skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Corporate boards do have tremendous latitude under the so-called "business judgment" rule, i.e., the rule that says they are to act in the best interests of the company and its shareholders. Under that rule, boards have huge latitude to exercise discretion without being at risk of violating fiduciary duties unless they engage in what is called a "self-interested transaction."

To underscore the difficulty of pursuing a lawsuit claiming breach of fiduciary duty, consider this: I have seen first-hand public companies where a VC-controlled board will use a company's resources to cause the company to acquire bum companies in which the VCs had prior investments (sort of like privately funded bail-outs at company expense); even something so extreme proved to be a very tough case to prosecute given that the VCs who controlled the board had so-called "independent directors" bless the deals.

Taking a corporate action based on so-called corporate responsibility would very likely fall on the safe side of the line for the voting directors in most cases. Business judgment is business judgment and it might be argued that it is good for business for a corporation to position itself as being "green" or "fair to dissidents" or whatever else might be perceived as a good thing to do apart from pure financial motives. If they did so where the economic impact were obvious and highly negative, however, this would certainly subject them to class-action lawsuits and would, in my judgment, be irresponsible conduct by the directors - but this would have to be an extreme case, e.g., (to put it in absurd terms) the Google founders suddenly determining that there are higher purposes in life besides making profits and thereby pulling Google out of its core business because it led to the sin of making profits. This is just another way of saying that, though the business judgment rule gives directors extreme latitude, such latitude is not limitless.

I think, on balance, that the social-responsibility stuff falls in a gray (but relatively safe) area under the technical terms of current corporate law. That said, directors do not want to be seen as doing anything contrary to the shareholders' interests in making profits and that is why recent proposals have all focused on giving shareholders the right to impose these sorts of things on the board via extraordinary votes. Such proposals have gone nowhere to date and, where shareholder advisory votes have been taken, the social-responsibility stuff tends to go down in flames. Shareholders do want to make money, after all. The post here, then, is correct that it takes a pretty extraordinary situation, such as a dominant founder or two controlling things, for this to happen.
So Lisp's great advantage over Java is that you don't have to put "import ..." at the top of the file? Clearly it's more fundamental than that. Trying to eke out minor victories over other languages on every front just trivializes the areas where Lisp truly dominates.
If you want to start a company that can make the world a significantly better place, finance seems a good route to go right now. It is pretty much the poster-child industry for corruption, inefficiency, insularity, and treating customers with contempt.
This seems to be a very common problem with management types; a fear that if managers show any uncertainty, employees won't respect them.

This sort of thing always backfires. Eventually, management will make a decision that seems wrong to the employees and is proven wrong later. The managers then appear doubly clueless; not only were they too clueless to make the right decision, but they were too clueless to consult the people who weren't.
The invisible man
No, they can simply deny your claim and then the burden of proof is on you to prove that you locked your door and the thief gained entry by picking the lock. Remember, in any dispute the person who wants the money is the one who has to prove their claims.
US surpasses Russia as world’s largest natural gas producer
Apache Corp is planning on exporting some of this natural gas via ships, via a Canadian LNG facility it is building, to Korea and Spain: http://j.mp/5i6d4u

The US is already the world's #1 producer and exporter of Coal.

Cheap, plentiful hydrocarbons, world-wide, exported from the US.

Exciting.
'officials brushed off Google’s threat, saying that “effective guidance of public opinion on the Internet is an important way of protecting the security of online information” '

Classic doublespeak.
Caching has been the main reason I have chosen REST over XML-RPC in certain instances - the ability to use existing web proxy and caching solutions to cache an API is certainly convenient. However, I completely agree about your last sentence here. Cache invalidation is tricky, since there isn't a standard HTTP method to tell a web cache to forget something it has cached. Also, client-side caching at a higher level using something like memcached has worked demonstrably better for me in many instances, and it offers more fine-tuned control over lifetime and expiration.
That is close to saying that all languages are equivalent given the same amount of experience.

Not quite - there are a bunch of languages that are "up there" in terms of expressivity: Lisp, Smalltalk, Haskell, ML, etc. There's no data to say "learning Lisp will give you an enormous productivity boost". There is only data to say "people with 30 years experience in Lisp/Smalltalk/whatever tend to be very good programmers". And, well, duh.

Also, if he had to do it in C, say, could he really not? Even if he needed to invoke Greenspun's Law in the process...
If you really need strong central control (the point of the article) then you should also consider Perforce. Non-Disclaimer: I have no association with Perforce and I don't use it unless a client has it as I prefer de-centralized source control.
You've "noted" this happening several times, but so far, you're the only source of this info.
I am guessing it could have a lot to do with the fact that Dave Winer is known to be a bit of a crank! He's historically gotten into a lot of ugly arguments, regardless of his age.

