skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
In addition to the comment by Bodhi, I feel I should point out that this is a HORRIBLE idea. Microsoft has been doing this for quite a while, and that's part of the reason web support (among other kinds of support) is so nasty.

If anything, the W3C exists to make sure the standards don't conflict with themselves. When amateur spec-designers start throwing around specifications, run for the hills. There's going to be enough hellfire, brimstone, and general fail to satisfy any armageddon cult, but they'll all disagree on how the fail is going to happen. Endless hours will be spent in chatrooms and forums debating which fail will win, and in the end everyone has to crawl into their radiation-, mutant-rat-, gelatinous-ooze-, cosmic-ray-, alien-proof-bunkers every 37 minutes just to survive the onslaught of potential fail.
Another puzzle: what's the radius ...
With whole lot of due respect to your experience, I'd still like to say a few things:

1. If a small feature is tricky to do and has a lot of strategic importance for a bigger platform, it makes complete sense to go for it and also protect the IP for it. We did just that.

You may be aware that Microsoft ended up paying huge money to Ric Richardson for his obvious technology which could have been thought of by 1000s of people before. It's just that he implemented it earlier and protected it as well.

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

We still feel that our solution is better than Google's even today. It may sound little finicky but we can prove it as well.

3. We were always aware that Google would do it some day. Yahoo did it earlier and we were cool. Microsoft is still struggling to achieve it. We just got hurt because G guys talked to us earlier and their official story looks too hollow.

Let me also confess that we have filed for a patent already and that many people guided us that we can potentially allege Google to be infringing on our patent. But because we still don't have it granted, we're just raising the genuine voice against the pain that RouteGuru hasn't been patronized anywhere despite the fact the Google has admired us for this innovative solution and learnt from us as well.
Wouldn't "no denial of care" cause healthcare cost to rise because of increased demand?
You can do a lot of it by ear on an Akai or the like...
Prompted by the discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013789

The exchange started here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1013929

Image found here:
http://zenoferox.blogspot.com/2008/02/circle-puzzle.html

Warning: spoilers.
LESS achievable. Multiplication by zero still gives a product of zero in the real number system.
I am curious how does this work business wise? Since there are quite a lot of samples from other artists/songs, who gets paid how and how much in order to release something like this to the market?
Yeah, that's cool. It's like the movie "Sleep Dealer". They looked for someone watching a feed and dropped a bomb on his house.
i like operating both ways in the real world. on the one hand, i'll cough up any knowledge i have when prompted, but not until prompted (unless its important). and until i'm prompted, i just listen and learn and experience.
Maybe just too terse. Try this:

"First discovery that flying insects use an unexpectedly simple and elegant strategy for landing on flat surfaces (Biological Cybernetics 2000). Image velocity is held constant as the surface is approached, thus automatically ensuring that flight speed is close to zero at touchdown. No explicit knowledge of flight speed or height above the ground is necessary. The feasibility of this landing strategy has been successfully tested by implementation on a robotic gantry, and is presently being implemented for testing on airborne vehicles." (http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au//index.html?page=52793#novel%20low)
It doesn't actually say what your last line suggests, it says 48% more than men. Women could actually be charged exactly the same but men's charges could be increased to match.
How to Make the First Move 2.0
Kinsey scale for various communication platforms.
You should be humble, but at the same time, you should appear to be a genius to most others. This judgment should not be based on your own evaluations. Instead, your clients, customers, and coworkers should evaluate you as intelligent. You cannot truly fake being intelligent just as you cannot fake being a fool. If you fake being a fool, that makes you a fool. If you fake being intelligent, it will be evident to those more intelligent than yourself. Just be yourself.

In addition to this, though, I must say that you can think unintelligently if only for the purpose of seeing from the perspective of someone less experienced than yourself. This is helpful for the purposes of understanding others, but it should not be demonstrated anywhere outside of your own mind. This can help with design, but in turn, that design will be deemed wise because of its simplicity.
All fair points.

I am not a big software patents guy, so I don't really like the idea that you can patent this type of thing. Thus I don't like to encourage behaviors whose exit strategy is patent troll, but that's another story.

Your solution might be technically superior, but the less-technically savvy way (ugc or such) is still as useful. Also clearly streetview is designed with the idea of becoming the ultimate landmark-based navigation.

I will yield that I know jack squat about the mapping industry or about what your company does (as that wasn't really what your post was about).

I was just using your post to illustrate a point about something I see happen frequently. It saddens me to see so many people's startups get (predictably) crushed.
I feel like the optimal path is a middle road between the two extremes you listed. I try to learn as much as possible. Once I have learned something, I am quite confident in what I have learned, but I recognize that at any given time, new information may come along which changes or contradicts what I already know. "Strong opinions, weakly held."

