skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's kind of a clueless article, it talks about how science has lost its 'machismo' because the great scientists of our day aren't attempting to bed women, seemingly as a competition. However, the author obviously failed to realise that at the time about a dozen of the best scientists of our time were essentially locked in Los Alamos with a large compliment of female staff and were rarely allowed off of base.

If the author had read Feynman's biographies, he would have released that the man did essentially anything for fun. Most of which seemed to be an endless one-up game with his friends and colleagues.

The simple fact is that people have lost interest in scientists and people with brilliant minds. Who cares what scientist came up with what, Jon & Kate broke up, Brangelina went to the toilet five minutes ago . . . pop culture has degraded so far, the antics of a scientist are tame by the standards of whomever the media has decided to follow. Which starlet purposefully forgot to wear underwear this week, or what female tennis player had some creep ass photographer take a photo up her skirt while she was playing.
A lot of HN readers are very critical of Tim Ferriss and his knowledge of what he writes about.

But if I was going to take any advice without a grain of salt from him, it would be about web marketing. This guy has, without really contributing anything, managed to make his name known.
Really? Can you name 10 celebrity physicists? I can only name three, Einstein, Hawking, and Feynman. I'd be willing to bet that outside of cs-math-physics nerds that most people have not heard of Feynman.
I'm the same. I use Windows for gaming, and I have a case of Mac envy for all the slick apps, but everytime I get more than a couple windows open, I really, really miss my tiling window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org/). Not having anything I need within one or two keystrokes (or having to reach for the mouse) feels very cumbersome now.
Given that he was in a Japanese POW camp it would probably be safe to assume that he was arrest and tried by the Japanese.
Mrs Browl, who qualified as a laser engineer and now runs operations at a thriving information management company, is the offspring of two third world peasant laborers who arrived here when she was 3. As it happens, I'm European, have an IQ of 142 and speak perfect English, but I'm the less economically productive one.

I do think immigration laws need to be reformed and the US should lead in the redefinition of labor as a commodity and work towards open borders, which I believe will eventually do more to improve global productivity and security than any number of tariffs and background checks. However, I hope the people in charge do not share your dismissive attitude towards those who are so foolish as to get born in the wrong place.
Move to Silicon Valley. Take a job that pays decently. Live frugally. Network your ass off. Look into a variety of different opportunities and startups -- maybe even start a few small projects, or help others start their's -- and the minute you find something that really excites you, quit your job and work on it full time (with a bunch of capital to get you started).
I use:

Windows/Windows/Windows/Windows/OSX side-by-side, shared keyboard through Synergy (w/ synergy server as a Vista+Vaio).

With 4 perpetual ssh connections to different flavors of Linuxy servers (CentOS/CentOS/Fedora/SuSE). With 2 perpetual RDP sessions open to 2 more Windows boxen.
People still don't encrypt their email (at least the overwhelming majority of them). The convenience of ubiquitous mail access across multiple devices has made encryption even less likely (i.e. do you carry your private key with you everywhere?).

I doubt consumers will care much about the privacy of their data in "the cloud".

I can only assume that companies with data that needs to be private will take appropriate steps to protect it, but as we've seen with lost laptops, usb drives, etc., they don't always take the best of precautions.
What don't you like about "tiny url" services (tinyurl.com, bit.ly)?
... and what do you like?
Which data? Back up your argument.
I think as perceptions of relationships change - affairs being considered a much greater scandal rather than an occasional fact of married life, and polyamory, open relationships and other assorted variant approaches coming more out into the open - people with a high libido as well as a high functioning brain are more and more taking a structured approach to the problem and one that doesn't require them to bother keeping track of more than one version of reality.

I certainly count myself in that category - I'm happily open/poly and so are a noticeable number of the open source geeks I interact with on a day to day basis. And from the ranks of my local friends, the other two who've followed this approach for some time are a chemist and a physicist.

I kind of pity anybody stuck in a situation where they end up cheating because they're unable to have the conversation with their partner that would allow them to either change approach or to understand that their choices are circumscribed if they want to retain the relationship - or worse still simply unaware that alternative approaches can and do successfuly exist.

Though I do still keep a small notebook and a pen on me for when what meager inspiration my brain is capable of strikes me when I'm out having fun ...
> unproductive assets

You mean savings? As in, we should discourage the key to long-term prosperity?
Buy 50k worth of gold & silver bullion as a future proof investment.

Give 10k as a gift to your parents and close family.

40k left. From that, mark 20k for one year living expenses. The remaining 20k, use to launch a business. So you have 1 year where you can work on building your own business without any other worries or stress.

