skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This would be my one (minor) complaint with her essay; I think that there is ample evidence in history, even fairly recent history, to refute the deregulatory undercurrent the essay has.

Regulatory oversight is certainly not perfect, or ideal, or even completely beneficial to anyone involved. Unfortunately, it is a necessary evil in any market with a combination of a large enough cost of entry and a captive market in which the majority of customers can't simply opt-out altogether.

Medical insurance is a topical example that immediately comes to mind. Ten people with some resources can't start an innovative new medical insurance company; the costs are just too great. As a result, existing insurance companies have no incentive to compete in terms of price or services, and because a large enough number of people (and businesses) simply have to have insurance, they don't have to worry about their market shrinking too much.

The flap over gas prices a year ago would be another example, and before that, there was California's energy deregulation that resulted in serious problems just a few years ago.
Know rich people? They'll help you get rich too.

I can confirm this. Contrariwise, knowing poor people can help you get poor. Such is life.
How to Reliably Crash the iPhone's E-mail Client
Why would you open yourself up to that level of liability? Full PCI compliance is a standard that will be used by businesses to determine if your product is a viable solution. If your solution breaks PCI compliance at any point, you open yourself up to big problems when (not if) something goes wrong.

Also, why reinvent the wheel? PayPal and Google Checkout are major vendors with PCI certifications who handle the entire transaction process. Why not use them to handle all the risk? You get a transaction id and collect your money through them. Never touching the sensitive financial information.
USDA beef grading is assigned to the whole carcass, so you can get any part of the cow in prime. Only cuts where USDA rating correlates with quality are typically marketed as prime/choice, typically just loin and rib-eye. You do see things like "prime skirt steak" but it's uncommon, because there won't be any difference in marbling or tenderness on that cut. For other cuts like chuck, prime is actually too fatty for many applications (e.g. try chuck @ Schaub's @ Stanford -- not good for moist cooking, could be good for hamburgers I guess).

Whole Food beef is select not choice. I can only speak for Bay Area definitively, I haven't checked out WF meat counter in Chicago. I doubt it's any different because Whole Foods has a nice high-margin gig going on what they call "natural" beef, which is USDA Select sold as a premium product on the strength of Whole Foods brand. It's a store brand with premium pricing, great gig if you can pull it off, good for Whole Foods.
This was actually a topic on a Dutch youth science quiz on TV.
From Google's point of view, it's worth it. If they think they could develop this in-house for $5 million, and maybe it'd be great, maybe it'd be okay, and maybe it would suck. Spending $50 million to let them have the pick of proven technology that they can already see working before spending the money removes the risk.
Take the steak out, drain most of the fat out, toss in a minced shallot, turn the heat off, cook the shallot for about a minute, take the pan off heat and throw in any liquor (brandy, cognac, and cheap bourbon all work great), heat to boil, scrape the bottom of the pan, clean, add mustard, mix, add cream to fill the bottom of the pan, mix, reduce. Steak au poivre!

Beautiful with the peppered crust.
The Vatican must be very happy with this "new kind of science" the blogosphere created; the one that allows for tons of opinion with scant evidence.

Well, truth be told, not even them endorsed Inteligent Design, yet.
Sort of defeats the original intention of running a business.
That I agree with, but it's a more general issue about the temptation to make future promises you can't pay for, and is also true in the private sector. Employers in general, public and private, make promises of future payments they can't pay for, don't set aside the money, and just kick the can down the road to the next generation of management. It's one reason so many American companies go bankrupt about 30-40 years after their peak, which coincidentally is when their pension obligations start coming due.
So why spend $50M when the integration path and implementation are reasonably well flushed out?
Vulnerability in Microsoft Paint Could Allow Remote Code Execution
You are biased towards software startups. I live in the US and I've lived in India. Look around you as you drive home. There are entrepreneurs everywhere. Small businesses drive around 70% of the economy.
New Anti-Piracy Windows 7 Update "Phones Home" to Microsoft Every 90 Days
Ideally they would comment coherently in the Queen's English.
How can I set up a financial credit card payment?
Hi,

I want to set up a shopping website, I want users to pay me monthly. It depends on the chosen service plan.

For example, if the user bought item A for $1500, the user can choose how many months they want to pay it. how can I make sure that the user will not cheat it, and stick to the contract? Because I'm afraid that I may go to bankruptcy if they cheat it.

