skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
One of these days information dissemination is going to be free, I promise you.

That day is today, actually. http://thepiratebay.org/
A. Higher interests rates for people who can't pay to begin with isn't going to get them more money.

B. Don't give credit cards to people who historically pay badly.

In my opinion, greed on the part of the CC companies is also to blame, besides financially stupid creditees.
Previously in News.YC:

This is what happens when you lend money to poor people
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50853

"Turns out, if you're poor, you don't need to pay lawyers. You don't like the deal you just wave your hands in the air and moan about how poor you are. Then you default."

Then there's SNL's take:

"That's why I've developed this unique new program for managing your debt. It's called, 'Don't Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford'."

http://consumerist.com/consumer/clips/snl-skit-dont-buy-stuf...
True, but that's the problem.
Review of MySpace Artist on Artist
The seemingly innocuous Artist on Artist series is a thinly veiled attempt at product promotion, but regardless of marketing, it's pretty cool.
DIY super gamer pc $550:

intel p35 mobo $80

e2160 overclocked to 2.7GHz easy on air $80

2GB ddr2 800MHz memory $40

8800GT 512MB video card $220 [http://www.ncixus.com/products/27328/88YFF6HUFEXX/Galaxy%20T...]

250GB hard drive $60

dvdrw $20

case + ps $50
[http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=204947963]

will run cod4 at 1920x1200 max graphics
>e2160 overclocked to 2.7GHz easy on air $80

Wow... that's better than the holy grail of overclocking I remember, a Celeron 300A to 450. I wonder how high they go if you watercool them.
in that case..

DIY doing what my roommate does $2k+:

custom built 2 phase cascade cooling system: $800+

intel core 2 extreme QX9650 overclocked to 5GHz at -72C: $1200

some gigs of DDR2: $300

some hard drives: $200

etc etc

http://gomeler.com/2008/01/18/gigabyte-overclocking-contest/
Great, I've PMed both of you with our paypal info. Could this be a new business model?
Weird. Anyways, we changed to form tokens.
Soon we're going to make it so that /refactorphoenix works, along with /refF%20ac._torphE.ON_Ix , and /refactorphoenix will be the default URL
I saw a prototype on the road a few weeks ago... It was totally sick!
Vista fuels 79% rise in quarterly profit for Microsoft
Google May Knee Cap Domain Tasting (a rare decision to not be evil for extra money)
Because mandatory history, English, Math, etc classes helped anything?
A. Higher interests rates for people who can't pay to begin with isn't going to get them more money.

As a matter of fact, it does. In bankruptcy, assets are divided between creditors of the same class (in this case, the class of unsecured creditors) in proportion to the size of debts they hold; a credit card company which records a higher rate of interest ends up getting a bigger slice of the pie.

B. Don't give credit cards to people who historically pay badly.

Credit card companies do this too -- if you have a poor credit rating to start with, you'll find it hard to get a credit card; and if you start with a good credit rating but start not paying your bills, there's a good chance that the credit card company will lower your credit limit.
Yeah it would be a lot better if on your friends profiles it would only show those the apps that they have installed that you also have installed. At least that way those pirate/ninja/etc. people can stick together and worry about which zombie has the most points.

Besides, most of those apps like honesty box require you to install it before you can use it anyway, which makes it entirely useless to me.

I'm tired of giving away all my information to any app that wants it. The whole site has massive security issues to give out your personal info at the drop of a hat. You can't even specify which info an app can use. They all can see all of your information.
considering many don't know what 'CRM' stands for, may not want to use that particular acronym
Note to self: Hire people who don't read the classifieds
Likewise, you can be a programmer without necessarily being a hacker.
Yeah I don't really understand why they trusted 1 person with all those files...
Send StopTheSpying a self-portrait with an anti-spying sign
It's just that writing a compiler requires such a large up front amount of knowledge of how computers work, and teaches you so much more, that it's hard to compare to any other project where you can learn exactly what is happening in a computer and what every line of your code actually does to the operation of the machine you are working on/targeting.

