skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It seems there are way too many variables to look for clear examples.

Indeed. The social science method of finding truth through regressions is an intellectually bankrupt exercise.

My overall views are these:

a) I suspect that developed countries (the U.S. in particular) over invest in the money spent on education

b) developed countries over invest on the time spent in school

c) the quality of the time spent in school sucks, and could be much improved

I don't believe the above because of social science regressions. I believe it because I am a software engineer, and I can mentally add up the time it took me to learn the skills I have now. It does not require 16 years of full time schooling to become an engineer. For example, when I put my mind to it, I was able to learn enough calculus to pass the AP tests in about 50 hours total.

I know that many peers who were fully productive - either doing software, carpentry, or even C.A.D. design for an architectural firm by early high school. We may need in a knowledge economy, but perhaps 1% of jobs need more than a year or two of secondary schooling to do them effectively.

d) The primary problem of the urban poor youth in America is not lack of schooling, but lack of discipline. We could spend one quarter what we do on schooling in D.C., but make it many times more effective it we simply re-imported pre-1970's discipline. Note that old school discipline was not abandoned because it did not work, it was abandoned because of disastrous court decisions that basically made teachers unable to control their own schools. The lack of discipline means that kids do not learn, and that when they drop out they do not even have a good enough attitude to get a job in skilled labor.
It's not a bad theory. Interestingly, there is evidence of inputs into the brain reward system that operate independently of sweetness and that perhaps directly encode metabolic value: Rodents that lack the ability to taste sweetness prefer caloric sweeteners such as sucrose to noncaloric sweeteners, such as sucralose[1]. Therefore the brain can detect calories more directly.

So in the context of this new study, it could be that the brain notices that a certain rate of eating/drinking is correlated with a decreased rate of satiety and concludes that the correct thing to do is to eat more.

1. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2008.01.032
I think if I really ever compared day over day / and really did it daily - I would go insane from the ups and down ..

I prefer month/month and actually more quarters or years How much better can you actually get in 1 day? I made the decision to quit smoking in a day; but it wasn't apparently "worth it" for months.
In everything, it's all about the frame
I got a lot of practice at these 'tricks' while taking a few chemistry classes; all multiple choice. It was excellent practice too since I attended classes but did not study, so the answer was somewhere hidden in my mind, associated to whatever I was thinking about when it was discussed. A large part of it also, as the author also mentioned, is reverse-engineering the question to find likely decoys and falsely intuitive answers.

For those interested, it worked pretty well for itself. On one of the classes, I entered the final with a perfect 80% and got a perfect 90% on the final-- netting an A due one of the instructor's policies.
Bored YouTube viewers bail at 52 seconds
Perhaps not "all", but it's important. Sure it's an old article, but good, and worth revisiting. It's also the consistently hardest part for so many people to come to terms with: "But my work is good!" Yes, but if you can't present it...

Steak on a garbage can lid, to paraphrase Cliff Huxtable, is never appetizing.
Wikipedia is increasingly conscious of being sued by public figures because of the high profile vandalism cases that occur with some regularity.
I think a good strategy for anyone who may potentially have to go through this situation is to roll your own encryptor/encoder to combine several sets of data in to a single dataset, and having multiple keys associated with it. Depending on which key you use, you will get a different output. From the outside it will look like a simple way to disguise a already encrypted dataset.

A decoy in simple.
After reading this "article", I completely agree. It's a series of "people familiar with the matter" and quotes from analysts.

Said analysts bring immense insight like:

- "As devices become more expensive, your ability to make them mass market declines," said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

- Analysts say how well an Apple tablet sells will depend on price, which most believe will be between $399, the price of a high-end iPod touch, and $999, the price of the cheapest MacBook laptop.

- Apple watchers expect the tablet to debut at the end of this year or early next year.
To be blunt: citations needed.

The article not only talks about conditions that are clearly mental (depression) and ones that are arguably mentally related (IBS), but also ones that you'd have a hard time attributing to "lifestyle 'choices' that aren't really choices at all" (Parkinson's).

> Placebos aren't working better because people have more faith in medicine, they're working better because of the Hawthorne effect

The article talks about both effects and more (placebos working less well for conditions that are locally under-diagnosed, for example). The article presents a rich collection of causes for the rise of the placebo effect instead of a single cause. And I think Occam, who could appreciate the complexity of the brain and see that they've got data, would agree that it couldn't be as simple as you suggest.

