skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Not sure why it's posted here, but this is one of my favorite stories by Woody Allen.

In high school, I used it as a Humorous Interp piece for my debate class and ended up winning state.

Even with his flops (I couldn't stand Whatever Works) Woody Allen is one of the few artists who's made an incredibly vast series of excellent works and managed to effectively move between different genres without sacrificing his own vision. Can't say that about many people, and it's certainly something I aim for myself.
Yesterday's discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=768137
I didn't even realize this was Woody Allen. Awesome read.
I never noticed this as we don't use Comcast's DNS, but I just opted out to express my disapproval.
Ok boys and girls; dish, share your favorite publications, links, papers, and sites on social network analysis. Assume knowledge of graph theory (and by knowledge I mean familiarity; most of us should be able to pick a non-specialist text on the subject and spit out code, right? :-)
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Like other things, you get used to it. It's probably more comfortable, and for a new rider it can be difficult to get your head around 'gripping harder will probably make you go faster, not slow you down'. Shifting in your seat/going over a bump shouldn't really affect it though, can't say I've ever noticed it happen while riding.
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http://www.dubstep.fm It's fat and awesome, and rarely are there vocals to distract you.
Peoplebrowsr uses Joomla?
Something without lyrics. Usually I listen to Juno Reactor.
I'm actually a distance runner because (along with other things) I enjoy (mild) high after a run :)
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"Taleb wants financial services to come in two flavors: boring, predictable, public banking utiliies; and no-safety-net no-bailout risk-taking investment."

But how do you get there? How do you make sure they don't spin out of control or even how do you decide which firms to break up and how? (I don't disagree, I am genuinely interested in learning how he sees it can be implemented and without new significant regulations no less).
Ask HN: OPT vs H1B for developers
I'm in a bit of a pickle. I got my undergrad degree in the US as an international student, and as I was graduating this year, I accepted an offer from a grad school. But one way or another, I have come to regret this decision and would like to try to get a full time position instead (currently an intern and have good intern experience and am a strong college hire level candidate in general). Currently, I still have lots of OPT time which I will lose either two months from now or as soon as I begin grad school in September. So if I start grad school, I can still apply for work, but I'd need H1B sponsorship, which will make it harder to get a job I like.

If you're a developer or have hired for your company, does OPT time (15-27 months available) make it that much easier to get hired? H1B's might hit the cap again next year. Do you think spending the two months interviewing would be a risk that's worth taking? Or play it safe, begin grad school and avoid having to leave the country?
The same songs over and over. My girlfriend and her blues band rehearse at home.
Is this vacaya related to the vacaya of hypertable? :-)
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If the sign flashes when you're already turning, it's pretty much too late, don'tyathink? At that point an observer may think that you're signalling a second turn.
I'd rather prefer silence. But in noisy environments, I prefer any instrumental music. Western classical mostly.
it's relatively easy for external factors (shifting in your seat, a bump, etc.) to affect the amount of gas you're giving the bike.

Seems like it would be a lot better to map the throttle to a thumb trigger, like on a jet ski.

Those two statements seem to conflict IMO. There is usually less play in a thumb throttle, so external factors are more likely to have a larger influence than they would on a twist grip.

A thumb throttle is also more likely to accidentally slip to 0% than a full handlebar. With motorcycles, suddenly losing all power can be just as if not more dangerous than too much power. If you're not prepared, the rear wheel can lock up and cause you to lose control of the bike. It's very dangerous because you lose all steering, and if the tire engages while they aren't lined up with the direction of travel, the bike will flip, usually throwing you in front of it.
I cringed too - especially at the capitalization. I shall cringe again when Cameron starts using it. Forced memes like "black swan", "outlier" and "tipping point" are like little mini-advertisements for their books and their authors. Getting them into the vocabulary of politicians and business leaders is the ultimate marketing ploy.
I hadn't heard of this one before - I really like the Comedy channel. Been listening to it doing some mundane work.

I think I will be switching between Grooveshark and this depending on the type of work I need to concentrate on.
Writers are hackers too.

Adding because of the (-)ve votes. What I meant is the play of words is quite close to what I hacker would do with his code. At least I think so.
> I stopped using Linux on the desktop because I didn't want to have to be a sysadmin on my personal hardware.

When did you stop using Linux? I have had either a laptop or desktop with Linux installed (Ubuntu, Gentoo and DSL) since 2003/4 and spend just as much time customizing it as my Mac or Windows installations. I actually save time in the long run, because of the magic of apt-get.

Everbody gives this logic, but I've installed Linux on plenty for non-techies, and they have no problems--at least, not more than they would have had.

