skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
There's a picture of me as a young child (4 years old) playing with the first Macintosh. From then until now (19 years later), I've been completely plugged in, basically all day every day.

So ... this post was amazing for me. It's like there's a whole world out there. It completely slapped me in the face. I realized I moved into this apartment a year ago and every single wall is stark white - there's not a picture or poster in the whole place, because I never look at the walls. I leave the lights off so I can focus on the computer screen better.

So I'm gonna do it, in September (I have a vacation then). A "31 day trial" of unplug (Though I will keep the fax, because it's so quaint and hilariously inefficient - and apparently my local Pizza Hut takes fax orders!).

But I just have this one question: what, exactly, do "offline" people actually do all day long?
Great idea! I would totally use a service like this too. You should write an email to the founders.
Yes, but what is the chance that these bacteria would survive the trip and thrive on Mars?
Tron Guy better get a cameo.
Having read the article I came here to comment and specifically mention this video.

I highly recommend taking the time to watch this video if you haven't seen it already.
The problem with having so many obscure laws is that they can be used selectively for political reasons. If it is true that we are all criminals, then we can all have our lives ruined (or at least damaged in some way) by someone powerful who we have angered.

I am reminded of a story a few years ago (a brief search found no reference) about a CEO who was fired "for cause" because he had left his water glass on a conference table in explicit violation of the policies laid out in the employee handbook. If breaking rules like that can get one fired, can anyone be fired without cause anymore? I doubt that the company's claim held up, but this still is an example of how complex rules/laws can be used to invoke the arbitrary will of the powerful.
You should tell them you're "on vacation" from now until forever. Saves paper and keeps you from having to bother with disposing of it.
Yeah, that's one thing that bothers me about the cases they presented. What on earth motivated the Feds to even look at these guys? They had to have been doing something else to warrant the attention in the first place, or else this country is in a lot worse shape than I imagined.
Not exactly, and I am not a lawyer. But from what I understand the business needs to exist as a legal entity and be reasonably able to pay you a living wage. I can't be a LLC with $500 in the bank. If it is less than one year old, and/or has no revenues, etc, they will ask for a lot of detailed business information.
From the article:

"If you're wondering how Goldman Sachs and other "big banks and hedge funds" made all their money this last quarter, now you know."

But from this article at Bronte Capital (via New Mogul):

"Anyway if 10 percent of global stock volume provides 220 million dollars revenue per quarter then there is no way that a substantial proportion of Goldman’s trading profit can come from high frequency trading. The numbers do not work."

(http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/07/high-frequency-tra...)
Cool use of special effects.
The author's rationale of "the law of large numbers" being responsible is awfully suspect, but then it is Techcrunch. More likely Bing users are currently less desensitized to sponsored results than long term users of Google.
Here's a nice intro to WebSockets:

http://www.kaazing.org/confluence/display/KAAZING/What+is+an...
I played a bit with Q (the predecessor language from the same author) a couple of years ago and I found it really interesting.

As far as I remember you couldn't define functions interactively but just recall them.

This one has a proper REPL environment. You can see all the definitions by evaluating 'show' and dump them all on a file with 'dump'.
No, it's from Office Space, and at least some of the downvoters probably knew that. People aren't very big on humor here; they tend to worry that if jokes are encouraged HN will turn into Reddit or something.
Peek hiring Engineers in NY/Bay Area
Joel Spolsky recalls dinner with Y Combinator
A previous post gives a better sense of the kind of person they are looking for.

http://www.geekypeek.com/?p=356
Speaking for this libertarian, no: I arrive at my little-l libertarianism primarily because [I believe that, based on the evidence,] government is a terrible solution to most problems. There's this logic most people seem to use: "We have a problem. Let us legislate a solution where the government will fix it. (Magic happens here.) The problem is solved." and I can't seem to find evidence for the magic. I further observe that the vast majority of people using this logic don't even notice that step, because it simply goes without saying that governments can do pretty much anything.

There are exceptions, where some sort of fair analysis of governments vs. some other solution are done, but even most of those exceptions strike me as being awfully trusting of the monolithic centralized power source.

I am drawn to libertarian economics because the market actually provides a solution to the "magic happens here" step in the form of an emergent solution to problems arrived at by free agents each locally choosing their optimal outcomes, and I describe myself as "little-l" because there's still a role for government in that world (especially in internalizing externalities). This economic idea actually explains why we are where we are; we had governments for thousands of years, but it wasn't until free markets (and some supporting technology) that modern civilization really developed.

My point here is to provide a counterexample to your claim, not to directly advocate libertarianism here. My libertarianism is result, not cause.