They might cheat their credit cards right?
How does the bank protect the online shops from this kind of theft?
You are right. SousVide cooking prepares healthy meals with less salt and spices, and at the same time, preserve the vitamins and nutrients and flavour much more than conventional cooking. Our latest release SVM 1500D temperature controller works beautifully with a basic rice cooker. FreshMealsSolutions is introducing another new product called FreshMealsMagic which is a heater and circulator all in one for $159.00. It will make any pots into a constant water bath for sousvide cooking ( no need for rice cooker).
Near the beginning of the 20th century, a lot of theorists predicted that our increase in per worker productivity would leave a population with huge amounts of leisure time. The average person would only have to work a couple of hours a day for all of humanity's basic needs to be met. With robots, we may eventually reach the point where people don't need to work at all in order to meet humanity's basic needs. Unless something drastic happens to our economic system, however, I seriously doubt it will translate into a shorter work day.
Ask HN: YC Intern- Housing in San Francisco?
I am talking with one of the Y Combinator companies about interning this summer at their San Francisco office. I'm now looking for affordable living space in the San Francisco Bay area with transportation access to downtown San Francisco.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get the cheapest possible place within a reasonable distance of downtown besides Craigslist?

Are there any recommended modes of transportation to and from the city? Only one I am familiar with is BART.

Thanks for the help HN community!
Maybe, I dunno, unfollow a few people?

Personally, I'm following people who'd have just sent me an IM or email if not for Buzz. So all Buzz really does, is compartmentalize the passed-link sorts of messages my friends and I were sending anyway.

So, in effect, Buzz has taken noise out of my email, my IM and my SMS and puts it into a box I can deal with on its own priority level.
Good point on the evil, although I'd have to say I'm a little more than peeved overall with the attacks, if anything the article put me more on Google's side. Yes, Google absorbs startups and imitates any product, but it's competitive edge is the crowd of engineers who say, "Hey, I could do that better". All its expansions are evolutionary, and they take into consideration all the criticism out there better than most others could.

Regardless, if you don't want to Buzz then opt-out, but the competition between Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest will come down too which are most convenient and affective, followers will take it from there. Right now though, Buzz can easily replace Twitter for me, but theres a way to go before Facebook starts trembling, and I don't think Orcut is joining the show any time soon.
The database could be mined to improve answers in Google. When someone asks "what is the best X in Y", Google will know and MS won't.

They might have some as-yet-undisclosed IP which one of the big search companies would be able to defend - rather own it than fight it.

Also, integrating the already-refined code and ideas into Buzz, Wave, Orkut, other future social initiatives.
I've heard of this technique before, but never tried the product of it yet. How do you control for food-borne diseases like Clostridium botulinum? (honest question). I'd be concerned that level of heat wouldn't kill it off.

It sounds to me like this technique would really help with a complete and consistent cooking of the entire steak -- something I strongly favor. It's why I start with a low heat grill then ramp up to hot at the end. But my technique is imprecise and requires lots of attention.

Does it also help the flavor by keeping the fats close to the meat in the bag? I'd think another side benefit is that the steaks would come out so tender a fork could cut them.

I'd be curious to try throwing in some butter and seasonings into the bag, or at least for the final searing. A browned coating of butter seems to make lots of meats taste really great in my opinion (as opposed to a plant derived oil). But some people don't like the heavy oily taste it can imbue in the food.
Your comment lacked substance, that is why I flagged it. The article itself was not propaganda, right-wing or otherwise. Calling people wingnuts does not contribute to the conversation.
Ah, thanks for that analysis. This is a part that I was missing.
I suppose the ideal would be not to have such articles posted at all, since this isn't really the place for this sort of hyper-partisan stuff, whether from Cato or the Socialist Worker.
I don't think this is an effort to acquire users.
I think "deficit of trust" would have been a better sell.

The future is inevitable. The immediate future being an ideal place to start having kids is a notion that's hard to trust.

Potential mates are hard to trust as well :)

It's hard to trust anything these days.
I think a lot of the comments in this thread are evidence of that.
Lots of cool things are just wrappers around other things.
Understanding the linux kernel
I'am willing to learn some parts of the linux kernel just for fun but i'am not good at c programming.is there anything that i should do before i get my hands on the kernel?
are there any good books?
I was worried about this a little bit. To be honest the major problem was that I did not have time to make it shorter! I wrote this in a single sitting, starting at 9:20pm and ending after 4:00am. Near dawn. I simply wanted to get it out there...

I'll put some effort in the future to distilling the argument and contracting the post. For now, at least it's available.
Looking back over the last decade, it seems like Microsoft is a lot closer to IBM than to Google.

