skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"I can't hear you over the continual sounds of the cash register... MS and Apple continue to be enormously profitable doing business the way they do." http://www.kottke.org/09/07/whos-up-for-a-little-microsoft-v...
You seem obsessed with this topic, but I question the quality of your sources and analysis. Of course if there were an exponential rise in money supply or similar absent a different fiscal, monetary and regulatory climate then this would be deeply alarming. But I feel you're making a meta-version of the same mistake many economists did, of over-extrapolating from a short trend. Massive policy changes inevitably result in discontinuities of quantitative data, so it's a mistake to apply the trend which obtained up to the discontinuity to the new discontinuity.

To take an oft-used metaphor, suppose the economy is a car or truck and money supply is one part of the steering system. If you notice you're heading for a crash, well you're going to spin the wheel hard or slam on the brakes - there's your discontinuity. The path of the car, on the other hand (which is GDP), will change more slowly. And once you've observed that the new course takes you out of immediate danger, you can then moderate the control system which you had drastically changed. In other words, slamming on the brakes (or accelerating out of danger, or swerving - adjust your metaphor to taste) does not in itself damage the car, but aims to substantially alter its vector.

In the bigger picture, addressing the question of whether the US economy will be in the toilet or at least near to it for years to come, of course it will. Just as the unpleasant effects of a hangover can often go on longer than the drinking party which induced it, so it will take time to unwind and recover from the serious structural imbalances of recent years. Obviously, I have a more sanguine view of this process than you do, as I believe it will still be possible for opportunity and growth to take place in the US. If you find my view dangerously laid-back, I guess the appropriate thing for you would be to invest heavily in defense contractors and raw materials.
It seems to me the only reason to join MENSA is to brag about the fact that you got in.
We use ADP. It's not very expensive and they do a good job of handling everything. I hear it can be quite costly if you're having people punch in and out, but for just a few guys programming on salary the cost is less than you'll probably spend on coffee.

Anyone who has a small team of engineers and does it themselves is insane. You'd gain more from staying in the programming zone for 5 minutes than you'd save in processing costs.
How to improve your website’s SEO
One of the most frequently questions that people make me is 'How do I make google index my website faster and in top results?'
Trying burning modern laser printer/copier paper, it's not easy, especially lots of pages together
Better than <insert sensationalist blanket statement to insight linkbait>.

How about, Cloud Computing Making Dedicated Hardware Obsolete For Some. Was that so difficult? Took me 10 seconds.
I think it's kind of gone the other way now too. If someone "brags" about having joined MENSA I'd pretty much roll my eyes.
BetterPrivacy: Firefox add-on to delete Flash-cookies
It's a fraternity.. don't waste your time.

(disclaimer: never had anything to do with it nor do I know anyone who has)
Call me old school, but I don't like having desktop environment in a browser (webtop sounds fine to me) to be called an OS. An OS is much more than that.
Here's her TED talk on the same topic:

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes....
That's one of my favorites as well.

For all the tracks marked "Voice", he's using his voice as a solo instrument, but not singing words. The description sounds cheesy, but the result is surprisingly effective -- simple and haunting.
That's a different argument.

You said Macs only sell because of marketing but don't have features to justify price. But you named all the features Macs contain in one package and said it takes multiple PCs to get the same features. So I argue that they do justify the price.

Whether those features appeal to you personally is yet another argument, but Apple knows thier target customer appreciates those features and will pay for them all in one computer.

And yes, Macs also break. Although they're rated at the top in customer-service and repair every year.
For me, they're different 'flavours' of programming and fit on a different chart. The C++/Java/C# line is for static programming with heavy reliance on a compiler -- the idea is that the compiler helps you find lots of errors. In all three languages, getting the program to compile rules out whole rafts of problems.

Python and Ruby move that responsibility onto tests -- you run the code to find errors.

