skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
* Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher (So-so. Pop-psychy, but interesting ideas.)

* 500 Essential Anime Movies: The Ultimate Guide, by Helen Mccarthy (Perhaps one doesn't actually read such a book, but graze.)

* Mister Blank Exhaustive Collection, by Christopher J. Hicks (Fun. Love the art.)

* Programming Cocoa with Ruby, by Brian Marick (Tonight I will likely crack this open and see how soon I can code something.)

* Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories, by Raymond Carver (Started in, will work slowly through the stories.)

Sitting on the floor, beckoning me:

* Sunnyside, by Glen David Gold

* The Invention of Air, by Steven Johnson
The Reasoned Schemer by Friedman, Byrd, and Kiselyov

Purely Functional Data Structures by Okasaki

Programming Language Pragmatics, 3rd ed by Scott

Fast Analytical Techniques for Electrical and Electronic Circuits by Vorperian
Ayn Rand was a philosopher. And like most philosophers, she started out with some good ideas and over applied them to everything in life, which leads to some scary conclusions.

My favorite Rand book was Anthem. It was short and therefore didn't have space to extrapolate Rand's ideas to their scary conclusion.

I just finished reading Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. It is just as long and pompous as Atlas Shrugged, but of the exact opposite philosophy. Those two books make for some interesting comparisons.
Why? Just because someone is reading something doesn't mean it's a good recommendation. I'm reading "Two years before the mast," and it's okay. There are better books.

However, here's a real recommendation: If you have a netbook, it can be used very effectively as an e-book reader if you turn it on its side while in bed, or place it upon your chest. I didn't buy it for that reason, but it is the most comfortable manner of reading books, AFAICS.
Oooh. I never looked to closely at that one, I had figured it was mostly just the same kit, plus the plastic cards, but going through it all, it definitely looks worth the extra $20. It looks like the one I linked was enough to get someone excited about the Arduino, and the one you linked was enough to actually start making things.
The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt
. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

. Programming Clojure

. Little Schemer (re-reading)

. Evidence-Based Technical Analysis: Applying the Scientific Method and Statistical Inference to Trading Signals by David Aronson
Generally speaking, if somebody wants multiple accounts, they can get them easily enough. It would help to know a little bit more about why you're trying to block multiple signups.

I'm in the US, and I write checks to my customers. We're required to submit information to the IRS on a quarterly basis, so we collect payee identification, which is either a Social Security number or Employer Identification Number. It's one thing to lie to an Internet company, its another to lie to the IRS. That discourages a lot of people from trying to game the system. Perhaps there's a similar mechanism available in the UK.

Focus on detection. Scoring new accounts for possible/probable fraud, and flagging them for review works wonders. Scaling this approach requires more human effort, but it's worth it when you get in to large dollar amounts.

It also helps to have some leverage in your terms of service.
I once listened to a 80-hour overview of the world's great philosophers, given by modern professors.

What amazed me was how many of them came up with a good idea that was new and revolutionary -- and then spent the rest of their life taking the damn thing too far. I guess great people fall so much in love with their great ideas that it never occurs to them that the most important piece is finding the boundaries for where their work applies and where it does not.
Dawkins is eminently readable, even in books that you think you know what he's going to say. I also recommend The God Delusion.
Yes it is.. I suggest you check your facts.

From PG: http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

What's the average age of people you fund?

About 25. A lot of people think it's younger because the press especially like to write about young founders.
"The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman

"Goedel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas Hofstadter
Do folks here use Library Thing?

http://www.librarything.com/home/jamesbritt

(I've fallen behind in updates ...)
A friend of mine has been completely obsessed with the Discworld books. I just borrowed "Jingo" and was impressed with how mature it was.(Mature in the ideas presented. The humor is absurd and appropriately silly) Pratchett isn't quite as great as Douglas Adams but is certainly close enough.
Ask HN: Users vs. Time with Emotional Annotations By PG - anyone have it?
Anyone have a link to the graph annotating "founder emotion" on a time v users in a startup?

