skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I was graduating the year Ontario was getting rid of OAC (grade 13) so there were twice as many graduates coming out of the high schools, even though the near by universities were only accepting 30% more applicants. Unfortunately (or fortunately, in retrospect) for me I was in the Grade 12 stream.

I took a detailed look at all the courses being offered and decided that I just wouldn't look at enough material in the grade 12 version of statistics, so I petitioned the school to allow me to take the grade 13 one. Of course there was a conflict with some other grade 12 course, so I was forced to learn it all from correspondence books. The books moved very quickly, and I found myself lost half the time until I finally told myself to stop skimming through the readings. I ended up applying to university with a 95 or something in the class.

In university I had forgotten that lesson until I was in the same mental space: lost and not knowing why I kept getting stuck. Then it dawned on me that I needed to actually read what in front of me and my method stemmed out of there. I think it helps that I'm one of those crazy visual thinkers, but most people can do it.
What's wrong with that? $15 a month might be all it takes to become "ramen profitable".
that was good... thanks
I would think if you can't afford the extra $10 registration for a new domain that you yourself probably aren't very confident in your products recouping their domain cost.

If such is the case, a company has bigger problems than even the great ones outlined previously.
When Werner Heisenberg was pulled over by the Munich police, he couldn't tell them how fast he was going, but he knew exactly where he was.
Banana's, if I'm not mistaken consist mostly of carbon and hydrogen. Since hydrogen is the easiest to fuse you'd get a hydrogen fusion reaction in the core of the bananasun. Over time heavier elements are created as the product of fusion.

The only thing that remains of the original bananas is the color yellow, which explains the color of the sun.
It works, but I wouldn't do it. For one it makes selling a product line a tough thing to do.
It's going to become a very dense, very hot (due to the squishing) bananasphere. Which is roughly comparable to a ball of water. The composition of the Sun would change drastically, it will contain a great deal more heavier nuclei and dramatically less hydrogen. The banana-sun will probably have to get a lot hotter and denser a lot sooner and start fusing helium (the hydrogen fusion product) and given its mass probably end up somewhere around here in terms of stellar evolution.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf

Although it would probably be a off-white bananaish dwarf.
My friend tells me that it is very difficult for those involved in a romantic relationship to go in business together as well. She says that it can be an additional source of conflict due to differing work styles, finances, and other problems. How do you two manage it?
How iPhone apps are raking in cash from virtual goods
Where should I turn? And what would you do?

For me happiness comes from two things: making interesting stuff, and intense social interaction. If you're in your 40s and married, you probably don't get enough of the latter either, correct?
I also have 8 siblings (and my name is also Mark, that's interesting). We do the gift exchange thing every year too, shopping for 8 kids is easy, shopping for 8 adults with spouses and children gets really expensive! I just have to say that your approach is awesome.
I edited the post to use the term "performance-oriented" instead of "bare-metal". Hopefully that makes more sense.
This is restlessness I think, and I can also relate.

I think the best approach is to make a list of goals and start knocking them off one by one. Keep in mind that the economy isn't the greatest at the moment, so it might not be the best time to make huge risks (although that can work out to, just depends on your style).

Sounds to me like the following would be a good place to start with your goals:

1) Reduce or completely remove your commute time. Do this by finding a job closer to where you live, or move closer to where you work (or where you can find a new job). Or work from home even, although working from home isn't suited to all of us since you might really miss the day to day social interaction (if so, try working from various coffee shops etc.).

2) Solve the boss problem. There are a few things to try here. You can try speaking to him and letting him know how unhappy you are and that your relationship with him is impacting your happiness and that it needs to change. You never know, he might turn out to be a reasonable guy and you can figure something out together. If he values your work enough then he'll help you to make the changes required to keep you happy. Of course if that doesn't work, you can start shopping for a new job.

3) Get a hobby you're passionate about. This will reduce the impact that a crappy day at work will have on you. Obviously you still want to solve the job problem, but even if you have the perfect job there will still be days that depress you. Diversify your happiness.

4) Put together a financial plan. You've expressed unhappiness with your financial situation, so start small and put together a plan that will evolve as you learn and save more.

Give yourself some deadlines for your goals. Really focus on them to the exclusion of less important (but seemingly more immediate) tasks.

You'll be much happier within 6 months guaranteed.
One thing a lot of people forget, is how much memory overhead is involved with modern languages like Erlang. (Python and Ruby are bad in this regard as well.) Smalltalk was heavily criticized in its day for this, yet "modern" languages are just as bad or several times worse.

