skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
If I have a widget that I'll sell to you for $4 then it's worth $4 to me. If you'll only pay $2 for it then it's worth $2 to you.

To whom is a human worth money? You can't own people, can't buy or sell them. Can't recreate them, can't even get an accurate clone.

You can talk about a sportsperson's value to their team in terms of how much money they bring in in ticket sales, how much sponsorship, how much media attention, how much another team will pay for them.

But the problem is when lots of money is involved, people care more for the money than the person. I don't have a problem with people trading on Apple stock and factoring in SJ's health at some level. I do have a problem when it pushes further and further towards SJ being treated as just another asset, some legal and medical details to be pried through, some news announcements to be analysed, some blood pressure and heart rate figures to be tracking.

Picking apart the Golden Goose to try and find where the Golden Eggs are hidden? Tearing up the Mona Lisa to find which brushstroke made it worth so much? Pulling down the Eiffel tower to see if an Operah Tower in the same place would have as much impact?

If he wasn't already a health fan, would the world be pushing him to alter his diet? His exercise regime? "In a bowel movement estimated to be worth half a million dollars this morning, SJ's saturated fat absorption levels were up 13% on last week (full analysis here), SJ didn't respond to a request for comment. Unusually, he looked in the mirror for 6% longer than average over the last three months, experts have raised concerns over his increasing vanity assessment index especially when taken into account his recent announcement "I had a great night's sleep last night" to his wife over breakfast, he didn't respond to 18 phonecalls for comment on that either". Would we be designing every part of his life and forcing him to live as we think will maximise AAPL profit, restricting and shaping like a human veal calf?

What's right with estimating somebody's worth in dollars? Why should you be able to profit from speculating on someone elses work? Why should people who have no choice where they are born be forced to be judged within the limits of someone elses monetary system?
Same in firefox.
Unfortunately, lots of individualist philosophies are used by people to justify their own asshole behavior. Note that this doesn't necessarily diminish the validity of the philosophy itself.

How often is it necessary to bruise the feelings of others to be true to yourself? Just about never, in my experience. There are lots of occasions in The Fountainhead where others feelings are bruised, but this is their jealousy causing self-inflicted distress. You can often be true to yourself by discreetly keeping your own counsel, so long as you are not dissuaded from your own true desires.

If you are the boss of others, you should be able to do this honestly and without cruelty, even if you are a hard taskmaster and blunt in your opinions.
Yesterday, Apple's stocks jumped up 53% with the release of the new iPhone

Link? http://www.google.co.uk/finance?q=aapl suggests it hasn't broken out of 130-140 in quite a few days. Particularly not jumping to > 200 yesterday.
My parents are in academia & they've each amassed a huge collection of books. I learned very early on that I should be collecting digital books instead.
1. I don't think the client can acknowledge one byte per minute - I think the minimum would be one network packet. Anyway, the whole response would timeout. Apache has a config setting for that, does it (I have been using mod_proxy a lot and mod_proxy does timeout)? Perhaps, there should be a minimum bandwidth threshold that forces the connection to abort. I see your point, however. Even sending a real complete header should not prevent the request from being treated as hostile.

2. I am not sure I got what you say. In a real DDoS attack, there should be a lot of different IP addresses and blocking thousands of them (many of whom would reset connection and come back with a different IP) would make the life of the firewall very uncomfortable.

3. I know this has problems with proxies and firewalls with large number of computers behind them. I don't remember proposing this idea.

4. It all depends on what is being attacked and how. I don't think any serious DDoS attacker would use this approach.
Michigan is a strange place to be living right now. There's still work for skilled technology folks if you look hard enough. What we don't have is work for the thousands of jobless factory/industrial workers. Growing up in Michigan, there were still people saying "My parents work for GM in the factory, I'm going to get a job right out of highschool - 30 and out, retire at 48." Unfortunately, all these people are now learning exactly how wrong they were. The age of plentiful factory work for anyone with a highschool degree is over in Michigan, and the statistics reflect this. The state is in a painful transition period - the country is feeling the effects as well. It's the end of industrialization and the beginning of a society based on service and technology. Unfortunately, Michigan, until recently, wasn't willing to admit that things were changing. Many of the jobless are in denial - that's why we lead the nation in unemployment.
I bought a Kindle b/c I don't have room for all my books.
I recently had a child and his books already fill one of my bookshelves. So I've been cleaning out my physical books, only keeping those I really like. The Kindle DX might be the way to go for texts. So you get unlimited space (Amazon will keep your books online), access to all the classics for free (via gutenberg,etc) and your books are always with you (while you carry the device anyway).

Of all the things you can spend your money on, books are the best investment by far.
But it's hardly surprising.
My email sig:

There's neither heaven nor hell,
save what we grant ourselves.
There's neither fairness nor justice,
save what we grant each other.
a couple of questions out of curiosity:

first, why would facebook do this? Is it anything more than negligence?

