skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Startup? Cash Crunch? Here can be one way.
We provide QA outsourcing services especially focused towards startups. With our good value services in the area of QA , you get to have excellent value for money while you focus on your core business. Some of the services are,
1- Functional Testing
2- Automation Testing
3- Usability Testing
4- Performance Testing
5- Security Testing

Oh! and what else you would want us to have in our services especially for your needs? Any ideas?

Check out our website for more detail and we would be more than happy to have your ideas developed as our capabilities too.

Cheers!
Khurram Mir
www.kraysis.com
khurram@kraysis.com
For PrettySocial, I write code, and my partner edits the content (which is targeted towards women). It's worked pretty well so far.

http://www.prettysocial.net/
I'm not sure I understand; you start off with "Bullshit!" and then go on to say, basically, "Of course what is implied in this theory happens all the time."

I don't think she is "attacking free markets" ... free markets suggest a democratic adaption of free market solutions. I think she's basically saying, in one way or another, that recent economic developments/failed developments are anything BUT free market developments; they are, as presented here, things that would never actually work in a free market society but rather have been shoved down everyone's throats while they were too busy trying to survive a disaster to actually participate in a free market.

So I don't see it as an attack on the free market system as much as a suggestion that much of what is heralded as free market solutions are anything but - rather they are force-fed solutions imposed undemocratically by a small cross-section of society which stands to benefit from whatever "solution" they offer to a crisis.

In other words, I think she's saying that most "free market" cheerleaders don't really seem to believe in free markets themselves and instead seem to believe that a small, centrally-organized group should centrally manage market systems (ie, communism) by exploiting people's weakness, fear, trauma, insecurities after a disaster.

"The movie just mixes togetehr totally unrelated things and claims a connection."

Not really. It proposes a hypothesis based on a verifiable doctrine proposed by a very influential person and then looks at the last few decades of history and tries to see if it can fit that hypothesis, which it seems to do very well, then it suggests that this doctrine is, in effect, an unspoken aspect of modern life.

To the extent that it can PREDICT economic phenomena, then that connection is very real.

I for one think the next time there is a natural disaster like a tsunami or something, people suffering the most will most likely be ignored while governments and corporations will rush to make development deals for luxury high rises, hotels, shopping malls, casinos, etc with no opposition from people too busy trying to survive to put up opposition.

"So who is Naomi Klein, a Super-Communist?"

It's funny you say that when all she's basically saying is that most people in the public eye cheerleading capitalism are actually behaving more like communists themselves ...
Mark as read links you're not interested in
Would be great if there was a function to flag a link you don't want to look at so the next time you read down the list you can easily skip over it like the links you've already read.
Piczo hit by social networking slowdown - maybe it is because of flaky young girls
>> Her main thesis is that free market capitalism is bad.

Not really her thesis at all. Her main thesis is that we're not really even given a chance to experience free market capitalism, we're just told we're experiencing it by people who are force-feeding us "free market solutions" during times when we're not thinking clearly (after a disaster) and that these solutions would never actually be adopted by people through a legitimate free market system.

I think she's not so much arguing against free market capitalism as saying that what passes for it is really a centrally-managed sham.

>> Instead, she attacks the character of famous proponents >> of it, by suggesting that they forced their will upon >> the unwilling populace. That's ad hominem.

She doesn't "suggest" that they forced their will upon an unwilling populace, she points to an actual, documented and verifiable economic doctrine of a person who advices presidents and Federal Reserve boards.

If she implies it, that is an attack on their character. If they themselves have actually said that this is a good way to force development that would otherwise be impossible in face of free-market opposition, than they damn themselves - she's just saying, "Look at their own words and theories, and see if recent history seems to follow this pattern, if it does, then these people are doing it on purpose - and they even claim as much themselves."

>> The only way her argument could be not an ad hominem is >> if there was a causal link between the merit of the
>> idea she is attacking and the populace's willingness to >> accept it.

I'm not sure, I wasn't there, but I doubt any of the people affected by the Asian Tsunami would have given up their beachfront property for chump change to major corporations in the hospitality business who wanted to build resorts BEFORE they were traumatized by natural disaste, like they did after.

Or take domestic matters - how many people would have put up with all the domestic surveillance B.S. we have here now if no such thing like 9.11 happened?

