skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You can also use gold, a basket of commodities, or a mixed basket of commodities and currencies.
That's a good point about the depth. I've swapped out the pictures for ones with fog enabled, and it looks a lot less like polygon soup.

As to the anti-aliasing, if there's a way to turn it on in OS X using JOGL (Java bindings for OpenGL), I haven't found it yet.
It would be nice if they could pick colors that aren't almost identical for their graph lines.
You could give the median profit, which is not sensitive to outliers.
This is a bad idea. Snorting (instead of swallowing) the pill won't change how it affects you half an hour out (or further). It will, however, get it into your bloodstream immediately, giving you a quick high, and by hyperbolic discounting, it will make the operant-conditioning association between the pill and the high much, much stronger.

Ritalin or amphetamines are much less addictive if you take them in a pill, especially a slow-release pill and/or with some food. And if your reason is to be awake for an all-nighter on a term paper, you don't get any benefit from snorting.
I believe work is the source of happiness. Happiness comes to you when you see the fruits of your work.

I remember feeling really happy after finishing up a program that I had been working on for a long time. Just seeing it work so perfectly gave me an incredible sense of satisfaction. It was far better from the satisfaction/pleasure I got from doing things like watching TV/movies, going on dates, eating at nice restaurants, etc.

Developing the program was definitely not play either. It involved things (like fixing bugs, coming up with algorithms) for which I had to expend a considerable amount of intellectual energy. It was work, but it was work worth working on.
1

My parents were "boat people" from Vietnam and settled here in Canada.
Nice straw man. Did anyone ever try to say that it's not worth fixing a 1000x-slowdown error because "we'll just buy 1000 times the hardware, that's cheaper!"?

Obviously there is a balance somewhere between pointless, unmaintainable, expensive over-optimisation on one end and programmer incompetence, bad tool choices and ignorance of hardware limitations on the other.

There will be a sweet spot in the middle, possibly different for all projects, which just has to be figured out by experienced people who knows what they're doing. Why all this trying to take "sides"? It's like getting all fired up about which is "better", planes or ships. They are both good for different purposes, choose the one that fits your need!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_2_peer

Look at the 2 images on the right :) Seti@Home nodes connect only to the main server. They never see or hear anything about other nodes either. If the servers died the network would die.

But I second the Folding@Home prompting - a great cause!
47 hour, 1200 km non-stop drive on a difficult terrain, with 90% paralysed body
"In June, 1996 KPCB organized a $100 million Java Fund to back a slate of startups using Sun's Java programming language, including Active Software, Calico, Internet Security Systems, Marimba, and Netiva."

It's kind of funny seeing the precursor to web 2.0 style names.

I think his team oriented approach still rings true today. Any two entrepreneurs can form a team, but it takes a special team to drive forward down the right path. The initial product idea almost doesn't even matter, if you have the right synergies and talent in a team, the product will evolve to reach the market. I believe that is part of the philosophy of y combinator.
Amphetamine use doesn't just make you score higher than your peers; it also dramatically enhances retention, reduces distractibility, and reduces creativity. In that sense it's a mental hack.
This looks a lot like UMA to me: http://www.umatechnology.org/technology/index.htm

If that's the case, T-Mobile US has UMA working already. Caveat: you need a special WiFi router so the cellphone gets good battery life on WiFi.

Does anyone know what Cherry is using?
" Because most of the time, these kind of people follow their own agenda and don't really bother to be at the top of the class."

That was always my explanation for my grades. :)
Sure. On the other hand, all the text on his site is all flash.

So, if you wanted to compete you could probably win the SEO fight. What's stopping you?
Why is a "textbook" different than a regular book at all? What can you learn from it that you can't learn from of K&R, plus "Programming Pearls", and other books aimed at the target market?
Yes, it probably streamlines I.T. management...it does nothing for employees (in my experience).