Sure other projects you can learn just as much general knowledge, but I'm going to agree with Steve that it's pretty enlightening. I'll also agree that it is a bottomless pit of your time and effort.
Social relationships in the Bible graphed
For example, 44% of all STEM degrees (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) are going to foreign nationals, who comprise only 10% of all students studying domestically, yet that number is not reflected in the world-wide distribution of wealth.

As the average person becomes more educated, there are and will be other barriers to wealth (isn't it not what you know, but WHO you know?)

In fact, I would say Y Combinator recognizes and institutes those very principles: offering potential participants a network of expertise, mentoring, and access to venture capitalists the recipe for success doesn't seem to be based on education, or knowledge, but on wealth, and the proximity to that wealth.

If you look at all these recent tech-made millionaires, one thing is strikingly similar: they knew someone wealthy who chipped in large amounts of cash.

Do you think a Ph.D, or even a guy with a bachelor's half-way across the world will have access to this wealth (monetary or otherwise)?

I don't think so.
Does an explanation of higher brain function require reference to quantum mechanics?
Who decides what levels are absurd? What is magical about 16%?
Copyright is legislative protection.
it seems like people are very excited about a downturn.

i hate to burst people's bubble (haha) but i dont think it's going to be nearly as pronounced as people would like to think.

sorry kids, no bread lines.
The solutions are to:

1) Block every app you're invited to

2) Remove the minority group who send you all the invites

Both solutions combined work well for me
One thing that's become clear (at least in my experience with Bayesian filtering) is that less is more. You can actually waste a lot of time trying to reverse spammer trickery like misspelling. Dumb beats out smart very often.

In POPFile we do an enormous amount of work to detect spammer trickery and a couple of years back I did an analysis (published at Virus Bulletin) of the effectiveness of this extra work.

Quick summary of the highlights:

1. Looking at words in the headers was more important than the body
2. Of those the Subject line is the most important (most important words were free, what, only, huge, judge, visa and soft)
3. Most useful metadata was image height and width, font color and size, Euclidean distance between foreground and background color (bucketized), and the background color itself.
4. The only trick worth spending the time on was Invisible Ink (same background and foreground color). Camouflage was close to Invisible Ink.
5. The charset is interesting

In my commercial spam filter I do as little intelligent work as possible. Everything else is done by the Bayesian magic.
The pocket geek
Fix unicode. (pi) shouldn't be replaced with an 'X' and other unicode characters should work.
Compilers is one of the few classes I really regret not taking in college. Fortunately, I discovered the unprotected URL to my university's online lectures site (no you can't have it) and might just have to watch this semester's class...

I started watching them, and the professor recommends this book (and the new edition of the Dragon Book):

http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Compiler-Design-Implementatio...
Yeah, not dumb at all. It's on the to-do list, thanks.
If you want to know more of Penrose's arguments for Orchestrated Reduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orch-OR

I've always been a fan of his books and I'm sure others here have read his works too.
I'm at 6 hours 2 minutes! :(
Hrm... in the section "break/continue":

"The symbol 'break' is arbitrary, but is probably a nice choice for YOUR readers." (emphasis mine)

A typo, or evidence that perhaps Steve isn't writing all his own content? (Ok, I'm a pedant, but I don't care ;-)
How do I find a lead investor? Part 2.
doing that would lose. your opponent would make a bunch of high numbered pieces, and aim them all at the same place. he could attack that place with more than you defend it with.
Why would we want a startups reddit when we've got that (but better) right here?
Google to kill domain tasting
my guess is that if you move forward, while your opponent levels up his pieces, you'll get slaughtered. you'll have less mobile pieces and be more spread out.

so both sides will level up. then they can't move anything very easily. move it forward and it's defended less times. meanwhile it's closer to your opponent, so attacked more times.

so they level up the back row of pieces too. capturing to cause trades isn't obviously useful. so level up all the way to 7 in back. the front row only needs 6. only leave a couple 1's. probably two of them.