Now Smalltalk and Lisp have both been used for "systems programming" -- years ago, on much older hardware. One can just live with the overhead. Go looks like it would have C-like memory overhead, so perhaps it is a much better choice in this regard?
So what was your inner desire?
Either talk to your wife/gf about it or leave her on the spot.

Call everyone in your address book and ask them to have a cup of coffee with you. Tell them you're ripe for a change and see what comes out of it.

Get a job in Singapore and see whether any startup ideas/opportunities result from it.
I don't post much on Hacker News but on this one I must. Happiness is not found in money, job, or having a successful startup. Men, on their deathbeds never wish they had worked more or made more money, but they do wish they had spent more time on what is really important: family and their children. You say you barely see your children. I suggest choosing a job or position that allows you to see your wife and children a lot more and cutting your expenses drastically if that would help. I'm sure with your reputation you won't have trouble finding remote contract gigs that would allow you to work at home.

I'll separate this next thought from the previous because I think you can take the previous suggestion will still work good in your life without taking the next suggestion, although they work best in combination.

Take some time to look at nature and your body. Ask yourself if it takes more faith to believe that it all happened by chance or to believe that there is a God that designed it all and created it. I'm not going to try to say anything else to try to convince since I know the HN crowd and I know no amount of debate will accomplish anything.

I hear in you a hungry heart for something to meet the deepest desire of your heart. I believe we were created by God and for Him and until we find Him we will never be satisfied. Being the owner of Google, Facebook, or anything does not satisfy that need. Having a wonderful wife and great kids doesn't. Having a challenging and interesting job won't do it. Money definitely won't -- look at the depravity you see in some of the world's richest people.

You ask "Where should I turn?". My answer: if what I have said rings true at all in your heart, turn to Jesus. Start by reading the Gospel of John in the Bible. Turn to your Creator to find the answers as to why you were created. He is real, and He is very interested in meeting the deepest desires of your heart.

And whether you take my advice or not, I truly hope you find answers to your questions.
Tell HN: noobcomments view allows flagging comments
I saw the recent discussion discouraging reply comments to troll comments, including pg's concerns about recent comments that seem to be dragging down the quality of HN. A user in that thread commented that it is possible to flag any comment by going to the comment's permalink, where a flag link will appear (as does not appear in the usual thread view). Another convenient way to see a whole page full of comments that can be readily flagged is the noobcomment view,

http://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments

which of course focuses attention on comments posted from new accounts. Some of those are very, very good, but presumably troll comments occur at a higher frequency among comments by noobs than among comments by HN regulars, so this view may be worth a look for users who desire to flag comments to maintain community standards.
This thread started with a contentless troll post. You've said things in this post that are provably untrue, and the other poster has accused me of being disingenuous. You've also moderated simple, globally accepted truths like 'unreadable code need to be fixed' past zero without replying.

I suggest you examine your own courteousness.
You should take the last paragraph and do exactly that - nobody that loves you would want you to feel the way you do, and generally I've found in life that the thing you are afraid of doing is exactly what you should be doing (or to phrase it another way, if you took fear out of the equation - fear of failure, fear of telling your family, all fear) then what decision would you make?

Your in a rut - you want to do something but you are afraid - I say go do it, and jump right in! Even if your startup fails, you'll land on your feet somewhere and will be a lot happier than where you are right now.
The particle we're talking about are the nucleons (protons / neutrons) in an atom. You can simply count the nucleons in an atom (atomic table), then in a molecule, then in a cell, then in a person. Take the sum of all nucleons in all people and you know the total matter. Energy/electrons are insignificant, and not part of the calculation.

You could argue that because humans are warmer than our environment there is some extra heat energy which can be converted to mass (E=MC^2), which is should strictly be part of our weight. It's so little, though, that we can safely ignore it.

Nucleons themselves are made of quarks. Quarks have themselves mass, but they can also have mass as part of their field. I can't remember the details. I'm pretty sure nobody knows why a quark has mass in the first place.
I think you've missed my point. The article writer made a ridiculously strong claim: that no centralized structure ever worked. Only a single counterexample is needed to show that this is a dodgy claim, but counterexamples to this aren't rare, they're abundant. In particular, any time the efficiency costs of centralization are less than the transaction costs of decentralized parts cooperating, centralization is a win. There's a reason we've evolved brains.

Coming up with examples where decentralization beat centralization, on the other hand, proves nothing.
Best intro-to-design book I've seen. Just to clarify, that's "The Non-Designer's Design Book" by Robin Williams (not the comedian).
Have never heard of 'Interaction of Color'. I'll need to hunt that one down, thanks for the recommendation!
I understand your concerns as I did a 'big quit' last year.

