skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The book "Creative Capitalism" features a discussion, sparked by Bill Gate's speech about the ability of tweaking capitalism somehow to serve the very poorest of the world.

The economist-headed detractors tended to boil everything down to companies charging higher prices in order to give money to charity. They then explain that this doesn't work because it is proven that customers will buy the ethical option online if it is of equivalent value and price.

Being from a marketing background, I immediately pricked my ears at the complaint marketers have at hand wavy economists. Even if we ignore the fact that the value of a product is completely subjective & that it is influenced in many ways on some of which have anything to do with the physical product, getting customers to choose your product when it of "equivalent price and value" is the no. one thing a whole heap of companies do. Think how much money goes into ads for washing powder.
I think it's in reference to the goats that Google rented to graze their front lawns.
Beyond Root Causes
I actually got curious about this thing now as well. I sort of missed the initial "Whoa, do you want a Wave invite?!" and turned people down... But now, well, should you have any invites left, throw me one!

Would appreciate it! (mail is in profile here at HN)
ya know, I'd love to read the article except the sites page contrast makes the site almost unreadable.
To be fair, there are many sections of FISA that are not so "lawful"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillan...
Why are we assuming that corporate responsibility and the shareholder interest are mutually exclusive?
I now hope Google stands up to other countries, mainly USA to whom they share their user data as well as log files.
When Google does that, I will be a impressed by them, threatening to leave a market in which they don't really exist is not something hard to do, when you have realized that your operating costs are going to be much larger than money you're going to make (even in the long run), it is viable to quit the market. Lot of other companies do this all the time, it is just that they don't make a huge fuss about it or write blogposts.
Learn (the basic syntax of) a new programming language every month in 2010

That's a bit more like it...
If you don't know enough about meteorology to comment on the legitimacy of weather patterns, then why are you dismissing Norther Annular Mode analysis as not "real science"?
Does this data include flagged/dead items?
jack of all trades, master of none.

i'll stick with c++
The Elusive Right Path to Engineering Offshoring
"Real science would be predicting the chill before it happened and explaining how it relates to global warming."

I have a degree in Geology and tend to think that, even though I cannot predict an earthquake, I did learn a real science:)
"I'm disgusted by the levels to which the Chinese Government can stoop."

Half of the surprise I received reading this article was my shock that the Chinese government would attack profitable companies like Google. Sure, they've always attacked foreign governments, but China's government depends on US companies spending Dollars overseas. Since consumer spending is down in USA, it only seems natural for China to start banking on the successful industries of today, like internet advertising. Is the political danger of human rights activists really worth more than the money that Google brings? Or were their egos so high that they thought they could get away with it, either by avoiding detection or keeping Google at status quo

Maybe the Chinese government + military is just too huge to get everyone to toe the party line.
The stated reason? Because they can do it more cheaply if they know how much capacity they budget for up-front. It's the same reason plan minutes are so much cheaper than overage minutes.

Of course, I can't even imagine how that would account for a factor of ten (the lowest on the list), much less 140.
Predictions of global warming go back to at least the early 1990s and clearly precede findings like this:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101419.ht...
Miguel de Icaza nominated to "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional"
Agreed. The value proposition for LucyPhone for business is potentially reduced support costs while improving the customer experience. Customers feel empowered when they invoke LucyPhone to hold their place in line. Once they are connected, the CSR has a happy customer ready to have their needs met, rather than an angry customer who has to vent for two minutes about the egregiously long hold time.
Google wasn't making any money in China anyway.

Yeah, I was thinking as I read this, "You were going to have to cede the market to Baidu, anyway."
Facebook friends Apache with $40,000
MagicJack Home Cellular Service Could Spark Legal Battle
That's what happens when you cross the goat transport streams. Goats just start disappearing.
Wouldn't every entrepreneur hope google would pull out of his market? :-)
I use git and github for my cloud storage. And I try to do as much writing as I can in plain-text documents so I get nice version histories. And there's nothing better for (text) documents with more than one contributor.
Wonderful idea, but I'd like to see this with:

* Objectively ranked categories based on word usage, not author-provided tags

* Legible graphs with fewer colors

* Analysis that weights comments by karma (or, better, a reasonable non-linear function on karma)

* Open source for reproducibility and better outside critique

Edit: In fact, I'd like to see it enough that I might build it. Any other ideas?
'fantastic perspective.
Yes, but I haven't seen specific predictions of local chills, only post factum explanations. Consider an excerpt from the article you posted: "2007 started with record breaking temperature anomalies throughout the world. In parts of Europe, winter and spring ranked amongst the warmest ever recorded, with anomalies of more than 4°C above the long-term monthly averages for January and April." They're using a short term local warming as evidence for global warming here, however the original article clearly states you can't do that (and explains the chill away in this manner).
> I could only imagine the level of corporate espionage that is in play between China and Google.

