skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The thing that really scares me is that you could easily argue that everyone has a "little bit" of psychopathy in them -- see how car drivers in big cities treat others on the road, see how some people go "too far" during war.

What threshold would/could you pick?
A cordless future for electricity?
100mg would be a pretty big portion. Maybe a grande from Starbucks (with notoriously high caffeine content) is about that. Isn't a normal cup about 40mg?
If you can make a 1GW energy plant for about 1.5 billion terristrially then to pay a 14 fold premium to put the same thing in space... is a pretty brave thing to do.

If Richard Branson (to pick a random spacefaring billionaire) was fronting a few billion dollars of his own money, that might be brave. Spending other people's money on boondoggles that are wildly unlikely to produce a positive return is not brave.
I'll probably get downvoted, but I have to say it, I feel like these kinds of Ask HN are getting a bit ridiculous. I'm sure it's just my knee-jerk reaction to the title "Ask HN: Pick My Career".

Don't ask a bunch of strangers what you should be doing. In most cases, it doesn't really matter anyway - what is more important is that you do SOMETHING, then if you don't like it, try SOMETHING ELSE. You can figure these things out for yourself - and from the sounds of it, you probably already know what your interests are and what your budget is.

Pick your own career / college major / text editor / programming language / what to eat for lunch / what music to listen to when coding / what city to live in / what video games to play / what drugs to use / where to meet members of the opposite sex / etc.

</rant>
Maybe Turing was killed by a time travelling robot he later invented?
How do you calculate Pi?
This is new ground. It always takes more to develop the technology initially than it does in production. Once the technologies have been developed and refined the costs of space solar should come down considerably. Not to mention the added benefits that always come from advanced R&D efforts.
I think what is important here is that the degree gives the potential for a certain career field - but does not guarantee a job in that field (and does not mean you are stuck in that field if you later decide you hate it).

One thing you might consider is that relevant work experience goes just as far for getting on a trajectory as the education. Trying to be hired as a teacher might be just as hard with an education degree if all you've done is worked on oil rigs as it would be if you had worked in a childrens museum for five years but had no formal degree.
Not only that, but vertical has a better chance of even making it past the short-term. With a vertical, it's much easier to find a pain point that needs to be solved, build it, and focus your marketing efforts.
Top 50 Forensic Science Blogs
From forensic reporting to crime psychology to computer forensics and more, the blogs on this list are must-reads for any fan of forensic science.
Not in the mrnging
I briefly looked over the code while browsing the web on my phone so pardon me if I missed this:

Do you need to enforce a certain logging scheme?
eg. [ ip ] :: [ user-agent ] :: etc, or is there something in settings.py that specifies what each record in the log file looks like?

This was something I was contemplating last week and wasnt sure of a way to accomodate people that might log different things or log things in a different order than I.
"Franz Reichelt (1800s – 1912), a tailor, fell to his death off the first deck of the Eiffel Tower while testing his invention, the coat parachute. It was his first ever attempt with the parachute and he had told the authorities in advance he would test it first with a dummy."

He did.
For me, what I get out of travelling (which I don't do often enough) is experiencing a foreign culture. I don't enjoy travelling from place to place and seeing the sights - it's always been a hollow experience to me, except perhaps for those momentous sights that have an impact a picture really can't convey - think the Grand Canyon of Niagara Falls. It seems such a waste to me when people visit somewhere, and make little attempt to truly experience the culture.
Computer algorithm to decipher ancient texts
The hashing approach is fine, but I don't get why they do this at runtime instead of at site push time. There are so many other things you want to do before making the content live like run regression tests and validators, get a commit message that explains the change, etc.

It seems like you will always have a script in there somewhere. Why not have it do the hash tag replacement at the same time and then the content is static?

I may just be a curmudgeon. I go to extremes to turn any runtime code into periodically-generated static code. I once started a mini project that was email-based blogging software. To post a comment, each page and existing comment had a mailto: link with an embedded ID string. Replies would hit procmail, which would pull out the ID and embed the comment in the HTML of the original page at the right place. No Javascript or CGI present, only procmail and static HTML. I wonder if Posterous does some of this?
Well, it varies so much, I just picked 100mg as a nice round number. However, after a little more research I found this website [http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database] and did an calculation on the average mg per serving and it came out to 109.97, so I think 100mg was a good estimation.
> We're the middle children of history as Tyler Durden so eloquently said.

You just quoted a hyperbolic work of fiction in supporting your point that people are addicted to referencing hyperbolic works of fiction.

That's a beautiful kind of irony right there.

