skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
don't see any reason why we need to demonize the people who don't know what to do.

Maybe if someone had demonized them a little earlier, they wouldn't be so worthless right now.
Well, messiness is just one part of the problem. I usually see AI as a layered system that solves a general problem. The layers are broadly: lower level sensory systems(vision, speech recognition) and higher level symbolic reasoning systems. Recently, there has a been a lot of success in the lower layers due to Machine Learning and probabilistic systems. The messiness comes in the lower layers. When dealing with the higher layers you face much harder problems. Hard in the sense of Turing uncomputable. The only formal solution proposed for general AI is uncomputable http://www.hutter1.net/ai/uaibook.htm.

Also there is nothing which restricts real world problem solvers to a single domain. Most messy problems have a formal solution. The engineering part is what remains (but the engineering part is nevertheless hard!). Some non "messy" problems have no computable solution e.g. deciding whether an arbitrary argument in first order logic is true. They challenge the bounds on human thinking.

Also "General Game Playing" is not only about games. (Like Game Theory is not only about games).
I don't need to read a book to understand your point. It's easy to criticize these people and difficult for many of us to imagine what life is like in their shoes.

Most people I know (and probably most people here) want to be sympathetic, they want to root for the underdog. For those in need, we routinely open up our wallets, both voluntarily with a smile (charity) and involuntarily without a smile (taxes).

The analogy I prefer to use is teaching your child to walk. We never give up, but we can't walk for them. Sooner or later they have to do it for themselves. And some have an easier time than others learning.

Adults dealing with difficulties are much the same. These people are obviously having a tougher time than most people here would with their problems. But based on OP's slim descriptions, they still have to try harder.

What you call "middle class condemnations", many posters here would just call "calling them out". Forget about the lottery tickets, beer, soda, and donuts, and get a little more proactive. And for heaven's sake, if someone offers you a job, grab it! Choosing to stay on unemployment instead of working earns little sympathy here.
The DMCA is one of the worst laws to come out of Washington ever. I don't think there is another law that so completely proves that Washington is beholden to corporate interests far more than people's interests. Somebody on the linked article calls it a corportocracy, and I don't think that is too far off.

That said, it is illegal, it is not surprising that you're going to get busted.
It's a playful representation of one key lesson.
This is a very, very important detail.

I was talking to a VP of a game company in Europe about 3rd party servers for games like World of Warcraft. He said that they don't really pay attention to them, except for when they run it for a profit. The minute $$ is involved, they have a special phone # at the FBI to call and get the servers raided the next day.
"This sounds terribly familiar. I had a friend who was taken in to those Multi-Level-Marketing (MLM) schemes (basically pyramid schemes by another name), and had me come along with him to one of their 'meetings' to introduce their method to new people who wanted to get rich. This pretty much nails the language dead-on"

One major difference, Leon: the book is free and it is not selling anything other than your own success and happiness.

"and the fact that you link to 'onestopinternetbusiness.com' makes me very wary of anything you are saying."

Here is the Google search I used to find it: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22think+and+grow+r...

I have no interest or affiliation with the site.

"If, however, other people can make a statement for the usefulness of the book or the author or something to backup these remarks, then maybe it is an alright source of inspiration. But otherwise, why would any sensible person read that pdf you link to?"

A sensible person might check my other comments, profile, etc. to get a sense of who I am and what I believe in.
The good thing about powerpoint can be that the professor actually thinks about how he is going to present his topic. I find that old-school professors tend to drift a lot.
This is crazy, especially in California, where jails are completely overpopulated (the jail currently holding Hans Reiser is designed for ~1700 people and currently has ~3400).

Agree with ujjwalg - sending someone to jail for that is crazy.

The point of jail is to physically stop someone from hurting other people. As in with fists or knives or guns. It's to stop violence. It is not to redress perceived economic or copyright infringements.

Are they serious?! You're going to take a human being, a fellow countryman (and a technically skilled one!) and actually forcibly confine him to a cage, because he circumvented the copy protection on a video game?!

What kind of crazy society is this, anyway. Welcome to the Twilight Zone.
People complain about education too much. Kids will find their way. You shouldn't judge a generation until they're over 50 and vote a Republican goofball into office that destroys the American economy. Now they obviously had some bad education.
Your motivation to learn the language will be a strong factor in your success. Wanting specifically to communicate in the language is a big plus.

Get as much contents as you can and use it. Since you are studying Spanish, if you have access to a Spanish language cable network (or a broadcast TV or radio station in some cities) use that. Start with something that is fairly predictable, like the weather forecast. Get podcasts and listen to those. Rent movies in Spanish (and turn off the English subtitles).

On the other side, find people to talk to. Ideally, you want native speakers. You want to spend extended periods talking in Spanish. Force yourself to say what you have to say in your new language, even badly, ungrammatically. You will make mistakes.

