skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No! it's not a hollow claim.

1. We're talking about the technology invention not the concept and RouteGuru pioneered this technology. Also there's a process in which the landmark intelligence is generated which is legible for a patent as well and RouteGuru has filed one.

2. Why Globally? In many countries, landmark intelligence can fundamentally change the way solutions extend directions today i.e. "Street name based directions", which is a very traditional style.

3. I'll encourage you to read the post again. All we felt sad about was that Google did talk to us, learnt whole lot about Landmark intelligent directions from us and eventually it comes up with a lofty story on how did they figure out the problem, terming it as their own invention and without patronizing RouteGuru at all.

We wouldn't have raised our voice if at all RouteGuru could get a single mention anywhere.
They certainly believed they were rubbish. However, a belief that the market will swing in a certain direction is not the same as knowing a product sold is rubbish.

In fact, the CDO's were not rubbish. The CDO's are supposed to pay off in a certain way based on market outcomes, which they did. Goldman simply believed the market would go one way, while buyers thought the market would go another way.
You've been here longer than I have, so maybe things are different... but I get the impression HN is about discussion. What is the difference between this guy creating a blog with a single entry then posting it on here for us to read and comment on, and him just creating a long Ask HN post?
Ok, maybe they didn't intend it, but what about the psychological warfare side of it? Didn't whistling WWII bombs further scare the folks on the ground?

Today's wars are more psychological than ever. The enemy probably watches and gets scared by video of their locations being watched and blown up. They might even think twice after seeing things from our perspective.
There is no reason whatsoever to suppose they didn't know these CDO's were rubbish.

The fact that they held on to the highest risk portion of them as their intended means of profiting from the sale is pretty solid evidence.
>1) Relearn how to eat. Do not eat just to eat, but eat for a reason.

Is this, "God I'm starving after that trek through the woods, this pasta is delicious!" Or, "Boy this braised rabbit with wine reduction turned out well."
The producer here is clearly talented, but the fact remains that notwithstanding Liam Howlett's setup in the late nineties, today's most basic music production software is a country mile more powerful than that which produced some of the most memorable music of the last twenty years.

I often think that there exists a clear analogy between electronic music and video games. The computer games of the 80s and early 90s possessed a simplicity and level of fun - often characterised as playability - which was to a certain extent lost when the exponentially-increasing power of hardware in the late 90s led to programmers to concentrate on all encompassing 3D effects at the expense of simple fun.

Likewise, I feel that many musicians today get too caught up in the neverending technical possibilities offered by their software (and digital hardware) at the expense of good, simple music which hits a spot close to the heart.

All the gear, but no idea - to coin a phrase.

I'm not sure what you'd call the musical equivalent of playability, but I think more musicians should bear it in mind. :)
I have no problem getting excited about an Apple Tablet. However... I can't get excited about rumours and speculation. There's nothing actionable about all this crap unless you're an iPhone developer and you decide to support full screen resolution and not make an assumption about the screen size.

Other than that... I suppose this might make some folks hold off on netbooks. Are there any other tangible,a ctionable consequences of this kind of post?

Or is it all the tech equivalent of guys in a barbershop arguing about whether Muhammed Ali was the greatest fighter who ever lived?
FTFA: "In the past we’ve put up with Photoshop because it was vital to achieving our beloved rounded corners, drop shadows, outer glows, and gradients."

No. Drawing tools beat markup because it's usually faster to draw (and redraw) a layout than to work out the markup. More so if you are looking for a very particular arrangement.

Working right in HTML it's easy to get stuck in a design because you can't quite figure out how to make something look just so. You tend to use the markup that's most familiar.

One risk to using a graphics tool: if you're busy with the rounded corners, drop shadows, outer glows, and gradients you end up with a design that is near impossible to accurately achieve with markup. Better to treat Photoshop as a robust set of pencil and paper you can save to disk.
That's a great point. Why didn't RouteGuru raised a voice against Yahoo? Let me explain:

1. Yahoo din't talk to RouteGuru team before the launch.
2. Yahoo also din't come up with any false story either and there team did mention about RouteGuru in one of their Blogs.

I urge you guys to understand the point of disappointment well.
The story conflates timelines, as does the discussion. It makes it hard to take any of it seriously.

For the vast majority of the time that those products were sold, the mechanism for profit was to keep a piece of the highest risk (and highest return, in theory) piece for the bank.

This is not a mechanism that works, at all, if one believes the products are rubbish.