If at the end of that one year, you have failed, get a normal job. If you succeed though, you will turn that 20k in 200k soon enough, God willing.

Make it a goal to be able to retire by the age of 40. Ponder life and the purpose of life and the reason for existence.
Ask HN: What programming language are you currently learning?
I would like to know what languages my fellow HN readers are currently learning/investigating, in their free time, and the criteria for choosing which language to learn next.
Put your windows where you want them at the size you want them and don't ever touch them again... that's what I do, anyway. Expose to get at things that are hidden. I also use hiding apps in general a lot, cmd+h to hide and then either click the dock, use opt+tab or use a launcher like quicksilver or launchbar to get those apps back.

Personally I don't use the mouse much at all so I don't need focus follows mouse, and I don't move windows and instead use the methods described above to move between them.
legitimate question: are you one of the information/opinion disseminators under charge of the Chinese government?

i'm not trying to be a dick, i really am curious. i'm not so closed-minded as to disregard what was written in your post, rather, it was that my "copypasta" alarms went off when i read it (and the linked article.)
Turns out reddit doesn't have polls :P
You could easily travel for a year for $10k (depending on where you travel and how comfortable you are with low-end, backpacker-style travel). Maybe it's worth taking some time away from everything familiar to see what inspirations come to you.
People like to go where the money and success is. If you're not American, the USA looks like a giant version of Disneyland, just as someone from a small town in the midwest may be drawn to a coastal metropolis like New York Or San Francisco or Los Angeles.
How do you make a poll?
Yes, I do think you should vote for windows too. you just don't enjoy the work you do in that context as much, but that isn't Windows' fault.
People move to somewhere they will have a say in local government. Casting a vote now and then is a very small part of that participation. Or maybe they're interested in politics and are sick of not being able to have a real debate.
There are a couple of mac apps I use that get you most of the way there:

MercuryMover - lets you move windows and resize them to preset positions with hotkeys (left half of screen, top half of screen, etc.)

MondoMouse - adds hotkeys that allow you to drag or resize a window from any position
Thanks. This is not new, but it's reassuring to know it's not just me thinking along these lines.
I think this is an interesting topic. But before we can even get started, we need to get a sense of what we are talking about when we're referring to cloud computing.
I have my own prediction for what cloud computing will look like in the future at my blog http://lchou1.blogspot.com/2008/12/future-of-computing.html

If you agree with that vision of computing on the cloud, you'll see that software and the way we interact with it on a daily basis will be completely different. Just like how television changed media, cloud computing will change technology. For instance, moving things to the cloud means you can access the information anywhere, so "your computer" won't be a physical entity, but an account, and soon, you probably won't need a full computer to access these services. So I don't think it's right to just say that cloud computing will "just" be better, it's going to change the game.

As for privacy, I think it's a good trend that this is being brought out into the open. If someone had the desire, people can find out a great deal about you with what's available now. Knowing about it and actively trying to protect privacy is the only way to prevent the big-brother scenario from happening. There was an article on something related to this not too long ago on hn:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=685095
On the Mac, the trick is to figure out what size you want for your apps and keep them there. Safari's always big for me, iTunes I almost always keep shrunk down, Mail shows a few messages at a time and has a large window for message display. Then I control everything via keyboard so focus never really bothers me.

There's also a Mac application that lets you resize your window from any side, but I don't recall what it's called.
I agree. I look forward to seeing how this is reported in the Economist which for several years insisted as a matter of fact that negative interest rates were impossible (I suspect this represented the view of one particularly dogmatic editor).
Turf War at the Hot Dog Cart
I use vmware fusion, and I keep hearing great things about virtualbox. But when I tested the new 3.0 version a couple of days ago I still got multi-second freezes, increased CPU usage and a lot of general slowness. And yes, I have the virtualbox tools installed.

What am I missing?
Yes, there is. The underlying survey is described here. With pictures. Short version: this is automatically gathered data from all the stores in participating chains.

http://bcnranking.jp/info/index.html?ref=products

(Edited to add: I misread which survey they were using originally. This comment previously had the wrong link in it.)
Me too, OSX with windows XP under VMWare.
maybe they're interested in politics and are sick of not being able to have a real debate.

This correctly characterizes many of the Chinese people I met in the United States in 1989 as part of the democracy movement at that time. Many of them were physical scientists or biological scientists or students about to enter those occupations when I met them, but they were deeply interested in politics and organized a "salon" with some very interesting discussions of politics, including guest speakers from newly post-communist Poland and public speeches by democracy movement activists who were able to escape from China after the post-Tian An Men Square Massacre crackdown.
no, as I already have an H-1B. But, as an H-1b holder I am only authorized to work with one company at a time (the sponsor of the visa).