I think C++/Java/C# fit onto a line, each taking away accidental complexity and adding higher level features. C# iterators and lambdas are a good example the OP mentions, of a high-level feature that makes possible styles not available in Java and C++. (we use C# iterators and lambdas to write in a more functional style than we could in Java)
Hmm, pricing page seems to want data that it can't find:

Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/.sites/28/site1/web/shared/shared.inc.php on line 53
I would recommend getting in contact with your local group and trying to meet a few members. What you get out of it could depend largely on how active your local group is and whether or not it's one you fit into. My local group is made up primarily of a much older crowd so I don't get much out of it besides a subscription to the Mensa magazine and local newsletter. There's a very active GenX/GenY Yahoo group, but it tends to be dominated by a handful of right-wing trolls. No thanks.

You need to coordinate a time to take the admission test through a local member anyway, assuming you haven't taken another test that could qualify you. There are quite a few that can be accepted so you'll want to look into it. It's possible you've already scored high enough on one of their accepted tests and you only need to submit the results.

If you don't anticipate being active in your local group you could go ahead and join anyway just to put it on a resume, although there are mixed opinions on how that's perceived by potential employers. I mention on my resume that I'm a member and I don't think it's ever been a problem, but I've heard about managers who toss resumes in the trash for it. As I write this I see that another commenter has said that they roll their eyes when someone mentions being a member. The reality probably is that very few people will be impressed by it.

The admission test itself is surprisingly simple. There are actually two of them and you only need to pass one. The first test is the Wonderlic and the second is a test designed by Mensa. If you fail both you don't get to reapply. You never learn your score. You're only told whether you passed or failed.

The tests contain nothing like those ridiculous Mensa brain teaser books. They're the types of questions that most reasonably intelligent people can answer fairly easily. They're not unlike the questions you see on the online Mensa practice test or one of those tickle.com IQ tests. What makes it difficult is that you've got insane time constraints. You end up with about 12-15 seconds per question. One test is fill in the blank and the other is multiple guess scantron. You basically have to be writing your answer while reading and solving the next problem. The person who proctored my exam said that there's about a 60% failure rate. It probably says more about the people applying than the actual test, but I thought it was interesting.

Is it worth it? I don't know. I don't get much out of the membership. I was interested in meeting up with similar minded people to have discussions, etc., but I think more than anything it was a personal challenge. I wanted to know if I could do it. As for the interaction with smart people, I think I get more out of HN than I could ever get out of Mensa.
It involves senior apple management sitting around reading entrails. Why do you think Job's needed a liver transplant? They needed to check the old one for the reasons they signed with AT+T
If you are looking for seeds for a social life in a strange city, then yes. But remember that membership in Mensa is not an achievement, it signifies nothing other than that you scored well on a standardised test.
He says this makes Twitter more confusing for new users, and I'd argue that is becoming less important.

My Grandma knows about Twitter, which puts the total number of websites she can list offhand to 2, the other site being Google.
Nanotech: The Key to Storing Carbon?
Not unless you need to be a member to get the puzzle books and magazines. I don't know what the materials are like these days but growing up we had a few MENSA books around the house full of brain teases and logic problems, I used to love going through them and trying to solve (or rarely, actually solving) the problems.

I don't know what the point of actually being a member is though, unless you're going to get a T-shirt, an "I'm with MENSA" truckers hat or something along those lines...
Twitpocalypse: The Second Coming is on the horizon
That's one of the hardest parts of business; seeing things from other people's perspective. The concept of that banality of evil can be applied wider as a thought tool: the banality of I don't get why they did that, but they thought they had a good reason at the time.

Come to think of it, that might be one reason why YC seems to be having good luck teaching programmers about business; we're more used to adjusting our views to reality than most professions. So just think of it as a syntax error that you've found and fixed.
the gap between treasuries and TIPS is growing nicely, signally at least inflationary expectations
In my unscientific trial, it looks like the hard link is an order of magnitude faster. Still, it takes time.

