skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of their failings has been a lackluster ad champaign. Ads for Pre are poor at showing off any of the phones capabilities. More importantly, the market is split between Android and iPhone with Verizon and AT&T acting as proxies. Each of their ads implicitly or explicitly plays to that standoff. They ignore Palm and Sprint as non-existent, and the later have failed to place themselves somewhere within that environment as well.

Maybe the future for Palm would be to preempt Google and go without being attached to any one carrier.
Agreed, but it's mostly in that awful background---I ditched that first thing, and everything else is pretty well in continuity with the previous versions.
I'm a bit late here, but if you want to really smash the challenge, you can use Lisp style metaprogramming with my Hasp program. Something like this is possible (10 nodes):

def arc
with->>= name input
link "click here"
display++ "you said: " name
Some quick thoughts:

1) Indispensable: add a rss feed: many people read news sites using a RSS Reader instead of going to the site.

2) Two or three columns will be nice for a quick view without scroll.

3) Quickly add an openid/facebook/google login.

4) Comments: Although I don't like to distribute for the same URL in a zillion of sites, add something like disqus and forget to develop comments again.
and my startup
As someone who's picking up one of _why's projects, I know I'm deathly afraid of someone thinking I was trying to replace such a legend. So I certainly wouldn't, as cool as I think the 'wandering professor' title was...
DocVerse looks like an awesome product, but I'm confused about how it fits into Google's strategy with Docs. Its a plugin for MS Office, that actually gives Office some of the better features of Google Docs (sharing, real-time collaboration). I thought Docs was positioned as an Office replacement.

This bullet on the DocVerse homepage says it best:
"Keep using Word, PowerPoint and Excel"
This doesn't make sense to me.

You've widened the scope of "language" to its libraries. And that's entirely fair. So, yes, Arc has it "built in", but Arc itself is (IMO) only marginally more mature than the libraries one might invent for (e.g.) Haskell to do the same thing (ok, I'm being a little unfair here, but not that much IMO). And one can invent those libraries for another language and can match Arc in the challenge using those invented libraries -- at least you don't seem to be denying this.

So, then, what's the point? That Arc already has the libraries available? That the Arc libraries meet the challenge? It certainly isn't that those libraries aren't possible in another language. The challenge means (almost) nothing with regards to comparing programming languages as you first implied, and is more about what tools and libraries were invented along with Arc to develop web apps.
What did they study? The accompanying photograph shows the alphabet, but I assume they aren't just considering using sign language to spell out words. Then they mention phonemes, but those letters aren't phonemes. Are there signs for phonemes? And ASL has signs for words.
You're conflating the rather abstract and arguably subjective moral concepts of "right" and "wrong" with "true" and "false."
Many biologists, palaeontologists, etc., apply "labeling and name-calling" to creationists; the person whose blog the original article here is posted on (not, as it happens, the author of the article itself) is a good example. I do not find it plausible that the reason for this is that those biologists are "insecure about their position".

So another explanation for the ad hominems remarked on here would seem to be: many climate scientists think that denying AGW is about as sensible as denying evolution. For what it's worth, this seems to me a more likely explanation than that they're "insecure about their position".

Incidentally, there's not exactly been a shortage of ad hominem attacks going the other way. My impression, of which I'm not particularly confident, is that the density of personal attacks on opponents is higher in the output of AGW disbelievers than in that of AGW believers.
I find it amusing that he only licensed it to IBM and minions for small-e evil, not big-E Evil.
Meringue
Depending on your purpose/needs, http://www.lowendbox.com/ lists sub $5/month VPS. Of course, dont expect much, but i have a couple for testing network connectivity.
vmware/xen are great for local playing around though as others suggest.
Geocities bitches.
I too find information theory a fascinating subject. Several commentors are disappointed by the trivial nature of the study (which I assume none of us have read). That is a problem with trying to apply theory to real world problems, You often have to make compromises in the quality of your interpretation of the problem in order to rigorously apply the tools of theory. I'm guessing the researches picked up some understanding of ASL during their research (if they didn't have some to begin with), but chose to frame their study so the parameters were easier to quantify.
Interesting. So, I guess they trained the software, and presumably the training consisted of tracking white developers' faces.
If you have to have a Google login to get to DocVerse, and if they make DocVerse-hosted Office documents available through Google Docs, then they've made the barrier to entry into Docs a hell of a lot lower. Moreover, this could work well with their other big project: Wave. There's currently no good way to get things in and out of Wave, making it much less than ideal for applications like what Pulse and SharePoint are targeting. Maybe DocVerse can somehow help with that?
"... I could hardly find a single person in that discussion advocating for an M16 over an AK47. ..."

I wouldn't expect too many combat vets to be hanging around HN (or the NYT blog).

"... Becca: early issued M16 had jamming problems...by the time I got to Nam thing were worked out and the 16 wasa great piece ..."