I also firmly believe in looking at economics as they are, not as a theorist says they should be... again, "little-l libertarian". I do observe that an awful lot of macroeconomics, if not most of it, is really an agenda looking for evidence; I wonder if the subject is not so large that no human can possibly work the problem the other way in the span of one lifetime.
In the sequel, he's now a web 2.0 social fiance application with a neural network that does realtime stock market transaction processing.
The largest problem with numerous overarching laws is that "ignorance of the law is not an excuse" cannot hold true. It is not possible for someone to be aware of all the laws that apply to them at any given moment, much less to understand the legalese corner cases written into them.
Like in Contact, if you buy the it-was-a-hoax interpretation?
I'm sorry, but I don't think this is the right forum for a public health care debate.
I don't have congnitive dissoance because I follow the political philosophy of anarcho-capitalism.(which incidently make me NOT a conservative)

Public services? No sir, I don't support them like I also don't support the drugs wars, military-industrial complex, and big welfare program like social security.

I ain't paying for someone else's problem and especially, someone's pork barrel program.
Is that an Apple Mighty Mouse on his desk!?
That's one thing I'd introduce into the constitution if I were rewriting it today: sunset provisions on all laws. Everything should expire after 30 years unless explicitly renewed by Congress, giving each generation the chance to shape their world anew.

This would fix so many problems. The copyright and patent laws would look dramatically different if they were written today. You wouldn't have silly state laws like it being illegal to have a goatee in Massachusetts, or it being illegal for moose to have sex on state highways in Alaska (how do they enforce that one?) We might rethink the war on drugs now that we've been at war for a generation. The 2nd amendment probably either shouldn't exist or should protect the rights of people to own much more than guns, now that a guy with a gun is easy fodder for a tank. You really need to legalize Stingers and TOWs to fulfill the original purpose of the 2nd amendment.

Curiously, the sunset provision on all laws should itself be subject to sunset provisions. It makes sense to make laws persistent when the world does not change very much over decades. In fact, we probably would not have developed our post-industrial society without it. It's only when the world starts getting massively remade on the timescale of 5-10 years that it makes sense for laws to expire and be remade themselves.

If only this didn't cause logical paradoxes at the time the sunset provision itself sunsets...
Well, I don't necessarily want to defend it, but I think there is a rationale to do with infrastructure. In the extreme case where everyone in a Hawaiian town offered a room to airbnb, the infrastructure would buckle under the increased population - not enough parking, some places are on cesspools that have limited capacity, water usage is a problem in some areas etc etc.

Granted there are also financial interests at stake, for example the state collecting a hefty room tax when people end up in hotels. But then that money goes to infrastructure among other things, so there is some method in the madness.
I think it pretty much goes without saying that, unless your drive has been freshly wiped, just about anyone could earn themselves a stint in Federal prison if their computer is confiscated and subjected to forensic analysis.

Between porn, tax evasion (although typically that would be a state crime), and copyright violations, all it takes is a desire by someone in power to ruin your life and you're toast.

I don't see any defense against this -- aside from unplugging -- except to try and cultivate friends in high places, so in case you step on someone's toes you have someone who can step in and get you out. It's unsafe to rely on the justice system to protect you just because you never meant to do anything wrong.
What if this bio-engineered martian life form gains the power to disrupt the internet with an endless stream of bizarre posts?
Yes, I was somewhat unsure about that, but I've seen much more diverse content here recently. I thought the only criteria really was high quality vs. junk.

My apologies if it's too far removed from the accepted forum content.
I think the SETI guys just died laughing. The poor guys have been getting by on a shoestring for years - the chance of anybody spending billions to mess with them is.... remote :-)
What I'm about to say is not pleasant. It comes from working in several different parts of the industry.

The greatest thing Wall Street sells is dreams. This will never go away. Every buy carries with it the thought that this one will go higher. Otherwise people wouldn't buy. As long as Wall Street continues to allow retail investors to play in the markets, there will be people who will come along for the ride.

EDIT: Don't get mad at me for saying it. I think I'm doing people a favor by pointing this out. You won't hear this from many other people.
It's plausible. That's what happened with Apple right? - they turned iTunes into an industry cash cow, and then used that leverage to switch most content to DRM-free.
All of the states use "At Will employment" rules (with varying levels of exemptions). That means that anyone can be fired without cause today.
Well... I think I'm underwhelmed, though I'm not quite sure.

(Later edit: IMHO, Scriptor's comment invalidates much of this, though I'll leave it for posterity's sake. Thank you.)

Tron 1 wasn't about "lightcycles". If you honor the original movie and understand it, it should be clear that lightcycles are just part of the local landscape because of the lightcycle game, along with the other stuff there. Another contemporaneous computer system would have more local flavor; modern computer systems have yet more richness to draw on.

