skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Toddlers May Learn Language By Data Mining
Congrats, Nick! Way to go. Catch you on the other side.
Make me.
"I'm sure an executive doesn't think it's cool that the battery's going to die on them before their plane touches down."

poor argument. 5 hours battery life on the MB air is more than most Dells would last on 2 batteries.

"just worthless for people who view their laptop as a tool rather than an accessory"

lets see, what have I plugged into my MB pro in the last 6 months....

1. DVI
2. Power
3. Headphones
4. USB Harddrive
5. Digital camera

Basically nothing I couldn't have also plugged in on the MB Air. (never had to plug in my camera and usb drive simultaneously). Also, I haven't put a CD in my computer since I installed Leopard, so not having a CD drive is hardly much of an inconvenience.

I liked this article because it called out all the FUD tactics that the Macbook Air haters are raging on about for no reason.
now how many users does news.yc have?
The Omni Group: the pre 37signals-like company
Around 8000 unique ips per day lately.
I would turn the question around:

What would Youtube or Myspace's market share be if they required theur users to download firefox first.

My bet is that you would never have heard of either of them.
I don't think there is anything wrong with PHP for serious development (whatever that is), as long as I don't have to use it.

Seriously though, claiming PHP is faster than Ruby is pretty suspect. There are benchmarks that can bolster either side of that debate...
This rather belongs on digg.
The easier way is to check the CSS file.
Hah!

You make it sound so familiar with I'm passing through.
I love Flex and it's potentials!
Ask YC: Need a loaner IPOD touch.
Hi,

Our app works on the Iphone but not on the Ipod touch.
Would it be possible for someone to loan us their IPOD touch for an hour or so. We would really really appreciate it. My email address is manojb at blogbard dot com.

We are located in South bay(Sunnyvale/Mountain View/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara).

Thanks a lot for reading this

-Manoj.
Interestingly, no matter how many times these people turn out to be crackpots, the next one gets even more media coverage. It must be because the significance of a perpetual motion machine (unlimited free clean energy) brings out wishful thinking in everyone it touches.

That or our nation's physics education is not so hot.
Empowerment without Discipline
They've done a terrible job this year, having been almost as far off as the polls.
If there's one thing I know about gamblers, it's that their willingness to bet money on something generally has no correlation whatsoever to their knowledge about it. Their ability to continue betting over their lifetime certainly does, which of course means that any prediction market that doesn't run on real dollars is essentially useless.

But that doesn't mean the for money ones are useful. This particular one is not. The infrequent nature of bets of this type, plus the small number of people able to get money onto sites like that in any reasonable timeframe keep it (at least where politics is concerned) from becoming anywhere near efficient. It's simply too small for much in the way of smart money to even bother with, so what you see is mostly just the result of sports bettors who watched an hour of CNN yesterday and have nothing else interesting to wager on.

I wouldn't be surprised if they were extremely accurate for European sports, but for American politics they've been way off recently. The good news is, they're very easy to exploit in any close election year. Perhaps I'll blog about how after I do it in November.
Wasn't the last one due to power failure (extra wear and tear from increased load)?
or hit me at mpstaton at gmail.com
A fan of Microsoft fonts, eh? You should move to Constantia, the new hotness in serifery.
This one doesn't suck: http://www.theclassconnection.com

I only reason I know about it is because it uses similar technology to my site (GWT). Don't know of any schools using it though.
And--this is just my understanding of a SOX-compliant software company; I've never actually worked in one--part of that legal duty is to document any changes made to the codebase (the product) so it can be QA-ed.
Every time I read something like that, I can't help but think that we're living in the future. And the future is pretty damned awesome.
I've not looked very far into zero-point energy, but, assuming it's thermodynamically valid as you say, wouldn't truly harnessing it lower the zero point of the particles involved to balance the system?

