skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What I still don't get is after stories like this and my own experiences dealing with customer service is why they don't just put one person at the call center who actually has the power to do something. If there was someone there that could make an autonomous decision without needing to ask the computer for permission and physically put a Nook and a $100 gift card on a truck to your house, then we wouldn't have these problems. But no one can. I get the impression that all the people you dealt with were being completely honest. They sympathized but literally couldn't do anything about it, at least not without getting fired. Customer service people who can't do anything are as good as no customer service people at all. I don't understand companies not trusting and giving real power to their customer service agents.
"The analysts are supposed to tell their clients what this currently-non-existent product means for Apple’s bottom line throughout the rest of this fiscal year, and they have no more clue than you do about whether it exists or what it does. They have better sources than you do (reporters, executives at lots of companies, manufacturing contacts in east Asia), but most of them aren’t trained as investigative journalists. They’re biz whizzes."

Hey...I just figured out what we can do with all the unemployed investigative journalists when the newspapers collapse!
Anti-Terrorist Products (Buy or Rent)
i think the real value in doing js implementations is hooking them up to js visualization libraries so that you can do online demos within the webpage; could be great for education. otherwise i don't see the benefit of coding this up in js vs. other similar dynamic languages.
hmm, this brings up the interesting idea of A/B testing literature ...
The paging speed is good? Wow, your expectations are super low - I can almost read the pages faster than the nook can turn them!
What do you mean precisely? I can think of two totally different ways to take this.

One, how, physically, would you go about running a company? What would you do? Would you hire people or contract out work? Would you get office space or work out of your house?

Two, how would you develop your company's culture? What kind of expectations and rules would you have? How would you treat employees? What would the chain of command look like?
The danger in this is that it is quite possible that at ~36 P/E Google is near the upper limit of its practical valuation for the near future. If they borrow big against their holdings then they have to pay back the loan and also service the debt. If the share price drops then they would have to sell even more shares to cover the loan. As it stands now they will still have such a huge chunk of voting rights that it would take near unanimity against them to overturn their decisions and in return they get big piles of cash that they can probably get a better return on by placing bets on other ventures.
Its your company it doesn't really matter. But I suppose I was leaning towards more toward second option.
"Google builds loyal following in China"
Plato says the same thing in The Republic
Import Ideas From Sales Promoting Agencies
Sales promotion agency offers a lot of profits to a business concerned in marketing its manufactured goods.
There's a big difference between writing that: (A) Calls a company out on poor product or customer service, and writing that: (B) Diverts or directs audience to a specific competitor. The "specific competitor" part is what makes this article reek of something suspicious.

[edit] I mean human-generated writing, of course. . .
The benefit being that JavaScript is the most popular language in history?
For the third time, you're trying to twist this into something about how much I value freedom, rather than actually talking about the actual thing that Mozilla actually does, which is the thing I refer to as being a dumb move.

They don't restrict anyone either

They do. They have chosen to implement <video> in such a way that users are unable to use it in conjunction with any other format than Theora. Not because users asked for it, not because it's useful, but because they want to push Theora.

they just stick to their values

I'm not passing judgement on their values. I'm passing judgement on their actions.
Arguably the languages were not "yet another" in the sense that they were the first application of those concepts to executable code. But your point is well taken: everything has its roots in history.

I would say most reasons for creating new languages -- for fun, for production usage, as a learning experience -- are good.
Anecdotally, I've told people about dropbox and had them not able to find it because they were looking for dropbox.com (before dropbox finally got dropbox.com)
But how could it remain free (as in freedom) if redistribution has strings attached?

This is the problem right here; you used a term without bothering to mention that you're using a very specific definition of that term. In your view "freedom" does not mean maximizing my rights to do things with the software; instead, it involves deliberately limiting my rights in order to force me to pass along (your definition of) "freedom" to others.

There are definitions of freedom, many surprisingly common, which do not include that little quirk, and you'll find that "give up some of your freedom for someone else's sake" is, to many people, like saying "pay higher taxes so someone else can benefit".
The ex-CS drone in me winced just reading that.

Granted, I think we're probably getting half the story -- my experience with customers that type subject lines like "Help! multiple nook delays and broken promises" is that they are not always the most pain-free to deal with. (The easiest customers to support are the ones who treat it like it is all business. Incidentally, taking this tact has helped me with a megacorp or six over the years.)