I think it was drawn on whiteboard and someone snapped a pic of it at a YC dinner?

I remember it having a "trough of despair" :)

Would love to see it again - thanks!
Finished "Ghost" last week -- nice book!

Not as good as his first one, but well-written.

You know there's a third book in the series too, right? Not as good as the first two, but good.

What impressed me most about this author was after writing three books, he hung up the series. He said that was it, not going any father.

I gotta admire that. Most Sci-Fi Authors with a good series have to beat the thing to death before they let go.
Brilliant Solution: Inventor Creates LED Wrenches
A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself, by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

http://www.amazon.com/Code-Jewish-Ethics-Neighbor-Yourself/d...
Wait for Android to appear on phones on something besides the US's fourth-place provider. They're coming this fall, and it will likely make a big difference in Android's adoption (and, in turn, its viability as a commercial development platform).
Because recommendations tend to be very specific to a certain topic (probably very technical), but asking what a person is reading now includes outside interests, hobbies and curiosities.
Unpatched flaw could take down Microsoft's IIS server
I'm a total foodie, and I simply cannot read this book. I'm not sure if I need pretty pictures, or salacious kitchen anecdotes, or what, but I read a lot of food books and I've failed to get past pg. 30 on this one several times.
"The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steven Gary Blank

http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven-Blank/dp/09...
The Brothers Karamazov. Awesome, if only for the casually violent Russian realism that I loved in Преступление и Наказание.

As far as learning goes, I'm chugging through the FARs and the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. I'm about to solo.

As far as computer tech stuff goes, I haven't picked up a book with hype (plus requisite clipart/bad drawings/abuse of color space) on the cover in years.

Edit: What's up with all the Ayn Rand? Misogyny, xenophobia and unvarnished greed aren't exactly admirable characteristics, and her books read like an apologist's how-to manual. My favorite example of a Rand fanboy now works (when last I checked) at a bowling alley in Santa Barbara, after loudly and memorably insisting that he didn't need liberal pansy friends like me, because he'd be the wealthiest tycoon alive.

Yeah.

I guess he has a stovepipe hat and a monocle now.
The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD
Pretweeting -- a market game based on twitter word frequency
I have done this for years. I currently (no pun intended) have two such setups operating. Hooking up batteries is no more dangerous than jump-starting a car, and we are all adults here -- just think things through carefully.

Car batteries, or if you want to go even cheaper, the "lawn and garden" riding mower batteries from Walmart, are not made for repeated deep discharge, as some other alarmist posts in this thread have pointed out. However, you start your car several times a day, but the power goes out much less frequently, and every power outage doesn't run it all the way down (if so, the UPS isn't helping much).

A few additional points:

1) The wires that attach to the battery should be big. Canabalized lamp cord or such will not work; worse, it will appear to work, until the compture runs off the battery for an extended amount of time, and then it can get hot enough that the plastic gets bubbly and then bursts into flame. (Not my personal experience, I use super heavy wire from old well pump wiring, that is about the size of the leads to a starter motor on a car -- about 12 or 4 gauge).

2) If a cheap UPS says it will keep the computer up for 15 min, it is likely not cooled enugh to run continously for hours without burning out. Look at refurbished computer places, or Goodwill Computer Works in Austin, and get the APC brand UPSs or similar, and look for those that have fan to actively cool them when they run on battery.

3) For reasons 1) and 2) above, TEST THE THING outdoors, giving it a full change and then putting several 100 watt lamps on it and letting it run down.

4) I put the entire thing in one fo those big plastic tubs, that looks like a big tuperware container, to keep acid from the non-sealed battery from ever getting on the floor. I leave the lid on loosely, so the power cords can get in and so hydrogen gas can not accumulate.