$ du -sh README.markdown
4.0K	README.markdown

$ time ln README.markdown README.markdown.link

real	0m0.002s
user	0m0.000s
sys	0m0.001s

$ time cp README.markdown README.markdown.copy

real	0m0.041s
user	0m0.000s
sys	0m0.002s
Another way of stating this would be to say that the top 1% now cumulatively earn roughly half as much as the entire bottom 95% combined, as their income has risen while the bottom 95% declined. So much for that old 'rising tide raises all boats' myth.
I happened to catch this video on Reddit yesterday and there was a thread with some illuminating insights:

http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/comments/962oj/bobby_mcferrin...
the people here seem so self-motivated that i would be surprised if many of them would want to pay yearly fees to be told they are smart, as opposed to simply telling themselves they're smart or, better yet, not really worrying about it at all.

those looking for a new, ultra-stimulating social circle may think mensa offers more than their local universities or alumni associations, but i'm not so sure. i would also worry that mensa might select for a unique type of person who is highly invested in his perceived intelligence (which is often to the detriment of friendship and productive conversation). i wonder if anyone can tell us more about the organization...
I qualified with my GRE scores in the last batch of GRE scores what was accepted by MENSA... I hear it lets you get car insurance discounts from some places? Logically, it seems like one more small trinket to enable in the equipment of Keefe (sorry for the dorky WoW analogy) but I have always been resistant to doing it.... maybe it's a good way to meet like minded people though?
For a better discussion of those topics, you can watch this talk at Startup2Startup http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH2VzGpVwHY&feature=chann...

She did a great job of explaining how to apply gaming tactics to social networking. Which is exactly what this thread is about.
I am not saying inflation should not be a serious concern, however the article fails to mention that the Fed changed the rules so they can now pay interest on these reserves. That's a massive change in law and policy and is the Fed's primary answer to articles like this one, so it's weird the author completely misses that point.

Here's what FRB NY's Dudley said this week - from Reuters article:

"Dudley argued that the Fed's large and growing balance sheet is nothing that prevents the Fed from controlling inflation once the economy corrects. 'It is not the case that our expanded balance sheet will inevitably prove inflationary,' he said.

Specifically, Dudley said the Fed's new ability to pay interest on excess reserves is a critical tool it uses to keep banks from lending these reserves and thereby creating new credit and boosting inflation. 'Thus, through the IOER rate (interest on excess reserves), the Federal Reserve can effectively retain control of monetary policy,' he said, noting that the Fed can increase the IOER rate if banks begin to find it more profitable to lend these reserves."

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/07/29/afx6714000.html
Television and Loneliness
That's kinda interesting, crazy and funny at the same time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_IQ_society. To me it mostly looks like this is to make the members feel somewhat outstanding, making up for their own social deficiencies.

# Top 5% (95th percentile; 1/20; IQ 124 sd15, IQ 126 sd16): International High IQ Society

# Top 2% (98th percentile; 1/50; IQ 130 sd15, IQ 132 sd16): Encefálica Society, High Potentials Society, Mensa International, Mysterium Society

# Top 1% (99th percentile; 1/100; IQ 135 sd15, IQ 137 sd16): Intertel, Top One Percent Society

# Top 0.5% (99.5th percentile; 1/200; IQ 139 sd15, IQ 141 sd16): Colloquy (Society), Poetic Genius Society[2]

# Top 0.37% (99.63rd percentile; 1/270; IQ 140 sd15): Infinity International Society, HispanIQ International Society

# Top 0.3% (99.7th percentile; 3/1,000; IQ 141 sd15, IQ 144 sd16): Cerebrals Society

# Top 0.2% (99.8th percentile; 1/500; IQ 143 sd15, IQ 146 sd16): Exactiq High IQ Society, ePiq

# Top 0.13% (99.87th percentile; 13/10,000; IQ 145 sd15, IQ 148 sd16): CIVIQ Society

# Top 0.1% (99.9th percentile; 1/1,000; IQ 146 sd15, IQ 149 sd16): Glia Society, International High IQ Society Milenija, International Society for Philosophical Enquiry, Iquadrivium Society[2], One-in-a-Thousand Society[2], Triple Nine Society