(Also, across populations we don't all get exposed to the same media. Something tells me that there aren't constant erectile dysfunction commercials in Bangalore.)
I agree, I would personally try to go with a .com simply because it is the first thing people are going to try. It's simply habit. I've been following the recent trend of country code domain usage and I believe that these are an exception to the rule IF the country code is somehow used in conjunction with the site name. People seem to remember this distinctly and disconnect it from the .com altogether solving the issue.
Update: This post unexpectedly hit Reddit, and within a few hours, Aaron got another e-mail telling us that our Adsense account had been reinstated.

Ah, the "significant risk to AdWords advertisers" must have suddenly ceased to exist then! Or perhaps the risk is just preferable to the risk this article caused to Google.
Vi on Unix and Visual Studio on Windows (with Vim bindings). Vi and Visual Studio have one thing in common that makes them great, the customization. Developers are very picky when it comes to the tools they want to use. We like it to work in a certain way. Every good developer I know has his own customizations that pretty much is unique to him or her.
Many diets seem to be based on temporarily fooling the mind.

e.g. a meal that fills the stomach to capacity but with little calorific content

Initially the dieter loses some weight. After a while, he notices that he isn't deriving pleasure from the diet.

But because it seemed initially to work, word of the new diet spreads.
I agree - I'm also a diet coke junkie and that's basically the only sweet thing I consume. I don't like cake, don't really eat any confectionery, don't even put sugar in my tea. I also cannot stand the taste of regular coke.

So yeah, I also question the article. I'm much more worried about the long-term effects of the caffeine, the chemicals used as sweetener, and the acidity of the drink...
guessing the UK doesn't have the 5th amendment? *also assuming what was on the drive was self incriminating
Unix/Linux.
Ghod knows that folks who have problems always talk to doctors about said problems....

> it goes out of its way to convince people that there's something "wrong" with them

I don't see that. I see "hey, if you can't make it through a round of golf without needing to urinate, you've got a problem and you should go to the doctor and get our drug".
I think a lot of old proverbs have a significant amount of truth in them.
Joe Hewitt's take on the iphone App Store
I am not an expert in infosec but plausible deniability looks like a better strategy here.See http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability
> I'm always put off by folks (on television) telling me about their E.D. meds.

Are you talking about commercials or something else?

If commercials, how do you propose that folks who have those problems become aware that it's okay to get help? Or do you think that they should just give up on sex?

Remember - you asserted the reasonable proposition that it's reasonably normal to be embarrassed about such problems.
This whole thread (outlook 2003 being slow, 07 being a lot faster) makes it seem like xobni should have sold for 20mm
Damn, I was just looking at all of those last week. Just one step ahead of the herd, apparently.

I have to say that MUMPS compares favorably w/ sendmail.cf as a programming syntax.
> To those that downvoted me, can you clarify what's wrong with the suggestion?

The suggestion is actually quite progressive, in the political sense, which should lead to upvotes.
The book Emotional Intelligence references a bunch of scientific studies about both the effect of mental health on physical health, and also about the placebo effect. The opening of Gladwell's new book is also about the effect of mental health on physical health.

There have been many studies done that show clear health benefits to joining civic organizations or participating in church. As the opportunities for civic participation decline, participating in medical studies may increasingly make people feel like they are giving back to society, which causes a change in brain chemistry that ameliorates the underlying physical symptoms.

Clearly both of my (related) hypotheses need testing, but at least they are falsifiable, unlike some of the dubious theories posed by the original article.
Magazine to Have Video Ad Insert
You know, I've never quite understood why logged-out editing is associated with "anonymity". You're far more anonymous logged in as a pseudonym than you are as a logged-out IP address.
Poverty doesn't kill. Nature kills you. Wealth just reduces the effect nature has on you (food, clothing, shelter, healthcare etc).

We've known about the solution to poverty since the 18th century (free trade - aka capitalism) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations but the solution isn't popular among intellectuals, despite the correlation of free trade and per capita GDP (admittedly crude but one the more objective measures available).

http://www.investmentu.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/200601...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/e/e2/2...

http://images.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimage...

http://www.invest.is/resources/images/invest.is/News/Index05...