However, the fact that something even remotely close to that story could happen shows broken CS policies. At my previous employer where I was a CS drone, I could have resolved the issue on any call: "Oh, we promised you a $100 gift card? I'm terribly sorry you haven't received it, sir. Can I make it up to you by issuing a $100 refund to your credit card, which will show on your bank statement within one to three business days?" Or at ANY point in the circus they could have said "I'm sending you a new Nook. It will ship from our warehouse within the hour and be hand delivered by FedEx tomorrow morning. When the first one arrives in a few days, do us a favor and just tell the delivery guy to take it back. Don't worry about the cost: we'll cover all the charges. We're serious about making you happy."

Obviously you don't want $8 an hour CS drones making that decision too often, but you can always just trust-but-verify their judgments. (I got flagged by the computer twice for being overly generous. My manager came over to talk to me about it. I said "A customer was unhappy. I resolved the situation." and got a pat on my shoulder. This was in a business with margins so thin you could shave with them, too, rather than high-end electronics which lock people into your purchasing system for life. Crikey, you think they'd fall over themselves trying to get that in his hands.)
Just to be clear. From OSI (see http://www.opensource.org/docs/osd ):
"1. Free Redistribution

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale."
Thank you. Finally, a voice of sanity!
Google PuWeb Analytics Success Measurement For Government Websites
Did anyone else notice there are more Internet users than there are people on this planet?
"Conan O'brien" - OneRiot.com
Previous discussions can be found at:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=438124

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062284

The QWERTY vs Dvorak argument is silly; both were designed at a time before any research had been performed into typing ergonomics, and the only reason to pick one or the other is largely based on hearsay and rumor.

If you'd like an ergonomic keyboard layout, try one designed to be efficient for common use cases, such as:

Colemak < http://colemak.com/ >: More efficient than QWERT and Dvorak, while preserving common QWERTY-based keyboard shortcuts.

QGMLWB < http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?full_optimization >: Highly efficient, at the cost of sacrificing keyboard shortcut muscle memory.

Or, design your own with carpalx: http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/
Certainly. In a previous life (10 years ago) I've been a user (and a hacker) of RT. So I know the guy, which is why I said this is most likely genuine.
Follow the Golden Rule.
Archway
At Archway, we have invested in state-of-the-art facilities that allow us to maximize efficiency. Our operations are located throughout North America, encompassing nearly two million square feet of distribution space.
I'm in, sent you an email. Hope to see the SD HN folks!
I can confirm that this is evil like crack. I've downloaded the first (free) book of 2 different series' and ended up purchasing the rest of the books in each as a result. They gave me two and I bought 5 more.

Even better, they were both by authors that I haven't read before.
Key point: this was not an attack on, or a vulnerability in, Tor proper. Someone cracked one of the servers that happened to be a Tor infrastructure box.

The system got shut down when the developers discovered it, the identity keys were changed, and damage should be minimal or non-existent.
I do a similar thing on a file by file level. Once a file or single function grows too long, it is time for a refactor.
1,73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).

This is about how many people there were in the world 100 years ago.
Then I would say basically like the company I work for is run. The most fundamental idea (in my mind at least) being that employees are expected to be self-managed and are trusted with that task. Employees do what they know they should be doing and management lets them do it.
A fascinating idea, but I shudder to think what kind of randomness generator they'd use---too many people "trust the computer" and don't know anything about randomness (and have never even heard the term "pseudorandom").

Although, the mental image of robed justices and besuited representatives standing around a well-recorded table and solemnly rolling a d20 does have a certain appeal. :)
The more I work with js the more I like it. This project is a great idea, if it can be maintained. I'm fairly interested in figuring something to contribute myself.
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- The 'fosstards' built and shared a good deal of the ecosystem on which the Internet you are using runs.

- A large chunk of the rest is directly or indirectly enabled, possible or cheaper thanks to them.

- Every one I have met in person has been polite about their goals, and while they base them on fundamental principles I don't quite agree with, their reasoning as based on those principles is rock solid.

As such I think they deserve a little more respect than being called names, especially here. When was the last time you saw a start-up that used no FOSS software?
Homewor Answers
Ask HN: Socializing or making friends without the internet?
It's hit me recently that I'm 30 years old, and most of my relationships are fake, existing only on Facebook and Twitter. Life didn't start out this way, but I'm hoping to change this. I know it's possible, sure I met my ex-wife at a dating site .. but I was working there.

So, has anybody done it? I just deleted my twitter and facebook accounts and am taking the plunge. I want to meet new people and not even tell them that I'm a technologist. Any advice?
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The article is mostly about speed, not efficiency. If you care about speed only, then many will argue it's a toss-up. If you care about efficiency over your typing lifetime, then I'd strongly suggest Dvorak has a big advantage.