# Top 0.07% (99.93th percentile; IQ 148 sd15, IQ 151 sd16): ISI-Society

# Top 0.003% (99.997th percentile; 3/100,000; IQ 160 sd15, IQ 164 sd16): Prometheus Society, Tetra Society,Homo Universalis Society

# Top 0.001% (99.999th percentile, 1/100,000; IQ 164 sd15, IQ 168 sd16): Eximia High IQ Society, GenerIQ Society, The Ultranet

# Top 0.00001% (99.9999th percentile,1/1,000,000; IQ 172 sd15, IQ 176 sd16): The Mega Society, The Omega Society

# Top 0.000003% (99.99997th percentile; IQ 175 sd15, IQ 180 sd16): OLYMPIQ Society, PARS Society

Oh, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
Thank you so much for the detailed reply. The topic just popped up while talking; its definitely not for bragging, or adding it to the resume.

12-15 seconds is insane. Would need some practice, if the time constraint is going to be that hard.
Looks kinda similar to bashreduce: http://github.com/erikfrey/bashreduce/tree/master
I found this one, similar to MENSA
http://www.triplenine.org/

Haven't heard of it before, just found it while looking for MENSA related info.
I wrote my own sprintf handler which checks string length and truncates if necessary.

unsigned long lsprintf(unsigned long max_length,char [asterisk]dest,char [asterisk]fmt, ...)

char buffer[1024];

lsprintf(1024,buffer,format);

Slightly overkill.
While I agree that this is a marketing pitch, and plays it a little fast and lose, all other things being equal local is better than remote. Of course, all other things are never equal, and finding the combination that works for you is the important part.
It's been a long time (over twenty years) since I've been to India but it sounds like things haven't changed all that much. Travelling in India can be gruelling, especially if you don't have the money to travel first class and stay in fancy hotels (and there's not much point in going to India if you're just going to isolate yourself from the place). If I ever did it again, I'd find rent a little hut in an obscure mountain village and spend a few months watching the sun and moon and letting my rhythms adjust to village life. The thought of tearing from one tourist destination to another fills me with horror.
As Stephen Hawking said, people who boast about their IQ are losers.
Given the method they've created to make carbon nanotubes, it should drive down the price of making the nanotubes and allow things to pan-out. Now if there is some serious flaw that comes-up in the commercialization process, then it probably won't, unless it is relatively inexpensive to overcome.
It only happens when the server has recently restarted. All but the most recent 15k stories and comments are lazily loaded from disk, to make restarts faster.
Necessity of Determinism
Even worse, users like me who do figure out how to use the features may not want to. Personally, I'm the kind of user who walked around for years saying, "I wish I had a web browser on my cell phone," when I did in fact have a web browser on my cell phone. It was just too crappy to be worth using. Apparently sometime when I wasn't paying attention "power user" was redefined to mean "feature freak," but given that definition I won't dispute my non-power user status.
No.

Groups within a community are generally good ways to meet new people and make connections, but I haven't seen any benefit in Mensa specifically. Go join a *UG or some group oriented toward finishing projects, not self-celebration.
The time constraints are doable. Like I said, the questions aren't terribly difficult. The most important thing is that you bring your A game. You could be more than qualified, but if you get up in the morning and don't feel 110% ready there's a good chance you won't pass. I felt great the day I took my test. There are plenty of other days that I don't think I'd pass.

The best advice I can give for the test is if you don't feel like you're ready to kick some ass you're best off rescheduling. Once you show up and see the test you can't take it again.

The Wonderlic is probably the harder test because the questions get progressively more difficult. The first few are a joke, but the ones at the end are pretty tough. You won't finish. Almost no one does. I think I answered 43 questions and there's no way I got them all correct.
Sometime in the next N*10 years I'm going to end up in the same city as you, buy you a drink, and by the time you finish that drink you will have conceded that what Joe and Jacob did was praiseworthy and impressive. Doubt me? Raise the stakes: I'll bet you $100.
is it useful on resumes considering that college degrees are already a stand in for IQ?
Employee or Contractor?
This isn't particularly new -- the theory has been around for more than 60 years.