Respectfully, I think you're accusing everyone else of being guilty of your own sin.
DNA forensics?
One of the big problems with this article, and it also applies (albeit slightly differently) to the singularity folks, is this: You are comparing normal existence today with front edge people of the past. This is easy to accidentally do, because it is much easier to see the people who really jumped all over lighting, and telephone in the past when looking from now. Further it is much more common to write about those people than it is to write about the smiths, who not keeping up with the Joneses, didn't get the telephone for another decade. There were plenty of places in the us that only used outhouses into the 70's. Horses were used for plowing and whatnot into the 1950's (tractors having been around for decades at that point).

My point is, in 50 years we will be writing about the curve the internet took, and my children's kids will grow up believing everyone did this internet thing fluently. It will be hard to explain to them how a lot of my contemporaries will never quite get it. Much like I still can't quite wrap my head around the telephone troubles my grandfather's parents seemed to have.

I guess the point is, there really is not a good way of measuring impact of technology until we can look back and go, "woah, that was a big change!" or "what a dud!". Compare period write-ups of the future of zepplins or pneumatic tubes, to current reality.
This is akin to companies that claim you should judge them by their EBITDA on an ongoing basis, as if capital expenses aren't real expenses.

To justify the capital cost, it isn't enough to show that you'll make something cheaper than it is now. The capital investment needs to produce technology that is so much cheaper that it can outcompete other options and still provide a return on the capital that exceeds the opportunity cost of tying up the resources. If you can't expect this, then the endeavor is a net misuse of resources.
That's not quite what the pilot says. This is from an interview -

Lt. Col. Dale Zelko - The first missile went right over the top of me. So close, actually, that I was surprised it didn’t proximity fuse on me. I could feel the shock wave of it buffeting the aircraft. As soon as it went over I quickly re-acquired the second missile visually and when I did, I thought: “It’s goin’ to run right into me.” And it sure felt like it did.

RFA - So it was a direct hit?

Lt. Col. Dale Zelko - It may have proximity fused, I don’t know absolutely. In theory, if it didn’t have a warhead in it, if it was just a harpoon or a tree trunk, would it have gone through my aircraft? I don't know for certain. But if you look at the photos of the wreckage my entire left wing is missing. [...] The impact was extremely violent and slammed the aircraft into a left roll, negative g tuck. I estimate seven, if not more negative Gs which is enormous.
The bar for success in our industry is too low
Sigh. Must we? This kind of large-scale dynamic behaviour tends to go wrong even in languages that provide type-checking and sensible lexical scoping. In PHP it's basically just a recipe for the kinds of untouchable "black magic" code that haunt code bases. It's basically some nasty syntax wrapped around even nastier GOTO-style behaviour.

"is_callable" is no better, because if you don't know, you shouldn't even be trying it. It might as well be called "does_stick", because you're basically just throwing spaghetti (code) at a wall.
That's incremental, not revolutionary. DNA research may eventually give rise to a revolutionary breakthrough but it will still not herald the coming of 'the singularity', and that was what this article was about.
Suppose I widen my view as you suggest, which seems reasonable-- I think you're right that the price of electricity isn't the only concern.

Then I think that Japan, currently the world's #2 solar market (Germany is #1), should be investing in thin film solar R&D for the reasons you listed.

In thin film, Japan (in the form of Sharp's second generation amorphous silicon panels) is getting its ass kicked by First Solar's CdTe panels. I think that investing in, for example, CIGS or CdTe technology would be a better investment.
I'd figure that you cannot pick a threshold. I am convinced that you can turn EVERYONE into a psychopath by pushing him enough, whereas 'pushing'depends on the person getting pushed.

For myself, well, threaten people I love enough and make me desperate enough and I will probably snap, even though I am the calmest and most balanced person I know.
You're absolutely right.

You know, instead of just yes/no, if we had a Likert scale for each choice we could do three variable polls.

Wouldn't that would make for some awesome graphs?

I'm just sayin'
Who was talking about shooting icbm's with microwaves? If you have a gigawatt power generation platform in space, putting a couple of free-electron lasers up there is hardly more than an afterthought. With a big enough laser, you can stop having to worry about the heat shielding/reflectivity of the target, and just trust that the second you hit something, it's surface is going to ionize (= blow up). And as for hitting the targets up there, at the apex of their trajectory ICBM's are 1) ballistic 2) slow compared to the other parts of their flight. While hitting is still not exactly easy, other than hitting them on the launch pads it's the easiest way to do the (hard) task.
The title was written in jest. I appreciate that you took the time to reply, but wish you could have offered me some constructive guidance. If not, I think a simple downvote would have sufficed.
I don't think the distance really matters in the amount of blocked sunlight. The sun is very far away compared to the satellite. The atmosphere scatters the light so it would cast a more diffuse shadow than if it was closer to earth.
Excellent point, the trouble with the singularity folks though is that their persistence that it will happen borders on religion. It is up to the proponents of a hard to verify claim to prove that claim to be true. The evidence so far is against them, the singularity hasn't happened (yet), and when it does it will be a simple matter of fact.

