skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I can't understand if you are arguing against people duplicating the fact that rubygems is already loaded / is part of the core lib, or that people should respect alternative choices. I thought it was the latter.

Yeah it is. And indeed you shouldn't.

You're nuts, did you know?

completely insane and nonsensical decisions such as randomly requiring rubygems just because

Just because .. it's loading required libraries? Like it is designed for? Like everyone uses it for?

And so the rest should just take it up the ass

Well .. yeah, sorry. The weird personal tastes of two people basically don't matter compared to the great benefits enjoyed by the rest of the community. So, OK.

I guess you're just never going to update to 1.9 then? So sad. Anyway, no sense arguing so whatever, carry on.
I myself drink 2 strong cups of coffee daily, 3 when I am really tired. Problem is, I can't really tell if it's the caffeine that is keeping me awake or simply the act of drinking something that does the trick. I'd guess it's a bit of both.

I've had success using sunflower seeds to keep alert on the days where caffeine is insufficient.
I agree.

Thanks to Ken Anderson, Trevor Blackwell, Daniel Giffin, Sarah Harlin, Shiro Kawai, Jessica Livingston, Matz, Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, Eric Raymond, Guido van Rossum, David Weinberger, and Steven Wolfram for reading drafts of this comment.
I think we still have a lot of room for progress, but I think it's going to take another leap in technological innovation for that to happen (there's a rapidly approaching point where we just won't be able to make a silicon-based processor any faster).

We'll also, of course, keep finding new applications for current technology, but that's unlikely to be a paradigm-shifter.

I guess you could say that the Internet has done that though to some extent, taking what was basically a medium for exchanging scientific data and turning it into a medium that really connects people on a never-before-seen scale. But I definitely agree with the article in that it is ridiculous to assume that there is some sort of exponential path for technological progress that society is just going to somehow follow. We're really gonna have to work for every step we take
Ternary search tree and implementing efficient auto-complete
It looks like HN is 800K compliant.

Congratulations.
I honestly cannot remember the last time I heard or read anyone other than Paul Graham describe somebody as a "hacker" in a serious fashion (except for in a newspaper story, of course).
Maintaining Diabetes With Coconut Oil
Its relatively cheap to travel abroad, especially if you're willing to live simply while you're there. If you plan significantly far in advance, you can usually find airfare for $500-750 round trip, or cheaper, depending on where you want to go. Then if you plan it out, you can usually stay wherever you are for <$100 a day.

I'm not sure about where you are, but even someone in the US, working full time at McDonalds, making $6 an hour, could afford a week long trip every year by putting away 10% of each paycheck. $1200 is (roughly) enough for a week long trip to most of the non-tourist packed places, and you can save that up by putting away a little more than $20 a week. Just making lunch at home rather than eating out (or buying a pre-made lunch) can save you almost that much. Its just a matter (like he said) of priorities. That isn't to say that some people can't afford it. My example assumed someone with no family, medical problems, or other large expenses, but it was also a fairly low end of the pay scale (for the US).
"I dunno about that wireless recommendation"

At this stage in the game, I would recommend wireless, because you can add more comptuers without running a lot of cable. Of course the servers should be wired.
Meh. Travel is overrated. The chances of you actually learning anything of substance by running around from one exotic country to another are very slim indeed.

Staying in another country for a substantial amount of time, on the other hand, is of course an entirely different matter but travelling for the sake of travelling, while pleasurable in and of itself, does not teach you anything you couldn't have learned from a brochure about the places you're visiting.
Skipping Spouse to Spouse Isn’t Just a Man’s Game
For people just learning HTML: I think they would have an easier time if they were taught that HTML tags mean something rather than perform a function. I know when I was learning HTML you would use tags to make a document look a certain way much like you would use MS Paint to draw a picture. The web has evolved and HTML takes care of describing what the content is. That's a big difference. Wouldn't the concept of "Use whatever tags you want to describe your content but here is a list of ones that are already reserved for other functions." be simple enough to pick up? It's the same idea with programming.

Updating HTML standard: That's what the doctype could be for, for introducing new tags and functionality without breaking the old. Atleast that is what the doctype should be used for.
I am missing the 1am-6am period, this is by far the time I feel most alert and manage to get the most work done. Apparently having utter silence and few distractions help! (even though I always listen to music while I work)
Fast, Distributed Ruby on Rails Tests in the Cloud with Devver
i think the main excuse I use to not travel is that I have a very stable job currently (federal govt). Its a risk that I would have to accept that when I return I would have difficulty finding employment.
The argument suggests that your net worth is mostly your own choice and has little to with circumstances. My point is that this flawed notion is responsible for other, more noticeably flawed notions.
PM to skolor:
you don't have contact info in your profile.
check your older comments for replies about ARDX.
That's an interesting one, Historically the opposite has happened.