That said, you make a good point that it's entirely possible to sell a product that you don't like for yourself, without doing it in bad faith. If you came to me and said "i want to put all my money into commercial REITs", I'd find a way to make the transaction happen. But I wouldn't put my money in with yours.
F.T.C. Steps Up Scrutiny of Google’s AdMob Acquisition
Great write up, haven't seen something this detailed in a while. I was hoping to install this weekend and this definitely saved me a load of time.
I even don't buy that key management is too hard. The logistics of sending encryption keys around secure military networks has got to be stupid easy compared to supply chain for, say, jeeps. Giving out encryption keys is the same problem as moving jeeps around, just different logistics. Things need to go from supplier to recipient. Keys can be revoked and set to expire automatically, that's got to make things even easier. Inside the armed forces, anyway.

Between "key management is hard, lets go unencrypted", and underestimation of locals, I'd much more buy into the echo chamber that said "towelheads are dumbasses who couldn't find sand in their own damn desert" much more than anything else.
Launch this and get it paying the bills:

http://www.fairtutor.com/
Or maybe they even did. Video really goes out over an encrypted link, and this is a setup. Maybe they have a good way to track the hardware needed? Maybe wait for the insurgents to noticeably use this technique, then midnight UAV runs with the unencrypted satellite feed disabled can go on unnoticed for longer. Hell, use this to feed false data so that instead of insurgents running out of a building just about to be bombed, they run right into a squad waiting to capture them.

There are also a spook-side theories. This could be a subtle poke in the ribs to say the insurgents could be doing this, and General Atomics embarrassed itself into a needed round of funding.
Good point the analogy definitely doesn't completely account for the adjacent field of software engineering, where coding styles are certainly important. I guess that's mostly because artists rarely work in large groups, and when they do, I'd imagine the work is mostly parallelize-able: several people don't need to go through the details of any single piece of work.
But CS is about programming. However, in order to really understand programming (that is, making computers do things), it's important to understand "algorithms, data structures, machine architecture, programming (principled), some math (primarily to teach proof-based and quantitative reasoning), and systems (such as operating systems and databases)". Similarly, a real artist needs to know the different constructions of canvas, consistency and production of paint, brushes, etc., in order to use his tools and medium to the fullest extent.
Sounds like hype. We haven't even seen anything yet, so it is all speculation about how great this is.
Agreed that "landmark intelligence" as a concept has been known for thousand years but still couldn't be demonstrated technologically till RouteGuru team did it in 2007. Can we figure out the reason?

Can't there be something novel in solving this problem which makes the solution (or perhaps the process) innovative? If it looks like a small feature to you it's your choice.

Adobe holds the patent for Menu based navigation for UIs. That also is just a small feature on a web page. Why does it make sense?

And many a times it's not the concept or technology but the regional strength that's worth taking the biggies head on. Have you ever heard about "Baidu" in China?

Google has still not been able to crack the markets in China/Japan/Korea/Taiwan etc is a big testimony for that.

I urge you to read the post to understand the reason for raising the voice again. The essence is much away from what you have taken it as.
Well, the reason why speculation about Apple is posted so furiously is that a lot of people do care. After all, Apple controls some 90% of the high end PC market (>$1000).

Don't like the posting? Don't read it.
I once thought Prodigy used mod trackers (those in-game chip tunes), but I found out they just use loads of Roland equipment.

After years of using soft samplers and synths, I recently moved into a bigger house and set aside a whole room for my music studio. With that much space, I now have:

+2 Akai S950 samplers (with enough memory for about 16 drums)

+3 mixing desks (2 vintage, one newer - the Yamaha vintage makes everything sound great

+Already had an Oberheim Xpander and a Bit 1, and a Crumar Toccata organ

+2 outboard compressors, UC200 chorus pedal

+Laptop with 192khz soundcard to master and sequence MIDI

My basic tactic is to make the entire track sequenced - recording only vocals and the non-MIDI Crumar Toccata - and then record it straight from the desk. A hardware mixer mixes better than Cubase can mix.

So overall, the older equipment was harder to use, but to my ears, sounded more 'real' than computer instruments. But I'm not in any way saying a music setup is 'better', just different, and sometimes different is what you want.
"All the gear, but no idea - to coin a phrase."

Love it. I think this is a universal rule. I've seen it apply to music (electric guitarists with their pedals), graphic design (with Adobe CS), renovations (shiny tools) and conversation (superlative vocabulary).
The Top Ten IPO Candidates For 2010
Drupal should have won. It should win everything.

Drupal can create boring blogs like wordpress...but what about it's power to create something like...umm...a SaaS Business Social Collaborative Application?

http://www.officemedium.com

100% Drupal Goodness
1. Become better at programming.
2. Write a killer webapp with Django.
3. Learn very well one of these: JavaScript, Clojure, Ruby. (Current level for all: 0)
4. Graduate.
5. Start contributing to an open-source project, probably only casually.
6. Be insanely curious.
7. Read at least 5 SF books.
Fair enough, and I didn't talk about the "idea stealing" too much.