Two blogs I like that emphasize exactly these two facets of language learning are:

The Linguist on Language: http://thelinguist.blogs.com/how_to_learn_english_and/

Fluent In 3 Months: http://www.fluentin3months.com/
Just because you're having a bad day doesn't mean you can be an asshole to everybody. Go somewhere else for that kind of thing.
Unfortunately, it isn't a question of should it be legal or not. Anybody with any common sense can see that it should not be illegal, but common sense does not rule our country.

The DMCA makes this illegal. Good thing Homeland Security could jump in and save us here.
Domestic violence: A disturbing symptom of the Iraqi refugee crisis
Last I heard it was also contributing to terrorism.
I learned English by playing video games. Back in the day they didn't localize the games or the manuals, so I had to read them in English.
Why Don't Managers Think Deeply?
"Customs" -> key word
They lost me at golf.

Ride his dirt bike? Sure, a fairly inexpensive (and fun!) pasttime. Fishing? Same deal. Golf? Holy Batman, golf is an expensive sport to get into.

I'm making double what he did at his peak, and I don't feel like a golf club membership.
It turns out that tinkering with parts should not be a crime.

When did it turn out? It neither 'should' nor 'should not' be a crime, objectively, that I can see.

Neither of those are crimes, so why should modifying a game console be one?

You can't kill or speed without large and noticable external signals, such as a speeding car or a dead/missing person. You can also target shoot and race on private tracks.

You can pirate video games without any significantly noticable events, and there isn't much else you can do with a chipped console.

Video game piracy has more justification for legal blocks earlier in the process.
Yay. Atlas Shrugged has some great insights in it, but the way it is revered in some places gives me the creeps.
Slide And RockYou Reboot
Microsoft’s Point Man on Search–Satya Nadella–Speaks (vid)
Public schooling doesn't, to my knowledge, promote economic or mental health. American corporations have spent a lot of money promoting stupidity over the last century ("Century of the Self" is a great documentary on how they did it). When you come from a milieu that doesn't think about the future and live in a society where people are encouraged not to think about the future, it's easy to end up an economic casualty.
they are not charging people who got their consoles jailbroken. They charged the guy who was jailbreaking them for money.

Moreover, the analogy you have is completely irrelevant. I was not arguing against the moral issue behind it. I was saying he broke the LAW and thatz it.
The split personality of HTML5
So what. You sell it, you should lose every right to control it.

As soon as you ask somebody to pay for something you lose control over every aspect of it. If that is not your intention you should rent your devices to people.

What really amazes me is that the law enforcement people are so eager to comply with this stuff that they even set up a special hotline for it.

As far as I'm concerned these kids are doing honest work, they're breaking a chain of control that should not even be there.
Yeah I can just imagine it now:

We are sorry but you can't buy this item because we don't iPay to be associated with questionable content.
Yeah, in a way Apple doing this is a zoomed fractal version of what is happening with China. They make and sell lots of stuff and they use the money to build out their financial industry. It's also what GE (GE Capital), Sears (Discover Card) and to an extent Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway which started life as a textile company.
Homebrew isn't much else?
He broke a law that should not exist in the first place.
That could work - Yahoo is US, Microsoft is UK (and traditional Western Europe). AT&T could be Italy, Motorola is Eastern Europe. Nokia makes a lot of sense as Japan since they seem to have their own set of priorities but are kinda cooperating with Android (Google)...
I know many - but they are all immigrants who do not have the notion that owning your own single-family home is a birthright.

Hell, the city where I grew up had to revise the hydro scheme from flat-rate to metered just because there were so many families combining into what used to be a single-family home.

I also know many families who invested in a large house and rent out a suite to another family. The mortgage practically pays itself, and with some renovations you can preserve your privacy also.

In the words of my parents, who are both Asian immigrants to Canada, who come from poor backgrounds (well, one of them anyways): some people have had too good of a life, and can't sacrifice what they need to sacrifice when times get tough, as they invariably do.
Twilio Contest Entry - PhoneSimon
I'd like to know how to survive for a week without my debit card, then. It's my only really consistent source of money.
Isn't "living in your parents' basement" and EXAMPLE of families that have joined forces and gotten houses together?
If I incorporate a US LLC, can I work abroad without a local work permit?
Does anyone have experience with this? Also, how does this work from a local IRS perspective?
I remember suggesting this to Steve Case when he was CEO of AOL. It was before paypal and it would have made a lot of sense for AOL to become the micropayment processor since they already had access to their subscriber's credit cards. I'm glad they really didn't move on it though, because they could have killed the movement of large content companies going to the web with it. Why publish free on the web when you could have made money for articles on AOL? AOL at the time was the largest ISP.
Video of a Netflix hub:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWA0LKfEv3c
For me there was a huge difference between a professor going through the process of deriving a formula on a board versus just having it flash up on a Powerpoint slide.

