skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've been thinking about getting a Mac for the hardware/battery lifetime. As a long-time Linux user, I like the fact that it has the Unix toolchain, and with rootless X I can probably continue avoiding paying for software. But I really don't like the idea of that global menubar. Every time I use OS X I get into a situation where the topmost window is not the active application and things get weird. But I said the same thing about VI and I got addicted. Does anyone who initially disliked the OS X menubar have any opinions about it after a while of usage?
I only ever got dirty looks for jaywalking.
Herbert or Heinlein ... a tough pick
Eyes (mostly eyelashes and eyebrows) are probably important too. Those are areas where make-up normally is applied to increase contrast. Same as lips.
I listed six here: http://jseliger.com/top-five-books :

These books are worth reading immediately:

1. Lord of the Rings
2. All the King’s Men
3. High Fidelity
4. Get Shorty
5. Cryptonomicon
6. Almost anything by Robertson Davies, though I recommend starting with The Deptford Trilogy and skipping The Salterton Trilogy
The OP's biggest problem is his unfamiliarity with the OS. I'm sure if he spent some more time with the Mac, he could easily get used to it. If it helps, I'm going to post the solutions to some of his problems here.

About the XCode problem: there is something wrong with Apple's servers. I never had problems downloading XCode, but one of my friends had to retry several times before his XCode download succeeded. His downloads failed in exactly the same way as the OP's. (BTW, OSX also comes with wget.)

Mouse: Contrary to popular belief, you can right click on a stock OSX install. If you have tap-to-click enabled, just tap the trackpad with two fingers. Otherwise, put two fingers on the trackpad and press the button. If you're using an Apple mouse, you can enable right-clicking in the mouse preferences.

Torrent client: I have never heard of or used Tomato Torrent. The most popular torrent client on the Mac is Transmission, and it sports a beautiful UI. BTW, if you're looking for apps, the best place would be http://osx.iusethis.com

Package management: Use MacPorts, which is something like Gentoo's portage. The trouble with MacPorts is that it doesn't use OSX's default packages, so you have two versions of Perl, two versions of Python, etc. The good thing about MacPorts is that it installs everything in /opt/local/, which means you can just rm -rf the directory to get rid of everything.

I don't use MacPorts. I prefer to compile all my packages from source and install them in /opt/.

Under the hood, OS X is a good ol' UNIX distribution. It took me about a week to get used to OS X when I purchased my first Mac last year (this was after 4 years of using Linux a PC).

The only problem with OS X is that once you get used to it, going back to a hardcore Linux distro like Debian is not easy :)
I missed that.

Typically I don't even notice who posted it to HN unless I've really liked the post and never seen that domain before (and thus wanted to learn as much about that new-to-me site as possible), so I can't say I personally have any feelings on others who self post.

Relying on a small community on some of my blogs to post things I think will be of interest here at HN isn't effective, either.

I like getting as much input and conversation around my posts and posts of my contributors as possible. I view Hacker News as a way to bring new eyeballs in to deserving contributors (the same way I view Reddit and Y!Buzz, depending on the type of post it is).

As an editor of a group blog, I view part of my job is hunting down and finding the right audience for my contributors, and thus have little compunctions posting stuff from my blog that others wrote, as long as I think it has a shot at appealing to the community here.
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I found one in looking for a college dorm room mate. I got a bit lucky but in talking a bit about what I love to do, I have met more potential co founders on campus.
Did You Know? Facebook Gets 10 New Users Every Second: Analysis
Facebook is growing at a whopping pace and the recent statists suggest that every second around 10 new profiles are created on Facebook.Check out the analysis in the post...As of last moth it had 300 million users!
You are absolutely right in pointing out the lack of uniform probability distribution across the different pieces in McDonald's Monopoly game.

My goal in sharing the link above was to show that McDonald's Monopoly game is significantly more costly to win when compared to the Coupon Collector's Problem, which has an expected cost of O(n log n).

Still though, I think its pretty interesting that the folks who run the McDonald's Monopoly game have to factor in economics when setting up all of the probabilities as pieces get traded over the Internet (which is against the rules, but still happens as in http://cgi.ebay.com/2009-McDonalds-Monopoly-NORTH-CAROLINA-A...)
The title alone is enough to dissuade me from visiting. That particular kind of misspelling is often a symptom of carelessness or ignorance.
I know, right?

WWiV and VisionX were always my favorites, but I regularly dialed into a few Renegade boards.

When it comes to tech that I wish there were still a use for, I don't think anything will outrank the BBS in my mind. The same way some people feel about Steampunk, I feel about BBS's.
This looks very good. I think the fade option should be set by default. Can you make a screensaver or something with this stuff? I would definitely use that.
xp-dev.com
Chemistry hack.

Distilling Alcohol. I wasn't of age at the time, actually was still in high school, and had a hard time getting alcohol, so I decided to make it my self.