Therefore, you'd either run out of energy when all the zero-points became literal zero, find that the energy harnessed is linear while the zero-point drop is inverse-exponential (an amazing fact indeed), or find that the zero-point is able to become negative.
Expensive toys... like the iPod? Apple has never marketed to the kind of "normal people" you're talking about.

They've marketed to people with designer homes, designer clothes, and designer children; college students (working ridiculous hours at high-paying jobs but with no high-charging commitments such as a mortgage); and schools (who have large sums of government money and a strong desire to use it for anything other than improving learning quality).

Additionally, the Mac v PC ads appeal to hipsters, the same people that buy $300 pairs of jeans, and soccer moms, the same people that buy $30000 minivans.

The inexpensive Apple products are just things to buy for your children, your relatives, or your spouse to integrate them into the Apple fold. When those kids grow up, they'll buy [the expensive] Macs as well. It's a loss leader in the same way that Adobe feigns interest in copy-protecting Photoshop--when the people that crack it hone their skills and start actual graphic design careers, where else will they turn for official, licensed on-the-job software?
> I'm his brother

He ain't heavy? ;-)
The book Freakonomics mentions a discrimination study on the gameshow The Weakest Link. Apparently, open discrimination didn't occur to women or blacks but it did occur to Latinos and old people. So, it is entirely possible that some political candidates are benefitting from positive discrimination. For example, New Hampshire is almost exclusively white and they'd look really bigotted if the black dude came last.

Freakonomics also mentions the value of voting - which is mostly social. The chance that you'll swing even a regional election is small. This is because your vote is worth less than the acceptable counting error. The majority of the value is social. Namely, that you're seen to be a good citizen and performing your civic duty.

The real discrimination in politics is that you've got to be rich to get power. Political parties in the US spend over one billion dollars to secure a job that pays closer to one million dollars. Some of the difference is prestige but the majority is corruption.
> K&R is the essence of a great language book: it's short.

s/book//
Yep. Working on the Mac version. Linux version should be out about the same time. The plan is to work most of the kinks out on the windows version and then get it running on Mac/Linux.
I assume the technique involves betting on whoever's losing, and inversely so based on how much they're losing by assuming that the numbers will come to 50/50 in the end?
Dear Jerry and Steve, Here's the Answer (saner take on how to do a MSFT/YHOO merger)
> I heard that Nokia named a set of meeting rooms after cities. This was changed after it cost a small fortune in canceled flights.

Funny. Has anyone covered it in an article or something? Would love to hear more...
For those not familiar with Wil Shipley, this is his style, so MacBook Air haters: don't take it personally. :)

Some context: he founded The Omni Group software back when OS X was NEXTSTEP. They became pretty successful when Apple bought NeXT and released Mac OS X. He left and founded Delicious Monster, which makes one of the more successful useless OS X applications, Delicious Library.
I hate to nitpick, but... it's iPod, not IPOD, Ipod, or any variant.

I don't have an iPod touch, and if I did I probably wouldn't loan one to someone on a web forum, especially not someone who registered just to ask that... but I'm curious, is it a web app or hacked SDK app?
Decision Time For Yahoo
If the purported energy source is really unlimited, could we really consider it clean?
I love how these guys never actually, say, create a website that describes the machine. If he was really so keen to have it scrutinised by the scientific community, he'd publish something to go on. You know, enough to allow it to be independently repeated?

With the limited information available, and assuming there's no hidden secrets behind this device (it runs on batteries, say, and the whole thing is an attempt to fool investors) then I suspect the crux lies in the permanent magnets. They're not permanent if you extract energy from them...
We learn more through our mistakes than our successes. And now there's research to prove it:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=mom-was-right

Sorry about the paywall, but you can get the gist from the summary.
Apple doubles iPhone, iPod Touch capacity
Progress report on the OpenSocial Web
In my experience (and my teacher's), vocabulary is the biggest obstacle to understanding and being understood. I'm learning Turkish now, and I'm trying to do 40 words/day. It turns out, in the languages I know, you can usually follow

Subject + verb infinitive + object

and people will understand. Of course, grammar is important, but I hate it when I have to say "he is very good" instead of "he is quite good" because I don't know the right word.