Build something for a niche, sell into that niche, then expand outside the niche by adapting the product to other uses once you have sufficient strength to do that.

It takes a lot more in terms of resources to develop for a niche than for a 'horizontal' market, the marketing expenses are also a multiple.
Use Google Apps for Domains for your email and calendar. No need, IMO, to run your own mail server. We are currently 10 employees and have no physical servers. We have 1 Linode that is our build server and source repository, and we use Google Apps for everything else.

Source control: Subversion hosted on a Linode we manage

Email and calendaring: Google Apps for Domains

Online meetings: GoTo Meeting or WebEx

Conference calls between < 5 people: Skype

Web server: Hosted on a Linode we manage

Build server: Hosted on a Linode we manage

Internet, White Boards, Printers, Network: We get that from the office we share
I don't know who is voting you up? Maybe because you sound angry, and people associate angry technical rants with people who know what they're talking about?

"I think Ryan's point is that most of the time your program doesn't require rubygems itself."

Yeah! You could have manually downloaded the files for all the libraries you need, placed them in the directory, and required them directly. See, who needs rubygems? Oh hang on, rubygems is about 1000x easier than doing all that.

"You just happen to manage your libraries using gems"

Yes, because gems are the standard way of managing libraries in Ruby, and work transparently and conveniently. Where the hell is Ryan getting all these gem-using libraries anyway, if not from gems? And what is supposed to be wrong with it, anyway? I have never had a problem using a non-gem library even with gems present and a duplicate installed. Just require the non-gem lib first. What is so freaking hard? I assume it's some stupid problem he has to solve at Heroku - and his solution is trying to change how the entire Ruby community does things, to their detriment, benefiting only him. Screw him.

Oh well, anyway .. who cares. You're a crank and so is he. Rubygems is here to stay and if you don't like it .. well again, who cares.
I know someone doing this. He worked for a software company in SF and quit a year ago. He's been an extra in a bollywood film, stayed with monks in some temple, volunteered at an orphanage outside of Kathmandu, etc. His pics and stories show up on facebook every couple weeks. For the record, he has no idea what he's going to do for money when he gets back. But maybe he won't come back.
It doesn't, but it depends on what you want out of life. If you want to have a successful business, traveling all the time isn't for you. If you want to see the world though, putting it off until later isn't going to help you any. The longer you put of traveling, the less you'll be able to do, and the more entrenched you will be in your work.
This story has been already covered last week:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=788073

It's still a waste of time.
I'm most alert in the late morning or late evening.

However, for me, alertness is almost negatively correlated with actually getting things done --- unless I'm working on the "1% inspiration" parts, I have major trouble staying on task.

For the "99% perspiration" that makes up any project, the early morning is often better. I'm not so tired as to fall back asleep, but I also feel as dull as a butter knife -- which actually helps with plowing through the necessary tasks that don't necessarily inspire excitement.
Awesome, less famous DNS trick by Dan Kaminsky: DNS source routing
Subcases and Hierarchy
No, it hasn't been slowing. The author fails to see that we know more about astronomy in the last 2 years than the previous 10. More has been discovered about the brain in the last ~15 years than people knew in the last 100,000 years. Throw in chemistry, nanoscale fabrication, materials science, etc. At every level of society we have been impacted by the advancements that are occurring around us daily. People who have spent their entire lives thinking linearly have a hard time getting a sense of how much things have changed.
For powering up an army of Evangelions in defense of Tokyo-3 against the attack of Angels?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelion_(mecha)
the "why" section seems reasonable to me. particularly as a wiki macro.

it still makes me say "ugg". making a diagram in text is like writing code in ed.
No his argument suggests that the distribution of your net worth is mostly your own choice, which it on the whole is.
We've all probably read this many times, but for me this is the first time I realized how incredibly suppositional the essay is. Largely it's an appeal of pathos and ethos and while I intuitively agree with its various conclusions, it'd be fascinating to see some of the more measurable suppositions (GDP v. Civil Liberties, which I'm sure exists somewhere) next to it.
Weldon Homes, LLC
Weldon Homes is Nashville’s newest most dynamic new home builder. Incorporating the latest designs and styles with time honored construction techniques; Weldon Homes is leading the way in quality, affordable housing.
What to change in Scrum
Windows 7 Enterprise Offered in 90 Day Trial Edition
Summary: You can establish inbound IP traffic to a host inside a private network, with no IP to route to, and no DNAT setup.

You do it by fooling the private network's local dns resolver into relaying trafic back in forth.
1. Well, to the extent that you can't practice psychology without a degree, it kinda does. I see your point, though.