I really enjoy the "progressive degrees" joke: "When you get your Bachelor's, you think you know everything. When you get your Master's, you realize that you don't know anything. When you get your Doctorate, you realize that nobody knows anything."

To your high school/college un-friend's yearbook snipe... based on human nature, I would expect that he just wanted to have the last word on you. However, that doesn't mean there wasn't a point lurking there... I know I enjoy being the center of attention, and I think it's important to discipline oneself to temper that attention-seeking with humility. So maybe what you can take away from that yearbook note is two-fold. One lesson might be, "Show, don't tell." Let your intelligence speak for itself. If the people in the room are supposed to know that you're the most intelligent, they will, based on how you say what you're saying, and how you do what you're doing, as opposed to what you are saying or what you are doing.

The second lesson could simply be humility. Maybe your constant striving to be the smartest, while admirable, has given you a subtle sense of entitlement to admiration or good results. It could help to examine that.

It's really cool that you're willing to take a step back and ask yourself if there was something under the surface of that comment, especially almost two decades later. I hope you find the epiphany you're looking for this year. Happy holidays!
Something seems to be wrong with Slideshare. Almost everything seems to be a dead link.
Ask HN: What are your goals for your startups in 2010?
Everyone has goals, what are your top goals for 2010?
Adverse selection may cause costs to rise. (I say "may" because I don't know which version of the bill was just passed.)

For one of the major versions of the bill, it was cheaper for many people to pay the tax hike rather than buy insurance. This means that the cheapest way to get health care is to pay higher taxes and buy insurance after you get sick.
> If the poster can consider 'activation costs'

What makes you think people consciously consider it? Most of them just say "I don't feel like moving", or "I'm too lazy". Also, you missed the point of the "fully general counterargument". The point is that if your descendants find it better to be somewhere else later - well, they're fully capable of moving themselves.
Are these ETFs flat rates? Meaning, is the ETF the same for cancellation at a year in a half and two months in?

If it is, that does seem ridiculous, but if it isn't it should be taken into consideration that a droid at retail without a two-year contract costs ~$600. If someone buys a droid at $200 with a two-year contract and then cancel's their contract, Verizon would (with the old ETF) effectively lose ($600 - ($200 +$175+profits on whatever data/minutes you paid for)).

The reason you can buy the phone at $200 is because you've said that you'll make up the difference (and allow them to turn a profit) in data/minutes fees over the next two years.

Whether or not they should be making a profit on the ETF is up for debate, but at least they should be allowed to break even.
Because the primary function of the central bank is to control the money supply. If inflation is 0, or more generally if short-term interest rates are always higher than inflation, then the central bank's tools are rather one sided. All they can do is decrease the real money supply by making interest rates higher.

That would be bad news in a situation such as, for example, right now, where a massive credit collapse is greatly increasing the demand for money. To keep the economy stable the Fed must print money. They're doing it by buying long-term debt, which is the best they can do but is disruptive to the debt economy.
I run into this a lot.

Port is in use 8003.

lsof -i :8003

Then I kill whatever process was on 8003. I do this a lot with my Django development if I didn't kill the server right the first time.
Sounds like active record.
Safari doesn't render it for me, but the WebKit nightlies do (they're <i>phenomenal</i>. Usually more stable than Safari, and faster than anything else). I guess I'm the opposite of you, as Chrome does.
I'm on a Mac though. Odds are versions are different if you're on a Windows machine.

As to the "bug in WebKit", only if it's supported in that version of webkit. Restart Chrome, and if it's still there, hunt for an existing bug report, and check if it's supposed to be supported. If yes, it's a bug. If no, then wait until a Chrome update (no clue how often they'll update the WebKit part of it, though).
My goal for Tarsnap is the same as my goal for life: I plan to end 2010 with 10x as many customers as I start it with.
I am not sure if the FCC Commissioner slamed them on the $350 ETFs, but the fact that with the current rules if someone wants to cancel their plan with a month left there is still $120 left on the ETF. Showing that only $230 is going to recouperate the cost of the phone which are what ETFs were for in the first place.

Also, Verizon did nothing to explain the more pressing issue of charging people the random $1.99. I think that fact is the last straw that broke the commissioners back.
Neat - I just tried it. I am fairly much "in like" with both activerecord and datamapper, but Friendly is cool. I wonder how much work it would take to support PostgreSQL.

Friendly looks especially good in MySQL shops - otherwise I would suggest taking a good look at MongoDB (or Redis, CouchDB, Cassandra, etc.)
"Smart" is a really vague concept that's nearly impossible to define. PG touches on this when he asks "Is it worth being wise?" [1].