It seems crazy to me now, but I worried most about ageism when I was around 38. I had just started a job in the Bay Area where almost everybody else was in their early twenties. To the extent that there was a problem, it was all in my head.

I am now 46, I have a much better perspective on it, and I don't think about it at all. I suppose it is possible that I have been discriminated against during job searches, but I've got plenty of more important things to worry about.
Some of the things I found really interesting within this paper...

1) They hypothesize that alcohol's legality vs. the illegality of other equally or less harmful drugs is a result of efficiency: we only need one drug, agreed upon by social norms, with roughly the same rate of effect (or predictability of effect, accounting for weight) on everyone, for the purpose of 'social lubrication' / 'signaling our true selves via willing loss of control'.

2) They talk about how knowledge of the effects of a drug is key to choosing how much to consume for desired signalling, and pretty much provide a perfect mathematical model for the horror that is college freshman drinking with older students.

3) Their references are pretty cool. e.g.:

Nutt, D., L. A. King,W. Saulsbury, and C. Blakemore (2007): "Development of a Rational Scale to Assess the Harm of Drugs of Potential Misuse," The Lancet 369(9566):1047 - 1053. -- This paper apparently provides a scientific basis for ranking the harm of different drugs.
Google is a unique company and its Founders are in a unique vantage point that I doubt that many of us struggling entrepreneurs would share. However, this article is a thought-provoking good read for anyone who is a Founder/CEO of a startup, who are both the owner and the executive. In fact, in the beginning of the startup, being the Founder means that you own 100% of the company but at the same time, you are also its first employee. Interestingly, these two distinct roles provide two different and potentially conflicting sets of responsibilities. As an owner, your responsibility is to yourself and your family and you are free to make any political statement that you wish to make. On the other hand, being an executive means that you have accepted a fiduciary duty and the mandate to protect the interest of your shareholders. In any case, I beleive Google leaving China would be a devastating blow to the Chinese citizens AND to the Google shareholders.
Checklist for Better Web Graphics
My take on it is that they didn't wait until all of those features were completed to release a product, they hacked through the core functionality within the smallest time frame that they could. You can always "do more" later, if more is a nice to have.
You can still edit. Click the "add" button that appears under "Row ^" in the upper left.
Every REST interface I have tried to integrate with uses HTTP error codes differently, treats the GET/POST/PUT/DELETE commands in its own peculiar way, and has unique requirements for authentication.

I can't defend systems that (for example) misuse HTTP status codes or ignore HTTP authentication, but this puts it at the same level as XML-RPC, which re-invents error codes, methods, and authentication every time.

documentation of data structures, calling conventions, and error codes is essential, and just saying "we use HTTP" is insufficient to communicate these details.

I absolutely agree. Documentation is essential for a web service, regardless of how you provide that service.
I'm not sure how many Torontonians are on HN, but I put out a call in there anyway. Hope to make some meaningful connections. Thanks jayliew!
That's more than i've done at this point. I'm specifically looking to write a press release and submit to a site like prweb. I get the gist of submitting links to social media sites, but I'm not sure of how well I can write an objective compelling article that "traditional" media will care about.
Corporate America needs a centralized version control system. Subversion still offers this: Subversion centralizes the repository and simply checks out a working copy (versus Git, which gives you a complete repository). Corporate America still needs to have cannonical version numbers, and the ability to see the progress of a product over time as a single line – not a bunch of branches and independent repositories.

While I think I understand what he is saying, there isn't any reason why Git can't be used just like SVN (other than checking out only the latest version, which I wouldn't argue is an advantage). Just because you can branch and merge easily in Git doesn't mean that you have to.

Edited to add the following:

There are some valid reasons for not using Git over SVN, but I find it pretty hard to believe that better branching/merging, offline repo access, and version numbers are among them.

Moving on from something which is already in place and taking care of existing needs, or better GUI tools (in "Corporate Americal" anyway) are certainly valid.
It's more work to write a client library for XML-RPC/SOAP, but a single one of those libraries is likely to work with any such service you encounter. Most users never have to write one themselves.

On the other hand, it's easy to write an HTTP "REST" client library. But it seems that everyone has a different idea of what REST is. Amazon's implementation of REST isn't even close to the generally-accepted definition, for instance. Indeed, you need (to write) a separate client module for every service you use, and that's where REST fails.

