skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well of course it fails to work when the reply's tone isn't warranted. In this case, the article was bemoaning IT and blaming all the problems of The Working Man on that department, which has been a theme probably since IT became a department. After dealing with these sorts of uninformed gits for 20 years, I would expect a rebuttal to have a little feeling to it, and it would have been rather boring, without it.

Sometimes complaining about name-calling and meanness are warranted; most of the time, they're just cases of outraged people being outraged. Which is exactly what the thread OP came off as. I happen to really like visceral, biting rants against ignorance (so long as they're couched in logical arguments).
Very interesting topic. A few checks on current comments:

The metaphor of the brain as a carefully portioned soup of chemicals should be retired. The brain is a modularized information processor. While you can pour in more "happy" molecules (try morphine), this still causes a cascade of other effects. Prozac doesn't start working for two weeks -- figure that one out!

Drawing a line between clinical depression and healthy sadness is easier said than done. Almost no one gets depressed without triggering life events. The difference is in depth and recovery. In any case, we still don't have a good idea what is "healthy" about sadness.

It is really hard to judge the long-term benefits of depression. Evolution plays out over generations. Modern society is not what we are adapted for anyway. Maybe we should study siblings of suicides to see if they are somehow more biologically successful on average.
In point of fact, it didn't. I read all the way through the original article. I gave up on Mr. pseudo-Nice Guy. I ignored the guy who didn't call me a prick.

Therefore, in contradiction of your argument, meanness and name-calling enabled communication with me. And therefore your premise blows its own brains out in disgust at its own self-contradiction.

Now, it helps when it's actually well done in contrast to your last line about me being "a prick" -- and I am, by the way. Always remember to make that beautied muse Creativity your ho when insulting a man.
"When it does, at a completely uncontrolled time with countless business processes dependent on it, the cost will be HUGE"

Couldn't that happen with any app, even the new ones? I don't quite get the "risk of legacy" debate. Sure it would be nice to get rid of legacy stuff, but should it always be priority 1? I rather doubt it, especially since new stuff becomes legacy very quickly, too. You'd end up wasting all your resources just trying to keep up with the latest developments.
With enough money to live on for a few years he's hardly a beggar.
Google: ASCII art
I believe so - I use pdb.set_trace all the time in my django views (during debugging) and prefer it to code.interact
My apologies for not including the safety information. There is another very similar article that includes some safety tips:

http://www.instructables.com/id/SYB2G6JFMZAFYV2/
At scale, this site/idea could theoretically "own" the reputation market. There's definite value in that.
Apple Snow Leopard Security Criticized
No, I wasn't being sarcastic.

Had he left out the unprofessional bits, this would have been a really boring story about IT stuff that I may have ignored. Instead, the post was somewhat humorous, which pulled me on through it and let me know how serious the guy was about what he was saying.

As to your second point, the sheer fact that he was able to lay out a host of possible reasons why something that would seem obvious to an IT consumer might not be a good idea was enough to encourage me to pause before badmouthing IT again.
For example: The "About" link on the home page didn't work, so I went to http://www.kabadge.com/about and got an error.

I like your idea though. Keep going.
Significance of Diabetic Diets Menus
Wow, what a bad idea.
As some supplemental data, there are 5 million more women than men in the United States. You have the advantage.
The Ownership Trait in IT Staffing
My first thought was "Xbox Achievements for the Internet". This may be a good 1-sentence elevator pitch for certain audiences.

Definitely think working with the partner sites to make the end-user experience as transparent as possible is the way to go. Also want to make it very easy for partners to hook in to your system (e.g., simple API calls around their existing login/event logging process).

This may sound silly, but you want better icons/eye candy for your badges. They should be things you want to collect.
Your speculation has been extensively explored, and isn't actually better than the theory advanced in the article:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&cmd=D...

Reading over a few of the abstracts, the consensus appears to be that depression can be caused by defects in circadian rhythm, but that the relationship isn't necessary, and may not be sufficient. If I were you, I'd ease off on using "amateurish speculation" as an epithet in this situation.
i'm not 100% convinced this author has any idea what an 'algorithm' is.

Algorithms are simply one way of executing on insight, a way that is particularly well suited to large data sets, no doubt.

huh
I didn't feel that when writing to The Queen asking her to give someone a knighthood that it would be appropriate for me to use the following language:

"Yo, Liz. No love for AMT? Dude deserves a KCMG. Peace out, John"
Down To Business: Outsourcing's Next Big Thing
Sometimes name-calling and meanness are warranted; most of the time, they're just cases of outraged people being outraged.
That's the usual hand-waving argument (if you need this you're doing it wrong), but the fact is that even something with three simple preconditions is quickly rendered unreadable through three nested levels of if statements.
javanix, my guess is that there is a big overlap between the hacking community and the comic book fan community. Beyond the superficial commonality there is also the fact that it is a major M&A transaction. For a community focused on start ups it is an interesting reference point. Another way to test if something is on topic might be to ask what would a founder do with this information. With this data point you could come to a couple conclusions:

1. Content does have value - for all the talk about user generated content having an IP library is worth something. You might hire some content specialists rather than work on an open ended CMS.

