skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"and he had no choice but to attend high school for several more years"

This is a very common misconception. It's quite possible and legal in many (most?) US states to remove a child from school and keep them home to let them learn at their own pace.
Stop making sense!

The only solution would be for Twitter to acquire Bitly and their complex code base, how else are the inflated prices going to be justified ?

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/30/if-bitly-is-worth-8-mil...
>> it is solely by choice (and probably fear of the unknown)

Or because of the social benefits. You state that you consider your former self a freak, and consider your current self a completely asocial misanthrope. I was following a very similar path to you, but realized that I was on my way to being a social outcast. To me, being a C++ programmer was not my purpose in life (although it was a very interesting field I ended up making my career). A great deal of what I see as the "purpose of life" consists of those social relationships. If I didn't have those, C++ wouldn't make me happy, so what would be the point of it all?

I don't mean to sound argumentative - I'm just pointing out that although I was capable of doing more, I chose to stay close to my own age group because of a legitimate quality-of-life benefit. You did state that it's by choice, but I think that's an aspect a lot of people don't consider, especially the author in question.
My experience with MSDN is one of the biggest reasons why I avoid Microsoft tools. Now you're telling me that Apple's documentation is much worse, and that depresses me.
Did I ever say nerdy schoolboys and white prisoners were particularly weak people? No. But here's your assertion:

People who become victims are completely random.

They're not. People who are gang members don't get bullied in prison because the other members of their gang will retaliate. Popular kids don't get bullied in school because their friends will retaliate. And while smaller kids may be weaker targets than bigger kids, nerds or white prisoners are usually bullied because the bullies don't like them.
WaPo vs. Gawker #2: How To Make Money Selling News
http://www.hslda.org/laws/default.asp
In a best-case scenario for CA, it could pay down its entire debt with IOUs. After that, its finances would somewhat improve because the IOUs pay (I think) three percent interest rather than whatever the bonds do. But then, imagine if the bond holders could sell those IOUs to California citizens for 99 cents on the dollar so that they could pay their taxes with them. The state would suddenly have its own paper on its books and would then need to borrow 26 billion dollars overnight, and the bond market would spank them. Of course, in that same scenario, they could conceivably just pay out the IOUs again, which is how a normal currency works.

Taking them piece meal as taxes would do the same thing, more slowly.
So, when I bought my car I did research on the owners forums to find the common problems, tips, etc. I was impressed that this website already had those things nailed down in the "common problems" section.

I'm impressed, and made an account. The service cost estimation is slightly useful to me, but it's the other information they have (and future feature potential) that has me hooked.
This worked for me and I am definitely better off than if I had stayed in high school. That said, most kids, don't have the necessary drive and motivation to make this work.
Markdown redux, and walking the AST to generate (statically) valid XHTML
Fighting Fantasy (very vivid, huge fantasy world)

or

Interplanetary Spy (a classic for the most silly ways to die, like getting trapped in a prison bubble on the outside of a ship for the rest of your life...).
I think the standard widescreen aspect for the 15" would be 1680x1050. I'm holding off my MBP purchase for that. My current 14" dell has 1440x900, I can't understand why the "better" screens on the MBP's have such poor resolution.
Unless the choice is to live forever?
It is only because high school is the default that those who choose other options feel isolated. Those >25 usually find friends without resorting to spending most of their day in the same overcrowded fishbowl. If 16 year-olds were spread out across various activities, they would make the effort to find each other, but it's easy to exclude those few kids who aren't seen at their lockers everyday when school is the norm.
NY for instance seems rather restrictive:

http://www.hslda.org/laws/analysis/New_York.pdf
>kind of DoS attack

DoS requires a single actor with a distributed source. If everyone tomorrow decided that gold was worthless, it would be worthless. People don't work like that though. For every person undervaluing their home, there will be people that will overvalue it to the market. It's in the homeowner's interests to have a low taxation rate but a high assessed value. (Like hell I'm buying your house 30% over what you publicly think it is worth).

There are two players, but only the owner is constant.
> Teenagers are inherently highly capable young adults

I'm currently a teenager. This is mostly false.

--

On a serious note, interesting idea. It won't happen, since the US education system (and the public sector in general) is not open to, well, any kind of change.

But as the founder of 9 startups, high school wasn't a huge help for me in any ways other than somewhere to socialize. However, this is the special case. High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%.

Dropping out is not an option. You 100% will have a much harder time with acceptance with most colleges (and asian parents.)
Quick Simple iPhone App Outsells More Elaborate One
Pixar has their own style that is intentionally not photorealistic. Also, Toy Story is from 1995. Try instead comparing Crysis to the effects from a modern blockbuster, which have to hold up well when compared to the live action shots.