(One of my laptops, for the life of me, would not hook up to an external monitor. That's it.)
Is that link supposed to be gibberish? Or is it just messed up for me?
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Twitter is the slap bracelet of the aughts.
I listen to goa music (psytrance). Generally I like rock, but listening to electronic music while I code helps me to concentrate.
Looks like a pretty clear-cut case of economic hacking. and in these economic-centric times, pretty clear-cut HN material.
That was my hang up too. Then when he did get round to the definition it's clear he needs a bit more than a sentence to qualify what he means: because call me a gambler but Black Swan's sound pretty much like something we should avoid planning for or risk getting paranoid.

(and even though I did start reading his book and do sort of know what he's on about I still cant get away from that feeling. Why cant he say "lets not be arrogant and high risk" without having to qualify it with IMO a poor reason (surely the sentence alone should be enough):(
two columns of text is the bomb.
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Hey Brian, Pat from AddToAny. Even without the drop-down menu (which displays the Delicious saves count) I love your implementation. If Delicious can stay relevant we should totally add the # of saves to the share/bookmark landing page as well.
My take on a lot of classical music is that they seem to be trying to hard, doing too much with the instrument (been listening to some piano pieces by Liszt, Chopin, etc recently). That and I really don't appreciate a lot of high treble sounds (it depends, but genereally flutes and violins aren't my favourite instruments).

My recently instrumental fascination has been the work of Yann Tiersen (Amelie soundtrack), which has recently inspired me to try my hand at the piano again after 20 years. Not sure if that'd float your boat though. May give Brahms a go though.
I would speculate that innovation in this domain effectively stopped when the complexity of computer applications surpassed what the layperson was willing or able to wrap their head around. This happened some time just after the spreadsheet.

At this point, businesses became highly dependent on skilled IT staff to hand-hold them through everything. IT staff are expensive, scarce and difficult to work with. They are also utterly preoccupied with rejiggering old ideas to work with flashy new technology, devoting very little time to truly new ideas.

The problem concerns all of computing, both home and office. A vast knowledge gap leaves most people helpless while the experts are buried in architectural cruft, and often unaware of it.
Sorry emmett I was not saying #2 applied to Justin.tv
this is, I believe, what will eventually bring google low. so long as the search results are more relevant than the ads, people will choose the search results when they are looking for things. If google starts nerfing search, they will eventually be overtaken by the competition.
I have driven a piece of farm equipment (bin carrier) which has a pedal that works this way. The pedal is on a pivot and instead of depressing the whole pedal you press on the top to go forward and the bottom to go back. Braking is a simple matter of pressing the pedal in the opposite direction you are going (though normal mechanical brakes are also present as backup).

I found the system to be rather touchy. When coming to a stop it was quite easy to overcompensate and start oscillating back and forth. It was quite fun to drive though, and for the kind of work a bin carrier does the ability to reverse without changing gears is very useful.

Incidentally, in order to achieve this continuously adjustable drive a diesel engine runs at a constant RPM turning a hydraulic pump which in turn drives hub motors in each wheel. The whole thing makes a very distinctive sound as it drives around.

http://www.shakermaker.com/bin-carrier-images.php
To fix all types of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry issues in stock markets, every Algorithmic and high-frequency trade should be regulated via http://www.sec.gov/answers/form345.htm
Yay, everyone's a hacker!

Except, they aren't. Writers may be clever people and smart, entertaining, and so on, but there are plenty of them that aren't really hackers by any definition that isn't so broad as to be completely meaningless.
It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay attention.

Actually, the initial development was done almost entirely by think tanks (Rand Corp., BBN, etc.) and academics, with the crucial piece being supplied by the concept of packet switching, invented by Paul Baran at Rand Corp.

The essence of government is centralization of power over individuals. The essence of the internet is decentralization of communication among individuals.

The internet was a revolutionary invention because it solved a revolutionary problem: how to maintain communications after a massive nuclear attack. Pentagon (DARPA) money was behind most of this because it was the Pentagon that was responsible for solving the problem. More to the point, the key technologies that the internet depended on were the transistor (AT&T/Bell Labs) and the integrated circuit/microprocessor (Intel).
If you're having language problems I feel bad for you son, I got 99 prolog problems and python ain't one.
I associate names with peculiar features or habits. It is best not to ever vocalize these mnemonics to others.

For the memorization of facts and figures, I find that alliteration or a short rhyme works best.