Or New Orleans - hospitals and such shut down to be torn down to make way for upscale property development - what resident would have agreed to that prior to Katrina? None. But after, they were in no position to agree/disagree with anything because most of them didn't even have a place to live.

I think she's basically saying that what passes for "free market capitalism" is a sham perpetuated by people whose ideas/solutions would never be adopted in a free market system and so they rely on the irrational emotions produced by disaster to get otherwise weak ideas through the market mechanisms.

In other words, if there were no disaster, many "free market solutions" that saw the light of day after disasters would never actually be accepted in a free market.

This then leaves open a disturbing scenario: at what point do people whose economic contributions would never be adopted by others unless it was in a state of fear, panic, shock, emotion, etc., consider it useful to actually initiate disaster in order to have their ideas accepted more readily?
I don't know much about Milton Friedman, but I can't imagine his main suggestion was to push things into a crisis to bring about change. You don't become one of the most economists with such a thesis.

Rather, I suspect that the quote was taken out of context or blown out of proportion. You can find something weird to quote from anyone. I am sure you could find a quote by Paul Graham and work it into that video to replace the Miltion Friedman quote, for example.
I wonder if the Biotech field is this depressing. I thought that it would be different with all that's happening in the field.

Anybody have experience in Biotech that cares to comment?
"Not really. It proposes a hypothesis based on a verifiable doctrine proposed by a very influential person and then looks at the last few decades of history and tries to see if it can fit that hypothesis, which it seems to do very well, then it suggests that this doctrine is, in effect, an unspoken aspect of modern life."

You saw all that in a five minute video? I didn't see much science in it. 90% was just showing pictures of torture videos or war bombings. If you think that amounts to verifying a hypothesis, I don't know what else to say (where is the example of societies that didn't change without a crisis?). It is exactly what I hate about that kind of videos: they exploit a weakness of the mind to connect unrelated things, to make you believe that connections exists where they don't. TV and videos are doing that all the time, but the case here was one of the more extreme ones.

As I said, of course politicians and power people are playing their game, and exploiting psychology is surely a part of it. I just don't see any connection to free markets, that is what I take issue with.
"Top Stories:

Angelina Jolie's Remote Controlled Vibrating Panties (8 comments) 25"

I don't know... looks like it might have a wider appeal. :)
Here is my weekend project - widget for bloggers
Let me know what you think guys.

Cheers
user: khuram_mir
created: 57 minutes ago
karma: 1
about: Chief Marketing Officer Kraysis Ltd. A QA Outsourcing Company

You have much to learn about marketing, especially when this page gets a better search engine listing than your website.
Naomi Klein is a hero to Western socialists, second in her hero status perhaps only to Noam Chomsky. She is most certainly against free market capitalism. Your post makes her ideas seem more attractive to me, but I think you're misrepresenting her.

I'll read the book. Maybe it's not as bombastic as this video. Still, from what I've heard about it, I have little hope.
Adding DRM to Flash will lock out open and interoperable players. However, when Flash is used to play video, Flash itself is used as a crude form of DRM. This creates a "look but don't save" environment to which most people are already accustomed.
Yeah it seems to be broken.
> Too many people build to sell these days instead of building to last

Establishing ongoing relationships is a core Indian value which can grate with more transient methods of doing business.
>> As I said, of course politicians and power people are playing their game, and exploiting psychology is surely a part of it. I just don't see any connection to free markets, that is what I take issue with.

But she never says, "Free markets are bad." She seems to be saying instead that many of the things we are told are "democratic free market solutions" are not because they are "slipped in" when people are in a state of shock and not thinking clearly. So many "free market solutions" are not actually, according to her, even put to the test of a democratic free market but rather sneaked in when nobody's paying attention because they're too busy trying to survive a disaster.

>>You saw all that in a five minute video?

Yes. She points to an influential man (Friedman) who advises corproations, the federal reserve and presidents, she points to a documented theory of his (shock precedes change because people are too weak to oppose the change), and she shows "pictures" as you say of events in recent history which fit into the following thesis: disaster is exploited, and possibly caused (that's my inference, she never says that) by people who want to introduce changes that would never actually work in a real democratic free market system.