I've heard that you need 3000 words to be reasonably comfortable in a language. With 40 words/day, that's still 3 months, which should be enough to pick up grammar if you actually talk to people and study a bit on the side.
Learn about buying your computer
> "Anyone know the current US regulations on betting games of skill and would this speculative market fall under that domain?"

I believe that it is currently illegal to gamble on US elections while in the US. This probably applies to US citizens outside of the US too. It doesn't stop it happening, though.
Social Networking - Things I have learned the hard way
Wolfram said it could be wrong in "A New Kind Of Science" - I think he says it is probably more a "on average" thing than a real law.
Ask YC: Quitting Etiquette
I accepted an offer for a summer internship in Silicon Valley several months ago (I received 2 offers very early). I signed and sent in the standard at-will employment contract, all that fun stuff. Now, an idea/product has surfaced/been developed that I feel has huge potential and would like to pursue through YC. I don't, however, want to burn bridges at this company (which is pretty prominent in Silicon Valley). How bad of a career move would it be, assuming I get accepted at YC, to turn down this company a month before my internship to accept a YC offer? Is this as poor a business practice as I think it is?

On a different but related note, while I appreciate that the business we are in moves quickly, I feel very strongly that the whole application process is way to late in the game, specifically because most internship offers come long before April 2. While I know that YC is not an internship, I think there is significant overlap in the type of people who get Silicon Valley internships and the type who apply to YC. I think the choice between accepting an internship and applying to YC with no guarantee of getting accepted is avoidable by making the process slightly earlier. I'm mostly saying this to see how people feel on the topic, partially to satisfy my own curiosity but also to allow PG and the crew to see if they are missing out on a lot of potential founders because of this.
Actually if you put a wire into a magnetic field and run a current through it, there will be a force on the wire (if it has the right orientation, I suppose). That's how conventional electrical motors work, too.
"the best way to get bought is to not be for sale."

Worth it's weight in gold!

The startup I worked for previously was so obsessed with making the right noises and preparing themselves to be acquired that they forgot all about usability, reliability and making a product that actually made a difference to the user's work flow. And they are still waiting to be acquired 4 years after they began.
On Software Teams
I've Got The Monkey Now
There was a quote, which I can't find exactly so I'll paraphrase:

Languages evolve not by accumulating new features, but by removing the restrictions that make those features seem necessary

As far as I know, Arc does little to remove restrictions from Lisp. Examples:

- (setf (* 2 x) (- y 4)) cannot be expressed.

- Infinite lists

- Infinite memory (limited only by the total amount of information --- far from what we have now)

- Why do my objects "disappear" when the program ends? The whole serialization "feature" comes from there.

- Hash-tables are 1-1 mappings. Why not n-1? Why can't I write (= (color 'nicholas 'car 2) 'blue) without having to implement it myself?

- Speed of execution. Because compilers are not "sufficiently smart", we have to add declarations to the language.

Did I miss anything?
"Every Mathematician Has Only a Few Tricks"

Now I'd like to see a summary of some of these tricks of mathematicians.
As a mental exercise think how many people that call themselves "Java developers" would be able to troubleshoot the issues this guy encountered.

I love statements like "take a look the code below" followed by what appears to be perfectly normal code to me and then "the problem in the code above is obvious".
Similiar situation here, I was in the recent Twiistup event. First time I had applied for anything like that and to get in I feel was a good accomplishment.
I find it ridiculous to criticize a product simply because it's not within your price range.
Top 100 Essential Mac Applications
Google conference rooms are (or at least were) named after cities as well.

I wish my current job had a similar naming scheme so I can have an excuse to escape the current Chicago weather ("you mean I wasn't supposed to fly to Hawaii? oh, well...")
Some things you should probably figure out for yourself:

- What's stopping you from pursuing your idea now?

