemicals, others because they want the animal to not be mistreated.

That said, why is it that you can't boycott and/or not eat something while eating a substitute? A (admittedly bad) analogy would be to boycott the RIAA by _not_ buying/listening to Britney Spears, but then buying/listening to a similar-sounding independent artist. You're saying that person is a 'poser' because they don't completely boycott anything that even _sounds_ like an RIAA-signed artist.
I don't like being skinny. I've been skinny my entire life. Last year, I was 6'0 and 135 pounds. I started working out and eating more. I'm up to 160 and look a lot better. I don't look like I'm starving, I fit in my shirts a lot better, etc.

If you want to gain weight and are interested in a food hack, buy lots of milk. Over here it's about $1/1000 calories. You can't beat that. I drink half a gallon a day and it's done wonders for me. You probably want to be weight lifting if you do this though.
Before my wife went vegan, we never had milk/whole milk around the house and soy/rice/almond milk works in pancakes even when using eggs.
Why Technology Can't Fulfill
I agree with that. Anywhere the government coerces the market you're going to get distortions. Is playing favorites the worst type of market distortion? That's hard to judge, but it is probably the most egregious.

I don't think that immigration or foreign competition is the primary driver behind the decline in American engineering (if there is such a thing) though. The other mistakes we've made completely dwarf any effect this would have had:

Our fiscal policy over the past few decades has made debt our primary export. Wall Street firms can make more money just dealing in US Treasury debt than the profits of all the successful companies in Silicon Valley combined.

Steadily increasing regulation (SOX, whatever nonsense comes out of the current situation, etc.), litigiousness (often spurred by statue law: sexual harassment claims, hostile work environment, discrimination, etc.), and complicated tax code has made lawyers and CPAs more in demand, while licensing keeps their numbers down.

The increasing nationalization of health care has misdirected a shocking amount of resources into this industry.

All in all, the major reasons why a smart, rational young person, who is primarily motivated to make a buck, should go into law, medicine, banking, (or politics!) have almost nothing to do with immigration.
The actual review:

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/07/06/09070...
What is really unethical is retarding process, and not allowing people to have the best possible medical care.

Oh, give me a break here. Take your emotions out of the argument. Cutting edge medical experimentation does not necessarily equal "best possible care".

And if by innovative medical care you mean human guinea pig, then by all means buy the ticket now and head over.

Is it really a problem to want to be on the "safe side" when dealing with medical treatments on humans? You're the one who has it backwards. In your convoluted sense of ethics you somehow equate "doing nothing" and "being cautious" with "doing harm". What sort of stupidity is that?

Do you consider yourself an unethical greedy person each time you deny a beggar money on the streets? Do you consider yourself doing harm if you deny tackling a robber who has a gun pointed at a bank teller? How selfish of you to eat three meals each day and deny food to the millions of starving children in Africa. In each of these situations you had the capability to help, yet you chose to deny it to those people and it resulted in needless suffering.

Am I correctly understanding your system of ethics where you are saying that choosing to do nothing = doing harm?

Even if "doing nothing" did equal "doing harm", I would be willing to wager that doing nothing and being cautious statistically does FAR LESS "harm" than attempting a number of untested medical experiments on human guinea pigs for the sake of trying to save one person's dying grandparent.
Karōshi: death from overwork
could also eat lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
Widespread Rackspace Outage. DFW datacenter unreachable.
If your server is on Rackspace, chances are it's unreachable. Support and staus lines down too. Major fail.
Offering an app contest seems like a great way to get lots of work for free. Make the prize big enough and you'll get a ton of submissions, only one of which you have to pay for!
I gave away a bunch of old carpet on Freecycle. It was easier than cutting it up into little pieces so the trashman would take it.
"I just assume climate researchers use a reasonable definition."

Have you ever read about what that definition is on any discussion on global warming? I haven't. So they tell us the temperature is rising, but we don't know what temperature. What a joke...

"Seems to me a finite saple should be sufficient to get a statistical significant result."

"seems to me" is not very scientific, but you're right. Fortunately, physics makes it easy for us. We only need to sample every few hundreds of meters or so.

"Maybe at some measuring spots you miss the temperature by 10°C. So what? On average, those errors should cancel out."

The problem is that if you don't have enough information of the present state, you will not be able to predict the (near) future state reliably. A very coarse discretization is most likely useless for prediction purposes.

"As I said, I am not interested in the way to get there, just in the final information upon which to act or not. And that is one bit."

If you don't understand the process used to obtain the numbers, you don't understand how much the numbers can be trusted. Scientists study things and make predictions. It's not the scientists' role to decide what to do. That is the politicians' role. Funny how things seem to have been turned upside down.
I am not sure buddy, but I know that is where students reside.

However, you guys could try several approaches:

-Bottom Up: Ask students to submit their .edu email or login via Facebook connect, and you will notify them once a class is added (this is a bit of false advertisement because at this point you don't even have ties with their professors). But as the number of students for each school becomes significant the school board will be more willing to listen ("75 students at XYZ sign up to ....").

-Top Down: Close the registration process and start to pitch to one school at the time. In other words, adopt an enterprise sale's model. It may take you much longer to close one sale, but you are guaranteed to have revenue from every client.
It's actually better to eat food that is seasonal than local. Case in point, if you buy local tomatoes during the winter they are grown in a greenhouse that burns more energy than shipping tomatoes up from Mexico.

I recently found out that most (maybe all?) rice that's grown in California is grown in an area where they need to pump the water uphill to irrigate that area. Energy/greenhouse gas-wise it's more environmentally-friendly to import the rice from India.

Load of people seem to think that 'local' implies something like a small town and therefore must be better and/or closer to the earth or something, but that's not always the case.
Pizza Party - Order Pizza via Command Line
Clickable: http://mikesandmegs.com
I think you will learn much faster about parsing if you just read source code. Once you have looked at more then two implementation of the same thing you start to see similarities and differences and pick up the ideas in use.
> Eat five or six times a day

This is bad advice. You want to eat two large meals and a light one to minimize total insulin exposure. If you eat and snack all the time you keep insulin spiked up too much.

Working out six days a week to stay thin is completely ridiculous. Once or twice should be sufficient if you're eating right.
So let me get this straight:

1. Give up all your free time to working out.
2. Eat nothing that is delicious ever again.
3. Statistically, not significantly prolong your life. You could still die of heart disease at 50 because your genes are just not good genes. You could get cancer and keel. You could sleep an hour to long, and throw a clot and die.
4. Some people feel better in general doing the above 3 steps.

I am overweight, by a fair margin. But I'm not especially unhappy, insecure, or immobile. I have plenty of hobbies that involve outdoor things and my lifestyle doesn't inhibit those. My doctor says that losing weight is more for reducing long-term stress on my joints: my cardiovascular system is fine so long as I don't gain more weight.

So why the fuck should I, or the legion of people like me, care or listen to what this exercise freak says? I've got dogs, a girlfriend, and some hobbies taking up all the non-work time in my life. Who actually wants to do what he says, especially when the benefits are so incredibly dubious?
Urban farming movement 'like a revolution'