But I'm assuming you've simply had better experiences with Windows than me. Let me tell you what my experiences have been...

If smaller IT staffs can benefit from Windows features, then IT staffs can be almost eliminated by Unix features. On my campus over a decade ago, it took one man to administer the entire network of Unix machines.

"The company" doesn't tend to make the decision so much as "the I.T. group", which is trusted by executives that really don't know any better. Since I.T. won't risk its livelihood on relative unknowns, nothing significant ever really changes. Why would they deploy something that takes one man to run, when they can have Windows?

In most organizations, there are plenty of users who don't know any better. And there are users who hate Windows, but they've long given up the fight because if they complained all day long, they'd never get any real work done. And for this same reason, they're not about to look for another job: Windows is too prevalent.

Sometimes, employees are extremely productive. These are the ones knowledgeable and efficient enough to deploy their own solutions in spite of I.T. offerings. They're the ones loading up Windows with a pile of open-source packages to make up for its pitiful tool set. Or, networking together a bunch of Linux laptops because they know nothing else will do the job. Despite the fact that their company has failed them with a poor status quo, these employees are more committed than anyone to do really good work.

But even those people have limits; they eventually leave and form startups (that are free of Windows). Having failed its true talent, the company is left with the people who don't know or don't care how to be productive anymore. Mission accomplished?
In some cases, I just like being part of the talk. Right now that's Hacker News and Something Awful, because Reddit people frustrate me and the idea of losing days to Metafilter scares me. I'm also a little obsessive re:design. I like clicking every link on every web site to see where it takes me.

In a lot of cases, I like going through a site's history, reading up on its culture. I've spent a day or two going through the YTMND wiki, for instance, and right now I'm looking through the Let's Play Archive, which has quite a lot of fascinating stuff. My favorite moment there so far is http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/OregonTrail/Update%2021/index...., an Oregon Trail run where, to decide a single action at a river, people wrote a hundred or so poems stating their opinions.
uh...threaten to fire them? We are in a great depression. Why do we keep babysitting people that we pay?
From what I've read, I'd much rather live in a world full of Erdőses than a world full of Feynmans, a world full of Paul Grahams, or a world full of Gell-Manns.

I wouldn't describe Erdős's amphetamine use as "hard life". He wasn't taking the pills for euphoria, and his body survived longer than most people's; amphetamines in the doses he was presumably taking don't seem to cause much extra wear and tear on the body.
The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids
If you're that dedicated to your work, it's possible that you should not have children. Why start a family if you're not going to spend any time with them? The social pressure to spawn is strong, but not insurmountable.
I have to admit I don't remember a lot of the organic chemistry textbook and AD&D Player's Handbook I inhaled when I was 9 and on Ritalin, but I apparently remembered enough of the book on phone switches that digital logic was always a cinch. But that was 23 years ago. I think even five or ten years later, I remembered quite a lot of it.
From what my wife tells me, you should add Turkey to that list too.
it's easy to not be stuck to a job; just don't get into debts and marriage. then you can always pick and choose your schedule.
I think immigration is more about what you do (or are willing to do), and less about legal status.
or use twidge
The Freemium Company LifeCycle Challenge
If I didn't have to wade through the immigration process over here, I would have started my own company many years back. My story is not unique.

The story goes that things that do not kill you make you stronger. So one might theorize that this is one more obstacle that will separate the men from the boys. It is just a test of your relentless resourcefulness. But its only a theory. I feel that immigration rules in the US are one of those things that kill the boys and leave behind dead men.

Agreed, I set sail on a boat, a flying one, on a calculation that I have better chances over here than where I started from. So I stand and fight for a 5% chance over a 2% one. But its a depressing fight. So if you are listening to this and in one of the other countries that wants your own silicon valley this is the silver bullet. Make immigration laws strictly adhere to common sense without exception.