You could probably use Powerpoint to simulate that, but most professors don't. Even if you do show the intermediate steps, I think the gradual process of watching something being written out (as well as then having the time to write it out yourself) let's it sink in better.

Even something like having to decipher the professor's handwriting contributes to better understanding. If it's ambiguous what a particular symbol is, you're forced to think harder about the context it's in to figure it out. I'm not saying lectures should be given with obfuscated notes or anything, but that split second of interpretation your brain has to do adds value in the end.
Xilinx ISE. Admittedly I only used it for a college course ~1.5 years ago, and then only whatever version they made freely downloadable, but it was ridiculously buggy and user-unfriendly compared to any other development tool I've tried.
Ask HN:  How do you make money on a non-viral iPhone app?
Suppose that the number of daily purchases without ongoing advertising would be too small to make any reasonable money.

Would constant spending on advertising potentially be profitable?

What sorts of numbers are involved? How would one proceed in this direction?
I don't care how poor you are, or how little you make, 12 months of savings is a MUST. I simply can't imagine living paycheck-to-paycheck like that.
The bottom line is usually "You should keep in house what can gain you a competitive advantage (your core business), other stuff can be outsourced if it saves costs".

That's an oversimplification, but it sums up what the general thinking should be.
Great insights. Anything on revenue forecast Paul?
This guy worked for 2 decades paycheck-to-paycheck? He had zero savings after working for 20 years. He never bought a home and has one beat up car and one that is broken down? Did he spend all his money on smokes, beer, donuts, pepsi and gambling? Does he expect sympathy? Stop gambling, stop smoking, buy some cheap healthy food for your family, rice and beans perhaps? If you need beer (really, 8 in the middle of the day when you have no job?) buy a 6 pack for home, it's cheaper. Take any job you can get and network/work your ass off. None of this is complicated or hard to figure out. I feel bad for their children.
Seems like someone squealed to the Po-Po, if I were him I'ld love to get my hands on them.
If that is not your intention you should rent your devices to people.

That's more or less what these companies are doing. If you read the mouseprint, you're effectively buying a licence to use their device on their terms. :P
There are plausible reasons to modify a game console that aren't just pirated games. I haven't followed modchips et al recently, but historically a mod chip was required to use any non-standard software at all (for instance, installing a different operating system like XBMC). I think it's the same today.
"When he lost his job, Scott had no savings, his primary objective always having been to earn enough to cover the rent, eat an occasional steak, feed and clothe their children, ride his dirt bike, fish, golf, play poker, buy lottery tickets, and drink Bud Light."

This is the primary reason for the hardship that majority of the middle americans are facing in this tough times.
There has never been a culture of 'saving'. as an asian immigrant, saving has been deeply rooted into my psyche. Travel and recreation is one thing, but golf, fish, poker, lottery - when you have 2 kids and a wife to support ?

all aside, i thoroughly enjoyed reading the comments on HN more than the story itself.
Genetic Algorithms 101
If pre-existing copyright law is to be considered, then we are entitled to make an archival copy of a work to serve as a backup. What's the point of allowing for an archival copy if that law also doesn't imply that you should be allowed to use said archival copy in the event that the original is destroyed? And if you are entitled to use the archival copy, then you summarily should be entitled to remove whatever restrictions from a device in order to lawfully use that archival copy.

IMO this guy did nothing wrong based on the spirit of the law, but it is rather the DMCA that is in conflict. If you want to charge anyone with a crime, it shouldn't be the guy who removed the restrictions, it should be whoever was actually pirating games using his modifications.
do you remember the link to the HN article you talked aboout?
I checked out "strong interaction". Who couldn't love a song with a line like "you quark me bottom (shoot shoot on isospin)" ...?
YC startups unite to drive nail into the coffin of Internet Explorer 6
I use CintaNotes (http://cintanotes.com). It's really well suited for quick saving and finding little bits of information. Hot keys are highly configurable too, so that you can use Win key for example.
> It's this short-sightedness that let them end up in this situation.

When you're close to the poverty line you've been taught by experience that saved money will be just eaten up by future crises anyway, so why not enjoy a little treat while you can? If future pain seems unavoidable, why not take some pleasure today?
Odd to think it's taken till now for someone to build the whole loop.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
The Google Voice Speed Dial Bookmarklet Generator
I really like the scratchable input idea, but their gestures seem overly complex for realistic use. I think that double tapping on my desk to answer or hangup on a speaker phone call would be a nice touch to any smart phone. You could probably implement it with the microphones already existing on most handsets.
"handgun manufacturers build guns solely to murder other human beings"

That's a gross oversimplification of a complex issue. Very few people obtain a handgun legally for the purpose of Murdering somebody. (Less than 1% of legally obtained firearms are used in a crime) The primary reason to own one is for personal protection which implies the direct preservation of life. Ignoring that fact is intellectually dishonest.
Mine: http://www.cs.vt.edu/~scschnei/streamflow

We allocated fixed size chunks of N objects, although we didn't have a smooth function for what the chunk size was. The inflection points where we changed our strategy were cache-line size and page size.