Second, what are the consequences besides some facebook messages ending up truncated? Do excessive messages of this type choke up mailservers or anything else of the sort?
As I was pondering here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=664383 : why do I keep working my way through them like some sort of automaton? "So it goes"? It doesn't have to go like that. You could buy one book and read it and then stop. How much am I really benefitting from reading and how much am I using it as an escapist excuse? Would I be a better person if I read 8 five-star books from Amazon than if I read 8 four-star books?

Is it really better to read a well reviewed book? Isn't a horrible book better for you in the same way that walking uphill is better for you than driving uphill?
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erik_Naggum
Book Review - 'Digital Barbarism: A Writer’s Manifesto'
From everything I've heard of him that's right. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I rarely judge people on their personality. I know nice guys that are absolute shits, just as I know one or two nice guys that are incredible people. Similarly, most assholes are just assholes, but some are very brilliant people with short fuses. I've found that of the people I associate with, the least consistent variable is personality, and I find that as I grow older I lose ties more and more with the people I only liked because of how they acted. Those cliques dissolve to make way for groups of people united by interest and motivation, where personality's got less to do with it.

(I also find, incidentally, that the more ambitious your goals the more likely you are to be an asshole. Jobs is certainly the archetype again. But on the other hand you've got great people like Jeff Bezos, so I don't agree with the folk that think assholery leads automatically to greatness.)
1 illegal download = 3.33 dead relatives
He had a unique online persona - simultaneously nasty and fanatic(about lisp) and brilliant.
Citing The Fountainhead - not exactly the best way to make an argument. I'm a supporter of Rand and her ideals but her writing regarding human relationships is detached from reality.
Point. But I was talking about outside of bundling, since I figured it was a given. I'm guessing Microsoft here is trying to retain that hold, at a time when many people download Firefox or Chrome or Safari first thing on bootup.
why would facebook do this? Is it anything more than negligence?

That's pretty much it. They already fail to provide cross-browser compatibility for their website (Opera has long had problems with it), so this is just another way of thumbing their nose at open standards.

what are the consequences besides some facebook messages ending up truncated? Do excessive messages of this type choke up mailservers or anything else of the sort?

From TFA:

as spammers make the same mistake rather often - I've seen line length checks for Quoted-Printable implemented in antispam software.

So I'm guessing quite a few emails from Facebook are getting sent to people's spam folders.
In Britain, unemployment is reported by the government at 7.2% - but for those aged between 16 and 24, it's hovering around the 20% mark.

And that doesn't count people who are studying but can't find work to support themselves while at university; they're counted as "in education" and don't appear on the unemployment figure. One wonders what sort of a rise we'll see this month and next as 600,000 people get dumped off the end of the education conveyor belt into this big bucket of shite.

But it's all okay. The "green shoots" are coming. House prices are rising modestly which apparently means we can all start leafing through luxury yacht catalogues again. Now, where's my application form for the minimum-wage job at the new £1 shop...?
IP geolocation database
This is exciting, but in Safari 4 I saw no video. Using OSX 10.4 Intel.
Kinda shocking that anything bad could happen when giving a stranger your email address and password.
Look into the difficulty of securing a liver transplant.

Fame and fortune can directly purchase health.
Facebook's response to the guy demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the issue:

I apologize for this inconvenience. Unfortunately, this is not an error on our end. You will need to speak with your email provider in order to resolve this issue.

That said, I'm sure this just hasn't been a priority yet rather than something willful. That along with with browser compatibility as w1ntermute said above.
Building Successful Long Term Relationships
Schematics' Multi-touch Interactive Touchwall Debuts in Cannes [video]
> so this is just another way of thumbing their nose at open standards.

It's likely much less "thumbing their nose at open standards" as it is just a matter of making sure their software works for the vast majority of their users.

I know that's how I develop software, anyways -- if there's a quirk in a browser used by a very small percentage of users that's not entirely simple to fix, I don't. It's just a matter of priorities: create new features and upgrade existing ones for 99% of your users or fix features for 1% of users. Depending on the feature, you make a rational decision.
AFAIK, there aren't a lot of benefits to registering an LLC in a state other than your own and it can end up costing more when you register to conduct business in your own state. I recommend anyone considering this to treat out-of-state registration with skepticism and research it more. It's been discussed on HN, there's info on nolo.com and you can ask an attorney.
Facebook has 200 million users. If they don't fix a feature for 1% of their users, that's affecting 2 million people. I'd say that's pretty significant. When you consider that this bug probably affects a lot more than 1% of the users, you're looking at tens of millions of affected users.