Now I'd like to have a following point, assuming you live in the US:
You are very lucky as your country makes it very easy to grow your own business. I live in the EU in some post-communist country and believe me, there's lot of bureaucracy you have to deal with, which distracts you from achieving your goals. I know from some friends in the US that there such things are really near-to-zero when compared to ours. It's not about my political views or the economic situation at the moment, it's about how law is constructed in a particular country (and law changes quite slowly).

So, we do the biz on our own. Surely you can do it as well living in a system which makes it easier.

Good luck! :-)
With Facebook as Alibi, Brooklyn Robbery Charge Is Dropped
One written tic I have in my technical writing is to use the adverb "simply" before an instruction. It was pointed out to me early in my career that this is worse than noise... it can make the reader feel bad or annoyed if they don't succeed or perceive it as simple. I now always make a second pass to remove any potentially condescing phrases.
REMUS Transparent high availability for Xen
Brace for Google Caffeine
Bank in August, Google created sensation when it announced that they were working on a new version of search engine. The project was officially known as Google Caffeine.
I find it hard to take people seriously when they mention their ridiculous biases right up front.

Why is this? Most people, myself included, have at least a few "ridiculous biases" in their heads. I find it much easier to take an argument seriously when the biases are obvious. I may quickly decide that the argument is wrong, but at least I can make that decision.

Someone as far out into the ideological fringe as this article is going to be making a skewed argument no matter what. Would you really prefer that they did it in such a way that you never noticed the bias?
Remus has been applied to the official Xen repository, and is expected to be included with the next major release.
"You ask "Where should I turn?". My answer: if what I have said rings true at all in your heart, turn to Jesus"

May I suggest the Flying Sphagetti Monster instead? Just as valid as some "man in the sky" mythology, from a "turn to X" point of view.

Please, take your religious preaching elsewhere and don't prey on someone's confusion/depression, at least on this forum.

Thanks in advance.
"6. Channels are a great way of dealing with mutable data in a concurrent environment, but I'm not convinced they're enough."

Channels are a fantastic for concurrent environments. I took a distributed operating systems course during my graduate work, and we used Inferno as the environment and Limbo as our programming language of choice (you'll notice that one of the developers helped write Limbo). Channels made communicating between threads extremely easy as they could by typed to anything you wanted (primitives, ADT's, etc). Will they be enough? I'm not sure, but my experience tells me that they probably will be.
Jacob's a good writer, and I'm not surprised that Django is so well-documented. I just have one small quibble with this piece:

> You need to understand the difference between "its" and "it’s";

If the problem is that people conflate "its" and "it's", the solution is not to keep placing them side-by-side.

What got me to stop mistaking the one for the other was to understand "its" not in opposition to "it's", but as part of the set of possessive pronouns: "my", "your", "his", "her", "its", "their". Note that none of these pronouns have an apostrophe.
I'd be very worried about both wireless security and wireless interference.
Of Fruit Flies and Drones
Your asshole boss is about to loose you. I think that itself is a reasonable punishment for an asshole. So now that we have had him punished, let us put him aside.

Being 10 years younger than you makes it just difficult to give you an advise. See, I would expect you to give me advise based on your rich experience.

All I can do is share with you some general thoughts that come across in my mind from time to time, being at work, whether spending time coding, or writing some documents, assisting the marketing and sales guys or dreaming about my $32 Million startup.

In my opinion, your loving wife and children are a startup. being happy with them and maintaining decent family and quality life is a great success these days.

I think, by now, understanding this point, you should get up from your chair and start dancing with joy and happiness for being such lucky bustard.

If I was finding myself in such frustrating position this is what I was might be doing, finding myself a long term contract (as self employed), securing my financial state and then, after a while in the freedom, not being abused by a stupid fat ass boos, the muse would probably be back. Ideas will pop up and the way to the startup is short.
first thing is to stop ruminating. even if your mind wants to. even if it feels like that is the best way out of this situation. so stop now. don't look for explanations, don't try to understand. that would make it worse. the answers are not in what we accomplish, or in what we think we need to do or be (great doctor vs. lowly coder) - all dangerous fabrications.

watch this video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1424079446171087119..., it's only :45 or so.

read these - take the day off and read them if you need to:

http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom-Illness...

http://www.amazon.com/Mindful-Way-through-Depression-Unhappi...
Face-off: Motorola Droid versus iPhone
"P.W. Singer, the author of an important new book called Wired for War, told me that, 'We are at a breakpoint in history. The U.S. air force this year will train more unmanned system pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined. And, as Bill Gates has noted, robotics are now where computers were back in 1980.'