Designed and built a reflux still with embedded temp sensors, a condenser, and one-way air locked gasoline containers for fermentation. I used sugar and yeast to ferment giving me ~10% abv, then ran it through the still 5-6 times to get ~90% abv... it was rocket fuel. I also sent the final samples to a chem student I knew to test for methanol as a precaution. Finally filtered several times through activated carbon to get any final impurities out.

It was the best vodka I've ever had so far, no burn and extremely pure ethanol. I only made a handful of batches before the excitement of it ran out.
A buddy of mine (local) still has a backup on disk of his Maximus setup and from what I understand several of his mods-plugins are still making the rounds
lord of light and in search of the miraculous
Not to take away from the accomplishment, but I think most of the credit goes to the model's parents. (Intended spin is as a compliment.)
Crime and Punishment, Dostoevsky

Lolita, Nabokov
grendel - john gardner
bluebeard - kurt vonnegut
Isn't it better to just go for a setting that is as cheap as possible? Like a room in an apartment to make ramen profitability a lower number...
There's a big difference between mandatory education, up to the level of learning how to read, and college education, as Krugman is speaking of.

I also believe America's success came from its freedom (and perhaps more so just the idea of freedom), and the culture and attitude (optimism, can do anything attitude) that resulted from that, that made it such a successful country.

Not to mention they stole tons of technology from Europe, and didn't get ravaged in WW2.

In my opinion, what has led to the "downfall" of America, is about 10-15 years of, in my opinion, decidedly unstrategic thinking on the part of manufacturers, specifically hi tech. In many cases, the technology that took generations to develop has essentially been given to the cheap labor manufacturers (China)....this was one of America's most strategic advantages, and they no longer have it.
Interesting, but it was the other case I was curious about: what happens if you give the "masculine" higher contrast lips?
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

Second is a tossup between Hyperspace (Michio Kaku) and Made to Stick (Chip & Dan Heath)
Artists have a choice in doing business with them, they don't have a choice in copyright infringement.
Nice. Hadn't heard of Tristan Shandy, starting vol. 1 tonight.
Blogging Event in Cagayan de Oro
The Great Gatsby and The Book of the New Sun
I think you already failed if you have to actually go looking for a co-founder. You are getting into a major endeavor, the co-founder should be someone who you've known for a while, not someone you just met playing ultimate frisbee. + at that point, you'll be just another "business guy" with an idea, so chances are you won't find anyone anyways

p.s. I'm assuming that this is advice for the non-programmer entrepreneurs, since programmers can just start building, without needing anyone else.
Anyone got a mind-map version? :)
My main inspiration of thought along these lines is the urge to want to post things like photos online for friends/family, but I shy away from using something like Facebook to do it. The only problem with 'rolling my own' is the I don't want to necessarily make all photos world-viewable, and I don't want to force my friends/family to create an account just to view my photos.

If all I had to do was grab their public key, I could then do everything behind the scenes (even creating groups so that some people can see some photos and others can't).
Human beings have a nearly infinite capacity for self deception. I am not a special, unique exception. I must be merciless in my self observation. The only way forward is to look at where I am and make a simple, realistic plan to take me towards my goal. Underestimating cost in time, effort and money leads to failure.
I made all of the public area lights at a major hotel and convention center strobe for about an hour during an international science fair. The hotel had a huge glass atrium with elevators and several thousand bulbs, so it was quite a spectacle. It looked like a single huge strobe light had landed in the city center.

It made the news, and I won our (informal) pranks contest for that year. I felt it mostly made up for my loss the previous year (the shaving cream dipped in liquid nitrogen and then packed into a competitor's car was a poor showing, prank-wise. It was unoriginal, it ruined the upholstery of the poor car, and it wasn't as dramatic of an effect as one would think for the trouble. Too much of the shaving cream never expanded after can removal and thawing.)
I haven't really used Apple mice enough, but, as far as laptops are concerned, I think that the multi-touch trackpad is way better than anything else I have used on laptops.

So, I keep reading the same thing too, but my feeling is that people would need to know the different gestures to really appreciate it.

double-finger click = right-click; double-finger is scroll (on other laptops I had a scroller on the side, but it often worked so-so); plus others to flip pages, rotate pictures, etc.
The original goal of the Namesys filesystem (what eventually became ReiserFS) was a similar attempt to replace fixed hierarchies with a form of tagging. While the original paper is no longer accessible, I found a copy here:
http://www.dmi.me.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/reiser-...
Failure is part of the process of understanding something.

I would guess that if you limited your ambition of using all the features in the language to something you almost know well, after making some programs using that feature-set, I'd guess you'll see the need for some better feature, and there's a good chance it already exists.

Does not that sound reasonable to you?
Not true. At times you just bump into a guy who happens to be exactly what you're looking for. This has happened to me more than once, so I would not make "looking for co-founder" a point of failure.

