skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I approach this in the same pattern. There are some technological tricks that have recently made it much easier, though.

In addition to Arxiv and preprints I can find online, there's Google Scholar and Amazon Previews (I'm still missing many journal articles, especially in engineering, due to a lack of university access, luckily they're often compiled in journals on Amazon). By flipping through Amazon's book previews using the search feature, I can read an arbitrary number of pages in any given book, and the world's library is at my lap. I can then 'photocopy' the relevant/interesting sections using ctrl-shift-command-4 on my Mac, and paste them into my Evernote. In this way I can locate and collate a large number of papers and texts, and organize them along the way without even dipping into LaTeX. After that, I can past those copies into Mathematica, which has a very workable equation typesetter, with the additional advantage of the equations being computable.

Lately I make a lot of use of Evernote, however, which I can pretty much paste anything into, and I can 'photocopy' any part of a text on the computer by using ctrl-shift-command-4 on my Mac.
It's sure that programming is fun when you do your own thing.

When you are an employee, it'll depend, if you like the project you are working on or not.
We had a convo about this a couple days ago, but it was regarding experts-exchange http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=663124
Clients? You mean IP. NAT anyone?
Thanks for the pointer. They sell a keyboard I've wanted for ages, a buckling spring keyboard with a thinkpad "nipple" mouse - http://pckeyboards.stores.yahoo.net/en104wh.html
Maybe not having a single company running a set of servers that service hundreds of millions of people would be a good start. If Facebook were software running on the servers of many different groups of people, then the relationships would be somewhat different; among other things, you could fix your local copy of the software to handle MIME properly, then distribute the result to other people who were running their own servers.
I hope it's not due to the negative tone of the article and comments, coupled with scribd being a YC company -- I believe flags are administrator-reviewed.
I had a look at this, and then saw the link at the bottom to "He's Only in Field Service".

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

There is certainly a message in that about taking care of the customer, and not making assumptions.
Your post is three sentences and a paste of the paraphrase. That people click through to Jeremy's post should be expected.

The submission is blogspam.
Thanks! That made me stop watching The Wire and continue working my way through Practical Foundations of Mathematics.
Oh, my bad. Thanks for the correction. Since I took the time to find a little context for the orignal linked PDF, I thought I'd share for others' convenience.
There are a couple interesting things about this article but it is a bit too short and doesn't say anything about the situation for PhDs in the science, which is not as extreme.
So you explain it better. Why can't I get a Linux "netbook" with the same configuration as a Windows "netbook" ?
This is the comment I just left on the blog:

I will have to read the paper in more detail, but I have an extremely simple reason why math education in the US is so hard: We use the English system of measurement. Most students in grade school associate math with this horrific measurement system, and once that happens, there is almost no chance to engage students in what math is really all about.

You want people in the US to embrace math? Then start on a campaign to scrap our horrific measurement system, a system to which logic and simple math can not be applied. In the metric system all you need to know is it is base 10. With the English system you must know that there are 12 inches in a foot, and that there are 3 feet in a yard. How many feet in a mile? There is NO WAY to logically derive this information, one must KNOW it! How may teaspoons in a tablespoon? Can math help us with that? Nope, one must know the answer.

Sorry, I hope I am not ranting, but this has been a burr in my side for years. Yet it seems that no one ever talks about this aspect when talking about why people in the US are so adverse to math. I guess I should just write my own article about it…
Why? I don't use most things for 22 years, so I've found it rather convenient that laptops hard drives go after 5 years or so, since it's a good reason to buy a new one.
That looks like a very nice keyboard. I liked the description of the "bucking spring" design behind the perfectly clicking keys.