Another thing, is you can put jumper cable style clamps on the battery wires of the UPS, not close it up, and use it to make AC current for running saws and such where there is no electricity. If you do this wtih cheap UPSs from garage sales, you will swiftly find that you can light the cheap brands on fire, and that APC rocks.

A battery that may not be good enough to start your car on cold mornings may keep your computer up through occasional 3 min outages for several years.
The correct question is, "what are you reading _for_?" and the answer is "I'm reading 'Hee Haw: The Book.'"

Actually, it's "Matrix Methods in Data Mining and Pattern Recognition." Two years ago I would have torn through the math but now I'm, uh, less smart.
I'm reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson for the third time, and understanding it more than the second time. It has wonderful technical digressions that seem aimed precisely at geeks/hackers. In fact, on the the main characters is a programmer, and another is a code-breaker in the military who sees an opportunity for geeky analysis in everything he sees. (There are also many accounts of military battles from a soldier's point of view to break the talking up.)
What prevents a startup from creating an alternative marketplace that accepts all sorts of mainstream payments methods, works within and outside of the US, and doesn't suck? It was my understanding that Android, unlike the iPhone, could install applications from elsewhere.
1. The Mythical Man Month (Some interesting essays, some dated)

2. The Art of Agile Development (First agile book to read, certainly interesting)

3. Object Oriented Perl (Very interesting stuff... I've read it a few times but keep flipping open to chapters and being in awe of the cleverness of the author)
That's a valid question. I changed it because my point in submitting it was to draw attention to this part of the article:

The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading, like phonics and spelling.
I can't imagine that quantifying the success or failure of a program like this is even possible. All you can quantify (and quite easily) is its popularity, and so that's probably why it's being dropped.
Do you also have an app for the S60?
Sorry, no, just an iPhone app and a website right now. We just have 3 people :)
McMafia by Misha Glenny. Interesting read on globalization and organized crime as circumstances have materialized since the end of the Cold War.
Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software
http://www.amazon.com/Dreaming-Code-Programmers-Transcendent...

The Design of Everyday Things
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Donald-Norman/d...
IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation

Imitation of Life: How Biology Is Inspiring Computing

Programming in Python 3
Even more surprising, ESPN.com is still a subdomain of go.com
Search Engine Optimisation Australia
Increase your business sales by employing our Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) service. Get your website to the top of search engines.
C# in Depth: What you need to master C# 2 and 3 &
Introduction to Algorithms
Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki
I always met far more interesting people in random places in the Valley than skiing at Squaw.

(amazed at the mix of ex-pats who played touch rugby at Stanford, including some VPs and a referee who had officiated at State of Origin)
Long long history here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kremer_prizes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedaliante

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Condor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus
Currently reading:
"infinite jest" (wallace)
"how to rock climb" (john long)

On deck for winter:
"god created the integers" (hawking)
"critique of pure reason" (kant)
"illuminatus trilogy"
"a brief history of technology" (up to 1900)
Experiments with CouchDB Map/Reduce Views (i.canhazthread.com)
The article hinted at the decision being motivated by data, but was not specific.

It seems likely that as televisions have become more common, younger children and those from poorer families are watching, and have different educational needs.
You can sell it on eBay for around $25. Buy beer for your team this Friday. Swap the Natty Ice for the good stuff.
A Cleveland-area landlord was offering a year's free rent for a somewhat urban restaurant space (Shaker Square for the locals here). I presume a longer-term lease was required at the beginning of the deal. For the tenant, it was like some mix between venture capital and an option. If he fails, he can leave and not have spent as much compared to a normal lease deal. But, if he is successful, the landlord wins with a long-term tenant, and the tenant sticks around because of the signed lease and the switching costs of moving.

I don't know a lot about lease deals, but it seems that some additional complexity would make the market more efficient. The article repeated the question, "What restaurant would sign a one year lease?" I presume the restaurant owner was referring to a contract that offered no guarantees about renewability or the price at renewal time. Why not structure a lease as a combination of rent and an option on a future contract? At the end of a one-year lease, the restaurant could pay $X to get out or sign a similar contract for no more than $X/month. This is just one of many examples.