In reality, the people I know who are truly wisest in a truly meaningful way are very down-to-earth. Until you get to know them, you can't really tell they're "smart" in the traditional "perceived IQ" sense.

I also try to say smart things and speak as an expert on a wide range of things.

This sounds like you're intellectually confident, which, I think, is very different from being "smart". I'm going through the exact same transformation as you, I think, one triggered by some very rudimentary study of epistemology. Most people, after meeting me, have a very high opinion of my intelligence, much higher than (I think) is deserved. So the realization I'm going through is how little I really know, in the epistemological sense.

For the most basic example, I can certainly talk intelligently about computers and programming, and do excellent at interviews and even at getting work done, but in reality, I know very little about the details of a computer's architecture, and much less about the details of networking. I know the high-leve abstractions, but I have no idea what's actually going on.

1. http://www.paulgraham.com/wisdom.html
Time to start trying to decide whether to pay the $1,500 to opt out or to not pay and go to jail.
Okay, this one is just... too easy. I can see why some people might find it confusing, though.
These small things show why Nintendo is where it is today. Very subtle decisions which improve the gameplay experience a lot.

This is similar to the momentum in Super Mario Bros. A simple idea and yet it made the game much more playable compared to other platformers at the time.
It is too bad that such a historic change is being done in such a bad way, but in some ways is inevitable.

The challenge is that when Republicans saw that Obama was serious about health care reform, they trotted out their 1993-1994 playbook, where they managed to obstruct health care reform, and used the resulting negative publicity from special interests campaigning to take control of Congress in 1994. This time around Obama solved the problem by cutting side deals with every special interest he could, and engaging in some truly epic negotiating. The result is pretty much the weakest bill that could be called "reform", loaded down with complex provisions.

However the Democrats are under a deadline. They need to get the thing passed and enough concrete benefits out there to fight the FUD in time for the midterm elections. That is why they have been working so hard - their political lives depend on getting something workable out.

By my understanding now that both house and senate have passed the bill, the Democrats only need 50%+1 to reconcile differences, so they really have come too far to fail. Something will pass.

If the experience of literally every other industrialized country is a guide, the result, suboptimal as it is, will be an improvement on the status quo. Over time it will become very popular, and barring unforeseen circumstances the Democrats will win politically from it for years to come. (Unfortunately for everyone there are a lot of economic train wrecks barreling down on us. For instance the collapse of many companies purchased by private equity circa 2011 and 2012. The Democrats are likely to get blamed for those disasters, and that is likely to matter more come the next Presidential election than health care.)

Personally I'm still unhappy about how this unfolded. I would have liked to see Obama borrow Canada's legislative model. Not their solution, just how Pierre Trudeau got legislation through. What he did is passed a bill saying, Any province that passes some form of universal health care meeting these standards gets per capita transfer payments of this size. That pushed the problem to the provinces with a large carrot. After provinces saw other provinces successfully pass health care, every last province had it within 5 years.

If Obama had done that, then I think he would have had an easier time with legislation because all of the controversial bits would be pushed to the states. And after a few brave states passed it, others could see what works, what doesn't, and most could just wait to adopt a successful model.
US healthcare bills: House v Senate
Rights-clearing in electronic music and hip hop is usually quite complicated. Taking a beat or riff from a song is fair game, as it could not in any way be claimed to serve as a replacement for the original work. Often though, big named folks like Kanye West or Daft Punk will clear their samples before releasing, just in case.

I believe the payment is a flat rate, through rights clearing houses and the artists' agents.
My reason for wanting to learn more Romanian is that it is a natural side effect of having Romanian friends. It always gets a good laugh anyway.
Well, technically you're right. However, GM is a massively speculative play, and not an investment in the least. Their business has been declining for years, they're no longer profitable, and they filed for bankruptcy this year. They don't even trade under the GM ticker symbol anymore, they're now "MTLQQ" (Motors Liquidation Company) ever since they went bankrupt.

The only reason you'd (or at least I'd) buy GM is because you believe their assets are worth more liquidated than the stock price implies. Tesla, on the other hand, shows tons of promise for actual revenue growth.

GM's 2007 high share price: ~$42. 2008 high: ~$29. 2009 high: $4.15. Currently trades for 49 cents.

I'd say the author's point, that GM is a total stinker compared to a profitable company like Tesla, is still correct, and shows much more financial literacy than you give him credit for.
That’s why there is now a mandate for everyone to buy health insurance (with partial subsidies for those who can’t afford it)—to force young healthy folks to get their premiums in the pool even if they’d rather not buy insurance and hope they never need more health care than they can pay for up front.
Ramen profitability. Stat.
There's quite a bit of information on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28music%29
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?