2. Selling physical goods is smart - A huge portion of Marvel's revenue is based on licensing and huge revenues are attractive. If I were working on a tech startup I might think of ways to produce artifacts to sell in addition to digital services.

There are probably other lessons to be learned as well. Not hacker focused, but certainly useful to start ups.
"College has many merits but one of them isn't really the promised good job, good career, good life that many people believe it to be."

I think its true that a degree will not get you a job.

But unless you can prove to be a complete superstar in your field you will severely narrow your choices for getting a job without one. Having a BA/BS even from a minor college is still a bar set by most HR groups. (the relevance of the degree aside). Note the BA, an AA which you get at community colleges generally aren't worth too much.

But in regards to your friend paying 50K a year for a social work degree. Sure your friends daughter may not end up with a job where she can ever payback the 200K they're going to pay. But she sounds like someone who is going to try to make a difference in the world. Perhaps that means more then the amount she'll make in salary post-graduation.
As art is just an expression of someones feelings, I guess robots need a way to mimic real life as well.
A BA in humanities isn't going to get someone hired for middle management. There aren't many companies hiring entry-level management trainees any more.
OK, here it is on Google Docs with vanished references and mangled formatting: http://docs.google.com/View?id=ah7wnxgtp2dq_18cjcsgc27

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/101698/I_Economic_history_of_entr... should work much better. I wrote this in about 24 hours so it's quite possible there are typos or odd phrases that I missed. If you notice any, please let me know.
Ah, I see now. This strikes me as an idea that people will like, but I just can't see the use case.

Maybe it's because I've never understood the whole "achievement" thing anyway, but I can't come up with a reason to care about them at all. I can't think of a reason to use a system that restricts access only to people with completely arbitrary credentials. I can't think of a reason to implement such a restriction, either.

I can think of a reason NOT to export my application's "badges" to other applications, if any: it would encourage people to create accounts on my system for the sole purpose of gaining these badges. It further encourages behavior designed to obtain badges.

That said, I don't want to be too down on the idea. It's got some potential as an information hub. I would consider losing the "badge"/"achievement" terminology, downplay the "access control" angle, and bill it as a more generic hub for sharing information about what users get done in a given application.

I could see benefit of sharing information about -- say -- how often a user makes posts on user-moderated discussions, as opposed to voting, or that sort of thing. Swapping numbers and ratios instead of boolean data reduces the arbitrariness of the thing. The ability to use them in subtle ways, as opposed to ham-fisted restrictions, would likewise reduce the temptation to create throw-away accounts.
Now its just a waiting game for the Marvel vs Disney Brawl-ish fighter that's going to come from this merger.
Putting aside the corpspeak fluff, I wonder if this advice is valid for SaaS as well. I understand managers won't feel nervous after buying a mockup or code review tool from a small supplier, but would they be as willing to put business-critical data into a small company's servers? Would you let a one-man shop run your CRM?
Full, print formatted version of the article:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3631
It's not that users can't find out that they've been deaded, it's that it requires a little bit of work. If one simply logs out and tries to look at their comments, they'll notice it right away. This account that I'm posting under actually started out as a dummy account that I specifically created so that I could ensure that my primary account hadn't been deaded. (This was right after I'd done a couple of very provocative things) Of course, if one makes half a dozen straight comments that never get voted up or down, it should be pretty clear that something is going on.

Also, it's worth considering the reason why it isn't made obvious to deaded users why they've been deaded. If you notify a troll that you've killed their account, they simply create a new account and continue. At that point you've effectively accomplished nothing by deading their account, and they whole point is to do something about trolls.
Imagine catching one of these on your line!
Also imagine the scientists surprise when their robot gets eaten by an endangered shark. What do you do then?
Why BSP is being phased out of 3D games
This is seriously just a copy of stackoverflow.com. It does look a lot less busy though... And its WAAAAY cheaper to buy
I just tried it and it works
It's true, I was banned once and it took me about two weeks to figure out what was going on. I probably wouldn't have caught on at all, except I'd heard of other forums doing similar things. The only trouble is, I'm not a troll. I was told that I was banned due to a server error - not sure if that's true or not.
Hoff on Virtualization's Impact on Networking Vendors
The Thinkers: Black holes, black energy and the history of the universe
If you're really interested in conflict and drama above all else, I suggest you navigate to one of the many web discussion forums that are suited to that kind of thing--there are many of them and any one will do. As for this issue, it appears that when calling people cunts is the most interesting thing one can say, the issue probably falls far below any level of genuine intellectual curiosity and has no place here. Your citing of Plato and Martin Luther as examples only strengthens my point--Plato was a bullshit artist to the highest degree and Luther was above all things the instigator of some of the most dramatic religious wars in history. Neither of them had anything to say about reality, and those of us who do discuss reality would do best to ignore their examples.
It's not only an apology, they're also calling for a posthumous knighthood.
The main page you've linked to tells me almost nothing about the service you're offering. From the first page I should be able to answer the following questions:

- What's an achievement? What's a badge?