It's not wise to take the advice of non-experts, "Doc" is so I listen to him ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/13184821@N07/4011451162/in/set-... (read the comments)
That's a tautology: the way you know what startups had good ideas and execution is by seeing which ones succeeded.
"if they make DocVerse-hosted Office documents available through Google Docs"

I think that's the key there. If they can add the ability to edit Word docs online with high fidelity that would be really compelling.

However, DocVerse does not currently have this capability, and neither does Google Docs.
The article suggested that the current structure of the telco industry would have to change "the economic basis of your mobile telephony service in 2019 is going to be unrecognizably different from that of 2009".

I think there is something to this argument. I worked for a telco OEM in 2005. Then it was possible to buy the hardware to build an "NFL" city backbone in the US for about $50 million. Adding fiber, end user access, operations and installation would clearly add much to this but it is likely that within the next decade that a wireless network with a significant nationwide footprint could be built by a company capitalized with a few billion dollars while not carrying the legacy operations costs of the incumbents. This company would likely have no problem in driving network costs to the ground. This almost happened during the first internet bubble and could this time around follow from the current cloud computing trend. Adding compute services on top of network services could help to regain some of the margins lost by commoditization of the network.
could the problem be the exposure level? to get good contrast for the details in a face with darker skin you need to use a longer exposure, which would blow out light areas in the background.

(i agree it could also be that it was trained on white faces)
I've started using Zerigo.com's cloud-hosting. So far, it's been fantastic for keeping my LAMP stack imaged for quick deployment so I can test new projects in their own sandbox for pennies.

Note, it's a private beta still, but I figured they were worth mentioning. Having a VPS on SliceHost as well, I'd recommend something quick & small for "tinkering" and keep the VPS for your existing sites until you're sold on a new environment.
Back for about 5~8 years, it is a known issue in face detection area where the face of Africa-America people just not so distinguishable than others. But for today's face detection system, it should be no problem. My only guess is that the guy in video is the rare "false negative" somehow.

Edit: it should be "false negative".
Q: Can your community drive your business and product?
WEC 45 Cerrone vs Ratcliff Live Stream Online
Quite right, but now they have a really good first step both on the client and server ends, so this acquisition brings such a goal into the realm of feasibility, I think.
It would be interesting to discover that some languages are less efficient than others, and what effect (if any) it has on the economy. I think Japanese probably is more complicated that English - so why does it not appear to slow them down? Or maybe it slows them down in some respect (maybe having to sacrifice a lot of childrens play time to rote learning?), and they compensate in other ways?
Святий Миколай завітав у Бучацький район | Бучацькі Новини
Congestion-Priced Rapid Traffic Lane - Operator to Guarantee Minimum Speed
Actually, there are a number of possible attacks against a quantum cryptosystem; e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_cryptography#Attacks
I'd love to do some Palm development, but even the photo upload stats (recent news on YC) show Android is the next best place to be, not that far behind Apple (l)App(land).

On first play, the Palm WebOS is really nice, but if there's no audience, why would I want to bust a gut developing and supporting an app.

So despite the Android geeky reputation, the Android emus are not actually that bad. Not Apple levels of polish, but it has a rough sort of charm... Though I do hope the actual phone runs faster than the emu on my iMac.
What Will Future Space Battles Be Like?
I basically want to know (your educated opinion) if a new company (what ever business) can drive its business and product though community building. Requirements of a good product and open communication channels are a given.

Can existing companies reduce their PR and marketing budget without a declining customer acquisition rate? Shifting the budget to the community in many forms and let them do the PR and marketing?
Anyone use one of the Mac Mini hosting services?

http://www.macminicolo.net/
http://www.xservhosting.com/mac-mini-colocation/mac-mini-col...

Looks like you buy a mini from them or ship one you already own and the hosting starts about $30 a month. I'm not sure if this is just to appeal to "Mac Fanboys" or if it's actually a good setup. I'd be interested if anyone has used one of these services.
I hope it does. What would the next level be?
Anyone manage to get Gentoo running on there?
Difficulty processing an image with a low contrast ratio != racism. What a moronic claim.
I would assume the title is facetious...
how exactly are they at odds? The second statement pertains to services provided by developers, not the developers themselves. Just because you pass a qualification exam, no matter how serious that exam, does not mean you can provide a quality service. The second one should just be an obvious thing that our legalese culture requires. Of course google doesn't endorse someone just for passing some online test?
Good comment. That said...

> 'Japanese words tend to be longer than English words. So how do the Japanese communicate as effectively as we do?'

I speak some Japanese. Japanese is actually a bit harder to communicate in than most other languages. The emphasis on social unity and modesty has evolved to make the language incredibly nuanced and complex. Nowadays, there's some factual statements that are almost literally impossible to say in Japanese because the words/phrases/grammar to say them don't match up.