then, finally, the side that moves first starts the capturing, and either wins or draws, dunno.

if there was ever a chance for the guy moving second to initiate trades to his advantage, the guy who moved first could have set up the same thing a move earlier and done it first.

not being very fair isn't the end of the world though. one of my favorite chess variants, Wild 5, is quite unfair to black. but that's ok, if you win a larger percentage of your black games than your opponent, you can win the series of games.

the symmetry is the main problem, and lack of incentive to advance. game will probably turn out boring.
because chess pieces don't store numbers. better use pieces of paper.
700MHz Spectrum Auction Day 1: $2.779 Billion bid
Carrots help prevent lung cancer
Well, some rural communities report that the children were pretty distraught when they came home from school to find metallic replacements for their fathers, but a little bit more allowance money allayed their distress in most cases.
Maybe someone's starting a company to capitalize on the Ron Paul craze - what better place for it?
On Emacs heatmap my control key would blind me...
I had to laugh when I saw the link to your kratom website. I gave you a point for being so persistent.
maybe you have to be living in the uk to get the humour?
chances are reading the economist for 5-10 years has made you smarter...
I've enjoyed Penrose's books, but "The Emperor's New Mind" (where all this started) wasn't as good as some of his other work.

I just came away with the impression that the train of thought was:

(Brain == Mysterious & Complex) and (Quantum Physics == Mysterious & Complex)

=>

(Brain == Quantum Physics)

And with no explanation of how QP would actually solve the problems that regular computation couldn't.
I think you said it in the last line of your comment:

Apple is the exception because of Jobs' amazing reality distortion field and his style.
I think this attitude is largely to blame for the current financial crisis in the US. People have come to see it as their inalienable right to have access to large amounts of debt, without much thought as to when and how it should be paid back.

This is a dangerous situation, as we are beginning to see now.
I just updated linkherd.com and urls are now stripped of spaces and underlines. Please let us know if you spot any problems.
But you shouldn't have to do that! The thing just has a bad design that they can fix by letting people elect to ignore all requests. Then you wouldn't need to do any work!

edit: I'm down-voted for arguing against a recommendation to do the exact opposite that the site was designed for: networking with friends? While the parents suggestion is practical and what I will probably do, that doesn't mean I'm wrong about the site having poor design choices for settings.
I know the argument about noone but techies being able to see the advantages of using lisp, but I think it puts hackers on a piedestal where they don't belong.

Basically the argument implies that management types won't use lisp because they don't understand it. Well they don't understand java either. Or C++. What they do understand though is finding the fastest and cheapest way to a product - that is what they do for a living. If lisp was so great then surely some smart manager would have noticed that "hey look over there, they have 3 guys working on something that we have 30 guys working on - and they are doing better" And management is all about getting the most value for the least resources.

If you think of managers as the Dilbertesque pointy haired boss, then sure. But I think you (and PG) grossly underestimate the intelligence of management, and what it is that they do.
Except the page hasn't looked like that in about a month with the new UI tweak.
Buy New Automobiles and  Used Cars for Sale
Great news.
I think by 'readers' he means whoever has to look at your Elisp code.
> "Banking industry" is an insult to those who actually
> produce goods.

What do you think should be a use of industry? Is it OK to say "transport industry" despite the fact that what they do is a service?

Banks produce value through strategic use of risk calculation. They take in $100 and then lend out $90 for further wealth creation, and keep $10 on hand as liquidity so that if any of the owners of the $100 want any back they can get it. Thus, you have $190 of value passing around from a base of $100. You've just got to be careful not to loan too much out or you run out of liquidity and then the system stalls.

> which is frequently, unfortunately

Frequently by what measure?
The article would have been better if they had given some idea of just how much data was actually involved.
URL to the actual video file:
http://edwardtufte.com.s3.amazonaws.com/iPhone_Resolution-de...
Ask YC: So, why are you doing a startup?
This is a simple question: why are you doing your startup? why did you quit your job, or maybe even why didn't you get any? What is your motivation for doing this?