Moreover, I seriously doubt that a company like Facebook has any manpower issues when it comes to fixing bugs on their site.
Technorati profile for lucartstudio
1. You're wrong, see rfc793. TCP flow control acknowledges streamed bytes, not packets.

2. I just tell you what works in real life. Blocking 500 supernodes (out of 5000 machines botnet) is basically a non-issue for linux iptables on usual modern processes. Other 4500 are usually pretty tame in terms of firewall processing power.

3. You didn't propose that, it's what we do (and what works best for these attacks). Its rate of false positives is sufficiently low. Folks behind NATs don't use sustained 4 connections per user, so it's usually a non-issue either.

4. Well, you're wrong if you don't think so. Mitigating DDOS-es is one of the things i do for living [i'm in charge of web infrastructure of certain political opposition websites in Russia, if it rings any bells]. The scenarios i described is what actually happens.
Naggum was sort of the anti-pg (actually on Wiki he's described as PaulGraham's EvilTwin): people who loved Lisp were driven away from the community because they couldn't take the abuse, and so comp.lang.lisp became a vicious slime pit.

There's more discussion and some minimal confirmation on reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8u5dp/erik_nagg...

Unlike most of the posters there, I'm glad he's gone. The world is a better place without him, and maybe now the Lisp community can begin to heal.
I used to work retail as a kid and at that time I learned two tricks.

The first was for normal people (like you seem to be) and it was simply to put myself in the customer's shoes.

Generally a person isn't going to pester you over a $9 cable so those who do pester are making long term purchases. That means they are speaking to you about something that will affect their life for years to come. If you as the salesman remind yourself of how important this purchase is to the customer I find it keeps frustration down.

The second trick was for the really obnoxious people and it basically boils down to invoking pity.

I found it is very hard to stay angry at someone you truely pity. So in the case of really obnoxious people who got me angry I'd remind myself that this person probably treats everyone in their life this way and basically lives a life in which everyone regards them in the same angry light I do. A life like that can't be easy to live and the truth is it's probably a vicious cycle (they treat people badly so people hate them more which leads them to conclude people are all mean and treat them even worse and so on.) So the truely obnoxious live in a hell of their own making and that's really, really sad when you think about it.
Sometimes you just read about things you want to learn. At least that's the case of the books I talk about in this thread. For example, I'm driven by the curiosity to understand how some theories of physics work, particularly relativity and quantum theory. I've learned some extremely basic stuff about them, and I want to learn more, and more, and the more I learn, the harder it gets (it needs more mathematical tools, etc.).

Maybe a key is to read books that drive you towards a goal? I can understand your feeling, and I really appreciated your thread when it appeared in hn. But in my case the problem is different: I want to know a lot of things, and learning all of that will take me years, and a symptom of that is that I end up collecting tons of books that I keep reading slowly.
I don't see how truncating lines can be "correct" behavior. Be liberal in what you accept and conservative in what you send.
Nor disappointing
Iphone Dev Team sets 3.0 free
They never engage competition on a level playfield - for them, it's a waste of resources.

Bundling makes a lot of sense because they can deal with ten, at most, clients and have a huge impact on just about every computer user on the planet. Groklaw has an interesting piece on the probable reasons why Asus pulled the plug on their ARM-based netbook and I guess this is their typical behaviour.

Want to bet the net MSN Live Messenger (or, will they call it "Bing messenger"?) will make every search on the system default to Bing?

Playing fair is so strange to their corporate DNA it would provoke a violent allergic reaction.
Is there any other confirmation of Erik's death?
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Behind the curtains
There are some interesting quotes there, but many of the intermediate conclusions are not well supported.
Someone should point the FSF at this :-)
Interesting. Acknowledging receival on two layers (packets and butes) makes little sense. Wonder why such decision was made.

About 4, are the DDoS aimed at your servers or at your office infrastructure?
What makes it annoying?

(I'm asking out of genuine curiousity, not because I use it.)
Bad title. Diagram was interesting though.
Hopefully he's learned his lesson and started eating lots of meat.
Microsoft is stuck in a bad place. I don't doubt they've got some brilliant people working for them, but they made a bunch of tasteless products and now they can't even scrap it all and start again because they have to offer support for all the crap they've made. So they take the only viable path, which is continuing to force crap into crap and making everybody unhappy.
Mint (haveamint.com) has a pepper that tells you where your visitors are going.
It might work better if the URLs in the video tag didn't 404

http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody/video_for_ev...
http://camendesign.com/code/video_for_everybody/video_for_ev...
I like your enthusiasm for having tech solve societal problems. And I can see your point but, as an incurable optimist, I still have to believe that one person can make a difference. (Yeah, yeah cue the orchestra with inspirational music.) Plus, it's not like the ACLU is one person.