I'm not sure these types of interactions can still be described as corporate espionage. The fact that one of these parties is a sovereign nation creates wrinkle to this whole thing. (From what I understand China doesn't directly link themselves too closely with this but no one really thinks this isn't covert stuff being directed by their government.)
Can you provide more information about how the sampling was done and how you categorized the articles?
Yes, you're talking about a definition of 'physical access' you just made up in order to salvage your argument, while everyone else (including the original article) is using the commonly understood one of... well, having physical access to the computer.
Yes, but given the initial parameters of the earth quake you know nothing about you can predict various other parameters of the quake with pretty good accuracy. The same isn't true for meteorology: giving some initial state isn't sufficient to predict anything beyond a very short-term time period.

EDIT: err, this argument is rather weak. I shouldn't have used the phrase "real science", that was a dumb mistake on my part.
In my experience, getting an onDestroy() call doesn't mean your process is about to be terminated/unloaded (this may be different in newer versions?)
IRS commissioner doesn't file own taxes - says it's too complex
Regardless it seems Graham drawing a synthesis between hackers and painters worked well as a generative metaphor to accomplish what he explained the books purpose was: "This book is an attempt to explain to the world at large what goes on in the world of computers."

In the end can your antithesis exercise as many readers' imaginations and share as much insight as his book has?

What I got from your blog post is that there are better books for one interested in the similarities between art and computer science and that is helpful information but I own a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach and it's certainly not a light read.

Maybe your right, "Hackers and Painters" doesn't belong in the same category as the other books you mentioned but then the authors of those books probably had different intentions for their material.
"Yes, but I haven't seen specific predictions of local chills, only post factum explanations."

This is actually a textbook difference between Climate and Weather. We're better at predicting the former than latter.
It would have been equally as awesome if you had built a fort, which I originally thought was the case. Regardless, cool project.
A thought: if several other Western-based web service providers (Yahoo? MSN? etc.) all made a similar move in a short period of time, the effects on Chinese policy could be substantial.

Is this an opportunity for a grass roots petition?
I checked google.cn and the results still seem to be censored. The blog post says they will stop the censorship, not that they already have. I think they're leaving the door open for the government to save some face here and approve it if it wants.

That said, they did not leave a whole lot of room for China to save face and that may be enough to sink any hope of progress on that front.
IMHO, this is like saying, "I am not really beautiful. It's just that my face and features are symmetric and they just happen to confirm to traditional norms of attractiveness".

A lot of what we take to be talent is "hard" work, except that the work doesn't seem hard to those who love doing what they do. In other words, talent is just a transformed form of obsession with a subject. The more you work with something with the intention of getting better at it, the better you get at it. And the rate of getting better just keeps accelerating until there comes a point where few other humans could hope to catch up with you in your lifetime.
What I read between the lines there was: "We have the feeling that this might have been made possible due to an inside job by one or more of our employees in China. However, we don't know who or to what extent and we'd rather not do our dirty laundry in public."

Call me cynical. :/
wave still crashes when i try to use it with chrome. i feel almost as though that bears repeating.
I know and I couldn't be prouder right now.
Nexus One Vs. iPhone: Feature-by-Feature comparison
It isn't necessarily true but it usually is. Developers spend way too much time getting cute, optimizing for the infrequent case. Choosing a slight increase in verbosity in favor of simplicity of implementation is usually a better decision.
I'm not defending the China gov for these actions (and many not listed above). When criticizing these actions, it helps to understand the tremendous strains within China. China has changed more in the last 10 years than possibly any other country in the history of the world. These changes are accompanied by massive externalities. There are some serious powder kegs of anger and resentment, Xinjiang being a prime example. I'm not taking you to task for your criticism, but if you were a top government leader in China today, how would you handle these issues? Keep in mind that if your answer is to just make things free and open, there will most likely be a price to pay. You may say the short-term price of social disruption is worth the potential long-term benefits. However, there is no guarantee China would survive such extensive social disorder.

Controlling internet traffic is both a citizen control issue and an economic protection plan. I don't know what is in the reams of WTO deals China has made but its possible they never agreed to play free and open with companies outside China for access to their Internet user base. You may not agree with this protectionist approach, but it fits squarely within China's "middle-kingdom" mentality.