Mine is a personal motivation: I want to do something worth, something interesting. I don't want to look back and see I wasted my time doing worthless projects for money. I believe we have to do some kind of (Spanish) "obra", just like writers, musicians and scientists do: we have to be able to look in the past and say: "I did X, Y, Z, and this has my signature on it".

So, why are you doing a startup?
College Students seek Seed money for invention
Pakistan's stockmarket - The world's most dangerous haven
I think the quality of Mr. Manchester's article is pretty low. Apart from the title, it reads like it was written by the Columbia NLP Newsblaster running in Fox news "fair and balanced" mode. Other than a few errors, the text is just a collection of fragments of what others have said.
Your argument in favor of copyright amounts to "As someone who benefits from foo, I support it," or (rearranged slightly) "I support foo because I benefit from it."
What Now for Skype, StumbleUpon?
The uploader hasn't breached a contract under the current system. Copyright law makes contractual agreement unnecessary to the copyright holder. In essence, contractual terms are forced on everyone within the jurisdiction of copyright law regardless of any agreement by the parties to this so-called contract other than the copyright holder. In fact, even the copyright holder hasn't had a chance to determine whether or not agreeing to contractual terms is a good idea: he or she must explicitly declare relinquishment of "contractual" benefits to refuse the contract's terms, and the only means for negotiation of stronger benefits is a lawsuit.

There are not contracts that stand up in court under those circumstances. There clearly is no real contract here -- where "contract" assumes "agreement".
Is Metaphor the name of your pet?
Upvoted, because what you said was strictly true and possibly insightful. (Is it still insightful whether the person who coined it actually had the insight that the statement implies?) I'm not really sure what you meant to imply, however, so I hesitated before upvoting.

Probably more information than you needed.
Success takes time. Capitalism is spreading in China -- but it isn't everywhere yet, by a long shot.
Ooh, magic! Capitalism already works for the poor!

Notice that in the more-capitalistic nations, the "poor" are richer than the "middle class" in less-capitalistic nations, in general.
her: "wow that's a really great site"

me: "yeah, I think it's OK"

her: "wonder who did it.."

me: "well, me and a couple of guys.."

her: "take me to bed you stud.."

:-)
I agree that you shouldn't have to resort to my tactics, but that's the only way right now
I think an open minded boss (assuming his hands aren't tied by someone above him) would entertain Lisp for a pilot or internal project if:

1) you could show good examples of successful projects done by comparable teams

2) you could demonstrate the ability to hire/train people to develop/maintain it

Am I being too optimistic? I put in lots of qualifiers to make it more realistic.
hiring - I think if you're willing to hire fresh college grads (like Joel does), you'll be a lot better off. If you're near a school with prominent Schemers (UofU, Northeastern, Indiana, etc), then students are probably more open to it. Heck, students are much more open to anything than older professionals.
Yeah, it's terrible, but at least most of this crap seems to stay within FB, rather than spilling over into my inbox.

Actually, by calling it 'crap', I'm probably revealing that I'm not in the target demographic.

Ooh, shiny widgets!!
Web Trend Map 2008 Beta
Summary: Psychedelic drugs increase the processing of the quantum annealing box because some biological plants like green tea have been shown to produce quantum effects. Further evidence can be found by analyzing lots of reports from people tripping and dismissing other explanations. Also this stuff must be in some way responsible for creativity and consciousness.

The video really ain't that bad and I even like that some people study if this might lead up to something. But lets just say once you start researching quantum effects in the brain you should maybe try to find arguments which are not based on yet another topic which sounds like typical 70's esoterica.

The basic building blocks for quantum computing could be there... yeah, sure, but unless he can present some stronger evidence this ain't worth the hour needed to watch the video. Though I liked the first half hour which was a nice overview on the topic.
That's what my girlfriend says to me all the time...
>assuming his hands aren't tied by someone above him

That is probably often the problem.