Small slightly loaded example. Try it yourself on any body of text: I just typed your title on Dvorak and QWERTY layouts. The top line are the keys that are on the home row of each, so fingers don't have to move to type them. The second are those you have to move for. Ignores shift.

"debunking dvorak vs qwerty myths at reason.com"

Dvorak: (home row first)

deunindoasetthsateasono

bkgvrkvqwrymyr.cm

So in this contrived example, the home row has slightly more letters on it than other rows.

QWERTY: (home row first)

dkdakshsaas

ebuninvorvmyttreon.com

Here, the home row has far fewer of the letters required, so most of the time you have to move your fingers. Oh, and I removed QWERTY because it was just unfair. Even if you remove the 'reason.com', Dvorak is more efficient. So try it yourself for a few sentences. I suggest you'll find Dvorak has far less finger movement in most cases. Maybe someone will code up a test, scanning HN for home row keys :)

Is it for everyone? No. Like Sarah Palin, everyone has a different opinion. If you're happy with QWERTY, use it - there are generally far better things to learn about. Out of 4 friends who tried Dvorak, two of us kept it. I use Programmer Dvorak because it makes coding nicer, but that's even more hassle.
This is really getting a bit out of hand.

I request Bing be taken down because it's too similar to Google.
http://abstrusegoose.com/211
Enjoyable presentation. Conrad Wolfram basically suggests teaching math like programming is often taught. (focus logical on problem solving, by changing the belief that computing by hand = math skill)
WakeMate Blog  (good suggestion for healthy sleep)
Approximately 6.8 billion people on the earth[1], versus the 1.7 billion internet users.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Moscow's Stray Dogs Evolving Greater Intelligence, Including Subway Mastery
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist#Tone_and_voice
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It's risky. If their new investments don't make any money, and google drops in valuation, they could be forced to sell a larger portion of their stake.
Here is a guy who recently did business with the government of Iraq, selling them $85M worth of fake bomb detection equipment:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm

Arabs have seens waves and waves of such Western "businessmen", selling them sham products that kill or injure people, or wipe them out financially.

I wouldn't mind if the Iraqi government held Jim McCormick "hostage", until he was able to defend himself successfully in a court of law.
Legal analysis of the personhood granted to corporations
Djata: A Django REST Data API App
Reminds me of a theory I came up with awhile ago. Why do little humans have such a strong propensity for sticking everything in their mouths? Well, way back when in the stone age, infant mortality was high. Mortality among the newborn is high for many species. As a result, low tech-level human communities don't invest in a little individual until they make it in the world for awhile. In fact, the little buggers haven't really had that many physical resources devoted to them. It takes a lot of food to make a baby. But that's peanuts to the resources invested in an adult over 2 decades of life. So who should be the food taster? Who should try things out to see if they're safe to eat? That's right, all those little ones!

It actually makes evolutionary sense for little humans to want to stick random things in their mouths and so become unwitting food tasters. It's better for the community, overall.

(Also, it puts pressure on mothers to be attentive! Another benefit to the community.)

Lots of female friends of mine absolutely hate this theory. I can understand why. But nature isn't always so nice.

(And yes, this theory is actually testable!)
It's not unheard of to have a moratorium based non-compete (specific markets/market types) in the license. Include support/availability for new features, etc. so they're likely to enjoy the license/throw more money your way and I'd go for it. It'd really depend on how core to the business model the software is. It'd be like anti-google, trying to start a business but end up making a business out of licensing your software.
At the very least they could test covers (cost: a few hundred per book, probably drive more sales than any other single item on the page because you totally can judge a book by its cover), test the book description text, test the highlighted reviews, etc etc.
I'm going to take a contrary viewpoint here, but please don't take offense. I see what you're getting at.

What I've learned is that anyone can learn Rails, or Git, or whatever buzzwordy thing is the latest language, tool, or framework. It's easy to learn these things because they are new, hip, and promise productivity increases. I thik it's good to try new things, but things like this aren't that hard to try, if you're really into programming. They have pretty shallow learning curves, and give pretty instant gratification: the double-whammy of what makes a good hacker flavor-of-the-month.

Learning these types of things is fun, easy, and good. You never know what the next big thing might be. And, you probably will come across a few gems you keep with you for many years. You also probably pass through a lot of crap.