People don't go there to learn how to innovate. they go there to work a full-time job for the rest of their lives.
It would depend on the events which led up to leaving Google in the first place. I doubt the original team left Google because it wasn't challenging enough or there wasn't enough flexibility, both of which would be reason enough to leave a lesser company to go out on your own. If your logic was accurate, then why would Aardvark have even sold out to Google in the first place?
Why is it of such fascination that people who can put a ball in a hoop can also read philosophy and novels?
Building a Brain-Machine Interface
Researchers are exploring ways to use brain signals to control computers.
Cooks Illustrated just did a piece where they cook the steak in the oven to 120f and finish on in a skillet; I've used it a couple times, and it works really well.
To make a lot more money, for example.
Mom and daughter team - XVIDEOS.COM
Can't really stand Jay-Z, but my reply was more about deconstructionism than hate, maybe the use of the word "bullshit" was a little too heavy I concur, I'm sorry about that. The main idea is that happiness isn't found in that kind of reflection, you must think outside the box!
I’m not American, but these things seem universal – sport jocks (rugby, football, etc…), ineffectual unionized teachers and anti-intellectualism. It seems public education systems are everywhere uninspiring at best.
You're digging in, which is a natural response to a bunch of people disagreeing with you.

Here's what I think you're missing. Although I am a pretty intellectually curious person, on my own and when working a separate full-time job, I can only do so much. When I was in graduate school, my job was to read, write and argue with other smart people who also spent all their time reading, writing and arguing (about a somewhat limited range of topics). I had very little else to do - often nothing else, if I wasn't a ta or lecturer. Graduate school isn't perfect (it's a mess in many ways, I think), and you can certainly lead one kind of life of the mind alone, but graduate school is an amazing way to immerse yourself in something. You can't replicate that experience easily, just because you have a library card.
I don't know of any modern corporations that have pensions -- it seems today that all companies use 401ks, they learned the lesson about pensions
* Rips the clock out of the vcr. *, That was fun, great analogy, but how do the generational gaps get jumped? Intereestingly enough it's pretty easy for me to rip Buzz out of Gmail, its the constant "he doesn't get it" whispering that bugs people. Everyone tries to advertise to new users, but its hard to do without seeming unnecessary or even evil to so many. I had the same observation of twitter, but they weren't part of millions of users email. I think Google will get over the evil hump this time though, for now it looks like an inevitable backlash to how fast they are growing a user base.
This is out of the realm of what you can do independently with credit card processing on your own.

To do this, you need to setup an account with something like GE Capital, who handles the credit checks and authorizations and such.

With the credit card act of 2010, this is even more difficult (at least in the US) than it used to be.

If your business plan depends on this, find another business plan. It is going to be more risk and trouble than you expect.
to be honest, i was just trying to explain what a tautology is.

however, it's certainly not clear to me that someone who "values the inner life of the mind" is also the practical-minded kind of person who's going to sit down and organise the equivalent of a university class.

in more general terms, this is "why cities matter". see, for example, http://www.tnr.com/book/review/why-cities-matter - "the magic of urban density means that agglomerations of people come together for simple reasons and often achieve amazing things". for that kind of thing to happen you need to collect people together - at a large scale into cities, and at smaller scales into institutions. your average book club in podunk isn't going to be as academically stimulating as a class at yale.
Chuck Norris Hudson Plugin
I can see a case for arguing that someone who has zero children doesn’t “believe in the future” (whatever that means). But surely the parents of one child “believe in the future” no less than the parents of eight.
This is/was more popular in eastern Asia, particularly in China when Confucian culture was in its heyday. I remember growing up a Chinese family bought a house in our neighborhood with cash. He was a garbage man, they had two kids, and his wife didn't work.

I've managed it since I was 25. Here's what I found.

* If you're making below or well below the median salary for your state, good luck getting past 10% of your net pay. 30% of net is much easier when you're at or just above the median. 33% of gross requires you to have made those "long-term purchases" already, such as furniture and a vehicle.

* On cars, try to buy the first "long term" one in cash. Yes, this takes time to accomplish, but the reality is once you can do it the first time, you'll be able to easily continue doing it for the rest of your life. Buy what you truly want, otherwise you'll find excuses to replace it earlier. 18-35 year olds in America would be much happier if they had bought a Miata or a Mustang or what they had actually wanted instead of their Corolla or Taurus they felt was a "more responsible" choice.

* Learn to cook. Last night I had a steak, homemade biscuit, asparagus, couscous, drink and a homemade cookie for just under $3. Packaged foods and mixes are never cheap, and the cost of prepared foods is staggering.

* If you don't love it and see yourself using it 10 years from now, why are you buying it? The pricier the item, the longer you better see yourself using it A huge sink in consumer culture is buying "disposable items", particularly furniture, gadgets, and even cars in some cases. Buy once, take good care of it, and avoid having to buy it again for some time, if at all. Furniture especially - go used to save money if the piece is still in production (typical for modern classics), because odds are even if it's already 40 years old it'll still handily outlast you.