- How do I earn them? If I want to go off and earn something right now how do I do that?

- Why do I care? What's in it for me?

It's difficult to review something when I have no idea what it is.

(Edit: formatting)
Does Canada still count?
you are a big loud personality type, you like everything spelled out in big bright letters. you're probably an extrovert in real life

Funny, I've read a lot of jacquesm's comments and didn't get that impression at all. He's certainly "into it" and really likes to participate. For all we know, he may be a real introvert in real life and is much more comfortable expressing himself on-line. I know I am.
I'm a programmer, so desktop support/management is out of my purview. I just spoke with one of our IT staff, though, and she confirmed what you state here. She said that in my department, support is close to zero because developers are better at managing their computers, but the majority of her work is made up of fixing the computers of assistants and researchers who've managed to do something silly, and do not have the knowledge or skill to back out the change. Also, these are the same people who forward dangerous, non-work emails through Outlook, or get caught in a phishing expedition using IE.

So it's clearly not as simple a problem as it seems from either side. I assume there's a cost/benefit ratio that might be (additional productivity) - (additional IT staff) > zero. That said, I like the freedom to use the tools that work for me. I'd be pretty angry if IT policy changed, so my perspective is colored.
You'd better make sure you do that from a 'virgin' machine then or your cookies or other signature information will give you away in a heartbeat.
For every 100 people who read HN, my guess is that 10 upvote stories and 1 comments. I bet that more than half of regular HN readers don't even know that the site is powered by voting despite the little arrows next to each story.

If people knew to upvote stories they liked on their own then the average story would have something like 800 upvotes. I agree with what you're saying because if everyone did this it would be really annoying, but certainly most people don't upvote the stories they like.
The Architecture Analogy For Programming Is Wrong
Ask HN: Is Thesis Theme the right choice for my blog?
I'm just getting started with a new blog and I'm looking into Thesis Theme. From what I've seen it's pretty good but it's hard to tell because the reviews I've found include affiliate links and banner ads to buy the theme.

Can someone give me an unbiased review?

If you think Thesis isn't the right choice can you recommend another one that has good SEO?

Here's the link to the site for anyone not familiar with it yet http://diythemes.com/
Why does hitting <ESC> take me to a login page? That was odd.
Timestamping your Github commits
Is Crowd-sourced Journalism Making You Dumber?
Thanks everyone for the replies. I agree, this is an interesting discussion. It seems like patents are such a thing that many people who's not entrepreneurs (including VCs) assume you have to do but very few question why. It's like "oh, you have a startup in high-tech, must have a patent, then?".

I would guess the general opinion in the HN-crowd is that ideas are worthless and that execution counts. Well, patents are "just" ideas. So, are they worthless? If so, why does everyone keep asking about them?
VCs care about the upside case, not the mean
emacs, 20 years, nothing else comes close
Love this post. This has been our standard marketing tack for years, and was a real conflict early in the company.

How are we doing? Check out:

http://runplaybook.com

Do we sound like VC-funded 6-person-marcom team boring jerks, or just the real jerks we actually are?
Play With The Beatles at JamLegend...For Free
ftse here.

I didn't know my account was dead to the world, but thanks jacquesm for letting me know.

In hindsight my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=765153 does appear trollish, but I assumed the bright sparks reading would have taken it in context. It was exactly the type of comment Dvorak would have made in defence of the accusation that he is a professional troll. Anyway, he has admitted this on video to Dave Winer, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA. The fact that I was posting this comment in irony was obviously lost, though, on mustpax who said I should be civil.

As much as I admire what pg has done here with NH, I really can't be bothered writing to him to explain all this if his code doesn't have the charity to let me know when I'm wasting my time talking to myself.
Which VC firm should I pitch?
I'm not sure why this was downvoted. Kingdom Hearts is the only easy place that Disney can exploit Marvel characters before 2017, given their outstanding deals with Activision and other publishers.
Link & Embed Contents in Web-based Email & Blog posts Easily | World of VAMPIRE
Bird and Wadler, Introduction to Functional Programming is a classic. They have a more recent book, Introduction to Functional Programming in Haskell, which I haven't seen.
I entirely agree with this. I wrote Serendeputy's about page in my own voice. I did it partly to separate myself from the my more corporatey competitors, but mostly because I despise the way I sound when I try to speak corporate droid. It makes me want to cry.