Anthropologists certainly are aware of the theory. It comes up all the time in student papers and discussions. My first encounter with it was when I was a grad student TAing Anthro 1.

There does not seem to be any evidence in the fossil record that supports the theory.
Yes, you can access the list of projects and contributions by clicking "Edit Project..." from the "Applications" menu inside Wiki-OS.

For example, the window manager and the taskbar source code can be found in the project named "WindowManager".

You can also see the list of contributions (sorted by date) by launching the "History" application. For the list of changes of a specific project, open a project in the Code Editor and then click "Social" -> "View history of changes".
Eurozone != EU

When you sum the GDPs of Euro using countries, you get 12.23 trillion dollars, or slightly less than the USA's GDP (http://www03.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=eurozone+gdp+vs+USA+g...).

How the size of an economy correlates with its resillience remains an entrirely different question IMHO.
An ex co-worker was partially obsessed with the topic of joining mensa. He used to bring it up in conversation all the time, mostly about how close he was to getting in and how much he wanted to get in.

One day, the director of the company for whom we worked heard us talking about it. She said, "You know what mensa means, right?" She's a native Spanish speaker.

My co-worker never brought it up again after that.

EDIT: Aw, c'mon...googling the definition is half the fun. ;)
Virtual worlds are getting a second life with 39% growth
Then, what is Twitter without status updates? I don't see how they can "get away from them". An Iranian at a rally is just as much "updating their status" as they 35 year old who hasn't left their basement all day.
First of all, this theory is not stupid.

Humans belong to a small number of animal groups that display vocal learning.

Vocal Learning Animals have a special “language” gene ( FoxP2 ), that gives them the ability to learn and imitate sounds they hear.

Among mammals only Dolphins, Whales, Seals, Elephants and Humans have FoxP2 gene. All of them are aquatic animals or have aquatic ancestors.
It's in PRE-alpha. What do they expect?
There is currently no user-generated code that runs on the server. All user-generated code runs inside a sandbox on the client.
> considering that college degrees are already a stand in for IQ?

What?
I joined when I was around 14, and left (if you can ever leave?) when I was 17. One of those precocious-gifted-child things; and the child subscriptions are fairly low. It was worth it to get the validated IQ score, and bizarrely, the child-MENSA magazine that circulated at the time led to my first real job.

So it can pay off, both if you've ever been curious about your IQ (not that anyone believes such things, but it's still great fun trumping an arrogant arse at a party) and because it's yet another way of networking. But the sort of people who join MENSA might not really be the sort of people you want to network with.

The job story:

An advert had a programming puzzle and an address to send solutions to. I solved the puzzle and realised it was a fiendish form of recruitment for a summer job at a fairly boring, run-of-the-mill web development company (oh, the glory days of 1999).

I also made a few 'friends' through it at the time, but I thought they were all up themselves. (They were. One later turned up to Cambridge, a year after me; can you spell 'socially awkward'? I bet he could.)
Since you probably haven't been following my comments here on HN: I work at Microsoft on a very C#-centric team. I have good friends on, and direct working relationships with, the managed languages teams here at Microsoft.

The "wrong level" corresponds to the goals and direction of the greater managed languages team. If the C# team wanted to implement every feature without any regard for the Visual Basic or F# team, they could. Clearly, they aren't going to do this because it creates wasted effort, inconsistency between languages, and maintainence complexity. Moreover, implementing on the wrong level has impact on performance and the developer experience.

I didn't mean to imply that they do the wrong thing because they are short on man power. On the contrary, they do the right thing because they are short on manpower.

Everything could be a compiler trick, but that doesn't mean everything should be. The managed languages teams here at Microsoft absolutely kick ass; they know what they are doing.