"Now you might think that a 'pilot' sitting behind a computer bank in Nevada blowing away people in Afghanistan is less liable to combat stress than a soldier in a unit deployed there, but Singer said the opposite has often proved the case."
Dupe from yesterday - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=934752 but is marked [dead] for some reason.
Perhaps the "competent developer" is not what they are aiming at, but the masses. In fact, this would explain a lot of languages using C-like syntax if it were true (not to say that those which do are any worse/better than those which do not, he said back-pedalling :).
So it's a bit of a stretch to claim (as this article does) that the "many worlds" interpretation of QM is a physics fact. It is a possible interpretation of the model which is impossible (at least I think that's the case) to empirically verify. Some pretty eminent physicists (Roger Penrose for example) believe that the "Many Worlds" interpretation is pretty much nonsense, and have said as much.
Google Dashboard paints the story of your life as data points
Feelings of utter despair warrants seeing a shrink.
I think a lot of people misunderstand the "omit needless words" rule. If you've taken out so many words that the text is no longer easy to read, that means you actually need some of the words you've omitted. :)
the syntax for most people is a bit of an initial stumbling block

Rewrite in the past tense, and this is an epitaph for any number of "niche" languages. Sad but true. Computer programming would be much better off if it were not so. Cultural expectations are a major factor in initial impressions. Good initial impressions make for a large, vibrant user base.

Python probably "gets it right" in terms of having enough syntax to satisfy expectations, but little enough to make tool writing accessible. (Except for the indentation thing, of course.) Ruby has too much. Smalltalk drops the ball with no precedence rules for math operations. Lisp and Forth are also a bit too weird, especially if your field is not programming and all you want to do is crunch some engineering data.
Seems really easy- you have a great reputation on here and are apparently an extremely accomplished programmer. You have no mortgage to pay, so your expenses aren't too bad, though if you have kids you probably want to start saving for their college. If you're not putting much into savings then your finances are either totally fucked or you just aren't being paid accordingly to your experience level.

Just post under your real account that you're looking for contract work, line some stuff up at a high per hour rate, save for a few months, and then quit your job.

The real question is if you think your experience is really that good- this is anonymous so there's nothing for anyone to go off of. If you have a great reputation here then this road has already been paved for you, comment by comment.

There's nothing wrong with cashing in on reputation :)
I know the big story here is cross platform support, but I also LOVE the idea of being able to see common friends as a way to break the ice.
but it's only about "winning and losing" from the sociopaths perspective. as mentioned in the first installment, lots of "losers" lead very fulfilling, non-work centric lives.
Well, there's ridiculous biases, and then there's ridiculous biases.

It's a matter of degree. Economics is a discipline which is all too susceptible to story-telling. Given a bias, almost any situation can be argued one way or the other by telling the appropriate story, and emphasising and underemphasising the various elements. So overt bias tends to lead me to suspect any given tale of economics likely has relatively little information and won't sound nearly as decisive if the sources are investigated. Making this decision to discount on the basis of evidence of bias is much cheaper than actually investigating the sources, of course; instead, I'll reserve such investigation for those stories which seem interesting but don't have obvious bias.

And in this case, the bias is extremely blatant and very silly. The author has stated right up front that there is only one way they could possibly tell the story they're going to tell, it can only end up one way, and they have no motivation to look for counterexamples.

In fact, the story may have some truth, may be a lot of truth, but the bias and the ease of manipulative storytelling in the discipline tell me that it's not worth my time investigating deeper. FWIW, I object to moralistic, almost religious, edicts to recycle. I'd much rather pay someone else to handle that problem. So I'm even on the side of the author's end goal; but I have no respect for the author's tale.
Easily.

Assume sugar cubes consist 100% of sugar. Then the question becomes, what has more mass: the world's population or the world's supply of sugar.

There definitely isn't enough sugar in the world to give everybody his own weight in sugar (including the sugar that naturally forms in plants / fruit), so there's your answer.
whats the big deal? you messed up and the CTO was pissed. we all make mistakes.
How to Make Developer Certifications That Matter
There's an external cost (or benefit) to everything. Fully calculating the impact of a given action on everyone else would be absurdly computationally intractable, particularly for extremely diffuse or probabilistic effects. So, the question to ask must be not "what are the externalities of this action", but "what externalities are significant enough to take into account"?

The author of the article is concentrating on obvious costs felt independently by individuals, and ignoring diffuse non-economic benefits (such as... not accumulating huge piles of trash filled with difficult-to-recover resources). He's quite possibly correct anyway that it's a poor trade-off, or that it's at least poorly implemented, but he really isn't making a persuasive case, especially given the lack of any actual non-anecdotal evidence of what the costs and benefits are.