In general, markets are less efficient because parties stick to contractual terms that are standard for an industry rather than being creative for mutual benefit. Fear, stupidity, and irrational doubt lead to this. When I bought my house, I modified the contract (at an attorney's suggestion) to include a "liquidated damages clause" which limited both the liability of both sides to the amount of earnest money provided. And, I provided a significantly above average amount of earnest money to reduce the seller's risk of taking the home off the market. The seller's real estate agent did not understand the economics of the change and therefore did not help the seller understand the mutual benefits. So, the seller ended up hiring his own attorney to review the contract, and the deal was almost delayed.
Just to clarify before-hand, i.canhazthread.com is a clone of a.tinythread.com to demo CouchDB's capabilities for a talk I was giving at a dev conference called #geekcampsg at Singapore.
"Anathem", by Neal Stephenson.

Don't be put off by its size, the book is great.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anathem
That's too bad. If the show succeeds, kids will read, and it will lose popularity.
Uhm, I buy the letter A. Like "how much more Absurd does it get".
You can go rob a bank. However, I don't think you should.
Gang Leader for a Day
Cracking the GRE
Personal Development for Smart People
The Ultimate Sales Machine
Finding Your Zone: Ten Core Lessons for Achieving Peak Performance in Sports and Life

Must-read-soon: Infinite Jest; Tribes; Influence; Made to Stick; Foundation Rails 2

There aren't enough hours in the day. I'm going to shift to a wake-up-at-6-am sleep schedule so I can become a more productive person and have more time to read. Anyway, back to work.
I'm about halfway through this. Not sure I liked it at first, because his style seemed a bit too heavy-handed, as if he were a 16 year old with a really big thesaurus, trying to allude to as many different things as possible. It's grown on me though, over the last far-too-many pages. Still not totally happy, but it's interesting.
Ask HN: What happens when a founder gets divorced?
This is something I've been curious about for quite a while (I have no plans to get divorced BTW).

Assuming there's no pre-nup, what happens when a startup founder gets divorced? I'm guessing things vary state-by-state, but I'm curious if anyone has knowledge or experience in this arena.

Has it ever affected a high-profile/silicon valley startup?

Thanks.
Every time I hear the word "organic" it bothers me. All food is organic! Whoever heard of inorganic food? If it were inorganic, we damn well couldn't digest it.
#followfriday, #musicmonday, "weekend", "goodnight"

Not really a self-correcting market, is it?
Learning Ruby
Mass Effect: Revelation
MS Donates to Charity if you upgrade to IE8
I've been trying to get an 80GB Intel X25-M G2 for a few days. They are going for well over double MSRP ($600 versus $230) at several retailers (e.g., http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167...)
i'm also not sure what you mean. how does the speculative bubble come from the government guaranty? doesn't the guaranty make it intrinsically _less_ speculative? FFELP loans also have fixed interest rates. less common in private (not govt-backed) student loans.

another thing to consider would be the Obama administration's clear intention to end FFELP in favor of direct federal lending and other programs (no middleman bank's balance sheet involved, so no need to securitize)
New York City is poised for a tech revival
An introduction to probability - Vol I (William Feller)

Introduction to dynamic systems - David Luenberger
Environmentalism as a collection of diverse death cults
There's really nothing controversial about organic food. It's a time-tested method and, due to the higher cost, it poses no risk of monopolizing the marketplace.

World population will likely grow until there isn't enough to feed the world by any method. So the less toxic, time-tested method should continue to provide an alternative.