Ditching the fixed-function pipeline isn't all about realism, though. More flexibility will allow more experimentation with non-photorealistic rendering. Maybe we'll see more games with graphics that look like they were painted or drawn.

Another benefit of more flexible rendering should be easier game development. Writing a complete renderer from scratch will be hard but most games will use middleware for that. The most expensive part of a modern game is the art, and a flexible renderer could do a lot to make generating that art easier.

I do share your pet theory about Larrabee trying to avoid stepping on toes at Intel by labeling themselves a GPU. However, in order for Larrabee to be worthwhile for Intel it needs a mass market, and graphics is it. If Larrabee fails at graphics it will likely not survive.
How a Macworld Cover Is Made
Hey thats my project! :)
Was it just shin splints that you had issues with? Have you had any feet,knee,or ankle problems since going barefoot?
I agree that spec work is nonsense, but these things have a way of working themselves out. If you want quality, you have to pay for it, and quality designers will charge you for it. Many times the parties who ask for spec work don't really care much for quality and thus will attract the kind of talent that is willing to do spec work. They'll get what they pay for.

I suspect the time and energy Tim spends trying to organize the book contest, look through the submissions and filter out the garbage would have been better spent just contacting a reputable designer and paying them to do a good job.
Apple working on their own format? Mmmm I love lock-in.
In case you're wondering how this could get any sorrier: U2 will be involved in the "soft-launch".
Are you asking how to manage direct reports, or how to go about finding someone to farm tasks off to in the first place?

I think you're asking the latter, but I'm not 100% sure.
What's next? GitHub is acting like an asshole?: http://contest.github.com/

This is roughly the same situation, but with code rather than art (ignoring the differences with open sourcing and whatnot). I doubt that GitHub expects the guys writing recommendation engines at Facebook/Google/wherever are going to participate in this contest for some bourbon and a GitHub account, and I doubt Tim expects big name graphic designers to make the cover of his book for $250. I certainly haven't seen any Facebook employees blogging about how the GitHub contest is demeaning to their industry though.
Dentists are quite happy to quote prices and negotiate, especially those who own their own practices (which is most good ones).

However, I don't even think most doctors know what is charged for their services.
Does this mean I have to change my username?
I took the term "hollow and completely unfounded advice" as "incompetent", since TFA was written by absurdly competent academics -- in their area.

I'm sorry if it upsets you that they didn't give enough references for your taste, to evaluate your anecdotal experiences.
Dig Into Unix: Sed and Awk
My only issue with the CSS from this is on .column it specifies the display as inline and then with another class sets the width. I can't remember right now but I had particular issues when trying to do the same thing a year or so ago and it turns out that its not W3 spec. Without the inner p tag creating a display block element the grid breaks down. In short display inline elements cannot by themselves have width assigned to them.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/WD-CSS21-20030915/visuren.html#inl...
The visualizations linked there are great too:

http://www.hatfulofhollow.com/posts/code/timsort/index.html

http://www.hatfulofhollow.com/posts/code/visualisingsorting/
Ah nice, thanks. But we don't know the rate. Probably big discounts for repeat buyers.
Depends how well the ad was targeted and how well quotas were set and screened for. There's a few good ways to attract survey respondents through ads, and a whole lot of bad ways.
Summary: this is a long and well-written discussion of how Tim created a contest for the design of his upcoming book, which violates many designers' belief that spec work hurts their craft.

Serious question: I absolutely do not mean to in any way demean or trivialize the work of designers, but how is doing design work for spec any different than other creative pursuits, like writing a novel, painting, or authoring a screenplay? First-time creatives usually do those things with little to no hope of getting paid, and no one seems to be up in arms. Can someone enlighten me as to the difference?
The assertion that teenagers have an 'immature' brain that necessarily causes turmoil is completely invalidated when we look at anthropological research from around the world.

That children and teens have an immature brain is supported by biological research:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1899715

http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/09/the-teen-brain.html

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/09/15/health/2008091...

I was not happy in high school (only ten years ago), so I think efforts to improve that period of people's lives are well spent. But I can't support something that starts from what I consider a faulty premise, which is the assumption that children and teens are miniature adults.
I think that's the cynical way of looking at it. On the other hand, maybe he's not particularly concerned with going through with the effort of finding an excellent designer and spending the time discussing what he wants on his cover and would instead like to give amateur and student designers a chance to possibly get their work on the cover of a book and maybe win $250 bucks for something that they might be able to pass off as course credit (in the case of students) or that they would have done on their own time (in the case of amateurs or hobbyists).

