skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's ironic that as the US has desperately tried to control certain drugs deemed illegal in the same time period we've seen an explosion of corporate sponsored drug addiction in the form of prescription medicine being distributed under the guise of health care. Along with, of course, the long standing American love of alcohol and tobacco. It's just too hypocritical and pointless from a public health standpoint to maintain the war on drugs while the government gives their blessing to other substances that basically offer the same effects or are as harmful, or more harmful, than ones tightly controlled and highly illegal. Sadly the war on drugs is the best example of a slow moving mistake. I still think we're many years (decades) away from any real common sense reform to US drug law. People for the most part cannot accept that a bottle of gin and a neatly sealed prescription drug container are worse than a bag of pot and easily as dangerous as crack or heroin if you happen to mix them together in the right quantities.
No, Theora doesn't rock, or more correctly it hasn't rocked

Until a few months ago when they made a breakthrough in the development version of their encoder, Theora was the WORST mpeg4-like codec in active development, much worse than h263 (which is itself awful). Double the bitrate / encode times and half the quality -- it hadn't really improved at all since it was open sourced.

Now it's no longer the very worst modern codec (beating h263, but still mediocre), but it's at least 4 years too late.

Vorbis audio is widely used in commercial game development because it's very free and very good at low bitrates. Theora has only been used by agenda-driven freetards, basically just Wikipedia. Mozilla will likely be the only browser vendor shipping Theora and not h264. Apple and MS will never ship Theora, and Google is currently only shipping h264.

I wouldn't have a problem with people advocating its sole use for ideological reasons if it wasn't dogshit for so long (and mediocre now).
Well MS have said they won't bundle it, but apparently this isn't good enough for the EU, who want them to include competitors' browsers - although which ones? Can I sue if they don't include browlzilla? I wouldn't use IE if you paid me but I support Redmond on this one, they've done enough.
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Whay is that not anti-trust violation?

What if they install IE ?
Emacs is forever. In other words, 'dialed in' is a continuous process, which will keep happening no matter what language or environment is popular today.
Decorator Pattern Explained
What happens if that plan is implemented and ten years later, after Detroit becomes prosperous, people in other cities want the same thing?

Now we see one reason the plan won't be implemented.
Thank you for this list - I liked reading The Knack so will explore the others.

I disagree with you about your examples of exceptional circumstances. Anyone can raise 350k or be stuck in a lift with Jeff Bezos if they do the hard around it. Focus on building something amazing and you can build your own luck around. For example, 18 months ago I did speak to Bezos - I did not have anything to talk tom about (apart from asking him sign my Kindle!) so nothing happened. But this year I really do so I will find another way to talk to him (and everyone else).

That is not to say that are not exceptional circumstances. For example, only a handful of people around the world in the 1970s had the priviliges of Bill Gates, ie a childhood growing up in a school with a mainframe. But it is not worth worrying about such things - each of us has to look for the unusual advantages we have and work with those. In my case I have a genetic illness which meant most of my childhood was spent ill or in hospital. I survived long enough to train as a physician and a programmer so this year I founded a company that builds software to help patients work online with their clinicians.
If you have an internet connection and there is no browser in your machine, here is how you can do it.

1. Open notepad
2. File >> Open
3. Giv the address "http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/products/download.html?product=firefox-3.0.11&os=wi n&lang=en-US

"
4. After the file is open, save the file as firefox_setup.exe
I considered taking an interesting/popular name, but realising that a whole heap of my private info is sitting on facebook, I'd do better not to attract attention.
Seriously? Good luck explaining to my 80-something year old Granddad how to connect to an FTP server through the command line.
Nice write-up and in the end everyone needs to admit that email is still the way most people go; even if it is just to tell them that they need to log in to the online collab tool because there has something changed.

One question I have though is how far you have to go with -not- preventing user's mistakes. I miss some concrete examples (except for the Little Britain sketch).
I think the important part of the plan is not to put books on computers; it's the open-source part. Whether schools eventually opt for a print version of the text is a matter of preference.

It is not the printing that makes textbooks too expensive, it is the lack of competition in the market. With open-sourced texts, everybody can offer a print version.
When you're talking about cars or computers there is a large market in optimizing performance and various tune-ups. Not so for the human body, at least not in the official establishment.

Doctors are not a finite resource, and they are not busy all the time. And still pretty much the only thing which is socially acceptable is having regular checkups. Anything else, from provigil and viagra to trying to get a customized diet is frowned upon. Why do you think there are so many diet sites out there? Because the people who could and should help you don't.