If one is concerned about yield, it would seem to me that corporate genetic engineering would be the concern. Monsanto and others wish to use genetic engineering to control our food supply via genetic use restriction technology. Their experimentation seems a much realer threat to the food chain than anything else.
There must be some game ideas which are worth plenty on their own. Tetris, for instance. Or... well, actually that's the only example I can think of. But it's a big one.
All I see at http://www.gaiagps.com is "hello world"
I don't know why I can't reply to icey's response to this, unless it's too much nesting -- the line is the same, but it may exist in a variety of positions on the slider.

I do not believe that he meant you would draw the line for can, and the line for should in different places, rather, that they are simply not in the same place for all people.
The choices of the last winner: lunch dinner night goodnight morning nite coffee church.

If only stock markets were this easy.
Theme song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6j8EiWIVZs
By inverting this list, we can get a portrait of the "normal" world.

I suspect that this observation has something to do with the last PG essay to hit HN about putting yourself in the centre.

If you take any list of characteristics that you apply to a group, it will tend to contrast them with the 'norm.' Invert it and you get their perspective on the rest of the world, especially if the list is self authored.

Imagine a group of Uzbeki expats in Rotterdam commenting on themselves. They'll come up with a list of traits that make them stand out from the crowd. Invert it and you have their perspective on the Dutch. The problem/advantage of this trick is that you might end up with a list of fairly marginal (in the eyes of a non-Uzbeki) or unremarkable traits.
From Beirut to Jerussalem. Thomas Friedman.
Interesting, Ayman...
Is it different money or is it just mixed in with YC's personal investments?
The issues with respect to externalities with respect to farming organic or otherwise are not as clear as you might think: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/the-gr...

Adding arbitrary production constraints tend to add costs - and in the case of "organic". From what I've been reading, organics cost more to control - so either you need more land or you need more inputs - labor or additives. If you go the land route, more limited land drives up cost of the cost of the underlying capital required for everyone - given that land is also an important input at the moment for general farming. Of course, I think consumers would be best served whether buying organic or regular if the governments of the world would abandon farming subsidies that greatly distort markets - but dare to dream.
Segmentation of the Top 100 Sites in the US
I couldn't make it to the end of the article because of the spelling errors. If you're offering business advice, at least learn how to write a coherent sentence!
Science's perfect on-hold system
"Ok, let's reverse this. Is there any profession or hobby that you would find interesting if a male excelled and generally kicked ass at it?"

Cheerleading.

Quilting.
Microsoft's Axum Programmers Guide (PDF). The language is beyond me, but I felt like going through it.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/B/D/5/BD51FFB2-C777-4...
Ulysses, haha.
had my temporary fill of tech books, so:

on my bedstand is "when you are engulfed in flames"

and my next major read is probably "the gathering storm" once it comes out.
Growing up, I was a big fan of Robert Aspirin who wrote the Another Fine Myth series. I found out he died recently so I picked up his latest, Dragons Wild. It's a young adult novel but it was a fun, nostalgic read.

Prior to that it was House of Suns by Alistair Reynolds. Far-future sci-fi about a group of traders who travel at near-relativistic speeds from planet to planet over billions of years, watching human civilizations rise and fall.
I think that any public exposition / debate following such a disagreement would be far more valuable to all present than anything either party could convey as intentional advice.
I am reading way too many books at once. Not in danger of finishing them all, but in the last month I have read from:

Technical:

Armstrong, Programming Erlang

Oppenheim et al, Signals and Systems

Abelson and Sussman, SICP

The Fourier Transform and its Applications

Project Management for Construction

Nontechnical:

Russel, History of Western Philosophy

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Schelling, Strategy of Conflict

The US Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual

Araki Photofile

...

All of them are too interesting.
I wish there was a way I could get a video of this instead of just the slides. I get the feeling there was a lot more information put out that would be very interested to hear.
As a non-Lisper:

In short, macros are cool because, instead of hacking the compiler and groveling through its weird data structures to add language features, you can add language features in the language itself, because the language is already traditionally expressed in parse trees. Phrased this way, I don't see why this is a life-changing revelation.
Why Google won't create the next Twitter or Facebook or Posterous