- Will you continue to pursue it if turned down at YC?

- Can taking the internship help you pursue your idea later (e.g by making connections)?

- How well connected are people at the group where you would be an intern?

- How much competition was there in the internship program? If you decide not to go will the company have a reasonable chance to get another good candidate?

Declining an offer is not quite the same as quitting, but you should still act professionally. Imagine being in the position of the company and think about how someone could decline your offer in a way that wouldn't upset you. If you do decline, try to find a way to occasionally stay in touch with the people you would have worked with if they are the kind of people you would want to know in the future.
IANAL, and this is NOT legal advice, but:

Since you'll be in California, you can take advantage of California Labor Code Section 2870-2872 ( http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cacodes/lab/2870-2872.html ), and do your startup (that doesn't relate to the internship-company's business, nor result from the work you do for the company) on your "own time
without using the employer's equipment, supplies, facilities, or trade secret information".

Then, you'll get your pay from the summer internship (if they're not paying you, GTFO; you'd essentially be paying SV rents for the "privilege" of working for them!), and have a head-start for the winter round. You'll also have gotten more done self-fundedly, which will help you stretch any stipend you might get from YC.
The Nature of Scientific Revolutions develops that idea a lot more, for anyone interested.
To make more clear the need for a submission-downvote button.
The First Instant Collaboration Software Solution
Well you could explain what you mean by server apps, maybe then I could understand you?
So, finance guys, how do you make money from volatility? This thing is bouncing around all over the place, as results come in. The winning strategy would be one where you make money from the uncertainty, as people overreact to various results.
MS to switch to Linux

That would be suicide for them, since they make their money by keeping their customers and hardware partners locked in.

Imagine if the next version of Red Hat sucked as much as Vista. Most Red Hat users would move to another distro without thinking about it or worrying much about things like device driver support. But Microsoft users are stuck with whatever Microsoft decides to support.

I think that's part of the reason virtualization is such a hit. For the first time many users are realizing there's a way to put some of the Microsoft worms back in the can where they belong.
I read it, understood some of it -- and am now happy not to be this guy. And I do consider myself a "Java developer", even though I have not been working with Java lately.
This guy definitely deserves credit for focusing on the problem. Most java developers I know would have tried some cheezy workaround like periodically restarting the process. As a consequence things like this go unsolved for years.

This is actually a common issue whenever you have long-lived processes which suck in third-party code. Half the complaints I see about browsers these days is that they leak memory.

I remember a similar problem in C++ years ago with a poorly coded initializer. One of the core dumps of an X application I looked into had over 50 megabytes of copies of the string "Helvetica".
I try and remember that you don't owe an employer anything besides your word. You work, they pay. Besides that you're free to make up your own mind about your life.

If you want to do it, then do it. Be honest and open with your former employer... If you're good enough then they'll hire you again if that's what you want later down the line.

If they don't and you're good enough then you'll always be able to find another job.
"The public" cares about a lot of inane things. Let's leave them to other sites like reddit. I come here to read things that leave me at least a little bit smarter or wiser, or at least provoke some thought.
> For my next project im thinking of going Joyent, as their storage seems more scalable.

One of my past clients used them (around when they merged with TextDrive). Their Solaris setup is a PITA if you're used to Linux or *BSD. If you set up a 25-cent swear jar, you'll probably be able to pay your hosting fees in quarters!

The other thing to realize is that Joyent slices scale vertically: a larger slice is just a larger piece of a very large Solaris box, and there's a limit to how big they can get. (Don't know if it's still true, but at the time, they also had no way of directly upgrading a slice "in-place").

You'd be better off figuring out how to scale your storage (preferably with redundancy) across multiple computers. Look into MogileFS or Hadoop's DFS.
Great questions! They may have been rhetorical but I have already considered them, so I figured a reply is warranted:

I do intend to pursue my idea, but I feel the connections and, more importantly, the full-time workload of doing it through YC would be very beneficial (there's a lot to be said for coding all day and then coming home to code all night...I think we can all agree that 8 hours of coding, especially if it isn't interesting, can be pretty draining). I've heard amazing things about the YC connections, and while I'm sure the company in question does have very good connections, I feel they probably pale in comparison to YC.