For me to start working in a new company I need:
1. A H-1B visa transfer. Cost about 2,5k - 3k on fees and lawyer work.
2. Eventual green card sponsorship, as my current max allowed time will eventually expire in a couple of years. That's about 10k of lawyer/paperwork costs.

For an employer, to pay you really well, and put up the costs, you can't be only 10%-20% better than the average american programmer, you have to be a magnitude better.

Fortunately, in engineering there is a huge variance in skills (up to 10 times), and good employers recognize this.
_why's interview is.. well, what you would expect.

This was really quite helpful for me as I ordered my first ever macbook for development just yesterday (which, with few exceptions, seems to be the machine of choice). I now have a long list of essential software to try/buy when it is delivered.
My comment was joking. I actually don't believe in the labels, and I find that labels generally only apply to the people who worry about them.

I've known some very cool people who LARPed, some of the biggest jocks I've met play WoW, D&D and MtG are huge among the drama cliques in the Northeast, and the NYC hipster crowd has made stuff like web design a social boon. YCombinator's own OMGPOP is probably the ultimate example of that.

But I've gotten into some fairly heated arguments on HN about just how accurate labels are, and I'd rather not get into that again.
Swarming: the next new major warfighting doctrine? (2003)
I use Blackberry OS quite a bit as well...
First, hello from down the road in Lynchburg. C-ville isn't that far out in the boonies. Heck, you're just an hour or so from the beltway.

For all of your explaining, you never got around to saying what you liked doing. Do you like working for yourself or in a team, do you want to pursue education at any cost, or do you want to fit into some large corporate system?

It sounds like you enjoyed your startup experience and would like to repeat it, but I'm not sure.

I can tell you what I would do, because I'm getting ready to do it again. Find something to pour yourself into for a while, and enjoy working on something bigger than yourself. This can be another startup, or charity, or creating a new solution for world hunger, or whatever, but the key is that it can't be simple self-gratification.

Doing this allows you to grow, and prevents the over-specialization, boredom, and frustration that can be part of large corps. It also allows you to put some of those fun P-classes to work in a practical manner. But you really have to have drive to make it work.

You could embrace your inner lazy person and work hard for a few years with the idea of retiring early. That's a cool plan. But the real question is whether you're going to actively do something or passively wait around for life to happen to you. That's a question only you can answer.
Ignore the money and find your niche/domain. Then figure out how to invest in the niche to better position yourself for the future. My guess is that you will start a business to fill that niche. Most great companies started when someone had a real bad experience at work or with a product or service. Find your passion, but don't blow your savings on it.

Don't give it away. If you can turn 100K into 10M then give 10% of the 10M away.
Yeah, because the iPhone was conceived of right before it was announced, not half a decade earlier. Come on.
I think the phenomena is still very much present, albeit it might have moved from natural sciences to humanities (probably because humanities are easier to present as edgy whilst keeping them accessible). Take for instance philosopher Zizek, at 56 he married 26 year old Argentinian model: http://www.higher-yearning.org/uploaded_images/zizek_wed-784...
after being a coder for 3 decades I finally got around to lisp, two things prompted me to do it, first the source code to HN, secondly a discussion with 'dtor' of the glusterfs project, a young indian coder that seems to be pretty gifted. I audited some code there and came upon a macro that took me a long long time to comprehend, he explained it was to give C continuations.

One thing let to another and I ended up buying a bunch of books and downloading the mit video lectures.
...says a guy hiding behind an anonymous profile.

Where are your examples to back of each of these claims? I'd gladly entertain an argument that she's not as good as she's cracked up to be, but an argument that she lacks "even a modicum of workmanship competence" is ridiculous.
It also points clearly to a disquieting amount of stubbornness mixed with a strong dose of willful ignorance. Any project you do for them will not come out "as they had expected". You will always be wrong, they always right, even after you've both payed thousands into the legal system and had it proved otherwise. Then, you'll just be a dick who somehow managed to manipulate the legal system to screw them...

Ahh. Sorry to rant. I've been on this train all the way to its last stop...
War and genocide predate the nation state. It's perhaps as easy to argue that the nation state has been a force for restraint of violence and a bulwark against broader tyranny. Violence is worst in the modern world where nations are weakest and least independent. The endless wars in Europe only wound down when national boundaries were finally properly drawn along ethnic lines.