Maybe he's not expecting professional designers to submit their best work.
This is exactly what I'm working on. I already linked it once today, see my user page if you're interested.
If by "magic thinking", you mean "a basic understanding of concepts like angle of incidence/reflection", then sure, magic. Or basic science. Your choice.

Don't go by sketchy memory. Take one of each laptop - borrow a co-worker's, if necessary - go outside, and expose each screen to direct sunlight.

Observe how the matte screen diffuses the light across the entire screen surface.

Also observe how glossy screens (which, it turns out, don't come in parabola shapes, and as such aren't reflecting all incoming light to one point) aren't washed out like the matte. There's glare, of course, but you'll quickly see the difference.

Given sufficiently bright direct light, matte glare is MURDER compared to reflective glare. Matte is ideal for office settings, but far inferior in sunlight.
When you write a novel, create a painting, or author a screenplay, it remains yours at the end. You take all the risks and all the gains.

Spec is initiated by another party. Meanwhile, it takes advantage of people who have little other choice, and often leaves them with little to show for having done so.
The real way to make good money in the iPhone market is not selling apps themselves but consulting -- charge other people to make apps for them.
Ask it! :)
So, now that I've actually read the article I feel like ranting a bit.

The thing about these kinds of contests is that they serve a niche that very much wanted filling: Low budget design projects that "real" design firms wouldn't touch.

Large clients already get ideas on spec from those design firms...this "contest" process just makes it possible for small companies to get the same treatment. Yes, it comes from less experienced designers, and it comes with some additional problems (like the unpredictability of follow-on work, which may or may not be of reasonable quality and may or may not be available from the same designer at all). But, for one-off design work, like a logo, it's simply the best way for a small business to get design work done quickly and cost-effectively.

When times get tough, as in a recession, folks often start looking for people to blame for their own reduced income. Some folks blame immigrants, and this is just an indirect version of that...blaming foreigners for working too cheap and cheapening their trade by accepting these contest terms. Because the reality is that most of the designers taking part in $250 contests are overseas.

The funny thing is that software shops have historically gotten some flack for using design contests and such...but the fact is software development was among the first to experience this pressure from cheap overseas white collar human resources. We hackers have been dealing with it far longer than designers, and though a few among us belly-ache and bitch and moan, most of us have embraced the differences and compete on quality and taste rather than price.

In other words: Tim Ferriss, while possibly an asshole on other occasions and for other reasons, is not acting like an asshole by holding a design contest.
I'll agree with your semantics. To me, "beating a game" implies that you can consistently come out ahead over a long period of time. Nevertheless, playing an "unbeatable" game over a short period of time is not necessarily irrational. Although your expected value in your first version of the hat game is -$9901, you are not losing $9901 every time you play. If you play long enough it will average out to be this, but every time you play you will either win $1 or lose $10,000. If the chance of a devastating loss is negligible, it's hardly unwise to make a gamble, even if it has a negative expected value--this is why we occasionally do risky things that have a small chance of killing us, like driving or eating sushi. The problem in thinking in terms of an expected value is that an expected value presupposes many trials--given a single experiment, it's a meaningless concept. Indeed, given a single experiment, both the classical and frequency interpretations of probability are meaningless with regards to what the probability of a given outcome really is. In the case of a single experiment, the only interpretation that makes sense is the Bayesian interpretation.

I would not play your second game, but the reason I wouldn't has nothing to do with expected values (notwithstanding the fact that it's technically impossible to calculate an expected value for an unquantifiable outcome like death). In your first game, I feel that I would come out ahead, and in the second game I feel like it's not worth it.
The fact that they have made a choice to increase their profits while compromising on user convenience is a completely opposite direction of what google was based upon IMO. Google is a company I used to look to whenever I had to think of a business problem(User convenience/solving a problem before making any money). If you are providing user what they want business model will work out, which seemed to be the case but not anymore, I guess.
Why would they want to give their work to a company that cuddled up to Twitter thanks to connections and took the entire market in a matter of months? I'd want some money out of that too.
"High school works decently enough for the rest of the 95%."

Toward what end? Babysitting teenagers? Forcing people to memorize information that they forget a day after the final exam?
There are many young kings throughout history, for young =< 32. The difference may have been that this was acceptable and even expected at the time. So I stand by what I said; this is age discrimination on false grounds.
Agreed. I know if I, for example, had been let loose on the world at 15 things would have turned out BAD.
Is he not allowed to do that? I grew up in Virginia, and two of my friends chose to spend their senior years of high school by taking classes at a local university or the local community college.