If Tron 2 is just the standard Hollywood mishmash rehashing of old themes with no particular comprehension of what made the original special, count me out. Tron ought to be something that can be made into a universe as rich as Star Trek, honestly, if you take the core concepts from the first movie and just run with it, but if you're going to get stuck on "remixing" the peripheral concepts, meh.

I might be wrong, and this might be in a "game" context, though it still seems pretty abusive of the lightcycle context.
Nonzero.
When will that be, and when will all Browsers support it?
Early Stage Prostrate Cancer Treatments - VERY Important Tips
Here is a statement from the EPA regarding Everston's case: http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/eebfaebc1afd883d852...

Here is a statement from the DOJ regarding the Orchid case and the sentencing of George Norris' accomplice: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/July/04_enrd_515.htm

I find it highly suspect that these two fellows were simply innocent victims.
http://wdmp-7.vo.llnwd.net/d1/wdsmp/TRON/VFXConcept/Grid_VFX...

Direct link to the 1080p trailer download.
Death of E. Lynn Harris at 54
First flapping, two-winged aircraft takes flight
I've always kind of figured that the halos around holy figures had to be rooted in something real. Older cultures weren't so big on fictionalizing things. They generally drew or wrote about something real. Maybe they didn't understand it well and made up some myth to explain what it seemed like to them, the way Native Americans (of the northwest) had the idea that the world was a piece of land floating in a bowl of water and an earthquake was when one of the gods pushing down on one end of the land, causing it to dip under the water. This is a fairly accurate representation of the tsunamis that occur after coastal earthquakes. It makes sense from that perspective as an attempt to make a logical model of observed events in the face of incomplete information.

We talk about a bride "glowing" on her wedding day. Perhaps that is not merely hyperbole. Perhaps it is something subtly perceived. And perhaps halos are also something subtly perceived. Saying that makes me think of expressions like "bringer of light" or "a light upon the world".
No, you're good.
I believe that executive employment contracts often predefine severance packages if one is fired without cause. The employee does not want to end up unemployed if he gets into a minor squabble with a board member, and the board does not want to pay out if the executive is caught supplementing his income through drug dealing.

Also, I suspect that it is harder for someone let go to claim employment discrimination if he is fired for supposed cause. However, further elaboration would require a law degree on my part.
Not really. No one can force Apple to support something. It is like Microsoft being forced to support their applications on WINE.
Yeah, because he believes they are fallacious. You don't expect scientists to include the Biblical story of creation in their work, do you?
Over-networking leads to groupthink - on digg, reddit, here?
All restaurant menus should have pictures of each dish. I notice I always end up ordering something on the menu that there happens to be a picture of, so why not show every item so I can compare and actually see what I'm getting.
Self cleaning bathrooms. A whole premade bathroom made out of 1 gaint piece of plastic or fiberglass so no crevices. It is sort of designed like the inside of a dishwasher with a drain,etc to clean it. (I hope you don't mind I'm posting a couple different ideas.)
> With such a broad law, the second jury didn't have much of a choice, and it convicted him

The jury always has a choice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
Charlie Rose asks about Loopt at 10:30. That's got to be some kind of milestone.
Thank you for posting this -- I had partly read this book but had to return it to the library many years ago. I have been meaning to finish it for a long time.
Now, now, don't go ruining this fine government-bashing thread with your "facts" and "research".
They are probably evaluated on how many convictions they get or cases they bring. They don't know this guy or care that it was minor, he was "breaking the law". Then once he is found innocent if they can later get him on something else they save face, see he really was guilty of something.
Just saw this other thread about an HN Vancouver meetup.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=722724
Yes. IIRC they got a really good recommendation from the Justin.TV founders. Then once we met them we were sold too.
I remember when the controversy first flared up there. Basically, there's one Wikipedia user who has an axe to grind against a particular publication, and parlayed that into the whole slew of nasty warnings you see now.

I actually tried to take part in the discussion for a little while, but gave up when it was clear that the dude was just pursuing some personal dislike of a source rather than any real questions about the reliability of information.
That's a confused analogy, because that's still a matter of fact. Hazlitt may have a value system in which government doesn't seem to accomplish anything valuable, but perhaps government accomplishes something that I find valuable instead.

Libertarians don't seem to care much for economic equality (hell, neither do I) but it's not the place of economics to choose our value system. And, as a matter of economic fact, maybe some non-libertarian policies will enforce economic equality! (Though even this is arguable.) Or, maybe I care a LOT about enforcing some kind of baseline standard of living for everyone, inefficiencies be damned. Maybe government can help me do this. But most libertarians are uninterested in that goal, too.