Because it's so easy to write a REST service, it seems more like REST is an excuse for lazy server writers to get by.
This makes me wonder why all the hype about Wave when docs can already do this.
Bangarang 1.0 su Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic
Please do not submit almost every article from your blog to HN.
This post doesn't say anything. "Corporate America needs a centralized version control system because it needs [features of centralized version control systems]", but without explanation of why they need it.
Also cool how it disseminates through the brain:

"Researchers in Sweden report that the parasite fans out through the body by manipulating mobile cells that are part of the immune system."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/science/20toxo.html, see also http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2006/06/20/toxoplasma...

This is interesting because it's very hard to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. One could imagine an engineered toxoplasma that delivers drugs to the brain via this route.
You are thinking in files, no wonder.

Put such a Lisp image that includes all the tools and classes on an embedded device. Then connect of the network and develop/debug the functionality incrementally while it runs.

In Java, oh wait, I forgot class XYZ, lets push it onto the device and see if it loads. Maybe not, it needs some more class files, ... then the Java capabilities for runtime changes are kind of limited - well, you can hack the class loader.

One area where Lisp has been used a lot, is interactive development using so-called images. During development one works with 'images' that contain all the necessary software - that's a part of the 'ball of mud' approach (Smalltalk environments like Squeak work similar and have extensive tools to control that). LispWorks also allows to save preconfigured images - with LispWorks 6 one can dump running programs (with GUI) and restart them later.
Word cloud of the Hacker News user skill set from the Google Docs spreadsheet
im going to cite this on all my expense reports from now on.
I use Mercurial in a corporate environment and we use a central repository to pull from and push to. It's really beneficial to get people actually used to committing by feature or bug fix rather than just in huge batches when they feel like merging.
These are not compelling arguments. In fact, these are terrible arguments, though I can see a kernel of truth, I think.

Corporate America needs a centralized version control system.

This is either a statement of fact or a thesis. If it's a fact, then the argument is circular.

Subversion still offers this: Subversion centralizes the repository and simply checks out a working copy (versus Git, which gives you a complete repository).

This is not an argument at all, but a description of how Subversion works versus Git.

Corporate America still needs to have cannonical version numbers

The version numbers in Git are fundamentally canonical. There is a possibility of hash collision, of course, but that's not a real concern of anyone. If the Kernel can work with hash numbers and not have collision issues, then a large corporate product can too. If the argument were that the version numbers must be incremental, I might accept that, but I would like an explanation as to why.

ability to see the progress of a product over time as a single line - not a bunch of branches and independent repositories

This is a workflow issue, not a problem with git.

Fundamentally, I see corporate objections to git entirely as a lack of established workflows and repo server management tools. Gitosis is nice, but I don't believe it allows for the central control that IT managers want. Also, people have not written O'Reilley books about how to manage a git server in a corporate, centrally controlled environment.
I think the author fails to notice that with Git you can have your cake and eat it too. We use a centralized canonical repo for each of our projects as well as origin (developer) repos. With branches we can more easily add larger features without polluting the main trunk. With svn, as we all know, branching is a bitch.
The advantage with SVN I think is due the amount of GUI tools avaliable for it. Most notably subclipse.
Uncomfortable thought, especially since probably everything we use has traveled in that toxic box. I wonder if it even make much sense - don't the bugs find a way to travel anyway?
I'm confused about your Python example and how REST can't achieve that.

bash$ curl http://my-fake-service.com/people/1.json
{name: "John Doe", address: "123 Fake St"}

I think opposite you, however. My feeling is that REST will probably meet your needs, and if for some reason you're required to use XML-RPC, then use that. It all depends on your starting point and biases.
I'd be disgusted too, if Ruby (my current language of choice) contained a bunch of completely random methods/functions in the core.

I think including things like that in the core is particularly poor practice.
Sparkfun looking for Web Developer
but now we're discussing specific implementations, which is a separate issue.

The author states that specific implementations is a separate issue, but it really isn't. You can't ignore that a good implementation will mean that people will actually use your pet mechanism over someone else's. Most people don't want to reinvent the wheel, so they're not going to be writing the lib to handle the wire protocol, they're going to use a library that does what they need.

REST is heavy, and XML-RPC unnecessarily so. Facebook's Thrift (http://incubator.apache.org/thrift/ ) is a lightweight alternative to both.

(That said, REST in Python is fairly easy - http://developer.yahoo.com/python/python-rest.html )
Ideal Co-founder word cloud according to Hacker News Google Docs spreadsheet
Ask HN: Review my twist on a voting app
Hey folks, I've been working lately on a new app that takes recent developments in electoral systems and tries to expose that to the end user in a friendly way.

It's similar to others in that you can create, share, vote and review your poll. It's different in that it isn't using Plurality, Approval or anything like that. It's working off of an implementation of Schulze STV that I open sourced a few weeks back.