(They were, in fact, brother and sister and had spent six years in Denmark as the children of foreign service officers. They did not take well to American high school.)
It is in no way at all different.
Let's say you can pay your property tax in advance, so up to one or two years in advance. After that period, others can threaten to buy your domain. If you manage to build a viable business out of it within a year or two, you can trademark the name and hold on to it for as long as you're doing business under that trademark. If you haven't built a trademark around it, then you either continue paying your tax or risk getting bought out.
Well, drive them there, of course! ;-)
Here (USA, Washington state) we have major limitations and it's hard to employ minors.

Signing contracts, however, isn't hard and so I worked as an independent contractor (1099) :)
Bootstrapping Abroad: why we do it and why it's awesome
What's to stop us from developing new antibiotics that will be able to beat antibiotics? It looks to me more like a never-ending arms race.
When you do graphic design work, it remains yours as well, unless you sign a contract that designates your deliverable as "work for hire". [%]

The "taking advantage of people" thing is a canard. Designers are in business like everybody else. There's no reason they need to be protected from the market any more than a carpenter or an architect.

[%] I don't know if Ferriss demanded a contract before accepting a submission or not, but I do know that the anti-spec brigade would have a problem with the contest either way.
Perhaps you're right, but if I was going to release a book and put my name on it, I would want it to be designed by a professional. Books are definitely judged by their covers.
I'm certainly familiar with this as an error. It's all-too-common:

Bla x = someFunctionThatMightReturnNull();

if(x.foo()) ...

Sure, people should check the return value, but that check is often forgotten, especially if x.foo() is some sort of validity or integrity checking. It's an edge case.

And really, a proof by "I've-never-seen-it" seems like a weak justification for accusing researchers of "conjuring facts out of thin air". If you're actually interested, the article by Tony Hoare (which was also posted on LTU) provides provides more concrete figures, if I recall. I think it's pretty well understood as a very common error.

I'd be interested to know what you think common sources of instability are in your experience?
The no spec movement is what is nonsense, to be perfectly frank.

Listen, I hate having my work undervalued too. I get it. But guess what? The value of my work isn't what I think it is, it is what other people think it is.

That's the heart of the matter: Designers tend to have inflated ideas of their value; more importantly, non designers tend to have low opinions of design work.

You can't sell BMW's to people who think a Chevy is more than enough. Crying that a person that comes into your dealership and says: "My budget is $20K" is some sort of religious persecution isn't winning you any friends. Even worse, suggesting that Chevy should start selling their cars at $50K so that they can see how much better your bimmers are smacks of self-righteous ego.

The whole point of spec or contests or paying for a cheaper solution is that the customer has already decided that the value of your work is not worth the cost. Get over yourself already and go sell to people who do appreciate whatever it is you offer.

Set your price at what you consider fair, then find the right customer. If you can survive, great, but don't tell others in different situations what to do please.
"You are ... arguing that because the same word can be used it is impossible to refer to them seperately."

No I'm not--I'm maintaining that distinction the whole way down ("one is a violation of civil and human rights, one is not").

Here's the moral argument made at the top of the thread by codyrobbins:

"If Apple wants to censor apps in the App Store, that's their prerogative."

Here's your argument:

"Apple has yet to censor anything."

I agree with codyrobbins, but I disagree with you. What's so complicated with that? You're repeating yourself and failing to even comprehend my posts. In addition, you've attributed opinions to me I haven't even expressed and thrown out tons of red herrings to boot.
The point is that you can save time by just using Lisp rather than reimplementing it. Which is what Google has done here.

BTW the original is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_Tenth_Rule
Likewise, I haven't seen a single programmer insulted by the Netflix Challenge. Most think it's a great thing.
Sorry, but I'm still confused. Aren't paintings and screenplays typically sold to someone else for a fixed price after they're created, assuming someone buys them? With a book, I guess you might theoretically share in the profits.

And while spec is initiated by another party, doesn't that imply that there's at least some demand?

Let's take another approach: what's a better solution? If you have an aspiring designer with no portfolio or references, how should they get started? I hire designers, and I'd be reluctant to hire someone with no track record...what if I hate what they produce?
Ask HN: What is something impressive you have built or achieved?
One of the question from the YC application is "Please tell us in one or two sentences about something impressive that each founder has built or achieved".

This might be a good question to ask everyone by posting it here because there are a lot of people in this community that have achieved or built impressive thing.

What is something impressive you have built or achieved?
For his last book, Tim actually printed out fake bookcovers, placed them on books in bookstores, and sat around and observed how much attention each cover brought (source: http://vimeo.com/3934635) . A lot of people around here don't like Tim, but that is certainly hacker like behavior. I'm sure he'll do something similar for the new book as well.