In the meantime let me go back and drive the American Innovation and be pissed on by politicians trying to get some votes.
Spring Python 1.0.0 Released
Is Steven Chu too much of a techno-geek?
Really? I've experienced the opposite, that people are smarter than I initially expect. Is there an age trend here, perhaps?
I have no idea what 'particular wireless networking device' you're trying to configure, but if you're just trying to get your Wifi card hooked up to a secured router using just a shell, the following thread is gold (substitute vim/nano/whatever for gedit in Step 2):

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202834
Say Hello to Underachieving
Does anyone have any idea how to send an executive summary to Ron Conway?
You're still talking about a minimum of 12-19 servers though. I'd imagine that the average website doesn't use even that. I think that SO in particular is at 3 servers. Maybe if SO explodes, this will become an issue, but an optimization would likely have to make a difference of a few racks before it it's even worth considering making an optimization based soley on power concerns.
This is why projects with large teams contributing to one system or application make it exceptionally hard to pick and reward good programmers. Their contributions just wont stand out functionally in the mass of mediocre performing system.

Moreover, their code may be considered unreadable or even dangerous by less experienced team members, leading to situations when he is considered less capable by the management than actually is.

It seems to me developing systems with loosely coupled components rather than tight, rigid interfaces, and keeping overall size small is the only way for assessing performance of products of individuals. Not an easy way, for sure.
Pretty easy to motivate employees:
1. Don't be a dick.
2. Pay people at least an average wage.
3. Don't pay one person wayyyy more than an equivalent employee. People talk and get jealous. Plus they could play the whole race/sex/religious/sexual orientation card and sue you for discrimination.
4. Continue to give people feedback when they do a good and poor job. In my opinion constructive reviews that address weaknesses should come right after an employ has received a wage increase, so they will be motivated.
5. Have a fun budget. 30 to 50 dollars an employee per month.
Hm, I don't think gold is a very good option. It's not evenly distributed, for one - why should Australia be able to dig up gold but Japan cannot? And the resources put into mining something for its arbitrary value would be better used elsewhere. And let's not even mention technological development - nanotech could turn the whole idea gold has any special value at all on its head. It's fine for personal use but I think the time has long passed where we should be basing whole international currency systems on supplies of an arbitrary metal, or any other physical commodity.

There's nothing gold can do that, say, cryptographically signed certificates cannot. The security council, or similar, could sign the certs. Or just use SDRs or similar, which are only one step removed anyway.
The effects are not well-studied for the uses described here. Indication of amphetamines and similar drugs for cognitive enhancement is primarily based on anecdotal evidence and drug company PR in the popular press. Much of what we do know about the supposed benefits is tied in with the already controversial subject of ADHD.

In my experience, calling the effects "enhancing your natural cognitive abilities" is extremely inaccurate, as the state of mind created is not one you can achieve naturally. That alone would not be bad, but there is a trend toward ignoring the difference. The risk here is that we recalibrate the world of normal human functioning to the standards of people high on speed.
Reminds me of a story of a Chinese-born scientist who was harrased by FBI for being possibly a communist. He got fed up with that and left the US to China, where he ended up playing key role in Chinese rocket program. You're in good company.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/20719/chinese_rocket_scie...
I think that if you develop something for a 3rd-party platform without knowing what you're getting into, any negative (i.e. non-profitable) outcome is 100% your fault. I'm certainly not going to ask for my tax dollars to go toward someone that was so excited by greed that they didn't even bother to google around a bit and find out some more about that platform.

If you do some preliminary web searches on small business statistics or entrepreneurship, you'll find that plenty of them fail right off the bat. I think that a large part of the reason that people love 'corporate culture' is because it's very secure, unlike when you start your own business and have to actually take some risks with your future.
> never writes in 150 lines that which could be written in 100 lines

I'd disagree on this one. Oftentimes the 100 lines of code is an unintelligible mess while the 150 lines isn't.
Copyright-fighting Pirate Party comes to Canada.
Rule #1. Never sign up to AOL.
Rule #2. Never break rule #1.
Rule #3. If in doubt refer to rule #2.
gRDC seems to work best, as it supports an RDP clipboard.