Feynman touched on this in "Surely You're Joking" - there's different verbs for the exact same action based on the social situation and how well respected the person you're talking to is. So if you want someone to look at your garden, you say something like, "Would you please take-a-pasing-glance at my barely suitable garden?" But if you want to look at someone else's garden, you might say, "May I look-with-admiration upon you're beautiful garden?" If it's an official figure or a temple, it'd be something like, "May I quickly-glance-my-eyes-over-reverently on your most majestic of gardens?"

Different verbs. All mean "view" - but with different levels of politeness and appropriateness. One of the HNers who lives in Japan could probably comment more, I haven't spent all that much time there. Fascinating and beautiful language, but tricky to say things sometimes.
emotional little assertions

The irony of your use of this phrase eludes you, evidently.
Ah. Thanks for the clarification.
I think of House as completely different from Jeeves and Wooster and enjoy them both in completely different ways.
I wonder how hard this would be to spoof. At 2:05 the camera "follows" edging to the left even though Wanda's face has already exited left. Also, the very last time Wanda comes into frame the camera doesn't pan anymore, but picks up a last minute zoom.
I stopped reading at the word "bleating". Everything you wrote after that was wasted. Think about that before you post again.
I seriously love twilio. Have been using their conference call service. It....simply....works.
Oh. But he didn't say the goal was mediocrity, only that performance at least wasn't getting worse as the site grew.

But then I'm sure you didn't really mean that mediocrity was your goal, either, right? Right? :)
Are there really 10s of thousands of scientists doing climate work? What is your source for that? It seems like a high number.
Thanks everyone! (I had problems with upgrading from 2.7 to 2.8 due to WP changing how it handled feeds, and my custom redirection rules in .htaccess didn't work).
Wow, ramhost (one of the links from that site) offers $3/month VPS.

That sounds about as cheap as it gets... anyone have experience with these guys?

http://www.ramhost.us/?page=virtual-dedicated-server
"I file Technology Review with Wired and SciAm. That is, fluff. Hardly intellectual material imho."

Sure, TR and Wired are fluff. Except that the article links to an arXiv paper. This is not a standard TR article. Moreover, you can't present scientific research in half a page without making it fluff. That, too, is an interesting information-theoretic problem.

"That would be interesting if they weren't using so poor an approach."

You missed the forest for the trees. In case you didn't notice, the people who wrote the paper are electrical engineers. They used the information-theoretic approach that is used in communications theory to a problem outside the traditional scope of application of the theory. Sure, natural language is hard, but if you start your research by focusing on all the little details you will get nowhere. To me, the paper looks like a first shot at a difficult problem. If you can do better, I would love to hear about it.

"...it sounds like the parameters of the study were determined by someone with very little understanding of how ASL actually works."

That is not the point. The point is that someone who does indeed understand how ASL works can read the paper, find out what is missing and build on it. No one knows everything, and inter-disciplinary work is very hard. Your criticism is too hard, because no one ever built a theory in one single iteration.
Yes, Moral Rights are even more of a pain in the ass than the AGPL could ever hope to be.
Yes, thank you! My cell phone is set to emit no sound when I get called, nor do I notice the vibrate all the time. When I'm busy I just don't notice it's "ringing". People actually get annoyed with me.

It really irks me when people assume I should always answer the telephone whenever they call.
I only have one real complaint, and that is this:

The email or password contains invalid invalid characters.
Only letters (A-Z) and numbers (0-9) are allowed.

What's the point in not allowing special characters in a password (serious question)?
Why require an account? Just let me click a "Play Now" button. If you want to be fancy, you could make it like EtherPad so if I want to play a game, I could just go to freeciv.net/jeffsgame

I would not be surprised if by reducing the barrier to entry, you get three times as many players. Your bounce rate must be staggering right now.

Please implement this and then post another YC article with the stats on your bounce rate. :) I'd be very curious how big of a barrier requiring an email, etc. really is on a site like yours.
Image processing and analysis (some of my work involves cbir), processing large amounts of data of statistical analysis, brute forcing needs, etc
wow ..I liked it... what a nice way of representing things?
Answering my own question, there may in fact be 10s of thousands of "climate scientists", for a very broad definition of climate scientist.

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2006/11/how-many-climate-scientis...

Interesting to note though, how low the number is for scientists actually working on climate change.
To be fair, this is essentially what Microsoft themselves have announced for Live Office, their cloud version of Office. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124749451107332731.html
The iPhone 4G Predictions
That was one of tasks on my list of "Projects to do before I die"!

checked out, love when people are making things real, thanks man

Ah, then next one is tough, "have threesome with japanese twins".
That flies in the face of conventional thinking, which says ideas are cheap and delivery is everything. Unless conceptually you've figured out such an enormous breakthrough that the solution is literally in your hands right now, you have no competitive edge over anybody, and you're working with a concept simplistic enough a thirteen-year-old could understand it. That's not a good thing, if the concept's all you've got. It means the thirteen-year-olds at Google and Skype have figured it out too.

