skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"In fact, thanks to their blind acceptance of a particular theory of the market, most of these concepts end up failing to accurately predict the future. "

Failing to predict the future does not prove something is not scientific. For example there are simple cellular automatons whose evolution can not be predicted, even though all the rules they follow are known.

Also, what is "the market" supposed to mean?

"Now the interesting thing about this money is that it lost value over time. "

Oh dear, please tell me that it is not the "Freigeld" craze finally reaching HN :-(
Why is every word in the title all-caps except for "Not"?
A "Deed" is a moral or brave action by default. The "Good" prefix is not required. The word for a "Bad Deed" (or Anti-Deed?) is "Sin".
I'll probably get downmodded for saying this, but it's Obama's own fault.

He says he wants bipartisanship, but he insults the republicans constantly. I like him less every time I hear him speak. And the republicans respond of course, but he's one man and can choose what to say, the republicans are a group and each person says his own thing.

No one trusts him anymore. Even the worst critics of Bush would not be worried about what he would say to kids.

During a speech about the stimulus package Obama basically said: "If you don't agree with me that we need a stimulus package you are an idiot/you are wrong. I'm only willing to talk about what goes in it, but not about the need for it."

He needs to remember he is the president of an entire country, not half of one. Even if you don't agree with people, at least let them know you respect them, and their ideas. It's his job to reach out to all people, even people he disagrees with. Remember you are disagreeing with an idea, not with a person.

It's probably way too late though. The pattern has been set, and even if he changes, the republicans won't.

PS. Wooho, got 3 downmods already, just two more left. And no replies of course.
PS2: Maxed out the downmods, and no replies to the substance of course.
As an old guy '45', and an old surfer (why does there seem to be this connection - see illustration to article) and also a serial entrepreneur, this article and the HN comments made some uplifting reading. As we're applying to YC this year, we've obviously been discussing if the age and varied experiences of our team has any positive/negative influence on our application.

In our previous lives in media production, it's all about youth and energy, and seems to becoming even more so, especially in advertising where ideas are often driven by an innate understanding of the power of technology, and how it can be harnessed to create and realise ideas in completely different ways. I know many over 40's colleagues who think computers are for Googling and email (you know who you are), and that's the limit of their technological skill. These people are almost speaking a different language to the 25 year old directors they're working with, who are breaking all the so called 'rules'.

At one point, many HNer's, after years of struggle and work on projects will become 'the old guys', and still drawing on their entrepreneurial skills and drive. Some will have made that Big Deal with all the $$$, but very many will still be pushing their next idea after a series of almost made it's. I think it's important for young start-ups to project that image of themselves in the future, that they might be looking at 20 years of pushing and fighting to get the success they're striving for.
The 'customer' in the anecdote doesn't really fall for the actual sales pitch, and makes his purchase solely to get rid of the salesman. So.. one is supposed to feel sorry for the guy who prioritises his immediate convenience over any future utility? Cry me a river.

Also, 'sales resistance' is hard to quantify. Does he not want to buy because the widget being sold carries no value to him? Or because he doesn't perceive any such value? Who's to say the 'older daughter' in the story wasn't Constance Keene?
The Fed loans money to banks. Their unorthodox response to the financial crisis involved (1) creating new lending mechanisms allowing loans to be rolled over for longer periods of time, and (2) accepting illiquid securities as collateral instead of just things like Treasury Bonds.

But these are still short-term loans measured in months not years, and they are still taking collateral for them. Which makes it trivial for the Fed to shrink the money supply by however much it wants pretty much whenever it wants. It just stops rolling over the loans and takes the cash out of circulation as the banks give it back.

It is always possible that some banks will default on repayment and collapse. But that scenario isn't consistent with inflation because any significant collapse would be deflationary. And in a deflationary environment you want to be expanding the money supply.

Simply put, what the Fed giveth the Fed can taketh away. Be grateful Bernanke is a grown up, and that political posturing on the debt issue isn't keeping policy makers from preventing this thing from becoming a lot worse. The policy response is pretty good, especially when considered in light of how much worse this could easily have been:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2009/09/i-see-one-third-of-a-g...
What would be most interesting is to extend the list past the page with the first 30 articles. That's what would really give you a chance to deal with HNs front-page feedback loop.

There is lots of stuff that does not make it to the front page during busy times.

Any chance of increasing the length of the list to 60 or maybe even 100 ?

That would really add value.
Unless we can perform alchemy as if we were gods and as well have access to all the raw materials in the world, scarcity will continues to be a factor in the study of economics.