But again I have to say that it's pretty obvious thing to do. Even if the GMaps guys were heads-down and no one at Google had thought of it (which I doubt), clearly tens of thousands of people have thought "why can't map directions say turn at gas station X instead of turn at street X".

As someone who lives in an area with lots of missing street signs, I know I thought about that years ago, and I imagine tens of thousands of others have as well.
Excellent point. It would tell us more if we knew how long the na'vi lived though.
- continue to get customer feedback
- launch trial service
- start charging early customer base
apple and oranges, if the beauty of the problem is in a clean elegant solution that does not require all of the pieces, it is not a well posed riddle, or solution.

That's why the solution to the wolf-sheep-cabbage problem is not "just add more floating stuff so you can bring all at once, idiot".

The comparison to school and exams, appears unrelated to me: there are situations where external aid kills the point (e.g. calculator for arithemitic in firs grade).
A web-based graphics application based on R
Testicular Cancer - Identify Hidden Symptoms and Prevent Tragedy
Health Care Reform Passes Senate: 60-39
In the sleeves of most CDs you can find a list of credits for every track, which include people that took part in the production, as well as other songs that were sampled in the track. There are also databases online which show what song samples what.
> I never said 'exactly'. I said 'similar'.

Actually, you wrote "I've heard that inflation doesn't actually 'tax' you because all nominal prices adjust so they have similar (previous) real values."

Whenever the adjustment isn't perfect, it's either a tax or benefit. Fixed-rate instruments include an inflation expectation. If reality is different, someone takes a hit.
Of course it's possible that it's technically tricky to do. But it still has a small surface area in the UX, making it a "feature" at best of existing mapping systems.

And thinking you can outcompete Google on a "technical" innovation is folly.

I read the ENTIRE post. I always do before commenting.

I guess I am not seeing the same "essence" you are.

I have been doing startups for 15 years and I have seen this type of thing happen so many times. The founders are always shocked when XYZ Co adds the feature and crushes their advantage.

My point is to stress to people that doing something a huge co does but slightly differently is rarely a strong foundation for a startup, and a huge risk to take. People discount the value of the rest of the ecosystem.

Also I used to be more ideological and think that the better mousetrap wins, but frankly it rarely happens.
This is relevant to start-up culture.

Employers would be induced to cover their employees through a combination of tax credits and penalties.

The cost of doing a start-up just went up, but overall, I think it's a good thing, since taxpayers would end up paying for it indirectly, anyway.

A neat visual: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e20...

and note that without the reform, women would be charged 48 percent more(!)
> The lesson is that whatever flying machine we are able to design, it will always pale in comparison to Nature's flying machines.

Those super-sonic eagles are extremely elegant. And, why do we bother with 747s when ostriches are so much more efficient.
We can all guess what this product will be like, probably a tablet resembling an enlarged iPod Touch/iPhone. But I can't wait to find out how this product will surprise and feature something new and unexpected. That's what Apple delivers so well, they continually innovate instead of just rebranding/repurposing. It will be interesting to see how the upcoming presentation will deliver an innovation.
> That was what his assistant told the Oracle's NC team when they wanted to discuss a problem about the machine with him.

If it was a technical problem, what are the odds that his input would have been helpful?
Finally crack the 100k a year barrier. This means either get that raise that I totally deserve or move on.
"Why would you invest in GM IPO if you could invest in Tesla instead?"

One reason may be that you think GM is underpriced and Tesla is overpriced. Techcrunch ought to hire people who are financially literate if they are to report on finance.
Excellent points.
Are you me? =]
Actually he uses a lot of software. There's ableton + several vst plugins like ozone izotope, waves L2, waves GTR : it still costs thousands of dollars...
It's a improvement for you, not for nature or the animals you displaced, which was exactly my point.
Stop Trying To Be Smart...?  Goal for 2010
Almost 20 years ago someone wrote in my yearbook that I would "do better when I stop telling people how smart I am." It stung and I avoided the guy ever since.

In fact, I've spent my whole life trying to be the smartest guy in the room. In school I took the hardest classes and shot for the best grades. I also try to say smart things and speak as an expert on a wide range of things.

Now, that guy popped up in Facebook and I'm wondering if my business and personal relationships are suffering. Maybe my biggest room for improvement is changing this perspective? This might actually help my business more than anything.

Can you offer any advice? How you approach the world? Are you the well read geek that with all of the answers. Or are you a wide eyed "beginner" ready to experience truly new things and learn from anyone?
Thanks, now that you are saying I remember what a CD looked like :) Seriously, it was so long I had a CD in my hand I didnt't think about that.
Hmmm... should I trust my backups to generic software vendor X, or to someone who clearly takes nothing for granted... tough choice. Signing up now.
Christmas Lights Gone Wild
I've joked about maps and GPSes giving "country directions" for years now. "Turn left where the old store used to be and drive on until you get to where the tornado hit" kind of stuff. It's landmark-based navigation, albeit a jokey one.