I think the custom diet is a great example. I have a slight calcium deficiency and I tend to drink coca-cola, which means I should compensate by taking occasional calcium supplements and staying in the sun. It is by no means an illness, and still this kind of things added over a 70 years life-time can really make a difference. And yet I don't see any services oriented to finding and solving small problems like that.
Nope. Vista killed that off, you now have to manually install it from the DVD.
There's a big problem here. When people like this use the word "capitalism" to mean the massive, ultra-financialized, state corporatist economy we have today, they confuse many into thinking this has something to do with free markets based on voluntary exchange.

So people who are understandably annoyed that Wall Streeters make millions without contributing very much, if anything, are unnecessarily encouraged to support state socialist policies. In reality, it is the lack of free markets which caused such problems in the first place.
The only southern hemisphere location is the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia. Would love to hear about more geeky places down under... http://geekatlas.com/ is the place to make suggestions.
my statement wasn't based on anecdotal evidence.
First of all, they are not "random", they are the same thing he suggests professors spend their time on and publish for free: "pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them".

Umm, he writes

"They are incredibly impractical. Not just in terms of the lessons taught, but in terms of being a reference book for years down the road....The solution seems simple to me. Professors should be spending their time devising pages or chapterettes or even entire chapters on topics that matter to them, then publishing them for free online. (it's part of their job, remember?) When you have a class to teach, assemble 100 of the best pieces, put them in a pdf or on a kindle or a website (or even in a looseleaf notebook) and there, you're done."

That explicitly states, instead of writing a text book - professors should publish their content for free, online.

Are you saying that selling books is inherently hypocritical?

You've missed my argument...

I'm saying that arguing that he doesn't practise what he's preaching, which makes him a hypocrite.

He plainly states (which I have quoted for you, verbatim since you can't seem to see it) that text books are impractical and that instead of writing a text book, those professors should put their content online for free.

You mentioned that there is nothing stopping professors publishing books, which I agree - there is not, yet Seth is saying that they shouldn't publish, instead give away their content online, for free as it's part of their job.

Yet, despite that, Seth is doing the complete opposite of what he's saying. The vast majority of his content isn't free - it's in a book that you buy, seminars that you attend or you can purchase his time in the form of consulting.

The fact that he occasionally blogs snippets of information is irrelevant, since you also agree that he uses the blog only as a marketing channel.

Are you saying that selling books is inherently hypocritical?

No, I think you perhaps don't quite understand the meaning of the word hypocrite. I'll paste a definition in for you.

Hypocrite - a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, esp. a person whose actions belie stated beliefs.

There, by definition, a person who's actions belie states beliefs.

Seth believes that professors (who's job it is to impart knowledge) should give their content away online for free instead of writing a book is a hypocritical statement given part of his job is the imparting of knowledge. He does not give away all of his content online, for free, instead, it can be purchased in one of the many books he has for sale.

The fact that he's made this assertion that that content should be available online for free, instead of being purchased in a book is especially humorous when you see the adverts for his book just to the left of that exact same statement.
I still don't understand why no mainstream politicians ever get behind decriminalisation or legalisation.

BTW, I'm not so sure about decriminalising use. I don't really understand the point. It doesn't meaningfully address most the issues. You still have the market run under the table by criminals. You free up some resources that theoretically get used on treatment (probably of users of still criminalised substances), but you still don't solve the problems arising from the fact that this is a black market. You might even make the market bigger.
Indeed. I'm subject to depression, and though this can and has led to negativity that later translates into negative outcomes, I've found it far better to accept my periods of gloom and just acknowledge the fact of my thinking patterns than to try to replace them with ones I don't buy into.

It's not that the optimistic views are wrong, necessarily (or that I'm universally pessimistic), but some approaches just reek of bullshit. I'm all for the 'little engine that could' approach of giving yourself permission and encouragement to succeed. But quite a few of the modern motivation gurus seem to espouse a sociopathic level of self-regard that reminds me of religious fanaticism. Don't even get me started on the 'God wants you to be rich' people.
I thought that at first too. Then it struck me that if every student has one there's not much incentive to steal. Cellphones were desirable objects for many thieves a few years back, but between location tracking and the sheer ubiquity of the things, a cellphone is no longer an obvious grab.
Some examples from Woobius:

- Construction collaboration is all about official issues of files (i.e. "I issue these 10 files to you for comment"). We make it easy to fix an issue after it's happened, if there were errors in the issue.