But why not attack the problem from multiple points? Attack with both a legal and technological response.
The reality of the world is there's a place for all kinds. The thoughtful speaker needs the passionate militant because not everyone has an open mind. Think Martin Luther King and Malcolm X

Moreover, the world needs these type of people on all sides to make sure the truth gets heard. Even if Mr. Naggum wasn't speaking the truth his opinion helped keep minds open to his side of things.

Honestly, as annoyed as I get at times by people like him I can also see how it's a noble pursuit. As much as people say they don't care what other's think just about everyone does to some extent. In that way it can't be an easy job to scream what you believe is the truth until people listen. So really people like Mr. Naggum are giving up a large piece of happiness to continue their devotion to what they believe is truth. That's admirable.
Did more good than harm, in my opinion. But he had this harsh style...
He later describes a charter school he helped fund that had a lot of success. Doesn't that support the argument that schools can make a big difference?

You are right that the home is probably the biggest influence, but it isn't easy to "fix" homes through policy or charity. But if you can find ways to help kids break out of the cycle and go to college or otherwise find success, then the next generation may enjoy a better start.
Kragen,
that is uncalled for. In most cultures, that remark is reserved for people who have hurt others. Naggum was opinionated about a freaking programming language. As far anybody knows, he did not hurt a human being.
Isn't a horrible book better for you in the same way that walking uphill is better for you than driving uphill?

I feel like your analogy would be more akin to learning theorems by deriving them from first principles as opposed to taking them as gospel.

It's the material that should be hard, not gleaning information out of the book.
I've heard this argument - the "if a large company ignores a small percentage then they're still doing awful things" - to justify a hell of a lot of griping. If Facebook was doing this willfully then I'd agree with you, but as it is they're an enormous company dealing with possibly the most complex consumer site (interface-wise) out there, and I'd be willing to bet they've got a few dozen priorities that are messing up for more than a percentage point, and that all those priorities are really tricky problems.
They don't acknowledge packets, just bytes. It's pretty reasonable for a reliable streaming protocol.

Their DDOS attacks target our servers. For example, Russia has some issues with Estonia, opposition sites post some independent statements and news on that. Then comes DDOS.
Also remember the duality of those two people: Martin Luther King at times called for violence and Malcolm X was mostly a peaceful protestor. It's easier to put them into categories but nobody is so bluntly one way or the other.

Just as I hear Paul Graham's name blasted frequently online, for a variety of reasons, I'm certain Naggum inspired as many people as he scared off. Never assume an internet personality is the whole story.
IMHO: I highly recommend "Zen" for anyone's reading list.
I'm going to start submitting stories like "${trendy_website} breaks ${random_official_sounding_standard} with ${what_can_break[random_official_sounding_standard]}" and link it to a post on some newsgroup. My karma will go through the roof.
To announce someone's death in a fucking TWEET is so insulting I actually feel angry.

update: Mod me down all you want, twitter fans. I'll be happy to tweet your deaths as well, if I can fit it in between what I had for breakfast and the funny thing my cat just did.
I know that's in the RFCs, but that's the kind of thinking that caused the web standards nightmare everyone has to deal with today.

If you accept incorrect input, then people will expect you to continue to do so into eternity - and if you have significant market share (facebook, IE, etc) you've just created a defacto (ill-conceived, poorly documented) standard that every other implementor now has to try to reverse engineer and try conform to.
Who says modern scientists are dull? Compared to when?

Is it really necessary to knock down every straw man one can conceive of?
Just read about it at the source http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-find-out-w...
In terms of the more general question in the title (and not specifically in terms of customer service/sales), I'd recommend meditation. Shamatha/Vipassana, for example. There are lots of (non-denominational) meditation centers out there where one can learn some pretty powerful techniques.
Outlook as revision control ftw. No seriously, lawyers must first get off the habit of marking up documents by hand. Everything else can come later.
Unlike most of the posters there, I'm glad he's gone. The world is a better place without him, and maybe now the Lisp community can begin to heal.

You digust me. These types of remarks should be reserved for the lowest of the low, the dictators, the committers of genocide, the murderers, the rapists, etc.
Take a break from computers. I notice an increase in stressful thoughts when I do too much programming. When I take a break from programming all the stressful thoughts vanish. I know "taking a break" from programming can be hard, especially if it's your job and you have financial obligations. In my experience taking a break of non-trivial length (1 - 6 months) has substantial rewards. I quit my comfy job around the middle of last year. I took 6 months off and am now back in a similar job. I feel far better everyday and I'm at least 1.5x as productive. I hope your situation will lend itself to a break like this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thurston

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

zkz: Maybe you are boring.

(note: The wikipedia articles linked to don't generally tell you why the subject isn't dull. In some cases the stories may need to be heard from people who knew the scientist in question, as there doesn't seem to be any written record to link to.)
Compared to Feynman or Erdős or Tesla ;-)
Bipasha Basu Filmfare Magazine photoshoot