Most modern keyboards can't recreate that authentic, high-quality feel.
Everyone who is commenting and downmodding here should read at least the first message in that thread. Then they should mod up my top-level comment and apologize.
That is exactly the kind of code that I was looking to write. The only difference is that it auto appends the code onto all URLs, local and non-local, then checks to see if they are non-local when they are clicked.
JS-Time, framework agnostic time calculations in javascript
It seems like there's a simple design spec for a very nice keyboard:

- Buckling springs, for that clicky feeling
- Split, or somehow ergonomically enhanced
- Columns instead of staggered keys

Anything else? Any disagreements with the above?

It might be interesting to see if home-designed keyboards could be built using 3d printers and ordered parts. Anyone up for writing a how-to?
That's true.

However, it would take a lot more computing power to try to determine what the thought pattern for "Click the Reply" button is, as opposed to looking for the thought pattern for "Move Mouse Down" and "Click Mouse".

As with any new technology, I expect that it'll start off simple and then progress from there.

Another issue, is that each device would have to be calibrated to the user's mind, as each person has their own thought patterns.

This could make computer use a practiced skill, rather than something that you can pick up pretty quickly right out of the box.

Each new computer you bought would have to "learn" your thought process so that it could tell what you wanted it to do.
I bought an old model M a while back, and I didn't really like it. Too much travel in the keys for me to really get going fast. As heretic as it sounds, my favorite keyboard right now is my Apple one that's about a quarter inch thick. It doesn't make me feel like I'm typing on a typewriter and cleans with a quick swipe from a damp cloth. Plus, it's tiny and wireless.
YouTube - YSE #20 - Y SIN EMBARGO magazine #20, extimacy
Isn't the situation actually worse for PhDs in science? I.e. not only can't you get a job in the USA because of foreign competition, you can't get a job overseas either (because the grad students can just go home)?
Have to agree. I really like the new Apple keyboards. They feel minimalist but with enough key travel that I know when the button has been fully pressed.
First Volunteer Run Open Source Conference is a Success
Erik was not a passionate militant; he certainly thought pretty hard, but he wasn't "thoughtful" in the sense of Martin Luther King. He was a bully and a sadist who devoted much of his life to emotional abuse of other people, and he did terrible damage to the Lisp community.

I'll quote briefly from what Erik wrote in http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/browse_thread/... , which someone linked to above:

I'm overjoyed that I actually hurt your feelings. I wish I could hurt
your feelings so much you would commit suicide. sadly, this has failed,

...

the only thing I regret is that I didn't see your fantastic stupidity as
a result of your shattered psychology -- it's fairly uncommon to be so
fucking retarded because of a psychological problem, but clearly, you
have been immensely stupid all your life, and now that I come and hurt
your stupid feelings, so you turn on me like a vicious and mad dog -- and
that's exactly what you are to me: a mad dog in need of a bullet through
his sick brain before he actually manages to hurt someone or himself.

do the world a huge favor and commit suicide tonight.

I'm not sure what Janos Blazi did that Erik thought deserved this kind of a response (which he tried to keep private, incidentally; there's no telling how many hundreds of emails like this he may have sent that have never seen the light of day) but I do not see how this "helps keep minds open to his side of things" or how it is a "noble pursuit" or "admirable".
Agreed. You end up having to pay taxes in two states (or at least, one more state than you would normally pay taxes in), instead of one, and the taxes aren't the same... which means you have to match up all income and expenditures.

Attorneys, at least those that incorporate LLCs for small businesses, are cheap, and will frequently double as service agents (for a small yearly fee).
Nice. It's always wonderful to find the exact thing one wants. I thought I'd found the right keyboard with the Matias Tactile Pro Version 1, but the "ghost key" problem scuppered that idea, and Version 2 was so bad it inspired this pan: http://jseliger.com/2007/10/18/product-review-matias-tactile... , ultimately leading me to the Customizer.
Well, in Computer Science, I'm not seeing that at all really. I see graduate students finishing their PhDs and getting good jobs and the departments I'm familiar with have been hiring. Though, many universities are experiencing financial difficulties, some even cutting class and really scrounging for funds.
Best book on sales is "The Selling Bible; For People in the Business of Selling", the summary is know what you are selling, keep track of what you do and listen.
"Most modern keyboards can't recreate that authentic, high-quality feel."