I will be working on the idea either way, but I am a strong believer in the idea that one is much more likely to succeed if there is the pressure of it being your primary focus and goal (I believe PG said this in an essay, though I don't recall which one), thus my need to decide between YC and moonlighting.
There has got to be prior art for some of this from the old "Orange Book" (aka compartmented mode workstation) security model. CMW included audit trails for everything, even things like cutting and pasting information from windows running at different security levels.

Oh that right, I forget.. blackboard does this over the Internet. How silly of me to overlook the significance of that technical leap.

Edit: I should have read the links in the article. The prior-art already gathered on Wikipedia is pretty impressive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_virtual_learning_env...
Coding Horror: DRM Ignorance is Expensive
Developing mobile VoIP: or why I hate all the mobile industry
One semi-rhetorical question I forgot before: which of your choices has the greater opportunity cost? Is your idea something that offers significant first-mover advantage, or is it something that you'll still have a good market for even if other companies are already doing it by the time you ramp up?
This is very interesting!
My first thought was, finally Linux on the desktop! Yea I know/noticed they put the Sun OS on this, but, well ... Unix, Linux ... if it can be done on Sun OS it can be done on Linux

I personally think, Sun should just adopt the Linux kernerl and maybe only turn Sun OS to yet another linux distro. Why? Well I support linux and this will be good for it! Plus, Sun is a systems company, not a software company, yea Java and all but if you read their financial reports all the money come from large projects, hardware and systems Sales, software revenue are minimal to them. So adopting Linux will be good for Linux and maybe save them more money than they make from Sun OS.

Finally I want one of those machine drools will look awesome on my desk, people will think I am the ultimate geek drools
A Medical Mystery Unfolds in Minnesota
Mozilla Store starts selling Firefox Plushies
Who buys a $900 computer with 512 megs of RAM? I don't get it. They call these workstations?
My main argument against the MacBook Air is that you pay more and get less. Sure, it's a flashy computer, but the standard MB and MBP lines are flashy also, yet still competitively-priced.

Not to mention, the comparison that he's making on this post is between an MBA with an SSD and an MBP, which isn't even remotely apples-to-apples. If you put an SSD in an MBP, I guarantee it would crush the MBA in any benchmark you ran. My point is he dropped upwards of $3k on a computer that's slower than his $2k MBP.
Assuming you're pretty sure you're going to do the YC thing either way, the right answer is: renege on the summer offer. It's at-will employment, and your will is not to work there. Apologize nicely, and tell them you hope for future opportunities at their company. Internships are just expensive recruiting anyway.
I'd never do that.
For some years now I name my computers after famous scientists/inventors (in the broad sense of these words)

I.e.: galileo, newton, leibnitz, curie, marconi...
Open Calais API: entry point to Reuters' semantic web platform
Yeah, but change out "internship" for "full-time position," and it's another story entirely.
ipods have pretty good resale value. If you only need to work with one for a short time, buy one on craigslist (or even your local apple store) and sell it a few days later. At worst you'll be out 50 bucks.
Could Anyone Buy Google?
Failure is the best option
Yeah looked into using XUL to do something like that. Now I'm down the track a bit if I needed a desktop or offline version I'd use Air. I'm not exaggerating when I say the interactivity of the flash version killed the native firefox SVG one. I appreciate that there is a not insubstantial anti-flash sentiment around, but its not likely to involve my customers and frankly I they're wrong in my applications particular case.
Misleading title.

Form the article:

"There's no talk of perpetual motion. No whisper of broken scientific laws or free energy. Zahn would never go there (...). But he does see the potential for making electric motors more efficient, and this itself is no small feat."