The pictures of the torture and the cia training manual excerpts are there to demonstrate that the state of mind of regression that happens after a shock is no accident and that the cia, a nexus between government and corporate america, has been interested in inducing this state on purpose for about half a century.

Fast forward to recent history and the film shows pictures of natural and artificially created disasters, then it indicates how governments and major corporations rushed to close deals right after the disaster while the people such deals would effect were too busy trying to survive the aftermath to figure out how they were getting screwed.

I think her main point is, not so much, "the populist, democratic free market is bad" but rather "if the populist, democratic free market is good" as friedman says it is, why then do friedman and the nexus between washington and corporate america rely so much not on the free market itself but rather disasters that suspend the free market? Why are their "free market solutions" pushed through when the market is at it's worst after a disaster? Could it be that their ideas would never pass muster in a free market?

IN OTHER WORDS, HER IMPORTANT POINT IS: A free market is a system where parties trade when both see a payoff benefit to the transaction. If one party suggests something that is too exploitive, in a free market the transaction would not happen. BUT IF I TAKE A BAT AND SMACK YOUR HEAD AROUND and cause you to fear your very life, well then you'd pretty much sign anything I put in front of you.

That's not a free market system of rational people making decisions in their best interests. That's a mafia system. The 'ol "Hello, I'm your new partner - you'll be sharing 80% of your profits with me because I says so."
we are looking into that area already. thanks for your point. very valid one.:)
"This event (whatever) is a horrible, horrible tragedy and millions are suffering. But it's also a wonderful new opportunity to try some ideas I've been trying to get adopted for years."

Again, I don't really know Friedman, but could it not simply be that his work was motivated by trying to improve human lives? It is pretty natural to consider in the face of disaster what might have caused it and what might have prevented it.

To make things clear, I was among the ones who would have no problem believing that 09/11 was staged. It happens all the time, in fact, it is standard practice when starting wars to fake some attack of the enemy to be first. That is not what we are discussing, though.

Also, let's think the other way round. Naomi seems to claim that people don't want free markets because the evil power people have to force it on them. But could it not be the other way round, people would actually want them, and the evil power people are actually trying to prevent it? The "evidence" could be interpreted in both ways.

When did people voluntarily decide against free markets, anyway? Which communist regime did not turn into a dictatorship in no time? The only reason people might think they would prefer communism is because they don't really understand economics, and don't understand what it would mean for them.
To save some time for others:

http://tinyurl.com/37775a
Man sentenced for imitating prince on Facebook
Microsoft-Yahoo antitrust hearings?
San Francisco Comic Book Stores Gear Up for WonderCon
US military grounds stealth bomber fleet
>> Naomi Klein is a hero to Western socialists

Now THAT'S an ad hominem attack. I can see people's eyebrows furrowing, "Oh, she's one of those new-fangled, "Western socialists" I see now."

Whatever she is, at the very least the idea put forth is original, and, to the extent its true, disturbing, and, to the extent that it's true enough to allow us to predict, then it's useful to.

Think about it: let's say some "horrible thing" happens some time over the next year.

According to her view, first we'll see politicians on t.v. assuring us that "everything will be alright" and that "help is on the way." although no specific help is mentioned.

Then while we're huddled together scared and confused, wall street, major corporations and washington PACs will rush to put together deals that will wind up turning into some scandal 3 years from now.

Then three years later, we'll all look at the headlines and wonder, "They did what? When the hell did they put that together? I don't recall reading about that! Oh - wait - that was when XYZ disaster happened - that's right - I was too busy calling my relatives in the area to see if they were alright to be busy worrying what kind of business deals walls street was putting together."

Seriously - say a disaster happens - do you expect anything BUT that scenario to happen?

Here's a quick test for you: bush's family has had affiliations with Exxon all the way back to when it was called Standard Oil.

All the global instability caused by bush in the last 8 years has driven oil up to sky high prices.

Exxon corporation, during bush's reign, has more than doubled in market valuation, on the basis of nothing more than rise in oil prices, to over half a TRILLION dollars.

Did you know that? Like most people, I bet not. You were too busy trying to figure out how to survive the current market crisis, ie, you're too busy trying to refinance your home, negotiate with whatever credit company just jacked your rates up because they're losing money on defaults, etc.