If something does not readily avail itself in that direction, then a "connections" type story will stay with me longer than a statement of fact.
You sound a bit like a quant who lost his job, Scott.
And even if Taleb is right only in 50% of what he says that's better than most quant traders were/are most of the time...Oh and BTW on your Greek citatation: the Danaos ain't the Greek but the Danaos!
Cheers
The press releases of the damned: Vista, iPhone Web Apps, Palm Foleo, and more.
Have to agree. In general, as much as I like most of these alt stories that have been posted to HN lately, I came to HN to escape this sort of posting. I'm sure we could expand the term 'hacker' to apply to anyone who was a creative misfit in their field; ingenious doctors, writers ahead of their time, one-handed clock makers, etc but that's not what I consider a hacker in the context of this community. Still, would love the alternative with links like this as a companion site to HN.
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There was that other bookmarking service whose DB got corrupted a few months back. Backing up is always a good idea.

I've grown to depend on Delicious bookmarks too much, since I work from multiple locations.

That said, I use the front page of Delicious maybe a couple of times a year, tops.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dvn_Ied9t4M

It never gets old. Always a mood changer when I need it.
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So he was a snitch? ouch! he is really gonna hate prison :-(
There's something fundamentally wrong with a guide that purports to be for independent developer income, yet lists advertisements above software development and claims they will be the largest source of income.
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Lord Mandelson wants tougher penalties for illegal file sharers
In Perl6: http://github.com/perl6/perl6-examples/tree/9720129dd09936b0...

See also: http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/12/99_problems_in...
I wouldn't be so quick to assume that they don't take this into account:

"Even after we account for the multiple time zones in both Europe (3 if we exclude Russia) and the US (4 if we exclude Halifax and Alaska), European traffic really is different."

This statement suggests that they've adjusted for the different time zones. Do you have evidence that they didn't?
You cannot name a single effective technique that's been shunned because it smells bad to a philosopher. Coincidence? Frankly if anyone tries that in any competitive field they'll lose market share, won't be able to publish, etc.
Unreal! bookmarked, and sent it off in a blast to my old crew. Can you make it so that I can share playlists with people? I wanna play the same song to multiple people at the same time.
Thank you!!

My own simple implementation currently compiles mathematical expressions with an (optional) pre- and post-condition into a single block and then executes these blocks in a thread pool (ie, they don't have dedicated threads, but share a number of pre-created threads). There is obviously a significant overhead in passing data between the blocks, determining when they are ready to execute and so on. I have not yet looked at merging blocks, at some point I think I'll JIT merge multiple small blocks into a single large block.

As for data, my current system is statically typed, so it knows ahead of time what the datatype is. Simple values are passed in place and copied as needed. Complex values (structures, lists etc) are (or will be, I still have some work to do here) passed as pointers and the pointers copied as needed. In this case, the data itself uses a copy-on-write scheme, so that if it is only read, then no copies are made.

My implementation is currently not very intelligent. Operations are executed and scheduled in a virtual machine of sorts, though I will be JIT compiling expressions and conditions within the next week or two. Theres still loads of room for optimization though and I'm still trying to think of ways to make the block scheduling cheaper.

Always interested in hearing how people go about these problems, so thanks again for sharing.
3d photos hack
Tripod hosting still exists?
"Planes with bullets in the cockpit or fuel tanks didn't make it home"

Such a brilliant piece of lateral thinking - thanks for sharing.
Isn't it better to have one idea that is insightful and correct, than to have many ideas which are wrong, like most commentators?
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Hello from Tokyo Japan.

On Japanese cars ( right hand drive ), all the stalks are reversed from the exported left hand drive model. This means that Japan cars have the turn signal on the right, upward motion signaling a left turn and downward a right turn. The shifter is of course in the middle console, so is on the drivers left. The wiper control stalk is on the left. The ignition control is on the right.

I am curious if the motorcycle controls are reversed though. I guess I'll find that out in a few months.
Not when it keeps being rehashed ad nauseum.
Instrumental, or indie. Altough I have to say, after coding for about 20 minutes I don't notice the music anymore because I'm too concentrated on the code.
It is not inherently deceptive. You can take out ads that point out your faults, if you like. (Actually, I've found that publicly discussing my faults works fairly well. Chris and I were talking about printing up shirts saying something like "I HEAR SLICEHOST AND LINODE HAVE EXCELLENT SUPPORT" and 'prgmr.com brand Xen VPS service, we don't assume you are stupid' on the back... but we backed down 'cause we have no idea what the legal ramifications of naming competitors in an advertisement is.)

On the other hand, advertising is usually, if not deceptive, at least not in the consumers best interest. If you click on a product link from google vs clicking on the search result, the cost for the company is quite a bit higher. It could be argued that the advent of good search engines obsoletes advertising.

Why am I still advertising then? I'm trying to have people think "Oh, I've heard of them" - which is a little bit like credibility. Most people think of slicehost as a old company, and prgmr.com as a new one. This tells me that I want more people to know I exist now.