Economists don't get to decide what kind of society we want to live in any more than the rest of us. Their job is to tell us whether it's possible, how to get there, and what the costs will be.
The internet can still help with the "who I am" and "why I'm here" questions. There are so many readily available viewpoints out on the internet that I can use to help shape my worldview. Certainly many more than the predominantly white, Christian home state.
No law degree here, but I'd gladly be fired over a squabble with a board member - that's a clear sign of a company I don't want to work at.
I don't think I disagree with you that much. All economics can tell us is that libertarian policies maximize wealth, they can't tell us "libertarian policies are good" or "we should adopt libertarian policies". Maybe I think it's more important to provide a social safety net than to maximize wealth. We would agree on the economic fact that there is a tradeoff here, but we would disagree on which side of the tradeoff to make. Just like engineering.
I've been saying the same thing for the past 10 years. I usually get a bunch of blank stares in response, I'm glad that there is another person with the same thoughts.

I disagree about the second amendment though, along with any other constitutional provision. They are a little too serious for me to sunset.
High Tech Swimsuits Banned
Scaling issues, in other words. All good reasons, but perhaps my cynical reasons are just as true :)
We call it 'Hubbub in passing (note the single quote contraction). Also heard people call it "push" for PSH.
OSCON: The saga of MySQL
Agreed - the title is obvious link-bait, and they mention "thousands of upstanding citizens" rotting in jail before giving very selective information about just two examples which seem to me as rather complex in nature - abandonment of dangerous materials and selling prohibited trade species.

Maybe I'm from a repressed generation, but it seems to me like common sense to consult a lawyer before starting a business, especially if it's "selling rare orchids to make some cash on the side".

And getting outraged over Fox News trash reporting is such a reddit cliché, guys, give me a break.
One of the things I love about Taleb is he doesn't cite lots of thinkers and have lots of quotes and references.

He writes from his head. He doesn't go digging through books looking for choice quotes to sprinkle throughout the text and make it appear more intelligent. I don't care if his ideas come from a lot of different sources. He synthesizes them very well.

The alternative way of writing really irritates me now. For instance, I was just reading "Poverty in America". The book literally starts by saying something like:

-In 1979 the government official in charge of fighting poverty in America stated, "Poverty will be extinct in 10 years." But it hasn't happened...blah blah

The whole book starts with some quote that is so shaky. Who is this guy who said it? Was he sober or drunk when he said it? What was the context? What did he mean by "extinct" and "poverty".

I love Taleb because he doesn't just snatch things out of context to help bolster his arguments. He thinks up his own stuff. He puts everything in his words. If you don't understand something enough that you can't fluidly describe it in your own words, you shouldn't be writing about it. I think PG's essays also are almost entirely in his own words, which is one of the reasons why they are generally so logical and clear.

Also, the disparaging is well deserved IMO. I think it's more than warranted to disparage people who don't understand statistics who are supposed to. At the very least, people who understand stat/prob should take themselves much less seriously than they do. I know it is very hard to always speak with correct probabilistic language, humans are programmed to speak in stories and not probability, but there should be a greater acknowledgement of this by financial, media, and other professionals. Until that happens disparage all you want.
First? Better let them know:
http://www.ornithopter.org/

Ornithopters have been around a long time. The first successful ornithopter, the size of a pigeon, was flown in 1870.
That was pissing me off too, I was starting to lose faith in it giving any real cases.

If they jury truly had no choice in this case, Then I feel it stands to reason Jury's don't have enough power in our legal system, The whole idea of a jury is to bring the common citizen to the legal process, and hopefully some common sense to the law.

Not being able to save an injustly, if lawfully, accused man for the crime of not knowing all the paperwork a disgusting flaw in our system.

I would hope articles such as this bring the issue to life in the political arena.
Few juries know this. Fewer still have the courage to apply it.
Daring Fireball: Pay Walls
A quiet home environment. A quiet work environment. I'm not anti-social; I just want to be able to escape others' noise and distraction when I am trying to concentrate or to rest.
The true cognitive dissonance on healthcare is the popular belief that medicine matters to health outcomes. Diet and lifestyle drive all population health outcomes. When people compare countries and try to talk about health care systems, they are really talking about diet and demographics.
As someone who is shocked by the group think that's hit news.YC lately, thank you for such an insightful post.
It's probably not a bad thing to have laws against abandoning dangerous materials - but like the article states there should be provisions relating to the intent of the accused and the actual danger to the community, not simply a vague set of circumstances that someone might fall into.
If constitutional rights had sunset provisions, we'd do away with the Bill of Rights the first time they sunsetted during a crime wave and we elected people to be "tough on crime".
> No law should have enough reach that a judge and jury could convict in even one case on that level of trivialness.

What is this "should" of which you write?

Note that successfully defending yourself in court can be horrendously expensive.
Why do people listen to Dvorak?
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Avatar raises the bar on 3-D film technology
So I thought the cycles looked absolutely great! But the people looked badly animated. Their limbs moved in a way that seemed to me like the motion equivalent of the uncanny valley.