Again, don't take my words as a defense of any of China's actions. But seriously, what would you do if you were in charge? I certainly wouldn't take the job.
> It's not that they can't--it's that they don't have the time in their lives to devote to practicing it.

There is also the fact that most of us don't know how to learn efficiently. For example, how many of us really know the current theories of memory and how we may exploit it to enhance our learning?
Google got whipped by Yahoo JP for quite a while, as I recall, and they stuck with it. They're still getting their asses handed to them in South Korea.

This doesn't seem like a decision that's being based on market share. And Google doesn't have a track record for bailing on tough markets. With their cost structure, why would they? (Google doesn't have near the physical plant costs that GE does.)
I'm not convinced. Google is talking about shutting down google.cn, not blocking google.com from the Chinese internet. I've used google services from China without any issues. Also, the local market in China is much more Windows-focused than in the U.S. I think Microsoft leaving the Chinese market would have a huge effect.

Overall, the question is not whether it has an impact on Chinese business but whether it would have enough of an impact to influence the decision makers in the government.
PG: Is this true?
Google doesn't have the sync app(in public). That is what Dropbox is all about. Syncing data across different platforms. They could be building on internally so who knows.
Google prefers to acquire startups that are pre-revenue
This comment by mdm@chromium.org makes me think there's a puzzle to be solved here:

The teleportation rate is actually a linear function of the number of tabs you have open. Each tab has to teleport a certain number of goats to operate, although as dank points out we were able to optimize it during the Linux port and reduce the number of goats required. I have some further optimizations in mind if we'd like to reduce it more to address the issue mentioned in comment #11.

Without looking at the code, what could that column really be measuring?
I'm relatively new, so it's difficult for me to see any major change that's happened since I first joined. My personal opinion is that there has been little change since I arrived, but much talk about how much has changed.

That said, I think an article about economics or politics can be more profound and deep than a lightweight article about technology and be better for the tone of the site. My personal preference is for news here to be technical, but an article being technical is not enough for it to be interesting. Overall, however, I want articles with meat; that dig a little deeper than "Head First SQL" or "How I made a blog engine with Erlang" (or "I am Phillip Greenspun and I don't like people in Northern California").

While I love beautifully designed languages as much as the next guy, I've seen probably 50 blog articles posted here about "Why language design matters" or "Why language design doesn't matter" or "Why there can never be a better Lisp". While these may be technical in nature, they're often very shallow and redundant.

As far as I know, it would be an impressive feat to determine depth automatically, but I think it would give you a better picture of how the tone is changing over time in a relevant way. And maybe it would be a good filter for submitted articles.
Just a small quibble - I think you're creating a bit of a strawman in economists. Coming from both an economics and marketing background, I would suggest most economists believe that companies should act in the interests of their shareholders.

Charity can be a form of marketing just as creating a culture where at times short term profits may be sacrificed for long term benefits is also very much in the best interests of shareholders. Thus, the beauty of this economic system is that while you can profit by pursuing profit for its own sake (which can mean being charitable), I do think taking a principled approach results in more sustained and greater long term profitability - as I suspect irrespective of the outcome, this will be a case study for years to come.
Amtrak to add WiFi, upgrade Fleet
Come on. Only Western search engines exist? There's more to it than just Google and Bing. Baidu has 60+% of the Chinese search market.
This might be a great time to buy GOOG - from the little I know about finance people, this has all of the heuristics which will make them overreact.
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The last three paragraphs gave me chills. If Google follows thru and exits China I really, really hope it will be the beginning of an exodus of those companies that support the Golden Shield Project.
I'm looking at you Cisco - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=f...

I am sure we will all be watching closely over the next few weeks, but kudos are due to Google already.
Google has an online store: http://www.googlestore.com/

This really is a landmark announcement and really shows that they still take their corporate motto seriously. The announcement may not mean anything until they take concrete action, but they have pretty much committed to doing /something/. Anyways, I'm going to start showing my support now :)
On the contrary, the services that Google provides are very important. It's hard for me to imagine China in the role of technology leadership that they'd like, without the support of Google's services.

I think that China's leadership needs to give serious thought to what it'll cost them if their industry and their people can't (legally) use Google.
Back up a minute. I never said that everything Google would be pulled from China.

But right now there are some heated conversations going on in the larger offices of China's censor. They will be weighing up the potential to block Google entirely and strategies for doing this if t becomes necessary. They will be adding up the costs. They will realise that leverage is not just one sided.

