news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: What's the point with so many stupid people in the world?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2997502Have you ever tried to sit and write code in a bar? It's nice. It's a hell of a lot more conducive to creativity than working in an office cubicle. You got your drink, you got your smoke. You sit at a table with wifi and a plug and you're invincible until about six drinks in. You look out over the patio at the mountains and you think...this is what life's all about.Then at about 6pm the soccer game starts. Suddenly, the owner of the bar comes out and unplugs your laptop, turns on the TV, and cranks the volume up to 7000000. Even though there's no one there. You say, "Man, that's too loud." And he says, "when they show up, that's what they're gonna want."Sure enough, about 3 minutes before the game starts, the patio goes from empty to packed. People are trying to move your table, your laptop bag. Then suddenly they're all staring, slackjawed, at this stupid TV that's blasting the same shitty commercials it was showing yesterday, last week, last month.HN readers, I'm sitting in that bar Sep 14, 2011 7:22 PM
bing.com
Transcript Requestshttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a88ea6d9e0642c8a794cc5db5e372c6&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bates.edu%2Fregistrar%2Facademic-record%2Ftranscript-requests%2F&c=3108604821078488767&mkt=en-usWe have partnered with Parchment, Inc. to process transcript requests. Please click the link below, select “Ordering your own credentials or academic records” and follow the system prompts. Utilizing ...Aug 26, 2010 1:03 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: What is Gravity?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629794While watching a documentary that mentioned gravity (forgive me the particulars escape me at the moment) my 8yo son reached across my lap and tapped the space-bar pausing the video. He then turned toward me and asked, ‘what is gravity?’Now, in our house we require explanations for actions because we are becoming, sadly too late in life, convinced that being on purpose is paramount. Because it is our opinion that if you do not understand, even at the most base level (epistemological questions aside), why you are doing something then you will never have any power over what you do. When any of us does something that results in negative consequences we try to be in the habit of either tracing down the root of our reasoning or admitting that we had none.To this end we have made much of the distinction between description and explanation. Briefly; all explanations include description but not the reverse. When we ask one another for an explanation and instead receive only description it has bAug 24, 2010 2:04 PM
news.ycombinator.com
Ask HN: Does changing locales to fix productivity doldrums work for you?https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=757407The article about the creative bliss of moving to an attractive, cheaper foreign environment to bootstrap a startup:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=756570... got me thinking on a somewhat tangential question: Does moving around to change your environment actually help you work? Or is it solving the wrong problem the wrong way?From a personal state-of-mind angle that the author is pushing, I guess I'm not entirely sold on the fact that a change of scenery will let a hundred flowers of creativity bloom - in a sustainable way - to an extent that confers upon a startup a meaningful economic advantage. The cost differences might, but I'm not so sure about the aesthetic/spiritual quality.I've moved around a lot in my 23 years. I emigrated from Russia with my parents when I was 6, and moved around the US several times during childhood. Within the last few years spent in Georgia, I've moved several times within the general area I inhabited, including twice within Atlanta. When I was young,Aug 12, 2009 5:53 AM
torrentspy.com
Torrentspy shutdownhttp://www.torrentspy.com/Friends of TorrentSpy,We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.It was a wild ride,The TorrentSpy Team"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the lMar 29, 2008 11:35 PM
bing.com
How Equity Portfolio Management Workshttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a88ea759ed74d7abdb4ca0e501d93af&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.investopedia.com%2Farticles%2Ffinancialcareers%2F07%2Fportfolio_management.asp&c=13711638627476408227&mkt=en-usBryn Harman, CFA, has 40+ years of experience in corporate finance, including as CEO/CIO of value-oriented investing firm Pelouse Capital Management. Andy Smith is a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) ...Mar 14, 2007 10:00 AM
bing.com
Contemporary art fair to blossom in Shanghaihttp://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6a892f62333a43059d5729d7ab662744&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbc.ca%2Fnews%2Fentertainment%2Fcontemporary-art-fair-to-blossom-in-shanghai-1.613987&c=9786868136457827424&mkt=en-usA major contemporary art fair to be launched in Shanghai, China next year will include more than 100 international galleries. "ShContemporary 2007" will be held in September 2007 in a 12,000 ...Nov 4, 2006 4:37 PM