But when VPN does not work, I then require ActiveX controls (I do not allow RDP directly through my clients' firewalls).

Likewise, ActiveX is the only other way that I know of that allows me to access Public Folders against an Exchange 2007 server with drag and drop support for filing to that system from my personal folders. I am a bit if an organizational nut, so I find this high on me digital "needs" list.
Why should the government be required to help you out here. Contact the company and find out some more about their platform. If they won't give you some straight answers, then it's time to move on. It's a private company, and it's totally within their right to refuse your information request, but they will also be driving themselves out of business...
Citizenship of a given country is a commodity in that piece is no differnt than any other piece, so it will be traded on an exchange and not in an auction house.
How do you think they generate the left side bar?

Maybe this page is more useful to you: http://project.carrot2.org/
Suppose that after some time, we become expert brain hackers and we can find a way to pass these changes onto our children. (through some sort of gene manipulation; I'm not an advocate of Lamarckian evolution!)

Since at this point, humanity will diverge into two species (those who have access to technology and those who don't), how exactly should we value those who's lineage hasn't been benefited by the presence of these drugs?

Just a hypothetical situation of this mentality being taken to an extreme, but still interesting nonetheless.
I've found that your perception of how smart other people are goes up with the quality of the education you receive.

Good schools have a filter to keep out the worst of the riff-raff; and once you are out of school, most of us spend most of our time after school with our peers. Many of my peers went to very good schools, and nearly all of those people have a much higher opinion of humanity in general than i do, simply because they have never been exposed to a group of average people. See, I went to one of the worst high schools in the state, then I skipped college to get a .com job, so my last interaction with the proletariat was unfiltered.
I see the difference between gambling and stock trading as this: Gambling has a negative long-term percentage, but stock trading is the opposite: a positive long-term percentage.

If you gamble at roulette for long enough with any strategy, you'll lost 2.6%.

If you play the stock market for that long, again randomly, you'll GAIN 2.6% (just a made up number - it could be 1% depending on the economy).

Postscript: At stock trading, like in a casino, you have to make enough to cover the "house cut", which is the fees you pay to brokers to sell and buy stocks (in roulette, it's 2.6%).
Why would a company voluntarily give out information that would discourage third party developers?

Does Facebook for example give out the median profit from a Facebook app?
How are they able to make MagicJack so cheap? Don't you get a real phone number? Most other services, like SkypeIn, charge quite a bit for the ability to call in, much less out.
I suspect most people lose money in the stock market because they need the cash so they may end up selling low.
http://gold45revolver.com
http://libertariangames.blogspot.com

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=314...

"SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING EXALTED VIDEO GAMES AND VIRTUAL REALITIES WHEREIN IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES"
Dude, you have no idea what you're talking about. So please stop with the bullshit about great mathematicians and computer scientists when this has nothing to do with them -- only with you -- you cannot accept being wrong. Do your homework first.

Recognizable is not the same thing as acceptable. For example, some undecidable languages are recognizable by Turing machines.

You can leave it as an exercise for anyone you wish, but your assertion (existance of a simple metaproof that there is [a proof of either P=NP or P!=NP]) is false. I base my assertion about your assertion on the fact that about 40 years of research has not produced such a metaproof.
Don't know if this counts, but my family immigrated during WW2 from Prussia (Soviet tanks rolling in..) to western Germany. Like Americans we had to build everything from scratch in town were everybody else was a stranger.
Free our bills: hardcore wonk/geek out
Oh, yes, more government involvement in the tech industry is exactly what we need at this juncture in American history. It's worked so well for automobiles, railroads, health care, and drugs, what could possibly go wrong?
FYI: Your MacBook Pro should have 4GB of RAM
I was involved in an HN thread yesterday, and someone indicated they had 2GB of RAM in their MacBook Pro.