I think Microsoft leaving any market would have a big effect, probably more then Google.
Or limit it to far fewer results. I click the submissions link pretty frequently from my own profile as an easy way to check up on conversations on threads I've started. Now I feel kind of bad for doing it that way.
Me too, but it's ok because they give some tongue-in-cheek error message. And don't forget, it's a "preview" so they expect their users to have absolutely no quality or reliability expectations.
Image searches for "Tiananmen" are now show protests on Google.cn
Does it has anything to do with http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg03928.ht... ?
go google.
that does it, i just put an order for a google phone.
"Gossip from within google.cn is Shanghai office used as CN gov attack stage in US source code network." - wikileaks: http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7689041346
Regarding point #2... the author is criticizing a platform which promotes breaking your application into easily-reusable pieces that communicate with well-defined semantics? What?
Amazing to me that airlines were able to beat Amtrak to the punch on Wifi, considering what must be a very wide gap in technical difficulty.
How often do you cross-post the exact same comment between HN and reddit?

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/aouv5/new_appro...

Edit: I may have jumped to conclusions; the individual on reddit may have very well stolen your comment in which case my accusation is invalid.
These are the public transit options for NYC-BOS commuting nowadays:

(all buses about 4.5 hours all-in)
Bolt / MegaBus: $10-25 with free WiFi from Penn Station
Fung Wah / Lucky Star: $15 every half hour from Chinatown
Limo Liner: $70-100 WiFi, comfy seats, bus attendant, free snacks
Airplane: $60-100, 1 hour flight, 2.5h all-in time
Amtrak regional train: $60-70, 4.25 hours
Amtrak Acela: $90-110, 3.75 hours

Acela to me is the least attractive option, and free WiFi + a fleet upgrade won't change that. Of course some people hate buses and planes, have special travel circumstances, want to be able to stroll the aisles, etc, but Acela's target market seems quite niche, especially when compared to the standard Amtrak regional service.

There are also cheaper options for the shorter legs. There are much cheaper trains or buses for NYC to New Haven, Boston to Providence, NYC to DC, for example.
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From what I understand, the filtering is IP-activated. Outsiders have always been served normal results.
As I commented elsewhere in this post, gossip is that the attack was launched from _within_ the Chinese offices of Google, not just from the Internet.
While using their peripheral vision also I bet.
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You might be willing to make that sacrifice, but your customers might not.
If it's the same article, why shouldn't it be the same comment?
Aww it doesn't work in Chromium 3 :(
I come from a somewhat similar background. I work in marketing and I am somewhat of an amateur economist.

I agree with you about the strawman. But many economists or more commonly, people with economics in their backgrounds take this sort of a view. They like to distil things to an economics "story." Sometimes this is a great tool. Sometimes this loses important info. Economics training does come with the danger of this kind of mistake though. I heard that there was a serious divide between students and old timers about Ostrom receiving the Nobel (the students didn't like it).

One "story" they (the against camp) told was: If being good is more profitable, companies will do it without being told. That's capitalism, nothing creative about it. If it isn't more profitable and they do it, they are forcing shareholders to contribute a charity of the company's choosing.

Another was the one I mentioned above. If you take an economics graduate, you may find that they're not sure what make of a world where getting customers to choose you're same price, same value product is the difference between non-starter & Unilever. It doesn't make sense to tell this story with the basic vocabulary of microeconomics.

In any case, some essays published in the book make this argument. I don't mean to suggest that all or even most economists would take this view. Great economists (like great anyone) are empowered, but not restricted by their tools.
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It seems unlikely to be false, though perhaps a misunderstanding is possible since we're working with 140 characters. I expect there will be an official announcement/confirmation sometime in the future.
I just talked to a friend of mine in the computer industry, native Chinese, my age (early 20s). I asked him about the Google news and he said when it comes to economics he's quite the idiot, and such things don't really concern him much. It's kind of ironic, since I recall him mentioning that Google was thinking of pulling out of China months ago. He did mention however that other new restrictions on things like registering .cn domains had caused him great inconvenience (he had to migrate all of his stuff to a .com), so that evidences he's not all roses about everything Chinese gov't wise.

It appears that within China this is being spun as the surrender of a foreign company failing to understand the Chinese market, and outside China as some sort of stand on Humans Rights. Probably both are true, but I think it's interesting to see the perspectives as reported by both sides.
Sold, For Just Me
Clouds of Dust on Martian Dunes
That's pretty neat that Google keeps poking around with different concepts without a "profit source" behind it.
Normal business school analysis would require a internal
rate of return before starting.
For lots of stupid arrests for photography, go to schneier.com/blog/ and search for photography ; there was a real rash of them for several years a while back.

For lots of Boston Police stupidity, go there and search on Boston Police.
It's further muddled because China is a sovereign nation with significant corporate holdings.