See how that works? You're busy trying to keep your head above water, the fat cats are making hundreds of billions in ways that don't benefit you and are often at your expense. If you weren't dealing with all the problems you are in life, would you agree to that? No, of course you wouldn't. Ergo, the fatcats have an economic incentive to keep causing you problems so you never have enough free time / mental energy to figure out how they're screwing you.
> but a professorship depends only on intelligence

Myeah, but personal relationships and contacts play a big role. Along with where you live. Einstein was kept out of academia before his big year, right? How close were we from losing him altogether?
Finally closure in Exxon Valdez case?
The difference being: most of my submissions are pretty easily classified as 'hacker news', rather than political polemics from the likes of Naomi Klein, Murray Rothbard, Karl Marx or Hayek, all of whom might have something to say that's interesting in some other context.

I didn't mean to be snobby, I meant to be very clear that I hope people don't submit this kind of thing to this site, be it left or right wing. I follow a lot of economics 'blogs', but pretty much refrain from posting them here. I think they're interesting, but off topic, and likely to lead to even more off topic discussions.
From Sun Tzu's Art Of War, 2:15: One cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one's own store.

From The Art Of 'Ware, Chapter 2: Supporting Development: Try to gain resources from the competition. Each dollar gained from or spent by the competition is worth two dollars raised and spent by yourself.

I don't know if the following is true, but it is a good story, anyhow. Apparently, in the UK, McDonalds spent about 30000 pounds (about US$60000) looking for the optimal placement for an establishment. Burger King subsequently ensured that they were line-of-sight from McDonalds.
Gladwell's writing is very seductive but frequently wrong. I like to think of it as speculative non-fiction. It has the same mind-expanding qualities as good SF, and its connection to reality can be just as tenuous.

It is very easy to make up a plausible sounding theory. The harder part is making sure it has no holes in it. The hardest part is proving it. To show how easy the first part is, let me, as a layperson, give an alternative evolutionary explanation for why it makes sense that (some) people can accurately judge others in a short amount of time:

Consider an intelligent social species. When two strangers meet, the ability to judge accurately and to be favorably judged, both lead to better fitness. Lets assume there are situations where intelligence is the dominant quality that is being evaluated. Now if you are intelligent, you want to honestly communicate this, so its in your best interest to aid the judgement of the other person. If you are not, then its preferable to be dishonest and lie. Now the interesting part is that the ability to lie effectively is highly correlated with intelligence, since lying takes more cognitive effort than just telling the truth. So if you aren't intelligent, you also can't lie well enough to fool an intelligent judge. And if you are intelligent, you don't need to lie. This evolutionary dynamic can easily lead to a state where intelligent individuals can quickly judge the intelligence of others, because they don't have to worry about other intelligent people fooling them.
It would be a particularly devious plan to get a friend to confess to a whole bunch of murders - and then get the internet to repeat the story everywhere - in order to cast doubt on your prosecution. I think it'd be effective though, and there's no chance the police will be able to prosecute on the random and unspecified claims of murdering people - you can't simply be convicted on the basis of a vague confession. The jury would do a bit of googling even though they shouldnt and there you have it; reasonable doubt.
Female Mathematician's Program to Solve Fermat's Last Theorem: Almost Lost to History
Well, we (http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/) were founded by me, who plays the "lead hacker" role, and a friend of mine who handles graphic design, marketing, client contact, accounts, contracts etc.

Basically he provides the business half of the "developer abstraction layer" that Joel Spoelsky describes (we also have an extremely talented sysadmin who handles that half) so I and my team can get on with building software.

Seems to work pretty well for us, but we're bootstrapped so we've been building a stable consultancy business first to fund product development and therefore maybe aren't an example of the style you're looking for.
A Fool’s Bargain: Building Software for Free (or, An Idea Ain’t Worth Squat)
"However, Jobs had to offer a very complimentary set of skills because he couldn't contribute directly in the creative process."

Come again??? Can you explain exactly how, according to you, Jobs couldn't contyribute to the creative process? I simply don't get it.
Is that enough storage for scientific datasets? After being an admin on a renderfarm with mumblemumblemumble thousands of cores, the storage specification looks really tight to me.

1.7 petabytes / 15,744 Quad-Core AMD Opteron(TM) processors / 4 cores per processor = 28GB per core.