Used/free record keeping was a simple table to map an address to the data structure for that address, and we re-used the free memory for an internal list.

That's what we did to get good sequential performance - it was the multithreaded performance we were interested in. Aiming for good multithreaded performance influenced the data structure design to be simpler to reduce synchronization.

Details are in the paper and source code.
the idea being the American LLC is paying an American via an American bank accounts. Neglecting the physical location of the individual. The person in question could be working somewhere on a tourist visa conceptually.
It really depends on the application. I just use the default system allocator until it's inadequate for some task, and then I switch to an allocation scheme or heap allocator that's well-suited for that problem.

Can you tell us more about your specific problem? Then we'd be able to give suggestions and help evaluate the options.
It provides perverse incentives.

and here we have the primary problem. those unjust situations are usually the indirect effect of other people acting on their perverse incentives.
To add to your point: don't just save, have a pre-sorted plan to reduce your burn rate drastically. Always know the barest minimum burn rate you can have, and keep plans to take it down that low if necessary.

A lesson I learned from my student days, when money was highly variable month-to-month.

I don't do so right now, but I can take my food budget down to about $200 a month in a pinch, and shed a lot of other expenses (Netflix, VPS, etc) with little to no penalty. Keep your head in reality and know what in your life is a luxury and what is a need.
ARPANET maps, 1969-1977
actually americans constantly look towards the future much more than other societies.
i thoroughly enjoyed reading the comments on HN more than the story itself.

That's the whole point.

If a tree falls in the forest with no one around, does it make a sound?

If you read an article on the internet without hn comments, did you really get all you could out of it?
If I'm not paying a monthly I'm buying it.

If there is a bill of sale I'm buying it.

If there is a rental agreement and I have to return it at the end of the agreement then I'm renting it.

More or less doesn't cut it.
I like how all the articles about the F-22 say it's a relic of the cold war; a case of fighting the last war. Right now "the last war" is asymmetric bombing of poor brown people. The next war very well might be a conventional war against a nation with a serious air force.

I have no real opinions on the F-22, but all these dismissals of it as some obvious waste are odd to me. Specific merits of the F-22 aside, pursuit of air supremacy over technologically advanced nations is not so obviously a waste, I don't think. It merits discussion.
A.K.A. a Mission Statement

It's a statement of purpose, or what you will do as a company.

It's OK to have a mission, a plan and a promise while remaining agile and open to new possibilities that may affect or change those plans.
I have two go-to solutions for malloc. In order of preference:

I use arena allocators when I can get away with it. Arenas are absolutely trivial to code; there's no per-object "free", so allocation is just a pointer bump. You will be surprised at how often you can get away with this; lots of allocation-heavy code paths map to a single operation, transaction, request, file, or what-have-you, and all you're doing is deferring free to the end of it. Using arenas in this scenario basically erases the cost of allocation from your program. It's also dramatically harder to fuck up.

For anything else, when malloc hits the top of my profile, I have a simple freelist library for pools of homogenous allocations, with an embedded linked list of free items.

You could get smarter than an arena, a generic freelist, and malloc, but why?
Has Google Found a Stairway to Heaven in Brooklyn?
I feel obligated to point out that jail is also used as a deterrent.
I feel bad for these folks (I myself grew up in South Bend, Ind., right next door to Elkhart), but, I do have to say that to some extent, this is just a consequence of tying your career and your fate to a frivolous recreational fad that is highly dependent on ultra, ultra-cheap and plentiful energy as an input, and then getting yourself into a highly leveraged financial position on top of it.

The moment that stops being the case, that economic sector stops being.

You just have to either 1) get the skill set and make a career in something that seems to be durable and sustainable and for which there is always a certain level of demand, or 2) take the appropriate risk-mitigation measures if you want to go work in something more ephemeral.

No, nothing lasts forever, and in capitalism, everything changes. But some things clearly change more than others, and the change is of a higher magnitude. Basing your family's fate around a pure-recreational industry is really no better than playing games as a businessperson with pointless non-value-added risk-free regulatory arbitrage opportunities (of which there is MUCH in telecom) or spreads that arise in various loopholes. That's just not a good way to ensure that there will be a tomorrow.
Yeah, but a mission statement is something you put on a wall. A promise is something you make to a _person_. There's a difference.
Of course, someone has to babysit the software and fix the broken robots.

(Which is why I don't see automation as a bad thing, even only taking into account the effect on the job pool.)
That must have been a long time ago considering that you've already forgotten how to spell South Africa. It's not hyphenated in English.

Anyway, good luck over there.