In other words, not really a new idea.
>> Any time you sell a security, you are selling a security which you believe to be a bad investment.

> Firstly, that's not true if you're a "market maker" as many large banks are.

Actually, it's always true. You sell things because someone else is willing to pay you more for them than you think that they are worth to you. You buy things because they're worth more to you than the money it costs to get someone else to give them to you.

Yes, there are lots of reasons why your valuation is different than the other party's, but the difference is why both of you are willing to do the deal.

> Thirdly, so long as you are not actively misleading the buyer, if he thinks it's worth that much, that's his call.

Absolutely. The buyer is willing to take the "profit", so he should be willing to take the loss. (The seller has similar issues - if they sell for "too little", that's their problem because they were willing to take "too much".)
That was amazing to watch. I have often wondered how awesome it would be to see great hackers at work in a similar way. I've had the luck to watch one or two sit next to me and work (during school), and it's mind-blowing how fast they are, and how they go about fleshing out a quick skeleton into a full piece of work.

Now with software like Etherpad, I wonder if soon we'll have screencasts of the making of great code.
"The community is what's beautiful." You nailed it.
Twitter buys Mixer labs (mapping software)
That's actually a rather cool point of view.

However, I don't share it. I believe that one should spend most of one's time trying to do something awesome in one language -- as opposed to wasting time by learning 5.

Now, don't get me wrong, the fact that you now 5 languages is very cool; however, I don't think I'll ever use up that much time to gain those particular skills.

You see, I believe that if one were to draw a graph illustrating the relationship between the "awesomeness" of what one has done and the effort one has put in, the effort axis would be on an geometric scale, while the "awesomeness" one would be on a linear one. In other words, one has to put in a hell of a lot more effort to get something just a little more "awesome".

On the other hand, maybe learning languages is an integral part of what you "do"; or, maybe, it helps you relax.

Either way, and as in most arguments between somewhat-intelligent people, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree -- please note that I'm using the "somewhat" prefix as it pertains to me; I'm pretty sure that you're just plain intelligent.

Oh, and: Merry Christmas.
And a very happy New Year.
CoffeeScript, a little language that compiles to JavaScript. Happy Holidays, HN
This seems to be a pretty good implementation of FriendFeed's schema-less MySQL ( http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql ) and this option would probably beat most of the simple key-value stores in terms of perfomance, backup and replication.

One should note thought that more modern NoSQL databases aren't only key-value stores. For example, Redis offers KEYS command which can scan the store by a pattern. Tokyo Tyrant (another "key-value" store) offers Lua scripting.
handy link. nearly got an audible "omg" at IE's fail...
Original blueprints of the Eiffel Tower
This article is a really poor piece of journalism. It has dozens of paragraphs of text that can be summarized as "the senate passed some form of the healthcare reform bill", without any loss of information. It barely touches upon what's actually in the bill, and it uses some surrounding wording to make it appear grand, except that it doesn't sound grand at all.

Is it a minor piece of legislation everyone calls a "reform", or is it an actual reform? What's actually in the bill? Who exactly will it affect and how? What changes, exactly, will it make? The article doesn't answer any of these questions.
I am not sure studying things in nature and creating exact models would be a good idea. Imagine trying to model a motor bike or a car by studying Cheetah(Fastest animal on ground). Nature may inspire to model/create useful things.
Then I must not have explained myself clearly enough. I'm not talking about extra equipment, I'm talking about information that's not needed for the solution to the problem.

Recently (for some definition of "recent") I was setting an exam question. In it I gave various lengths, heights, and so on, and I was told that it was too hard because I gave details that weren't required. On the other hand, if one is given only the information required, there is already an artificial clue - all the information given must be used. That's unrealistic.

I've interviewed people for jobs who performed fantastically well on exam style questions, but when given free-form problems simply didn't know where to start.

For me, whether a solution is clean and elegant is independent of whether you've used all the information given. It's the solution itself that's elegant. It's not only plausible but likely that we have different concepts of elegance - I'm a mathematician. When solving math problems, real math problems such as required to get a PhD or publish a paper, there's no way you're given just the information required and no more.

Along those lines I've been moved to submit another puzzle - you can find it here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1014092
Bernie Madoff Assaulted in Prison
Dude, you may want to turn off personalized search results.
JavaScript has always had a gorgeous object model hidden within Java-esque syntax. CoffeeScript is an attempt to expose the good parts of JavaScript through syntax that favors expressions over statements, cuts down on punctuation noise, and provides pretty function literals. This CoffeeScript:

square: x => x * x.

Compiles into this JavaScript:

var square = function(x) {
return x * x;
};

If anyone has specific ideas about aspects of JavaScript that they think could be more convenient or better-looking, I'd love to hear them. Cheers.