That, and digital economies are only suitable to things with the marginal cost of production of nearly 0 or is 0.
It was one of the dumbest media-driven controversies of all time. Of course there will be no more debate after people hear the exceptional speech, but I'll be surprised if we hear a single apology.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/04/obama.schools/index.h...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090904/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_...
It's a great way to see how articles develop 'traction'.
Money lose their money over time due to the increase of money supply versus productivity.

I imagine, if we cut off the printing press, there will be massive deflation.
Searching for a Bankruptcy Lawyer
In America, one state that is most affected by the recent credit crunch is Connecticut. As the number of foreclosures in the country start to rise, many people are now filing for Chapter 13 which is bankruptcy.
You ought to provide more detail about what you want from the language. Maybe we can help you then.
So, how do you know if anything you buy was not stolen at some point in the past ?

How does it work if the insurance has paid out after the theft ?

See elsewhere in this thread, the situation is not as clear as you make it out to be.

Also, the world is a lot larger than just the US.
It can be useful in a macro level, that is one might find out the best time in a day (or else, the best day(s) in the week) to post a link in social media site or an article in a blog.
Lots of schools planned to show this to their pupils. Some loonies objected on the grounds, roughly, that Obama was going to brainwash their children with socialist political propaganda. So far as I know, few schools were actually put off by this, but I bet some were.
!!:s/sl/ls

executes last command but replaces first occurence of sl with ls. (can also be written as ^sl^ls)

!!:gs/sl/ls

same as above, but now global replace
I think game theory is about coming from a disadvantage (the dealer knows everything about cars and getting the maximum from you) and getting a fair deal in the end, or having the advantage and getting the maximum possible. But the shown solution here, just changes the situation about information and leverage. Yes, everytime you have a disadvantage and put energy in changing to an advantageous situation, then you are in a better situation and get more out of a deal...
No, I am not worried about learning nothing out of this post. I am worried about the author. He just so much does not get the point. When I use mathematics to deal with the car dealer, my intention is NOT to get the information, NOT to gain leverage through dealing skills. I want to use my logical knowledge and skills to change the game from "best dealer wins" to "most logical wins".
It is really good to learn something about leverage. That is very nessesary for everybodies life, especially for us geeks, who are not naturally gifted in this area. But mathematics, too, is a strong tool, with different rules and different advantages. Please look deeper in this matter, too. There could be a real advantage for you over car dealers, who have mostly no scientific background.
(Downmodded on general principle: Every time I see a comment playing to the gallery by saying "I'll probably get downmodded for this", I vote it down. For the record, I would worry more about what Bush would say to children than about what Obama would.)
I suppose, I never really version control those, just track the revisions by uploading updates of the comps for the client, or using share drives if I'm working with other designers. I don't think you can merge PSDs, so many of the benefits of an SCM vanish.
Do I really need a dictionary to tell me what "down" means? Dunno. Depends on whether you might have forgotten that as well as "in the direction of gravity" it also means "small soft feathers" and "small round hill", or that in the first of those senses it has an associated verb to describe knocking people down or consuming a drink quickly and a bunch of metaphorical uses (e.g., "away from Cambridge University" or "depressed"). Or whether you have any interest in knowing the etymology of any of these, or when they entered the language, or how they relate to one another.

I use dictionaries about as often for looking up common words as for looking up obscure ones.
Yeah, of course, but it's how we deal with scarcity that makes the difference. Currently those who have the most power and sometimes fire power have the scarce resources.

They are not divided evenly whatsoever and the countries that harbor them in many cases are poor and and chaotic, think Congo e.g.

Now that China decided to limit the exports of many crucial resources and the US ceases to be the most powerful economy many people in the West will discover that the current distribution of resources is not at all satisfying.

In the current order most people either starve or live on a minimum while a few people are living lavish and wasteful lives. This type of "economics" can't survive in the long run. Let's just hope id doesn't end in a bloody way.

Wasting most resources like we do now is not economical at all and telling people that's it's natural market forces that makes people in Africa starve while we get fat is just plainly naive.

It's time to rethink the way of life we live based on the exploitation of the scarce resources and other people.
I didn't say architecture (although I'm sure they do, but I'm not qualified to comment) - but their natural landscapes are absolutely beautiful.
> For the record, I would worry more about what Bush would say to children than about what Obama would.

Probably because you are not worried about either.

As for the opening sentence, every time I talk about Obama I get downmodded.

So it's a way of telling people: "you are going to hear ideas you don't agree with, so instead of reflexively downmodding [like you did], please actually read the message (and reply if you don't agree)".
ctrl + r

Starts a search through your history file.
What do you know, this whole holier-than-thou anti-sales/advertising trend is that old?

The essense is of this entire, and apparently 80+ years old, movement is that "the little man" spends his money and otherwise prioritises in ways that we, the holders of truth, find odd, even repulsive. We therefore conclude that the error must clearly lie with salesmen and advertisers pushing unvirtuous products and service.