Until it does it is pure speculation and all that speculation and 'but it will' stuff isn't going to make it happen one microsecond sooner (assuming it eventually will happen, which I do not believe until I see it).

The singularity has been jokingly called 'the rapture of the nerds', and there is a lot of truth in that.

The rapture people from the 'scriptural' side of life tend to go off on all kinds of tangents about how 'the rest of us' do not get it and possibly will be left behind, the 'singularity' folks seem to have many of those traits in common.

This planet has existed for four billion years and change, the universe is currently estimated to be between 13.5 and 14 billion years old and it seems all evidence points to the fact that the singularity has not happened anywhere in the universe, because according to that theory it would take over the entire universe as we know it at light speed.

The only loophole this leaves is that it has happened but so far away that the effects have not reached us yet.
Funny, your best solution is exactly what the post described with the addition of creating the filenames and cache on the fly for ease of use.
Age: 21-35 1-2 portions a day
That's a ~4 sq km shadow (spread out because of light scattering).
Dollars are just a means to quantify value. To say one believes in benefits beyond a dollar value is to say one believes in benefits that cannot be quantified - which is usually a dangerous ways to approach government spending.
I'm running an experiment with Facebook Ads for my Tumblog
I imagine something like this, but more powerful and in space!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LThD0FMvTFU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser
Harder to predict: economic change, or weather?
When will recording companies realize the issues with the current system?

I really wish iTunes operated like Steam. You buy a song, and can download it as often as you need to. You dont have to worry about deleting/losing your MP3, because you could just go download it again, no charge.

I commend bands like NIN and Radiohead, where they offered an album for digital consumption at no cost. In reality, bands make most of their money from touring anyway
Good old Midwestern thinking is always refreshing.
yep I can agree that

require 'rubygems'
require 'png'

is kind of pointless.
Charging for newspapers online: Now pay up
That's ultimate awkwardness, regardless of the number of men using it.

They're also highly inefficient. I've been to a ball game (not in Wrigley Field, but with similar troughs) where only 2 guys, on extreme ends, were using the trough. A dozen guys were waiting in line for stalls or the trough corners to be vacated.
You make this sound a little easier than it is, really, but you are right that if you do want to hit them the top of the trajectory is one of the best times to try to do it.

Unfortunately the people that launch these things are well aware of that, which is why if they are launched they are not launched 'one-by-one' to allow you to recharge your lasers between shots.

Another slight problem with the strategy is that any attacker capable of launching an ICBM at a country would probably also have the capability to hit that platform, and wich a 1GW radiated output it provides you with a really nice fat target.
Some one wise once told me: we humans strive for 3 things to become successful.

1. Money

2. Fame

3. Making a difference

Everyone aims for all the 3 things. But you have to pick one out of the 3 - prioritize what you want. And then come up with the metrics that will help you measure your success.

Most startups these days unfortunately have no idea what they are aiming for.
Welcome to Terra Hat Creek
Southlake Custom Homes for sale, Southlake Town Center, Shopping in Southlake, Entertainment in Southlake
A-friken-men.

Money in must be more than money out, otherwise you aren't a successful business, you're an eventual death.
Does high tuition facilitate networking?
Summary: If you don't make a profit, you're not successful.

Enlightening. Hey, guess what? A lot of businesses have run in the negative until they got traction and make a metric ton of money. Congratulations on being profitable from day one. TMTOWTDI

That said, I despise the twitter business model...
I think the problem is most are gunning for number 2.
This article is fundamentally flawed in judging technological progress by its impact on "everyday life". Many of the advancements over the last 50 years have been of military or industrial application. Does this mean that they are lesser advances? Where is the cruise missile? GPS system?

Even important everyday items are missing, like cell phones, and cheap air travel. I own a phone that will let me call (almost) anyone in the world form (almost) anywhere in the world, while showing me where I am to the nearest 15 meters on a map composed of images from SPACE. I can travel 3,000 miles in half of a day for a weeks worth of rent. People change cities like they used to change wardrobes.