- If you're invited to the wrong company, you can easily be moved to the right company

- If someone named your company incorrectly when they invited you, you can rename your company

etc.
Economy is arguably based on cognitive psychology and game theory. (A bit less strictly, but it should even out with all the lacking environmental parameters in paleontology...)
Ok thanks for the clarification; comes down to that it's more about offering flexibility afterwards then "fixed mistake checking" before.
Hasn't Vonage had these features for years?

I've used Vonage as my primary phone service for about 5 years. I've had an 800 number that's followed me in two states and four cities. I give it to everybody as my primary contact number. I can forward that number to any number of my choosing. My voicemail goes to email. I can create any number of virtual numbers with any area code that I want. For an extra $5 a month, I could get a soft phone to make calls from my laptop. It's not really worth it for me, since I don't travel that much, and my cell phone is much more convenient.

Am I missing something? What else does Google Voice have that Vonage doesn't?

The only thin that Google Voice seems to do that Vonage doesn't is filter your incoming calls based on rules. That would be handy, but not the "killer app".
I don't understand what I got backwards. I was just pointing out that this is a very similar situation to that one (revolution, twitter, elections) and it has the same media buzz but with the added bonus that it involves a Muslim country hence the US media enjoys it more. Your points about that situation are valid of course but that was not what I was saying.

It's funny you should correct the way I wrote the country name. I know the proper name but I chose to write it like most English users would know it.
For me, the title is all that matters, as I read from the RSS feed and never actually see the URL unless I take the time to hover over the link and investigate.
So, do we get around the server costs by daisy chaining? Your search front end queries a few search providers, which mix their own content with the cached results from a few others, and so on.
This was on my list for The Geek Atlas, but they no longer accept visitors. I went there years ago and tried to just turn up for a visit... not a good idea :-)
It is old as a dirt - "People see what they want to see" - but reality is always different and it destroys delusions and brings pain.

The "solution" also comes from begining of the time - "be selfless", just do one thing at a time (leave anything else, including self-estim aside for this period of time) and do it well, or "just do it".
It's a video of an iPhone that's too big to put in your pocket :/ wow. They didn't turn it on in the video either, so basically a non-news-story. Plus it's an old prototype, and not the one that they may sometime in the future produce. The fact no one bothered to mirror the video speaks volumes.

Wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't just TC generated, trying to get some buzz for the thing.
I still have to come across better book than Tom Peters - "ReImagine". It's amazing look at markets that are under-served, problems that need to be solved in B2C and B2B environments, managing talents, creativity and innovation..

Trust me, besides that the book is colorful and everything but a typical business book, it is an insight in what will happen. These are all opinions of Tom, and a book doesn't get more personal than this. A load of startup ideas as you turn pages.

http://www.amazon.com/Re-Imagine-Business-Excellence-Disrupt...
Please up vote me, because I would feel much better with a higher karma.
So this time a guest at our party last week decided to corner Chandra Rathakrishnan, the CEO of our CrunchPad partner Fusion Garage, and talk him into doing this ridiculous “unboxing” of the CrunchPad.

[...]

And that guest who took the video without talking to me first won’t be back at any TechCrunch events anytime soon.

Uhhh, what about the CEO of Fusion Garage, is he also banned from your events? ;)
I have a Google Voice account grandfathered in from GrandCentral, but I don't use it -- because of precisely this issue. It doesn't help that the number I do have gets a couple collections calls a week!
Brilliant. Can't wait to try this out.
Not the ones I read.

There are a few famous physicists these days whose interest in physics was sparked by the availability of good & cheap Soviet physics books. American books are over-designed. Too many colors and visual noise. Textbooks should go back to basics and provide condensed knowledge at affordable prices.
>> "Loic Lemeur’s YouTube channel"

So If I'm understanding correctly, Mike Arrington and Loic Lemeur have had a falling out?

Maybe TC should take down the ridiculous seesmic stuff now :)
Without any browser, how can I remember that long URL, should I write it down from other computer and type all that manually?
Switch between tasks. 45-60 minutes is enough.
Actually, the amount of propaganda in Soviet hard-core science books was very small, in fact, math books didn't have any, that I can remember.
Quantifying Basketball's Intangibles, With Some Help From Computers
This seems to be relevant: http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/cfe-dev/2008-August/00267...

In short: per default, you get copies of captured variables, but you can mark variables to be writable from blocks. In order to be able to call a block after the function call where it was created has ended, closures may be copied to the heap (with refcounting).
It is exactly the same approach as used on other monopolists, even many that have not been shown to have abused their monopoly: e.g. imposing local loop unbundling on incumbent telcos.
Wasn't it Freud who proposed that depressed people are actually quite perceptive: they simply realize how bad things are for them?