It's much harder to learn things that take time and patience, that don't provide the instant gratification of learning a new framework or whiz bang tool chain.

You need to take the long view. Programming languages are a means of expression, they don't make you write better code.

What makes you write better code is the hard stuff. The stuff you lose if you don't practice. The stuff nobody has the time to sit down and really learn. Linear algebra, statistics, physics, machine learning, machine vision, game theory, logic, information retrieval, network theory, the list goes on. It's much easier to pick up a "Foobar in Action" book that has no scary math symbols or floating point values that can get you from 0 to "Hello World" in a few hours.

But, you will always be just another code monkey that way, following the leaders. I'd rather have totally shitty, ugly code written in BASIC that expressed some novel algorithm that nobody else had than yet another CRUD application written in Clojure in the cloud with jQuery and WebSockets.

Put down the Pragmatic Programmers books every once in a while, turn off your computer, and start reading about the basics. Even if you've learned it before, it always helps to go back. You never know when that thing you slept through sophomore year of college will turn out to be the right approach for a problem you're working on.
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I agree 100%. I was pissed that I got to the end of the article and it was just a customer service rant for a nook he never, ever received. No comment on the device itself.

These situations happen from time to time. I understand his outrage, but front page?
I hate that expression. Of course you can con an honest man.

For example, you could set up a high quality internet store offering, say, cameras for a few dollars less than everyone else. There is nothing dishonest about buying from there - it is simply trying to get a good deal. And yet if the store then simply takes the money and sends nothing, they have indeed conned an honest man.
Er...or click on the dvorak link on your QGMLWB site. There's no mention of 'heresay' or 'rumour'. What they do say is:

"Chances are you don't know anyone who types on Dvorak. This is unfortunate because Dvorak significantly reduces typing effort and the likelihood of typing-related injuries. "

"First, Dvorak is very good at keeping fingers on home row - 71% of keystrokes land there (compare this with 34% for QWERTY). This alone is worth the price of admission. Dvorak bottom row usage is very low at 9% (15% for QWERTY). Dvorak favours the right hand by 14% (QWERTY favours left by 15%). Dvorak has more uniform finger usage and makes greater use of the pinky (18% vs QWERTY's 10%). "

http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/carpalx/?dvorak
" i've long hoped for a decent language for writing low-level stuff."

Have you tried Forth? It is great at low-level stuff.
Wow I hate corruption. The fact that this was a UK company is interesting, because it means there's actually a chance of some kind of justice. The execs of this company should be tried for fraud + multiple manslaughter, or at least product liability resulting in multiple deaths. The investigators should also dig to find out if they bribed any officials to make the sales.. in which case I consider this mass-murder.
Don't forget about the fact that contracts separate out pay-schedules for different types of distribution. And since there is no way to identify how the original copy of the artwork being infringed was obtained, they have no contractual obligation to provide any money to the artists (and even if they could, the artists are paid per-sale, and lost sales that are recouped do not get included).
I've been wondering for a while why the obvious value in this approach isn't more widely recognized. Perhaps its time has come? I hope so! A Parenscript for C is a good idea. It would be exciting to see this sort of library come out of the game industry.
A billion flies can't be wrong.

Just because it's used on almost every webpage, doesn't mean it's popular in the sense of being liked.
For that matter I request Google be taken down for being to much like altavista
I'm going to switch to QGMLWB tonight. We (by which I mean I) will see if it is in fact greater.
Browser analytics
Not listed there is $220 spent on setting up a billing provider (PayWay), which is the part that seems wasteful to me.
A bit off topic, but I have been doing medical startups for 10 years now and can provide a little insight into your questions.

Directly helping people with technology is extremely satisfying and I would definitely recommend it as a career.
That said, it is not an easy career. You have to be patient. Getting a new device from concept to even human trials (much less market approval) can take 2-4 years and depending on the complexity. You have to be diligent and tireless. The complexity and amount of paperwork to meet regulatory compliance requirements would shock you. The current product I am working on has about 15,000 pages of documentation, test reports, etc. Nothing extra above the regulatory requirements is included in this number.

In the end, my opinion is that the direct difference you can make in peoples lives in the healthcare industry outweighs the difficulties.
Pigeons in London ride the tube too!
WakeMate (YC S09) Shipping Delayed
Interesting article. I was always under the impression that corporations weren't "persons" but "entities".

I have seen several references to "natural persons" as opposed to corporation or other entities, in various legal documents.

So I suppose that if corporations are "persons", then at the least they are (by inference) "unnatural" persons :)
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