2. To learn and to make more money. I realize the two don't always go hand-in-hand.

3. Too many. This is my 3rd semester back in school.

4. Nope. I'd love to find out more about it, though. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the reply!
Privacy Group Calls on Congress to Regulate Online Advertising
Hrm....

M-x artist-mode-render-buffer
See slides 18 to 25 for the relevant part.
Sea Levels Can Rise More Than A Meter By 2100
I bought a CD, not a licensing agreement
Runemdown: violence improves recall of in-game ads
Personally, I've been trying to cut down on my caffeine intake, and has gotten it down to usually one or two sodas a day (no coffee or tea).
Internet Turns 40 Today... Or Does It?
I've worked briefly for two startups since 2007. While both are still going strong, they both wasted money (in my opinion) on the following things:

Apple hardware (including 30 inch cinema displays),
Herman Miller Aeron Chairs, and
Glass Desks
You don't need additional space for solar panels. You can add them to existing buildings or even above parking spaces. So you actually need zero space.
Twice now, I have deliberately gone cold turkey on caffeine for a month. Both time, the results were the same; while I didn't completely lose my programming ability by any means, I totally lost my best programming times, and in general felt slower and fuzzier even during the rest of the day. From what I can see, after a month off of it I should be adjusted to its absence.

Since then my situation has been changing some, and once it stabilizes I plan on trying again (learning I have celiac disease, changing some other elements of my diet). So this may not be generally applicable. But I will say that if you are nervous about your caffeine consumption, try dropping it for a month and seeing how it goes; it's not that hard.
I guess I agree minus the quit your job part. Why not travel around the world several times a year without quitting your job? Or wait until you're between jobs anyway. Unless you have a crappy job you want to quit anyway, I see little reason to quit a job in order to travel.
All depends on what you're using it for. We use 7zip all the time at work and it is invaluable and I often see better compression rates depending on the data involved.

I just zipped up an Eclipse workspace
.zip using 7zip = 27mb
.7zip using 7zip = 6.5mb

We have a VPN to a customer over a dedicated ADSL link (max 300k upload) and daily we are transferring new builds / files. Which would you prefer?

Edit: you can also create a self-extracting 7zip as an executable as well with a very minimal payload (couple of 100k)
The word wars have been won. Hacking means breaking into systems. Cracking means stripping copy protection from software.

This is how the internet including geek hangouts like Slashdot uses these terms.
Thomas Midgley, Jr. seems like the most unfortunate.
I have plans in place to do exactly this beginning of next year. But let me clarify: I plan to backpack, living on the bare minimum and traveling mostly by foot and train and using a plane only when absolutely necessary (like when I visit my parents).

It's possible to travel and live in many countries around the world for <$300USD a month -- at least that's what I've gathered from my initial research. I don't have a family to support or a girlfriend so once I quite my job I'll be quite free of responsibilities.

How will I pay for it? Well, the little on-the-side web hosting company I started 5 years ago, which I haven't put any effort into growing, is already close to providing me enough monthly income to live comfortably in many third-world countries.

But I won't be a tourist. I want spend anywhere from 3 - 12 months in an area, learning the culture, the language, the local customs, and meeting and making new friends. I want share my knowledge (mostly technical) and use my skills (technical and carpentry) to help the community where I can. Since I enjoy writing, I plan to maintain a blog about my experiences with the hope that it will help others gain new insights and see that the world is a much bigger place than the 1500sq mile box that most of us live in.

Why? Because I just feel it's what I need to do next in my life to continue growing. I've been living in the same area (Northeastern United States, Boston, MA area) for the past 27 years. Science has proven that the best way to stimulate new growth in the brain is to expose it to new and unfamiliar things. My brain is entering the age where many brains begin to settle into a rut... and it feels like my brain is beginning to atrophy.
I think you should get a job that pays to send you around the world. Has worked for me, YMMV.
It is mostly for articles, not for forums: as you can see in the example, a single column of text is displayed. Threaded conversations do not fit this model.
For whiteboards, just buy a 4' x 8' showerboard panel from Home Depot, or Lowes. It's a thin piece of board treated with melamine, a perfect, cheap surface for whiteboard writing.

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000679.php - You could cover your walls with this stuff for cheap.
He says this will be open shortly in the article.
How long did it take you to learn all of that? Was your English major worth the investment?
Drinking sugary beverages all day is really bad for teeth. On the other hand the acid in soda doesn't harm teeth at all. Please remember your teeth, "if you ignore them, they go away" ;)
Nobody would say nothing about the Dyson Sphere? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

It's like the first step. Right?
A flat "no, it hasn't been slowing" doesn't address the argument that 1900-1950 changed everyday life much more than 1950-2000.
Yup, I do the same for CSS files
That increase in knowledge has been mainly quantatative, not qualatative. Sure, we know know exactly which stars are in quadrant x27b or where dopaminergic neurons connect in the limbic system. But that doesn't solve practical problems that improve people's lives, the way telephones and electricity did.