> more diversity due to the mixing

You are confusing diversity within a place with diversity between places.
Whereas London was once an English city with a distinctive English character, it is now a "multi-cultural" stew that is much like any of five other large global multi-ethnic cities. The loss of an English London is a loss of diversity.
Everyone has this notion that silicon valley is extremely expensive. If you have a family sure, it is. If you're young like the original poster or most of the people here, it's just as expensive as any other city (not that expensive if you're smart). Room with other people, which can be done for about 700-800 a month. If you need a car, get one thats 200-300 a month. Odds are you don't, and the public transportation system in the valley is great if you live on a main road. Food? Safeway has great prices with free delivery over 50 bucks and you don't need to eat like a pig. Drinks? Get to know some cute bartenders and your tabs will easily have 50% vanish :-). Or just split the beer/liquor bill for the house with roommates. Someone mentioned that you could live in the valley for 20k a year after taxes, which is about 1,666 a month. Highly doable and you'll actually enjoy it too. I've said this many times before and I'll say it again: If you have a REAL desire to give the valley a shot, then DO IT. You'll meet awesome people and have an experience you will never forget. Nothing is stopping you, especially with 100k in your bank account and already sharpened skills.
Indeed. We've talked about this phenomenon before. Here's the link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678144

This was my remark on the matter:

As a foreigner in the US about to finish a MS degree in IT and travel back home, I find Friedman's words apropos. The limitation on H-1B visas does more harm than good. I've met many young, intelligent knowledge workers about to get their advanced degrees who, unfortunately, find themselves unable to stay in this country because of visa restrictions. Sending those brains back home is a mistake. A new approach is required if the US veritably wants to foster innovation and entrepreneurship.

It's good to see more and more people are joining us and voicing their opinions loudly. Evidently, the H-1B program needs some major tweaking. The more people know and understand the implications of what's at stake here, the better.
Interesting article. To solve the security issue he mentions, I started trying out various twitter clients. I ended up using Nambu for Mac OS X. Mouse over a link gives you the real URL, if it has one. Personally, the extra latency that comes from using URL shortening services doesn't bother me, but the thought that the service might disappear does.
I dislike that I don't know what I'm about to be redirected to.
TheGreatHatsby, an ingenious AIMbot
The question is what OS we're using, not what OS we're using.

From my own experience, using Gmail is a different experience in each OS. I can't stand to use it on OS X, whereas on Windows it was always open.
http://www.amazon.com/review/R60O7705YNTL7

"Throughout this book, our statistical models have shown that the low education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and white Americans."

As is well known, American-born Mexicans average more years of education than do their Mexican-born immigrant ancestors. Unfortunately, as Telles and Ortiz report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites:

"In education, which best determines life chances in the United States, assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates thereafter."

The fourth generation (whose grandparents were born in America) was particularly unaccomplished:

"Sadly and directly in contradistinction to assimilation theory, the fourth generation differs the most from whites, with a college completion rate of only 6 percent [compared to 35 percent for whites of that era]."

The fourth generation Baby Boomers averaged 0.7 years less schooling than the second and third generation Mexican Americans born in the same era.

Telles and Ortiz found:

"...the educational progress of Mexican Americans does not improve over the generations. At best, given the statistical margin of error, our data show no improvement in education over the generations-since-immigration and in some cases even suggest a decline."
If you have a lot or the clear potential to get a lot, money seems like a pretty decent way of keeping score.
Wouldn't the most likely explanation simply be that the connections on social networks tend to mirror connections in real life? I think there was a study posted to HN recently that basically said instead of connecting to everyone and their dog, connections tend to stay local.
Enterprise 2.0 Conference Aftermath
Nah, you aren't factoring in those who are cruising on a ship at any given time.
The simple fact is that people have lost interest in scientists and people with brilliant minds. Who cares what scientist came up with what, Jon & Kate broke up, Brangelina went to the toilet five minutes ago . . . pop culture has degraded so far, the antics of a scientist are tame by the standards of whomever the media has decided to follow. Which starlet purposefully forgot to wear underwear this week, or what female tennis player had some creep ass photographer take a photo up her skirt while she was playing.

Get off your high horse. Do you think this is new? We saw it with Hearst and his papers, we undoubtedly had it in the radio era though I'm too young to be able to provide names. There has always been more focus on celebrity than there was on anything else.

Richard Dawkins is still a celebrity. He's a prominent and brilliant scientist who writes bestsellers on the side. Culture is no worse off than it was a hundred years ago. There's just more of it, and that means there's more of the tripe along with more of the good, and that means that for all the twenty-year-old cynics there's even more to wearily shake heads at. Recall that a hundred years ago, the idea of a global community where enlightened people commented on tech stories would have been an impossibility.
I've heard, though, that they have an uncanny habit of disappearing one day, just before disaster strikes, with nothing more than a "so long, and thanks for all the fish".
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