Also since nowadays almost all software has to interface with other software there is probably a case of Nash equilibrium. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

(this other software we have to talk to is written in java, so let's write this piece of software in java too)
No kidding, it's dangerous. It has gotten so far out of control that even the decision-makers at banks are afflicted by this problem -- else the sub-prime mortgage crisis would never have happened. Without middlemen (banks) fundamentally failing to understand basic economics, we wouldn't have a crash.
An IOCCC entry (gasp, is that language allowed to be mentioned here?) implemented this game awhile back.

http://www.ioccc.org/2001/dgbeards.c
All the Intro to CS classes start the same: the teacher writes COMPUTER SCIENCE in the board and then says 'this is not a science and it is not about computers' and crosses them out.
I felt I had a better way to do something, and that it would be wrong not to find out if I was right.
Got downmodded because people didn't believe you?
Even More Advice for Startup CEO's
current value = risk x potential value in the future

The more risk you are willing to take the greater the potential return.

And the risk in Pakistan seems to be pretty huge...
No that's just my context. The extremely abridged version of my argument in that comment is that the alternative to copyright law is some version of contract law and controlled access. You can't force producers to freely release their work, and I doubt you want to stop people entering into contracts with each other.
Play Tic-Tac-Toe with Knuth
no i think it may be because I cant speak proper english...lol
> Without middlemen (banks) fundamentally failing to understand basic economics, we wouldn't have a crash.

That isn't necessarily the case. There could be situations in which everyone does the rational thing for themselves, and we get a worse result for everyone anyway. Whether or not a given market (with regulations applied, etc) is such a situation is left as an exercise for the reader... :)
Type Manager
What, the weekly "Why I'm Done With Facebook" post, on Friday?

You're 2 days late this week.
Building something cool and useful is just doggone fun!
Because the guy who wrote this:

if (MonthNbr == 1) {MonthDesc = "January"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 2) {MonthDesc = "February"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 3) {MonthDesc = "March"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 4) {MonthDesc = "April"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 5) {MonthDesc = "May"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 6) {MonthDesc = "June"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 7) {MonthDesc = "July"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 8) {MonthDesc = "August"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 9) {MonthDesc = "September"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 10) {MonthDesc = "October"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 11) {MonthDesc = "November"} ;

if (MonthNbr == 12) {MonthDesc = "December"} ;

is a retired millionaire while I'm still cleaning up his mess.

I think I can do better.
Youtube as a video dating site
Very interesting, although I think some other alternatives to polling are also emerging, like Pingback and Trackback for Blogs. XMPP might be more general, though.
The core of the problem is that economic theory, and hence decision makers, stipulate that markets are rational.

This, however, is clearly not the case if you look at the data.

Last tuesday the NASDAQ fell by (if i remember correctly) 3%. Since stock price is a direct product of valuation a lot of companies were supposedly worth 3% less than they had been the day before. And none of them came out with any devastating news, fired employees, or had any other problems: they were the exact same companies as the day before, yet their value had dropped markedly.

This clearly shows that markets are not rational...

Markets are like any other endeavors involving humans: driven by fear, greed, stampeding and other human emotions.
My "hair was on fire" for a tool I desperately needed for my architectural firm that was not available anywhere, and I realized the tool would be equally powerful for any business.
Another good argument for software as a hosted service.
Do you think we are stupid?
If Rails Is A Ghetto, Please, Let Me Be Ghetto
Bid on TED ticket - win and meet with Omidyar, only $32k right now
How to sell to suckers (I mean, your classmates) | College-Startup
Money And to escape the Boredom !
Two big reasons:

1. Right now the leverage that a small group of talented technical folks have is huge. Much more so than I expect it will be in 10 years, or it was 10 years ago. I don't want to cede that to the PHBs.

2. A really useful web startup is a way to touch a lot of people's lives, and ideally improve them in some small way.

#2 is hugely motivating for me.
Ticket 10919: "Rails improperly pluralizes 'penis.'  While technically this is a defect, 'enhancement' feels like a more appropriate word to describe this particular patch."