The current state of the third world was caused by the UK and others encouraging places like Africa and India to follow the socialist model in the post collonial era after World War 2.

The extent to which former collonies have prospered is the extent to which they ignored that advice (Singapore, India since 1990 etc) http://mises.org/books/conquest.pdf
HN webpage visualized as a DOM graph
They evolve into uselessness, as any system does. They already have their own bureaucracy. Once they will introduce their own editorial process, the transformation will be finished.
That makes no difference, actually. I believe, that their technology just does not scale further. A couple of centuries ago, Britannica was also young and disruptive. No anymore.
Yes, but are their predictions correct? Anyone tried them out?
> And what happens when, faced with the rational person's ultimatum ("learn to fish or you get nothing"), the man chooses nothing? Surely it's his own fault, but suffering still happens.

Yup, it does. What of it? What makes you think that giving him the fish helps?

You can spend all your resources on problems that can't be fixed, and accomplish nothing, or you can spend them on problems that can be fixed and actually accomplish something.

It's unclear why you prefer the former.
So this means that the photograph of a rat sitting in the plant was placed there by the photographer? What's the word to express the sense of extreme revulsion I am feeling...
Twitter-scanning robot wants hugs, high-fives
I read this as only 2 countries in the world trust their citizens enough to make their own drug choices.
this video gives you a better impression of his thoughts of missing the $1,000,000 question :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLrbBj_LFW0
Given that the UK doesn't have a constitution, it clearly can't have amendments, hence can't have a 5th amendment.

IANAL, but I believe there is no legal defence concerning self-incrimination, but you do generally have the right to remain silent. Doing so, however, now allows the court to draw conculsions from your silence.

Some years ago, for example, the warning given to suspects when arrested changed to: "You do not have to say anything, but it may hurt your defence if you do not mention something you later rely upon in court."
Did you RTFA? It's more than just TPB. But since you asked...

... it's about free speech. TPB is not illegal, and it's not a source of piracy. It's a search engine. You think TPB's illegal, then so is Google, since you can use both for the same purpose.

Do you have the "guts" to pull the plug on Google? By your standard, it's just as illegal. They both point to .torrent files containing pirated material.
How to get Stackoverflow Reputation
What's interesting is that after reading this article I've realized I always expected e-mail search to be bad. Why? Possibly because, when another entity holds a large portion of my social information, it feigning ignorance about deep technical knowledge of my personal life (which is likely better than my own understanding) makes me feel good.

It's less 'big brother'y, which may explain why poor e-mail search doesn't bother me. It's as though its waiting for me to get the answer first.
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I wasn't assuming that it was true or wouldn't have methodologial flaws. It's basically impossible to find a study of any real-world sociological study whose methodology is beyond dispute..

Well yes. And in general, the flaws are pretty gaping flaws. If you have studies with gaping methodological flaws, then you must completely disregard them. They are not evidence.

The study you cite about the CPC program, is majorly flawed. In general, the most astute parents figure out how to find their way into these types of programs. When you look at a more broad based program - like Head Start - the evidence effectiveness does not seem to be exist or be enough to stand out from the noise ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start#Reports_and_statemen... )

But I think you will have trouble proposing that someone is making an unsupported claim when they say that education increases wealth and social mobility.

I dispute it. If you want to play the social science game, check out this article: http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/does-education-really-...

Despite dramatically increasing the amount we spend on education, and the time spent in school, basic measures of vocabulary and math have been flat over the last century.

But I don't like playing the social science game.

The real reason I don't believe schooling increases national wealth is because I got a topflight education. But after a private high school and an ivy league college, neither I nor virtually any of my friends learned much in the way of wealth-creating skills. I earn a much higher than average income, but its all because of self-taught skills.

After spending some time in the workforce, I've noticed the vast majority of people learn their wealth producing skills on the job. This is the norm now, it was the norm fifty years ago, and it was the norm one hundred fifty years ago. It applies to machinists and it applies to software engineers. The only difference is that we are so rich now, we can afford to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on formal schooling.

If people who graduate college earn more, it must because of some other affect ( selection effects, zero-sum credentialing laws, or because of social networks). I know this must be the case, because I knows what happens in schools, and I know that outside of engineering (which is a tiny minority of all majors) college does not teach wealth producing skills.
After Thoughts on the Gartner Cloud Collision  FailBucket Brawl
It's part of an ongoing dialog with Gartner between the SA crew and the cloud analysts. Interesting stuff.
This doesn't sound like a good idea at all to me.