Anywho, I'm wondering where to take this. I see sites like polldaddy.com charging $200/year for their services and think that there's wiggling room to work with here. Any feedback would be sweet. Thanks!
To say that some systems "misuse" HTTP status codes implies that there is a correct way to use them. What is the correct way to use HTTP status codes for an API? They weren't even designed for APIs. Where is this specified? Since REST is just a style, not a standard, correct use of status codes is undefined. As a result, everyone uses them differently. For example, what is the correct status code to send when a new resource has been created?

XML-RPC does not try to force an existing set of error codes on you. You start with a blank slate. This means you do have to come up with a plan for how you are going to use error codes, but the same is true of REST; the only difference is that you don't have to fit your error model to an existing set of codes designed not for APIs but for serving documents to a web browser.
Apple Sends Cease and Desist Letter to Gawker
Hey folks, I've been working lately on a new app that takes recent developments in electoral systems and tries to expose that to the end user in a friendly way.

It's similar to others in that you can create, share, vote and review your poll. It's different in that it isn't using Plurality, Approval or anything like that. It's working off of an implementation of Schulze STV that I open sourced a few weeks back.

Anywho, I'm wondering where to take this. I see sites like polldaddy.com charging $200/year for their services and think that there's wiggling room to work with here. Any feedback would be sweet. Thanks!
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/05/can-you-trust-37signals-with...
It looks like most people are looking for a good designer / UI specialist. If only there was an HN for designers focusing on starts ups!
http://fairsoftware.net/find-cofounders-for-your-startup and http://www.meetup.com/Co-Founders-Wanted-Meetup/ are dedicated to finding co-founders. The first one is for worldwide online, the second link is for Silicon Valley in person.

This was posted originally in this thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1046134 - can someone write me a script so everytime someone asks that question, I can auto-reply? ... ok bad idea... spam... never mind :-)
No, all-pairs shortest path problem is in P as well.
Ebooks and ebook readers
The strongest arguments I know for Perforce are scaling and performance. Perforce has simply been used for larger projects, on larger servers, by larger companies than just about anything else in existence.

It's also presumably good for companies that, like subversion, it's centralized. But it doesn't have any terribly significant feature improvements over svn, otherwise. The interface is slightly slicker, and the merge works marginally better.
Kudos to Dave Winer for successfully navigating Twitter at his age.

Sorry, I couldn't resist ;-)
All of the comments here correctly note that this article is nonsense. Will one of the upvoters please explain why they found this article compelling?
Economics of scale: probably. But maybe there are also other factors. For example it seems impossible to power a large container ship with solar cells, but maybe for a smaller container-ship it would become feasible? Some not so urgent goods could perhaps just drift in the currents, too? No idea, though...

I actually just had the other thought to call out a sort of X-Prize for the first autonomous robot ship that crosses the ocean. Or maybe it has already been done anyway.
Agreed, but I ran into some issues with Suds the last time I used it and ended up having to make a patch. I'm not familiar enough with either Suds or SOAP to know who's fault it was, but the whole experience still took way too long.

I'm sure it's great stuff if you're on Java or .NET and have an IDE do all the magic for you, but SOAP is really ugly from the outside.
In general as a consultant you can assert certain rights for yourself. don't be afraid to request changes to the contract.

Also as a contractor you are VERY different from an employee and the resulting IP rights are quite different. While ALL an employee does during their employment usually belongs to the company (even inventions done while at home sleeping :) the situation is very different for a contractor.

For example it is a standard practice that NOT ALL of the code that you write for them is theirs, but only "business specific" parts.
You should retain the rights to the generic parts of the code, all successful consultancies build a code libraries that they can reuse.
We usually release such things as open source but not always, we do keep the rights to ourselves though. Customer just gets a full royalty free license to do whatever they want.

Same with inventions.
If during the term of the agreement while working on their project you invent a super-duper-fast sorting algorithm and implement it in their project, it still doesn't mean the algorithm is theirs.

The implementation is (and only if its business specific) but the idea is yours and you can go as far as filing a patent for it (I'm quite against software patents, but still). Again, the client gets all the necessary rights to use it in-this-particular-implementation but that is.
I flew from Germany to NYC a week ago with a carry on and a personal item. Security in Germany was significantly less strict (e.g. no shoe x-rays) than is typical in the US, even before the Christmas bombing attempt.
I hope this Doc stays around indefinitely, so those of us looking for a co-founder in the future will have a resource. It's worth posting a link to it every so often.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degeneracy_(mathematics)
Apple Patent Shows New iPhone OS UI & Contacts On Home Screen
His claims about np-completeness implies that his research needs to be seriously questioned.