Quick: Name one practical, day to day benefit of the Human Genome Project...
Any citations, perhaps on the astronomy claim?
What do we mean by "technological progress"? Do we mean the quantitative improvement over previous generations of technology? Or do we mean qualitative improvements in our standard of living?

When you can eliminate the fear of hunger, automate mindless domestic chores and provide highly-accessible world-wide transportation, these are huge qualitative changes in our standard of living. But once you reach a certain level in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, big technological improvements don't make as big of a difference in your perceived quality of life.

Is it really surprising that storing 2000x more music on your iPod doesn't have the same impact on your standard of living as a cheap and reliable source of food?
For me, the word always calls to mind the scene in Jurassic Park, where the annoying little girl exclaims, "I am not a computer nerd. I prefer to be called a hacker!"

I have never been able to take the word seriously since.
It won't be outright arrest. Just preemptive and pervasive surveillance and other 'preventative' measures.

For the kids.
After having gone the whole gamut of caffeine, from 5-6 cups of coffee per day to completely dropping it in the last three months, I have settled on the following: I drink one (1) cup of really good (expensive) coffee as soon as I wake up. It is my morning ritual, so to speak. I then avoid coffee like the plague for the rest of the day. It gives me a jump start in the morning without inhibiting my sleep the following night, and it gives me a little treat to look forward to every morning as I wake up.
Getting Started with MacRuby
> You're nuts, did you know?

Thanks for teaching me that I shouldn't use an alternate explorer to the finder.

> Just because .. it's loading required libraries?

No it's not. It's managing your $LOAD_PATH. You don't need gems to load libraries, unless those were installed by gems in the first place if we stretch the meaning of "load libraries" a lot.

> The weird personal tastes of two people basically don't matter compared to the great benefits enjoyed by the rest of the community.

What's the relation there? What's the "great benefits" to you adding "require 'rubygems'" like so many droppings to all your libraries? It's not like anyone is arguing against using Rubygems. If you like gems, go ahead and use it. All that's asked is that you don't force others to do so.

> I guess you're just never going to update to 1.9 then?

I fail to see the relevance. Ruby 1.9 isn't going to shoot me if I don't use gems to manage $LOAD_PATH. And as far as Ruby 1.9 is concerned, since it requires rubygems on its own there's no reason whatsoever for library writers to do it themselves.
One gigawatt is a tremendous amount of energy, but what microwave radiation would do against an incoming ICBM is an open question. It's all about how concentrated the beam will be and how fast you can direct it (ICBMs move pretty fast and even at the top of their trajectory they are hard to pinpoint because they do not exactly carry homing beacons).

Also, in all of the following keep in mind that we're talking about a re-entry vehicle here which has extensive heat shielding anyway just to survive its inevitable contact with the atmosphere.

It is more about energy density if this could be used as a weapon against an ICBM or not, the receiver of the energy would presumably be a fairly large patch of ground with a 'safe zone' around it in case of minor misalignment.

If you'd want your gigawatt to be concentrated in an area of 100x100 m under 'normal 'conditions you will not be able to quickly reconfigure to something on the order of a hotspot as produced by a battle laser (this is not a laser!).

In normal operating conditions and assuming they can beam as tight as 1,000,000,000 Watts per 100x100m patch (which remains to be seen) you'd have about 100KW / square meter, or about 10 W / square centimeter assuming absolutely perfect (so lossless) transmission and 0 reflection.

Microwave absorption of the ICBM would then be the deciding factor if anything happened to it or not, 10W / square centimeter seems a lot but it really isn't, the question is how long the beam could be focused on the incoming ICBM and how steady it could be held.

With lasers this appears to be possible, see this http://boeing.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=817 but it was an aircraft at subsonic speeds vs a stationary ground target.

Shooting stuff down that moves very fast is not that easy, especially not if your normal mode of operation is for energy transmission instead of destruction.
I might agree that 1900-1950 changed everyday life more than 1950-2000, but I'm pretty sure 1959-2009 changed much more than 1909-1959.
Dunno, but I sure have benefited from the Music Genome Project.
There are many reasons to use text for diagrams:

* universally editable forever

* diffable version control

* can be included with source code documentation/comments

* full gamut of unix tools available: you can grep for labels, do regex replace with sed, etc

* automation -- anything text-based is inherently scriptable
I think in this discussion of the Titanic, the phrase "[the design] proved to be much more sinkable than he had anticipated" is probably against some sort of wikipedia guideline. You're not supposed to be laughing...
I use /usr/bin/env for most things (Python and Lua, for example), but still use /bin/sh for the bourne shell, because that's part of the standard.