That said, there's a line being crossed when apt salesmanship and glossy advertising becomes threatening, harassing or are downright scams.
And now I'm sad too.

Although, I guess I'll do some advocating for the devil and say that I would prefer if instead of saying

"I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books..."

he could say

"We're [referring to the government] working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn"

This would make it marginally less partisan. However, I would imagine that students are especially inspired by an individual and given Obama's background he's probably in a superb position to inspire students.

Sigh Why does everything he does have to be so partisan? What's next? "His dog is spreading socialist ideologies?"
I have that one aliased as sl2ls ...
Yeah, that is why introducing money that is designed to lose value would not be a magic weapon to fix the economy.
Can you link to the speech to which you are referring?
I don't think I've ever heard "deed" without a qualifier used to mean "good deed". (According to my dictionary, it can have that meaning, but it seems to me to be pretty rare. I tried asking Google, but unfortunately almost all the early hits for "deed" are using the word in its legal sense.)
Yeah, I used a bad example. It's not really over-the-topness in terms of size or expense, like in the U.S. (where it's really an obsession with number-one-ness).

Have you ever seen the "Human Tetris" video? It's a Japanese gameshow. You might think that it's just one gameshow, but no ... all the gameshows have crazy-haired announcers who yell wild-eyed the whole time. I mean that kind of over-the-top-ness .. to me it's quite different :)
Suggestion, if you keep on keeping it up: release a simple API?
That's why it's called 'the dismal science' - the first thing we were taught in economics 101 at university.
We already have money that loses value by design (the target inflation is "a bit over zero").
Many of these points apply to programming languages that are arguably more enjoyable than Java, including JavaScript (TraceMonkey), Python (PyPy), Common Lisp (SBCL), and Haskell (GHC).

For most workloads, even hard-core number crunching, it is pretty straightforward to get near-C performance out of those languages. I am not sure why anyone would even bother with Java.
I thought of that. Thawab is the reward for good deed :) not the good deed itself.
IMO http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=808534 should be filed under Java and not Python
What is "Natural Science"? A study of a "natural system"? What's a "natural system"?

I think what the author means to say, and should have said in one paragraph, is that economics has not yet developed an appropriate language for their models. Economists are still trying to use calculus, which was thought of by physicists do describe physical phenomena, which, when used in economics, is leading to wildly inaccurate models.
With all due respect to Obama and the United States, if every country's leaders speeches are to be submitted as "Hacker News" because there is a mention of technology somewhere in it, we are in for a lot of politics on this forum.

To most non Americans democrat and republican talking points about the latest political issue are just noise.

This is a US politicians speech with other US politicians approving or disapproving. Please, have some mercy on the rest of us.

Think about it for a second.

What would you think if random speeches from say Ukraine's President were posted as Hacker News because he mentioned technology in a speech to Ukrainian children? (and then the Ukrainians on this forum, who have the numbers to upvote anything onto the front page, started political bickering).
Poll about cross-platform native code: Where do you want to go tommorow?
That's strange. I can't find a single example online where "you" isn't the subject of the bet (for example, I bet you look good on the dance floor).
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/09/obama.conference....

"
That doesn't negate the continuing efforts that I'm going to make to listen and engage with my Republican colleagues. And hopefully the tone that I've taken, which has been consistently civil and respectful, will pay some dividends over the long term. There are going to be areas where we disagree, and there are going to be areas where we agree.

As I said, the one concern I've got on the stimulus package, in terms of the debate and listening to some of what's been said in Congress, is that there seems to be a set of folks who -- I don't doubt their sincerity -- who just believe that we should do nothing.

Now, if that's their opening position or their closing position in negotiations, then we're probably not going to make much progress, because I don't think that's economically sound and I don't think what -- that's what the American people expect, is for us to stand by and do nothing.

There are others who recognize that we've got to do a significant recovery package, but they're concerned about the mix of what's in there. And if they're sincere about it, then I'm happy to have conversations about this tax cut versus that -- that tax cut or this infrastructure project versus that infrastructure project.

But what I've -- what I've been concerned about is some of the language that's been used suggesting that this is full of pork and this is wasteful government spending, so on and so forth.

First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

Number two is that, although there are some programs in there that I think are good policy, some of them aren't job-creators. I think it's perfectly legitimate to say that those programs should be out of this particular recovery package and we can deal with them later.

But when they start characterizing this as pork, without acknowledging that there are no earmarks in this package -- something, again, that was pretty rare over the last eight years -- then you get a feeling that maybe we're playing politics instead of actually trying to solve problems for the American people.
"

--

The people who really believe the solution is do nothing? The president does not want to hear from you.