That said, I still think getting to know a person you will be closely involved with well enough before starting out.
The unequaled Franz Rosenthal did a translation of the Muqadima (Prolegomena in Greek) in English:

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/index.htm

My copy of it is Arabic but heavily annotated by researchers. A translation of that would be great, I know.

Short bio:

http://www.cis-ca.org/voices/k/khaldun.htm

Longer bio (PDF):

http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/books/ibn-khald.pdf

N.B: This is a medieval personality and the text is ancient. Please read it under that light. He lived 1332 - 1406 CE.
I concur....successful one trick ponies should be taken with a grain of salt.
The 4 finger up or down sweeps for Exposé are the best and most useful for me, just after the double-finger scroll.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb: A Crazier Future
I forgot that the two-finger-right-click was not on by default… But as I wrote in another comment, it makes a big difference.
It seems that paying to pitch is a worthless venture. You have to build a real relationship with an investor before they are willing to open their wallet.
The Dollar Dilemma: The World's Top Currency faces Competition
New U.S. Census to Reveal Major Shift: No More Joe Consumer
I'd really like to see more details about how they are implementing this, which that page provides none of, unfortunately.
Right. But purchasing something at a store like this when I travel is in no way forced for me.

I find my friends and I go to grocery stores/drug stores even more often when we travel than at home. You have no stock of stuff like when at home/work. You're constantly grabbing a drink/a snack things to take back to "base." You often have no refrigeration, so that means more, smaller trips to the store, too.
how many programmers go out looking for a "business guy with an idea", programmers get pitched the whole "yeah man, I have this idea, it's ultra secret, so I'll need you to sign an NDA first, but basically it's like faceb...."

the only way for a "business guy with an idea" to hookup with a programmer, without being lifelong friends, is to bring a crapload of money to the table.
The interesting part is that the author is apparently the last living user of CVS.
In the last three months, the weekend guest posts on TechCrunch have completely reinvigorated the site.
I'm about to move in the opposite direction. I've had Apple laptops for the past seven years, and I've had nothing but trouble with them, despite really careful treatment.

OS X is nice, but since I deploy on linux it's easier to just have the same platform on both. Besides Textmate and Dictionary I don't use any os x specific programs anyway.

Seems like Linux is still behind in terms of getting the most battery life out of laptops, though.

btw - does anyone have a good light-weight, long battery life laptop recommendations that will run Linux (most likely Ubuntu) well?
Reading this, I feel like it may be more relevant to business people starting startups than hackers starting startups.

It's hard for a startup that's all business people to get very far. A startup that's all hackers has a decent chance. You need some versatility in your hackers -- and it may well make sense to have a business person onboard at the get-go, but I don't know if having one on average produces better results.

I think the confusing thing when you read stuff like this is that it's tempting to assume that this is the way, not a way to find co-founders. Viaweb, for instance, was founded by three Harvard CS PhDs.
Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

Firestar, Michael Flynn
Your skull works more as a satellite. :P

And yeah, definitely does work.
Mythbusting Personalized Genomics
Two good books I read recently:

1) Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos by Michio Kaku

2) The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (I haven't read Atlas Shrugged yet. So cannot compare them.)

Yesterday I finished Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and it is a very good book too.

Currently reading: What They Teach you at Harvard Business School: My Two Years Inside the Cauldron of Capitalism by Philip Delves Broughton
Short Summary:

At 14, William, from rural Malawi could not afford school fees any more. He used the local library to study. He found a book on basic physics and one on energy. His English wasn't great, but a lot of the pictures and diagrams were labelled, so he could connect the dots. The latter book had some info on windmills. This seemed doable. He built a windmill from junk and connected it to a bicycle dynamo. We kept adding to it and it became relatively sophisticated.

This powered his houses lights, radio and charged mobile phones for the whole village. He also built one for irrigation.

Someone eventually noticed these and word went through the press and blogosphere landing him (at 19) at a TED conference.

This guy loves windmills. He really loves them.
There is very much an "if-statement" in lambda calculus.

The basic idea is, in the Church Booleans, we think of true as a function which takes a then clause and an else clause, and returns the then clause (T=\lambda xy.x), and false as a function which takes a then clause and an else clause and returns the else clause (F=\lambda x y.y). Then we get our if statement just by applying a predicate (which returns F or T) to a then clause and an else clause. Indeed, that is very much a way to get recursion to step -- the typical Church-numeral definition of the factorial function works that way.

By the way, one sure-fire way to get evaluation of a lambda expression to terminate if possible is leftmost-reduction -- that is, reducing the leftmost redex first. Intuitively, the leftmost redex is the "outermost," and any other reduction preserves it, so it must be reduced at some point.
Needs More Whitespace
Ya, but compared to what? I have many issues with it, but overall, it is excellent, and I think it will get much better over time. If you listen to the SO podcasts, Jeff is extremely focused on user experience. For a site that was built in such a short period of time, with so few developers, and had to support the load it does, I think they've done just fine.