I would rather say that they can, but not at the $5 – $20 price point that many if not most modern keyboards sell at. Other gourmet keyboards like the Filco Majestouch and Das Keyboard go for ~$130. By that metric, used Model Ms and contemporary Customizers/Spacesavers from Unicomp (at $69: see http://www.pckeyboard.com ) are a bargain.
This is a non-story. How could this developer have not known that Apple's app store agreement forbids emulators, interpreters, and so forth?

I mean, not only is it there in plain letters, but that particular clause was all over the interwebz! The fault here lies solely on the developer for spending all that time and money on development without reading the contract.

Or maybe I should say "praise". This is most likely a PR stunt to increase awareness of his product so he can then go sell it to jailbreakers (who are probably more likely to use, enjoy, and be able to understand it anyway).
I run 2 businesses at the moment, at opposite ends of the spectrum:

One is a campaign management website for Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games. Think "Basecamp for D&D" It's at http://www.obsidianportal.com Customers here are tabletop RPG folks. I'm very active in that community and have made all sorts of connections. Again, my most valuable contacts are not other startup people, but in fact just members of the RPG community.

My second startup that I'm spinning up right now is an online marketplace where people can find and buy plants from specialty nurseries. This one is called DoLeaf, and we're currently in closed beta. We'll jump to public beta as soon as we can recruit some initial sellers. So, to that end, I need to network with small nursery owners. You can be guaranteed they're not coming to things like AWE or Barcamp.

Don't get me wrong: I like hanging out with fellow hackers and entrepreneurs. We understand each other and speak the same language. Talking with nursery owners is a very eye-opening experience at how little I actually know about their world. However, my fellow hackers aren't going to come to DoLeaf and sell plants, so the time I spend with them isn't the most productive in terms of furthering my business. Since I've only got a few hours of free time after my day job is done, I need to spend it as wisely as possible. It's a pretty simple calculation.
My dad had a keyboard just like that. Looking at this makes me wish he never threw it away (I assume that's what he did with it).

I'm currently using an Apple keyboard, one of those thin ones, and I'm incredibly happy with it.
One thing that would help for evaluating your ideas is to include links to existing sites that are most similar. This would save the evaluator time in getting the basic lay of the land and show whether you're aware of the strongest competition.
I think you are doing exactly what Lockhart talked about. It doesn't matter what system one needs to memorize (although only knowing the metric system I can imagine the English system being harder to learn) what matters is that students are given the intellectual freedom to develop their intuition and reasoning capabilities, while current math education is all about needless, rigid formalism that needs to be learned by heart, then applied. Even the few proofs that are shown are presented in such a formalized way that they are a big turnoff.

Neither the English nor the metric system allow you to logically derive much about it (maybe Hertz = 1/second), the metric system is only more consistent and therefore easier to learn.

At least that's my take on that.
It takes me a while to read the books I have as well. I've bought lots of books than I haven't been able to read yet and my list of books to buy and read keeps growing as well. Another thing that adds to the amount of time it takes me to read a book is that I'm a very meticulous reader. I like looking up and cross referencing anything I don't understand, so for me that means looking up lots of stuff. I wonder if other people do this as well.
Math is a holdout.
I know Firefox just added SVG-style CSS transformations. Does Webkit support those?
I agree. The fact that this took two months to come out tells me that Jobs does not want it to be public information. I think that his privacy should be respected.
Maybe you're young, but Usenet was the center of mass of programming discussions from shortly after its inception, in the early 1980s, until sometime around 2000–2005. So for about half of Lisp's lifetime, Usenet was central. And, as someone else pointed out, you can see a major difference in the tone of comp.lang.lisp before and after Erik's ascendancy — and its contributors. He may not have been the sole cause, but he was certainly one of them.