But you're adept at saying very simple and ugly things with enough words that it sounds almost swallowable. I had to reread what you posted twice to make out what you were saying. Basically, you're admitting that Skype has an alternative that's cheaper and more effective, and that it works perfectly save phone companies don't like it. Your solution is to price gouge the same way phone companies are right now so that people will be tricked into thinking there's a profit. But phrased like that, it sounds more like a concept without an idea, artificially priced at a level beyond its actual value.

I wish you luck not for Avecora but for whatever idea you have after this. The best way to learn quickly is to pursue a wild, failing ambition. Two years from now, if you've learned, you'll have a savvy that's the envy of your peers. Just make sure that for the time being, you're enjoying your work. Then failure really doesn't matter.
Twilio sounds very interesting but the name makes me think it's yet another twitter app...
I think an AJAX-based refresh would feel more snappy than a full page reload to shake out a new set of links.
The GPL2 is less restrictive than any EULA I've seen -- it only addresses distribution, and only restricts things that standard "All Rights Reserved" copyright would restrict anyway. It's purely a copyright license, and I respect it for that, even if morons paste it into the "I accept" textarea in their installer-builders.

The AGPL, now that's a EULA. It hits the trifecta of basic wrongheadedness, poor implementation, and total unenforceability. The only thing it's missing is the admonition against using it in a Nuclear facility or exporting it to Libya.
"... Actually, you can get it with just an ABN - doesn't have to be a full registered business name. You could register yourself as a sole trader, for example, it's free. ..."

Learn something new everyday, thanks for that info.
:)

I think my choice of the word 'goal' was incorrect. If you have other priorities performance need be just good enough.
Incredibly happy to see this. This could tip the balance in favour of Haskell as a viable platform for web development, given it is as or better performing than something like Go.
I see ads on the side, I may be completely misreading your intentions for having them of course (as it could just be why not?) but I am not seeing freeciv on web as being very high in traffic. Main reason is that the barrier to entry is extremely high. Without tutorials, and the way the ui is setup, it requires you to be a former civ player, and a former civ player likely has civ on their computer (or at one point). So with the free advantage gone for a lot of them (eg i have civ4 installed right now), how is this better than multiplayer civ4? my hope is that u have some cool plans for it that takes it beyond the commercial civ titles.
Chrome says "Waiting for freeciv.net..." but nothing loads.
That sounds like fun. I'll have to download it and try it out.
Spoken Japanese may be less compressed than English, but written Japanese is considerably more terse.
Microsoft is in a very tricky position. On one hand, if they decide to go against Docs head to head online, they will be cannibalizing their own moneymaking product(Office) for a free online version.

On the other hand, if they leave online version weak or even make it fee-based, they will let Google own this space.

I didn't think online docs had much legs. But having gone this year in school exclusively using Docs over Office, I think its got real benefits.

I used Docs to organize group study guides where as many has 40 people contributed small portions to create a master study guide. Overwhelming majority that signed up and participated received A's on the midterm and final. Just through my study guide initiative, I probably got a hundred people using Docs this semester. Best marketing ever!
I hope you guys don't discover Nethack or Dwarf Fortress.
So you're defending the title by claiming that the title is linkbait?
Good question. Some banks (and other large companies) also seem to dislike them in passwords.
I don't know why the hell people are downmodding you, http://nearlyfreespeech.net is pretty brilliant. Sure, having to use classical CGI is undesirable in 2009, but they were doing true distributed cloud-based hosting long before Google App Engine and Heroku came along.

Them and Dreamhost are the only simple shared hosting providers I ever recommend to anyone.
If you have a Plesk (or whatever other panel they have as an offering) it should actually be close to trivial to move to another provider that offers the same control panel. Most of the big panels have command line utilities that allow you to backup a site at a time or the entire set of sites, then restore them to a different machine.
I guess I shouldn't bother applying.
I am unreasonable, freeze in the face of fear, lie pathologically, hate leverage (seriously though, when did corporatespeak become a value?), and favor hotness over chillness.
I thought the point of the arc challenge was to say to ruby/rails, smalltalk/seaside, python/django, etc., "hey, look what my language/libraries can do, can yours do this? or better than this?" If the answer is "no, I need to write a new library to do that sort of thing, or rewrite my existing one," then arc beat your language/library at the challenge.
The "may not be so easy" part is the trick.

But that's a tradeoff you make. If you have anything more than the most rudimentary of basic syntax, macros become hard. Whereas most of the things that Haskell brings to the table can be incorporated into any other functional language.
I'm glad someone else is coming with a solution other than maven. Maven is one complicated beast.