I will say though, that the interface for stackexchange users is sorely lacking....there are really very few ways to customize your site. To be fair, selling this as a service was an afterthought, but some crucial things (pre-defining tags, for example) are still not available.
OS X doesn't come with wget, but it does come with curl, which is almost as good.
Probably for the same reason you're not supposed to create wikipedia articles about yourself.
+1 for Lord of Light
The problem with this argument is that the larger the distance between bureaucracies and productive work, the more free the bureaucracy is to grow based on internal dynamics with no reference point to actual productivity. Therefore when it comes to bureaucracy, I generally expect centralization to cost more.

Point of comparison based on actual statistics from Detroit 20 years ago. (See http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=6014 for a citation.) Administrative overhead for the Detroit public school system: nearly 40%. Administrative overhead for parochial schools run by the Catholic Church: 0.7%. Key difference? The parochial school system is bottom up, whenever possible responsibility is pushed down to the individual school. By contrast Detroit's schools centralize responsibility with the district, and over time that grew into an ever expanding bureaucracy.

Admittedly not an entirely fair comparison. However decentralization sure looks good.
The post is really great! Very practical advice. But this is not really new advice. I've read this before at different places, may be in bits and pieces. But unfortunately I'm not very successful at it.

I think not looking within your close friends is probably a good advice. So I tried attending different events, met different people, but the problem is building that trust in few meetings that you have with friends.

I completely understand that it's not the right strategy to do it alone, and I'm actively looking for a co-founder, but still not getting luck.

I think I'll try to follow this advice again, and will see if I find any luck.

Your advice is welcome too...
Learning to juggle grows brain networks for good
The price comparison never made much sense to me. It's 1 - 1.5K difference in price. For most people who use the computer to make a living, that is nothing when evaluated through the lifetime of the computer.
You asked "Is it too late to get into startup mode?", I don't think so. I think that you might want to discuss this with your wife and get her input into this decision too. Marital acrimony along with the stresses of a startup might take its toll on both of these things, and that would be regrettable.

In any case, as far as getting into "startup mode" it might help if you had an offering that you really believed in. Something to wow the world with. An idea for a product or service that is compelling to you and to others (a lot of others). Something your wife would believe in too.
Ask HN: Please review my startup Wingify - Realtime Conversion Optimization
Here's my attempt at the elevator pitch: Wingify is the only product suite available aimed at increasing website conversion rates. For optimizing conversions, it provides a single platform to access and deploy techniques such as split testing, behavioral targeting, visitor segmentation, web analytics and funnel analysis. The platform is plug-and-play, hassle-free and comprehensive way of optimizing conversion events of any kind: be it sales, signups, leads, pageviews, etc. In addition to providing technology platform, Wingify also has conversion experts, designers and engineers in house to help its clients in designing and implementing the conversion optimization plan.

Here is the link - http://www.wingify.com/
Here is the clickable link - http://www.wingify.com/

Here is the link to the product tour - http://www.wingify.com/product/tour.php
What I learned from Ike's Sandwich Shop
AP, News Corp Visit China
Associated Press president Tom Curley and News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch both made speeches yesterday in China, focusing on internet thievery. One remembers that AP started cracking down on even scraper sites or news blogs that posted snippets with a link back to an AP story – normal web practice, which generates more links to the main source – which surprised many and was viewed as irrational.
Sorry, I meant Aqua Data Studio.

It's a pretty good general purpose SQL query tool (the best I've found for PostgreSQL anyways).

http://aquadatastudio.com/
1. Guns, Germs, and Steel

2. Hackers and Painters (expected to see this more here)
Not at all. I only sketched an answer to what I took to be the article's broad point--that the cruelty and conflict in nature don't look like the work of the Christian God. Mostly, I was making a smaller point: atheists often see ironclad, unresolvable contradictions where Christians see merely interesting questions--or trivial questions, or even no puzzle at all.

It is a simple case of confirmation bias, I think. An atheist does not expect Christianity to make sense, so when he runs across something counterintuitive, he is very quick to conclude it is a simple mistake. This is unfortunate; a bit of dialogue with Christian intellectuals would likely enrich him with ideas he would otherwise find alien.

As a conoisseur of ideas, I have been tremendously enriched by serious dialogues with those of opposing views. The prejudices and biases are different. Even if we disagree on foundations, this leads them to say things I would not think of, to ask questions I would never have raised, to point out flaws in reasoning I think straightforward.
> Every time I use OS X I get into a situation where the topmost window is not the active application...

Unless you mean a situation where the active application has no windows (and thus can't have a topmost window), I've never seen this happen in standard usage.