I think it's more accurate to say that programmers have been slowly accepting the ideas behind Lisp for fifty years: linked lists, recursion, dynamic typing, flexibly-sized data structures, conditional expressions, garbage collection, and a small core language with everything else in libraries were all present in (and central to!) 1959 Lisp, and very far from the mainstream in 1959. The main features of 1959 Lisp that have not been widely adopted are simple syntax and atoms. (Macros came later.)

For most of the time between then and now, new language features have tended to appear early on in Lisps and much later in more mainstream languages. Compare Python or Haskell list comprehensions with the Common Lisp LOOP macro, for example; or consider Loops/Flavors/CLOS.

I essentially don't use Lisp today because Lisp systems fell badly behind other languages in many ways: Python, Ruby, Lua, Objective-C, OCaml, and so forth are better options today. There's no mystery to why this is: people stopped working on Lisp systems. That was partly due to the AI winter, but it actually worsened in the 1990s. I don't know how much of that was because of Erik driving people away and how much was for other reasons.
That indeed looks awesome. I used an IBM SpaceSaver (not the space saver mentioned above) with a pointy stick for a while, but the keys just didn't feel right.
"Suck on that, RoR"? Ugh, grow up please.
But how much longer will it be economically viable to build stuff with an artificially limited lifespan?
Under the Radar Startups
A few years ago I earned the wrath of my coworkers when I cleaned up and started using an old model M that was lying around. Apparently it was quite loud :)

These days I'm happy with my Kinesis Advantage (seen here http://files.getdropbox.com/u/31884/desktop.jpg ).
It is a shame when a library closes. I find they (at least in their traditional incarnation) are a place where I can really concentrate, something that's so difficult almost anywhere else.

Some of my fondest memories from university were of studying in the library. And also looking at random books in there, unrelated to my course.
It's interesting when you look at his thoughts towards the television in Fahrenheit 451, which was the new media, or the future of news, at the time. Strikingly similar to his current distaste for the "noise" on the internet. His loyalty to literature has not changed.
No-one wants to hang out with the people who just stare at their shoes. However, those who spend their weekends at the Renaissance Faire or building a robot in their garage do have a story to tell. Do you see the difference?

Social skills are relative, not absolute. There is a HUGE difference between "being a geek" and "being boring".
Yes, yes. I've owned several Model M's myself (probably still have one around here somewhere). They are a very solid keyboard.

They are also loud enough to wake the dead!

Seriously, has anyone else here tried to type on one of those while talking to someone on the phone (like, when doing tech support)? Anyone else here used one of these to work on a school assignment, or a work project in the wee hours of the night--in a house where others are trying to sleep nearby? That's a recipe for disaster.

I do like the weight of the Model M (it stays put), and I like the feet that prop up the back of the keyboard to put it at a nice angle. While those features are nice, I still prefer a keyboard that doesn't scream out my every keystroke as if I were typing with a nailgun instead of a keyboard. I prefer my slightly-less ancient keyboard (only about 12 years old). I use an IBM model KB-8923 (which I believe was manufactured in 1997). It has a very similar layout to the Model M, except it does have those 3 nasty "Windows" keys (which I ignore). It is also heavy enough to stay put while I type, and at the same time is much quieter (without being "mushy", like a lot of keyboards are -- providing no pushback to the fingers at all). Like the Model M and many (most?) keyboards, it also has the feet that prop up the back corners. Fortunately for me, I bought this keyboard at a liquidation store (there were probably 20 or 30 of them in a stack for $1 to $2 each (in 2001). I think I bought 4 or 5 of them which I have used with different computers since then, perhaps giving some away with machines I gave to others. I wish I had bought the entire stack for that price. I have been that happy with them. I think one of the ones I bought started being unreliable, but only after much abuse (cracker/cookie/sandwich/whatever crumbs and probably one too many coffee/soda/water spills probably did it in). The rest are still in service.
I assume this does not work because the article was written nearly 4 years ago. Where are the results?
Actually, there is a bit of a story here around how to get emulator/software packages bundled and placed on the Apple store. The interesting paragraph for me was:

"Lyscarz pointed out to us that there are a number of apps in the App Store that do exactly the same thing from CHIP-8 emulators, programmable calculators and, of course, Frotz, a Z-machine interpreter. In fact, Sega's Golden Axe and Sonic iPhone games are nothing more than emulators packaged with the original game ROMs."