* Live as close to work as possible. Mass transit is cheaper than anything (I can go all over Boston, as much as I want, for $59/mo). The higher cost of living is more than offset by the extra time to cook, relax, and decompress.

* Reassess your budget, in full, every year. Prune possessions and figure out why it was a waste. Repeat until your friends refer to you as that really cheap person that somehow has really nice things.
It is, however, merely pocket change to the Google Corporation. If it works out then they win. If it doesn't work out at least it won't benefit any of their competitors.

Plus they get the cool early-adopter-of-new-search-technology userbase.
Uncertainty about the future causes me to spend less, not more.
The Catholic Church is scarily in tune with the latest scientific thought (I say this as a protestant).

I would not be surprised if they have an army of economists.
Good collection of videos, though many corporations are finding that robots are costly to purchase, install, and maintain and are very inflexible in their tasks. People on the other hand are free to purchase, take no installation, and maintain themselves (granted you still have to pay them). Most importantly they are very flexible. You could give them a new task every day and they would adapt. If you've ever toured a Toyota factory, you would be surprised by the large amount of work not being done by machines.
That's a practical solution but the need to do this supports this article's basic point. It was in Google's best interest to opt-in all your contacts. For the user it would have undoubtably been a better experience if they could start with a clean slate or at least had a list of contacts to check/uncheck when Buzz was enabled for the first time. Google must have realized the potential risk of doing this but figured the land grab was worth it. I don't like that much.
Wow, Shooter, what a story. Congratulations on writing that software, achieving your accuracy/consistency goals, and selling your company, though I share your disappointment with the fact that it never came out as a real product. It's probably difficult to sell to dermatologists something that sees what they see and does it better. That's why we were interested in the much more challenging technical environment of using software on consumer devices (like handheld cameras and cellphones).

If you have the time, I'd really like to chat some more about your experiences and your work. My friend, Adam Stein, who once worked for the FDA that I mentioned is looking for a cofounder in this area, and says that he's learned the ropes to deal with the regulatory issues.

As for the side story involving your wife, again, wow. I hear too many stories like this. Medical experts simply don't have a big enough stake in your health to be counted upon. Health is something you have to take in your own hands. I am so glad that you did.
The Real Struggle Behind Climate Change - A War on Expertise - David Brin
"Understanding the Linux Kernel, Third Edition" by Daniel P. Bovet and Marco Cesati.
Cheaper than a lawsuit later
How To Calculate Sweat Equity
I understand this is an ironic thing for me to say, given my alias, but is UNIX (along with C and C-descended languages) the best we could do?
Not true (or at least not ALWAYS true). Do you think corpdev guys are immune to anchoring? Here's a study:

"Take a minute and answer this two-part question:

1. Is the percentage of African nations in the United Nations higher or lower than 65?
2. What is the percentage of African nations in the United Nations?

This was one of the queries that Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman posed in their 1974 paper in Science called “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases.” It turns out that the answer you provide to the second question is heavily swayed by that first question.
The average estimate for question two was above 45 percent. When question one was lowered from 65 percent to 10 percent, the average estimation of question two was dropped to 25 percent. "

Source: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/files/26237737-fixed-to-flexibl...

In a financial negotiation, setting an anchor can be powerful. a VC investment (and accompanying valuation) is an anchor.
Using WooRank to Tidy Up Your Site
From what I understand, one objection is that trying an American citizen in an international court violates the right to due process. How? There presumably is a process defined by a treaty which the US has agreed to.

The other objection: ...implies that the Court does not have the power to try Americans for crimes committed on U.S. territory.

Is it not in Congress' power to grant jurisdiction to a court?

Edit:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause)
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
I don't think they worry about that since they'll always have a huge following. And I think this has more to do with the Catholic Church's stand on contraception and abortions.
It does not opt you out, it only hides buzz from your gmail

Disabling Buzz:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10451703-2.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_W6Qbob2mg#t=0m16s

Really?

Pagerank doesnt have anything to do with twitter and facebook.

Its a great idea, and its probably one of the major factors that made google a success, but today it is not a very important factor in google being a bigger company than fb and twitter.
New Engine Yard Private Cloud Infrastructure
ha, I was one of the presenters there, for Sharendipity. You're right that Aardvark didn't talk much about the tech, considering it was for Developer Fridays. They did focus a lot on expanding the ways you could use the social graph in FB though. I thought it was nice to see that they've been acquired, although I thought the price tag was a bit surprising.
Or HN:

http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/abs/nmat262...
Is it just me, or does it seem unfair to lump Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Google all into the same class? In particular (having worked at none of them), I'd reject putting Google, an engineering company, into the same category as the other two, which largely cater to institutional clients.
Breakthrough: IBM Makes a Solar Cell Out of "Earth Abundant" Materials