Obviously these are just a couple of things, and wouldn't fundamentally change his argument, but I haven't spent much time thinking of them. Asking other people's opinions of changes to "everyday life" would have been helpful, as there seems to be a serious personal bias in the article.
Some ideas:

It seems from comments in this thread that you are already back in school, studying, uh, nothing in particular, I guess. If you're sure you're interested in math/computers, then majoring your studies in computer science (possibly with a second major in mathematics) may be a good route.

But no degree recession-proofs your life. You have to do that yourself. Programming work is easily outsourced to whoever does it cheapest (and ostensibly, adequately). Be an engineer; create things, build things, develop things that people actually need or want. Solve problems people have. Focus your career on how you can make others' lives better. That kind of work isn't easily outsourced.

Read this: http://philip.greenspun.com/ancient-history/professionalism-...

And this: http://www.amazon.com/Thou-Shall-Prosper-Commandments-Making...

But like bhousel said... we're a bunch of random people on the internet. You know you dreams, ambitions, interests, abilities, etc., way better than we do. Probably, the more specific your questions, the more useful our answers can be.
I empathize with the general frustration at the media industries' desire to have it both ways.

However, there does seem (to me) to be a logical and reasonable limit to our rights to the music we buy. While I think it's perfectly reasonable to do whatever non-commercial activity I want with a CD I've purchased, I'm not entirely convinced it's useful or good to extend that to commercial activity. (Say: duplicating the CD you bought and selling it for profit)

And if you're anywhere on the spectrum other than the 'end copyright' extreme, it seems that you partially agree that there is some reasonable basis to the argument that a CD isn't just a CD, that there is some implied contract that limits use.
>Hey, guess what? A lot of businesses have run in the negative until they got traction and make a metric ton of money.

I think the key point here is that while they are in the negative phase, they aren't "successful businesses"; they're struggling to survive. Jason's problem it seems is not so much that people aren't profitable, its that they are credited with being successful prematurely.
If you don't make a profit, you're not successful. That does about sum it up.

You're the one that's extrapolating here.

Fried is indirectly criticical of the Evernote model, but he isn't writing it off. What he's saying --- straightforwardly --- is that Evernote isn't a business success, yet.

What he's very directly critical of is the lazy journalism that valorizes the Evernotes of the industry. Evernote may be successful one day. It may even be very likely that Evernote will be successful. Maybe very successful. But it hasn't happened yet.
Hewitt is Right, Ament is Wrong
It seems to me that I saw a subdomain graphics.stackoverflow.com or something like that recently but I can't find it now. They do have http://doctype.com/ which is for "web designers"
I'm sure many plumbers are profitable from day one.
Amazon wasn't profitable for a while.

Which is the more successful business now?

I agree that you aren't a success until you are making money, but I don't think that it's important to be profitable always.
The argument is that proper credits should be given to companies once they make that switch from getting traction to actually make money. Currently, media and blogs more and more name a company successful when they have traction, but not yet make money.

I tend to agree with the statements made in the blogpost.
Stay in bed longer. I do that sometimes and it works for me. Once I've opened my eyes I am out of that state so keep your eyes closed.
Furthermore, it's so much cheaper/less labor intensive to let Google host your mail. How many important things is your business not doing because your technical folk are futzing with an email server? Errors of commission are easier to identify than errors of omission. Did your business fail to identify a way to attract new customers? Nobody's tracking that, but they love to count up the minutes that email's down.
What I got out from the article is that an implied contract it's not a valid contract. I think everyone agrees that there is such a implied one.
Wow, this guy has a pretty aggressive modal popup that promotes his other articles: http://img.skitch.com/20090902-kcw6ah5sr6mkpk786ny6sq95d.jpg

Appears when you scroll down past the article to the comments area.
Analyst: Microsoft Hyper-V missing three requirements for enterprise apps
DNA forensics uses technology that predates the human genome project. There are some minor (but significant) benefits to "DNA analysis" as a larger category.

My point is that the Human Genome Project was sold as an exponential-style technology that would revolutionize disease research within a couple of years- But now it's been completed for a long time already and the benefits have been slight (Though I still wholeheartedly support the project despite this- Minor improvements are valuable, too)
1. Your college major doesn't determine your career. That's a flat-out myth.

As a 26-year old starting college anew, it probably does. As an 22yo graduate, you're probably right but if you are a 30yo graduate, you likely want to graduate in something you'll enjoy for the next 30 years.
Plumbers make a lot more money than people think. But when Amazon started, Jeff Bezos was still probably making more in interest payments than any Plumber makes in a year. So, two responses: (1) Amazon, and (2) what's your point?

Lots of plumbers are more successful today than lots of YC startups.