And I got a downmod for this too? Hacker News, you have fallen far.
The Fanatic four: A Book by Vidit Chopra
The Fanatic Four, as one can make out from the title, is a story about four best friends: Vidit, Kishan, Madan and Vikrant. They hate being bookworms like other students in school and always end up getting low grades. But they are happy. This debut novel by a teenager describes how difficult things can get if one doesn't think straight.
The Inevitable Move Of iTunes To The Cloud
"It is by logic we prove, it is by intuition that we invent" - Henri Poincaré

I emphasized the invention, but you're quite right that we also need the proving. I agree with your hardware example (things like the Pentium bug are rare...), but I think we similarly rely on other layers (OS, languages, libraries), though I concede with eroding confidence as we rise.

For hardware, it's also that we have more trust in the common pathways (Dijkstra wouldn't like it - it all should be perfect. I can relate to this, but that's not how it is - today, anyway). Popular hardware is used extensively, and very importantly, I think it tends to be designed to be pretty flat, in that almost all of it gets exercised by almost all uses (i.e. there are few rare pathways). So flaws will show up quickly.

We also don't worry about the language not correctly implementing

a+b

So I think you can make that assumption about code, if the code is well exercised (e.g. in a fundamental part of the code in the language runtime).

Concessions: Dr. Gosling apparently did write some (informal) proofs for Java, but it was in the byte-code verifier, not for the typical language stuff. But I've heard that Intel does some formal verification :-).

I agree that formal analysis is a worthwhile endeavour. I just wish they would do more work on interesting, useful problems. It used to be that computer scientists would invent something incredibly cool (like Boyer-Moore substring matching, or arithmetic coding), and then also prove it (well, really, prove some specific qualities about it). But these days, there seems to be a lot of proving things just because they can be proven - not because they are worthwhile proving. It's quite... insular.

They focus on proof, not invention.
set -o vi # vi like behaviour of the command line.

Use "/" to search through the history, "y" to copy, "p" to paste etc..

cat > somefile.txt <<EOF # quickly creates a text file

Type EOF in a new line to finish.
I didn't reply because you're the one who brought politics into this thread. I would encourage other people to not respond and drag this into partisan bickering.
I find that the older I get the more 'sales-resistant' I get. Maybe it's because I'm running out of room to store everything. :D
NoSQL – the new wave against RDBMS
It was aimed at students all the way from kindergarten to high school seniors.
You took that literally ?
I thought this thread was about politics?

But, truthfully, I can understand not wanting politics here, so I'll drop this thread.
This is more a general hint than a single tip. Years ago I tried to improve my Unix skills by doing everything at home from the command line -- burning CDs, playing music, copying trees etc. I learnt a lot but this exercise was much less convenient and more mentally demanding than using a gui. Recently I have become much more lazy.
My radio alarm clock goes off at about 8:30am. The radio slowly soothes me awake, so that I gradually wake over the next 30 mins or so Using this method puts me in a better mood more consistently than when I used to get up immediately and/or earlier.
I would love to get up early and work on some personal projects before I went in to work, but my brain just doesn’t start running until about 11am, and I cant figure out how to change this.
So.. one is supposed to feel sorry for the guy who prioritises his immediate convenience over any future utility?

No, for the resulting inefficiency of the economy as a whole. How you choose to divide the blame between salesman and customer is your own business, of course.

Who's to say the 'older daughter' in the story wasn't Constance Keene?

Statistics can say that with over 99% confidence.
Eh?

Russell's complaint is not that "the little man" prioritizes in ways Russell dislikes. It's that he prioritizes in ways that (a) he doesn't like when he can think it through clearly, and (b) produce results that he doesn't like when he experiences them; and that what salesmen and advertisers are doing is to interfere with his ability to think it through clearly and anticipate the likely results of his actions.

Or, to put it differently: the goal of (many) salespeople and advertisers is to make their targets sillier and stupider, and that's seldom in their interests or those of the community / nation / world as a whole.

I've no idea what's supposed to be "holier-than-thou" about that, even if it turns out to be dead wrong; perhaps you could explain?

(It need hardly be said -- but I'll say it anyway -- that the sneer at "the little man" here is mseebach's invention, and doesn't e.g. occur anywhere in Russell's piece. Russell introduces his victim as "some hard-working professional man", and if mseebach sees that as patronizing or insulting, so much the worse for mseebach.)
Similarly, !! refers to the last command, so you can write "sudo !!" to execute the last command as root. Helpful for apt-get, among other things.

!$ refers to the arg to the last command, so you can write:

$ ls -l /foo/bar
# .oO(aha, it's a stale link i don't want)
$ rm !$
rm /foo/bar
$