With a bit of work, I suspect that the C64 Games can be repackaged in such a way that they are no longer considered "emulators."
Well, it was enough for a New York Times Bestseller: http://www.sethroberts.net/
I studied computer science using Cormen et al., and it struck me that this might be one way to 'use' these oft-impenetrable tomes. (Though I really found Cormen very accessible.)

Look around for a university course that teaches using the book, and see if you can find notes, or - better - problems based on the text. Often gives you a sense of where to begin with the larger books.
Ask HN: Anyone working here on twitter apps esp games etc
ping back.
The comments below the article seem to explain why he thought it would be possible to submit the emulator and have it approved. The SEGA games in the app store contain emulators, and it looks as though there are more apps that do the same.

Inconsistency on Apple's part (haven't seen that before).
Modern financial engineering is only about 30 years old. That's easily comparable to the fundamental works of physics, biology and computing

What?!?
The throne method is surprisingly good! An ex-boyfriend of mine was a hacker (well.. most of them have been) and one of his peculiarities was to have a vast collection of academic and O'Reilly books next to the loo. Great for flicking through, though often one would end up spending far too much time in there...
After a few months of in the App store, I am finally realizing the realities.

A month ago they told me I had information that would be confusing across regions. I changed it immediately but they have not reviewed the app again.

I have send at least a dozen emails asking them for a review to no avail.

And this is a business app. So if anyone thought getting in was the biggest thing, think again.

This review was probably fair but then again, I have personally found dealing with the review team to be highly frustrating.
I grew up in Ventura, maybe a mile from this library and I went there pretty often as a kid. It has been in danger of shutting down and has had fewer open hours for probably over a decade now - it's really pretty sad.

I agree that libraries are incredibly important, but it's disheartening that Mr. Bradbury dislikes colleges, universities and the internet so much, which have likely done so much more to educate people on the whole recently than the traditional local library system. In fact, the largest use of our local library here in the SF Bay area that I see now is the computer room. Free access to the internet for people who can't afford a computer or don't have a quiet place to use one is really enabling. That is in general far more useful to people than the book selections, which have been overshadowed by Borders and Barnes and Nobles, where you can often find a larger and more up to date selection and can sit and read them as well.

Mr. Bradbury says:

“They wanted to put a book of mine on Yahoo! You know what I told them? ‘To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.’

That's really sad. Why fight for a few hundred people to have access to books like yours for free, but turn down the chance for millions to be able to read it? How many more people can have access to "Fahrenheit 451" with a local shared $200 computer and a free version on the internet as opposed to paying for printing out a copy and shipping them to public libraries? Multiply that by every important book in the world and the costs of the first scenario hardly change and the costs of the second rise almost linearly.

I hope my old library survives, but I really hope that his views do not.
I'm only speaking for myself, but that's why I'll miss him. If that's not good enough for you, kindly fuck off.
God I hope so. Although it'll be quite a few years before I finish/start my doctorate.
I love my Model M keyboard(s). The sticker on them says Copyright 1984! Unfortunately, I've had to discontinue use of them at my workplace because the keyboard only has a PS/2 connector, and when using a PS/2-USB connector, it had too many issues like stuck/repeated key input or whatnot. One day I'll invest in a Unicomp one, to get the USB connector.
I personally don't find it convenient when my things break.
Tangent: is loose a non-American spelling of lose, or is it just commonly misspelled?