This seems to be in the same vein. If you have low self-esteem, you know you suck, and no amount of telling yourself otherwise is going to change that.

I believe the theory of cognitive therapy relies on repeated instances of self-reinforcement, not just saying happy thoughts when somebody rings a bell.

What is it with psych studies and bell-ringing, anyway? Get a buzzer or a blinking light or something already.
I haven't used a hex-editor in decades. This is one of the few times where I still use Perl instead of Python.

$ perl -i.bak -p0777e \
'print STDERR s/\xe4\x0a\x00\x2d/\xde\xad\xbe\xef/g + 0 . "\n"' a.out
1
$ cmp -l a.out.bak a.out
50161 344 336
50162 12 255
50163 0 276
50164 55 357
$

Perl prints the number of substitutions done. If it's 1, all's well.
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The real problem here is that the textbook industry is being propped up by the government, and I'm not just talking about copyright laws.

People are placed at a serious disadvantage if they don't go to a government-approved university and get a degree. To do this, they have to take certain classes. To take those classes, they have to buy certain textbooks.

If people could learn however they wanted without being at a legal disadvantage, even if that just means attending a truly private university, the textbook extortion scheme would be competed away. Why would you tolerate $200 textbooks if you didn't have to get your hands on that legal credential, which can only be offered by certain institutions?
It also depends if your trying to attempt some collaboration for a short period of time, most people would rather not have to learn a new system for a short/ small project.

Everyone has an email and is comfortable with it, it may be hard to convince non tech people that a web collaboration tool is the way to go.

There is a lot of upside to them, with time I guess collaboration methods other than email will become common, especially with Google Wave on the way.
Shouldn't you also post what the data looks like when viewed or something?
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I'm tempted to mention "that is hardware DRM". Why am I tempted? Because some of the audience will realize "Uh oh, doomed to failure" and some of the audience will say "NO, NO, IT ISN'T DRM. That is to prevent bad people from stealing stuff. DRM prevents me from ... That isn't DRM!"
The article exaggerates slightly to make a point. Players and coaches do pay attention to many of these intangibles already, using film, for example. This will make it a lot easier, though.
Then it struck me that if every student has one there's not much incentive to steal.

High-end electronics are worth money, money is still worth stuff even if you have your own high-end electronics. I got graphing calculators stolen off of me at a school where my current income would put me substantially below what my classmates considered poor, and I'm a professional engineer.
The War on Drugs employs many people.

Mainstream politicians want power. Why would they stick their neck out for legalization?
I blogged some additions to Joel's list a few years ago:
http://nothing.tmtm.com/archives/2511

I should really get around to updating that...
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I don't suppose you've also read "Birth of the Chaordic Age"? The Amazon blurb makes it sound like they're remarkably similar - so much so that I wondered if "One from Many" was just an updated version of the same book.
Seconded. From his earlier books, I've also always been a big fan of "The Pursuit of Wow" and "The Pursuit of Innovation". Not quite as colourful, but still fairly non-typical as business books go.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0679755551
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0340717211
This was better than I expected. Everyone here is already aware of the two-party swindle (I hope), but the author describes it in a fresh way. He also explains some of the reasons it happens, for people who know the swindle exists but don't understand why.

Also, he rather subtly points out that we haven't actually dispatched of the idea of people being ruled by a separate class, contrary to what we're taught in school.
we still love ya mike! but we need you to get inside the Plastic Bubble. as in NOW.

- dave mc

ps - GeeksonaPlane miss u & hope u get back home soon :)
Heh. Too bad the terrists stole our freedom to see first hand some of our amazing national institutions because Cheyenne mountain sounds awesome. I'm going to check out your book.
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Food and Energy Are Still Too Cheap
Ms. Li’s breakfast was a favorite among test-takers: a bread stick next to two eggs, symbolizing a 100 percent score.

Education fail much? Of all the things to optimize your breakfast for...
Twitter died for me when the marketing people started trying to take advantage of it. now all I get is constant follow requests from self proclaimed 'internet marketing experts', most of which have only signed up in the past couple of weeks and clearly don't really have a clue about the true value of Twitter since all they do is post links to the same get rich quick articles over and over again.
Show of hands for those that want to be spared of M.Arrington's ever-lasting songs of praise for all things Google.
Legendary Leaders Just Don’t Quit