That might be my number one reason for doing a startup: the ability to avoid doing things that make me want to cry.
Hey, there's nothing wrong with writers who have a bit of personality. But you're probably correct (I did not, however, deserve that downmod) that it's even possible to write badly about an interesting topic.
> "…graduating in 2005 with a double major in journalism and anthropology…"

I think I see her problem right there.
I wrote a post about this subject ~2wks ago about how college (as an asset class) could be in a bubble, and I showed the similarities between a college degree and housing. The point made is that it would be much less feasible to have so many college students if tuition were not financed and subsidized by the US federal gov't.

http://www.investingwithoptions.com/2009/08/college-is-a-bub...

Soon I will be analyzing the data behind income differences and overall opportunity cost of various degrees as well as total amount financed over time.
A degree from a Tier-1 school and high GPA is a signal to potential employers that you are a hard worker and smart.

The only things it signals to me is that you have:

- Considerable financial support from your parents and/or considerable student loan debt.

- A strong ability to pass tests.

What it doesn't tell me is whether you'll actually be able to do the job, and do it well.
Or better still - skip college, learn to be a plumber.

You'd be surprised the amount of money a master plumber can take home.
You could also try to stomach xcompmgr for compositing...
for those who don't have 'showdead' on:

ftse here.

I didn't know my account was dead to the world, but thanks jacquesm for letting me know.

In hindsight my comment at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=765153 does appear trollish, but I assumed the bright sparks reading would have taken it in context. It was exactly the type of comment Dvorak would have made in defence of the accusation that he is a professional troll. Anyway, he has admitted this on video to Dave Winer, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA. The fact that I was posting this comment in irony was obviously lost, though, on mustpax who said I should be civil.

As much as I admire what pg has done here with NH, I really can't be bothered writing to him to explain all this if his code doesn't have the charity to let me know when I'm wasting my time talking to myself.
Microsoft broke the internet?
Downloading files from internet explorer 8 in vista and Windows 7 RTM won't work from most sites.

It seems windows 7 RC1 and XP are unaffected.
Thoughts on Clojure Package Management
But you're probably not a potential employer at a Fortune 500 company.
College, as an Asset Class, is a Bubble.
Seems pretty arbitrary. I'm amazed I was never put on perma-dead.
Assuming it's a current-limited "float charger," which is I think what almost all UPSes have (they just float some voltage, like 13.8V, over the batteries with some current limiting circuitry so they don't charge them too fast), how would you do that?

If anything, by using larger batteries for the same length of outage that you'd use small ones for, the batteries wouldn't be run down as far. That means while charging that they wouldn't draw as much current initially (although they'd draw it for longer), which might make them easier for the UPS to charge.

What I'd imagine you might want to do is charge the batteries initially with a fast/slow charger, and then hook them up to the UPS to keep them topped off.
I've found that because the applicant market is so incredibly saturated with applicants who have a degree, it's ceased to be an indicator of anything, and HR departments (and hiring managers) have stopped caring.

You'll find quite a few job posts now days that explicitly say "... or equivalent experience" in the education section, and many others that will happily ignore the stated requirements.
I think that the preferable way of doing this is using signals.
Try Ctrl-A + [ which puts you into 'copy mode' and ] to exit 'copy mode'. While in copy mode you can use arrow keys and/or page up/down to go through screen's scrollback buffer.

I usually run anything that will have a wall of text piped to less anyways (with or without screen).
Asserting Your Social Status With Your Facebook Status
Reading from CouchDB is pretty trivial in Clojure or any decent language; this is actually much more interesting since it implements a view engine.
Usually when a journalist points you to something and says it's the next big thing it's because it's probably not going to be.

I also suppose it all depends on what you call a "next big thing". If you modulate your expectations accordingly, almost anything can be the next big thing.
If I ever invent a time machine, I want to go back to my first year at the day job and say "When the boss says he wants a 'web service', he really just needs data from page X displayed on all these sidebars. Use an iframe and you won't be stuck in the office doing overtime for the next 3 months fighting Java's ridiculously obtuse frameworks."
Of course there is overlap, but seeing as it is a press release this article adds nothing to the general hacker/start-up knowledgebase, and considering the discussion here itself seems mostly centered on what crossovers/new movies are possible, I'm really having a hard time gaining any value from this sort of thing.
Your thinking seems self-contradictory to me. On the one hand, you seem to acknowledge the existence of evil in some objective sense, saying that such evil is rampant in the present time, yet you rule out the use of objective morality to evaluate our past actions. Do I have that right?

If so, then I think you'll find that you have little in common with most commenters here. If you reject the premise that Britain's treatment of Turing was objectively wrong, then the rest of debate will be unfruitful.