Yes to both questions.

I'm a firm believer in expertise -- both mine and everybody else's. If discussion turns to topics which I know a lot about, I will speak with authority; but when discussion turns to topics which I know little about -- which happens quite often -- I will listen quietly or sometimes ask questions.

In some cases people misinterpret my listening quietly as being uninterested in the topic at hand, but I can usually correct that misconception when it arises.
'What's the password of the day' is one of the oldest and most basic security measures in military history. Is it a tough technical challenge in a global theater? For sure. But I'll warrant that the bulk of military communications do not take place in clear anyway, so it's a manageable problem.
What concerns me, and something I didn't know before seeing this, is that the older generations can only be charged 2-3x as much for premiums as the younger generations, plus, everyone is required to get insurance under both plans.

This amounts to yet another tax on the younger generation, because as it is now, a young person can get by on $100/mo for health insurance, whereas someone 60 or 70 may be paying $500-600 or more for the same plan. The insurance companies aren't going to reduce the premiums for the old people, they'll simply increase the premiums for the young people. With the new law, the young people can't opt out of insurance.
Well, you could turn that into a shell script...

But what I think you are missing is the upgrade option that pops up in your dashboard. Yeah, there are some downsides, like security. I just chown the file tree to the webserver user for as long as it takes to do the upgrade and then back.
Great resource, thank you for posting. For anyone interested, J. E. Cirlot's "Dictionary of Symbols" is an excellent book.
Somebody needs to write an article about how the current two bills will impact basement startups. Are there fines to pay because you can't afford insurance? If so, how much are they? Can full-time corporate-world employees move into a beans-and-rice startup and keep their old insurance? Indefinitely? If there are fines for bare-bones startups, how many will not start because of the financial overhead? None? A few? Does anybody really know?

You'd think one of the SV rags would pick this up and run with it, but I haven't read much at all.

I'm not so much interested in the medium-sized startups who view healthcare reform as a recruiting tool. Medium-sized startups have lots of problems already -- the field between initial success and large startup is littered with companies that could make the journey for one reason or another. It's the effect on itty-bitty startups, the seeds for the next generation of growth, that I want to know more about.
More money to buy health care does not automatically or instantly increase the supply. Especially if the new regime is so onerous and nonremunerative that a lot of older doctors retire early.
eastlinkage, please correct your link, the correct link is http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/24/...
Greenspun's Tenth Rule - Prolog version
The Great Location Land Rush Of 2010
Yeah, that pretty much makes sense.

However, if they're already your friends, you probably communicate just fine in (most likely) English.

My (unsolicited) advice: keep it that way, and spend the time you were going to spend learning Romanian by doing something way cooler.

Anyway, ... Merry Christmas. And a very happy New Year.
How about a twitter list for Hacker News members? @mattwensing here.
Diversification in Startups
Tell PG: Preventing Double Posts
You might have noticed that sometimes, the same story is submitted twice. Since I haven't dug through the source code of HN, I'm not sure why, but I noticed that the system looks at www.example.com and example.com as different URLs.

This means that if I submit a story with a www. in the link, and someone submits the same story from the same source, but without the www., it gets submitted.

This can be easily fixed in other languages, I don't know about Arc (it shouldn't be a problem, though).
Will forward these comments to my brother. He's a long time digital producer although I'd be hard pressed to get him to mix together ambient/electronic/d&b/whateverIlove.

Sounds like a pretty sick and expensive setup. Nice job putting it all together.
Greenfeet - going green step by step
There is no simple link between the two.

I wonder whether increasing the price of healthcare until people can't pay, which is how a free market would handle increased demand for a limited resource, counts as "denial of care".

I don't think you meant it in this way, but someone's healthcare cost could go up, even if no-one changes their prices, if someone demands more expensive care than they need and a doctor can't refuse it in fear of "denial of care" lawsuits.
Great. Nine votes worth of concessions we didn't need.
I think you should go and read "What do you care what other people think?" by Richard Feynman or "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman." He had an insatiable curiosity, was well liked, had a lot of fun, and a lot of the times was the smartest guy in the room. But the key fact from the book and his life is that he didn't take any of it too seriously.

Not to be offensive as I can only go off of the few sentences that you have written but it would appear to me that you have the problem that you are trying to "prove" to yourself that you are smart in every encounter and this manifests by trying to be the smartest guy in the room. The smartest guys that I know will say "I don't know" when asked a question that they don't know. That to me is the essence of intellectual confidence.