(Granted, I was doing dumb shit like running used hardware until after slicehost was established; you could make a convincing argument that I wasn't worth using until late 2007/early 2008, and slicehost is definitely more established and they won't have the kinds of problems prgmr.com will if one guy gets hit by a bus.)

And yeah, spending the time on advertising is probably not in my customer's best interest; there's lots of things I could be building instead. (and there's no way I'm outsourcing my advertising. Most marketing people and I have very different definitions of the word deceptive. Also, in a very real way, I am prgmr.com. I know what image I want, and you could even argue that I know better how to reach my target market than most marketing people do.)

Now, personally, I think that the most personal advertising is often the worst in this regard. You can bet that if you talk to a salesperson, that person is getting a large chunk of what you are paying. Good salespeople are expensive. It's fairly common for affiliate programs in my industry to give half the expected revenue.

This brings us to the other thing I find irritating about marketing. Variable pricing. I buy the exact same product as the guy next to me, but sometimes what we pay varies as much as 75%. Even if I negotiate to the sellers cost, that negotiation is adding a lot to the cost of the service, both in terms of my time, and in terms of the seller's negotiator's time. But try buying large chunks of bandwidth without negotiation.

I do my best to list all prices on my website. It doesn't make any sense to give a discount to customers who spend more of my time negotiating. they are costing me more, so why should I charge them less? I mean, I'm always happy to get feedback on pricing, especially if some of my prices are out of whack with regard to the market, but my margins would need to be a lot higher (read: I would need to charge you more) if I had to negotiate price with every customer.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that the owner of that site doesn't have permission to have that story on his site.

Edit/Elaboration: This is pirated content. I don't think pirated content should be spread on a site like HN. It's very similar to blog-jacking, only now the original content is a book. If you want to read it, you can buy it here: http://www.amazon.com/Without-Feathers-Woody-Allen/dp/034533...
That line is right between "Twitter copies" and "Twitter buys".
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The goal of freemium is the upsell - "hey you liked my x, try my y!" - which requires a tight association between your products. You upsell in the same market. You do brand differentiation in different markets.

Basically, if you can imagine someone deciding to buy one product instead of another, they're in the same market. Nobody's sitting in the lot thinking "hmm, Lexus or Toyota?" but they might be thinking XLi vs GLi. That means you can convince them to get the more expensive one.

Some software does do brand differentiation, though. Off the top of my head, Hiveminder and Request Tracker - one is personal, the other enterprise, both made by Best Practical. Hiveminder is actually freemium itself, and RT has support & hosting tiers.
I think Taleb makes an excellent point with his Black Swan theory.
The point is, that we don't know what will happen. We don't know and governments don't know. Problem is, governments spend like they know :-)
It also doesn't do what the OP thinks it does. It's more like a Hawthorne effect - eventually your body adjusts to anything.

A few years ago I had to give up nicotine (and caffeine and alcohol) cold turkey; I did not become appreciably dumber, past the expected adjustment phase. It really doesn't do that much for you, certainly not enough to be worth the addiction.
It's great - how are you going to protect it? Any IP in there anywhere?
I can sense someone building www.classicrockgoblin.com as I type.

Nice work.
There is not a politician on this planet who does not want tougher penalties for something - plus they all seem to have a list of things they want banning.

It would be a refreshing change to come across one who was against making new things illegal and who did not think it a good idea to criminalise great swathes of the population.

Just dreaming of course...
The shift away from career thinking
Techno / electro. These often have the energy and rythm of machines, and it helps to keep a good pace.
I especially avoid any music with lyrics in a language I understand, so it does not steal my attention.
All in all, I want my surrounding to be an atmosphere of "going forward" and no distraction.
I also need to regularly look away from my screen, release my brain for a minute, get up and stop being static.
Depends on mood and problem I'm currently solving.
For trivial coding I can listen to anything and would probably go for something indie. (Currently the "trivial music" has been Florence+The Machine, Dirty Projectors, Crystal Castles and Grizzly Bear).

When I'm stuck on a hard to solve bug/issue I like to go for metal as I tend to get aggressive and that helps me get the aggression out and focus on the task.

But for all other causes I prefer classical music or something akin to it and electronica, especially Niccolò Paganini. And Vivaldi, Wagner, Detektivbyrån, Slagsmålsklubben and Mozart.

I would love to be able to work in complete silence once in a while, but open office makes that impossible.
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My Logitech mouse comes with a set of weights to allow you to modify it's weight. It's a bit of a gimmick, though, and sometimes the cartridge with the weights slips out of the mouse.
I wonder how Taleb reconciles his views on probability with respect to Cameron winning the next election in May?