(http://siliconangle.com/ver2/sabackchan/2009/08/24/why-is-fa...)

MySpace and other startups succeed because they’re small and nimble – why the heck is Zuck on a mission to hire as many people as possible? It sounds like a recipe for failure. Am I wrong?
It looks great, but I just installed it via cabal and the examples on the github page fail to parse.

Does it require a particular version of of ghc?

I have:

Glasgow Haskell Compiler, Version 6.10.2, for Haskell 98, stage 2 booted by GHC version 6.10.1

edit: After some guesswork I managed to build a cabal package from the source and re-installed, and it looks good. Perhaps something in the readme should mention steps needed to build from source?
You're missing the point. Placebos produce real physical effects, as real as those produced by non-placebos.
Surely someone who works at facebook/flickr/google/at&t can pinch his access logs...
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wait, myspace is now succeeding?
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It's been shown that antidepressants are no better clinically than placebos. The drug companies simply suppressed the trials that didn't yield the results they wanted and cherry-picked the ones that did in order to get FDA approval. This all came out a couple of years ago when a long-running Freedom of Information Act suit forced them to release all the trials.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/26/mentalhealth.m...

Edit: I just remembered that I posted about this to HN back when the study came out: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=123575. A commenter pointed out that the study was limited to SSRIs, the most widely used antidepressants.
From your first post (and my real contention):

> Placebos aren't working better because people have more faith in medicine, they're working better because of the Hawthorne effect; people feel like they have someone who cares about them.

The problem isn't that placebos are working better, the problem is that they're working better relative to medications. If it was merely an issue of "someone who cares about [the patients]" then we'd expect that the actual drugs would benefit from the same effect too. As it stands, the problem is that placebos have been working better, while the same drugs have been basically steady. If Prozac couldn't beat placebos now, it tells us something, but doesn't tell us anything about how much better things were back in the old days when when we were participating more in civic organizations and church.
A mess? Possibly the easiest website to use, that has helped millions of people connect and saves consumers billions in classifieds? Oh, and makes $100M+ and growing with almost no overhead?

The only mess is the direction Wired has gone in the past year.
> Believe me, if there was a placebo-based solution to this, I would be the first person in line to get it...

If you are taking drugs for this, then you are in line already. Every one I have read about has studies showing it is only slightly more effective than placebos.

I really am not trying to say the problem is not real. I'm only saying that placebos are far more effective than you realize.

For example some quotes from wikipedia:

"Notably, however, a recent Cochrane review of the efficacy of the SSRIs concluded that they were only slightly more effective than placebo for the treatment of people with depression."

"A widely-reported meta-analysis combined 35 clinical trials submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before licensing of four newer antidepressants (including the SSRIs paroxetine and fluoxetine, and two non-SSRI antidepressants nefazodone and venlafaxine). The authors found that although the antidepressants were statistically superior to placebo they did not exceed the NICE criteria for a 'clinically significant' effect. In particular they found that the effect size was very small for moderate depression but increased with severity reaching 'clinical significance' for very severe depression. The relationship between severity and efficacy was attributed to a reduction of the placebo effect in severely depressed patients, rather than an increase in the effect of the medication."

(Especially note the last sentence.)

Please don't understand this in reverse and assume people should/can do nothing. My point is placebos work, and people should make more use of them.

Another thing: just because something is all in your head does not mean it's not real. People often assume that "since a placebo fixed it, it was not real to begin with". NO! That's is NOT the case. The problem was REAL, and the placebo fixed it.
That is some nice fancy logic you have going there. Are you a mormon by any chance?
Except it's regulations on PRESCRIPTION drugs, so it's still up to the doctors.
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Duplicate: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=756724
Besides, when I have a problem with a friend, I don't threaten to boycott our friendship until they change, so I'm not going to do that to Apple either.

Apple is not your friend. Friends are people, not organizations.

Good post otherwise. Though I do wonder if Apple is legally obligated in some way to at least show that they have made a good faith effort to review applications that they are distributing. If there was no review process and people were distributing kiddie porn apps, could Apple be held legally responsible?