Any sort of hacker should really have 4GB... buying two 2GB only costs about $60, and it's as simple as two screws, removing the old RAM, and popping the chips in to upgrade.

So, if you have a 2GB MacBook Pro, it's time to upgrade. You'll immediately notice the difference.

EDIT: The commenter was right, I did put in two 2GB chips to replace 2 1GB chips. It does cost about $60 bucks for both chips.
I think this is a very good point!

Come to think of it, we, ruby programmers, don't really pay our dues. 1.9.1 has been out since January/February, and nobody bothered to package it for OSX, Windows, or Ubuntu.

Thanks for bringing this issue into the light.
Fact of the matter is OSX 'just works' better than anything else _I_ have personally used. Less hassles, less issues, less crashes than linux or windows. And when you have lots of people saying the same thing, its not 'high ground' its a result of having a unix based OS that you don't have to waste your time to have it work.

I switched to OSX after using linux as my primary OS for about 5 or 6 years, and the big difference for me was that I didn't have to spend valuable time actually getting osx to work. Linux is amazingly customizable which can be great, but when it comes to getting work done all I care about is having a terminal, vim, and being able to run a local server to test my work. Anything else that I have to configure is just getting in my way.

Edit: As much as I like OSX, there is only only app that I actually require that is OSX specific, and that is quicksilver, which for me completely changes my workflow and allows me to productively use a 13" laptop as my primary development machine without the need for an external monitor. I think also goes to show my point, that OSX doesn't necessarily have any spectacular features or applications that draw me too it, but really its the fact that it is a unix based OS that I can use without hassle.
Jeez, you really need to add another 2GB. It costs like $60 and takes 5 minutes.
> The effects are not well-studied for the uses described here.

That doesn't matter, what matters is the affect and side effects of the drug on people is known. This isn't a roll of the dice on some newly discovered drug where the long terms effects are unknown.

> In my experience, calling the effects "enhancing your natural cognitive abilities" is extremely inaccurate, as the state of mind created is not one you can achieve naturally.

Not true, people can and do naturally achieve extreme focus and flow, the drug isn't giving you new abilities, it's giving you more of an ability you already have and allowing you to control when you have it.

> The risk here is that we recalibrate the world of normal human functioning to the standards of people high on speed.

There's nothing wrong with that as long as people are aware of what they're doing and it's reasonably safe to do so. People have always used drugs, people are always going to use drugs, and as the drugs get better and better, more and more people will use them if they find it beneficial to do so.
Getting started with  C#
count me in, too!
Btw, have you seen how much the official upgrade from 4GB to 8GB costs?
ID cards are a bad idea everywhere. Loss of privacy; loss of the presumption of innocence. Being required to produce the card by aggressive cops. Corruption and collusion between fat cats and government.

The cards will be hacked and sold on the black market almost immediately upon being released (if that ever happens -- it probably won't even after billions of rupees have been spent). Hence they'd make ID fraud and terrorism easier, not harder.

The article mentions 20 different forms of ID which are currently recognised. This sounds better to me. Historians, for example, prefer several pieces of evidence which can be cross-referenced to support a story rather than just one piece.

Just as it's not a good idea to allow private companies to collect data on people without their explicit consent, so it's a bad idea to let the government do so. Actually, it's an important check on government power not to let this happen. And I think many politicans involved in such schemes realise that ID projects won't reach completion. They either think it's a neat and simple idea, or in the worst cases they're out to build empires and make profit for their 'friends'.
Hi Andrew,

This is David Lee here. Feel free to send them to me, Brian Pokorny and Kevin Carter directly at david.lee@gmail.com, brianp@gmail.com and carterkev@gmail.com. Thanks!
Is Ottawa still Silicon Valley North?
And some run perfectly in Windows. I prefer my PC Games.
A First Course on Time Series Analysis