skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The European whiners are looking for scapegoat for their overspending. The bankers themselves are on the hook for losing money if Greece defaulted. Greece politicians are democratically elected. This just means a breakdown of their audit and oversight ability. It was the EU regulars who were debating whether to call these "loans" or some other junks, and they decided to not call these "loans" to hide them from the book.

If they truly think the bankers are at fault, let Greece default, then the bankers would be hurt as well. The blame will spread evenly then. That's how capitalism works.
Adobe Flash and AIR Coming Soon to Android [VIDEOS]
Introducing some kind of 'how interesting was that chat' rating would give users an incentive to liven things up; maybe the more interesting you are, the more you get connected to other interesting people.

['course, definitions of interestingness vary plenty. Maybe you leave that in as part of the fun; maybe you introduce some kind of categories -- e.g. slashdot-style +5 funny, -2 offensive]
Tuning Hotspot JVM 1.4.2
Yeah you're right. I'll try hard to ignore the "language syntax sucks/rocks/is so important" articles.
I suspect they haven't fixed the requirement of IPX (!) for LAN play in this version, which seems to be the primary stumbling block for multiplayer in older C&C games (up to RA2) on modern computers. I suppose now you can just all play via the internet instead, without having to make sure you've got enough serial numbers.
I like your point, but in the specific examples given of my own mistakes with sunk costs in startups, I usually did know it was wrong at the time.

I just didn't have the stones to pull the trigger.
"perhaps more men would like to see women for cybersex than women would like to see men"

So pitch it at a gay audience:)
Well, that's just it - HTML5 video will allow Apple to make whatever optimizations necessary to keep power consumption to a minimum.

If video is wrapped inside an opaque Flash container, a huge chunk of Apple's user experience is now squarely in Adobe's hands; this isn't confidence-inspiring given the general stability and performance of the current Mac Flash app.
Famous Gordon Letwin quote: "One in a million is next Tuesday". http://blogs.msdn.com/larryosterman/archive/2004/03/30/10416...
This may be the new trend on speed dating 2.0. It would be cool if you could choose the ambient where you want to hang out: Facebook, Twitter, BeautifulPeople, etc.
25+ Alternative & Open Source Database Engines
The Widening HTML5 Chasm
I'd hate to break this to you also, but being "turned on" is just another emotional state that is subject to the mind's interpretation and perception.

It's long been known (as the root of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) that the order of neurological operations is

Event --leads-to--> Perception of Event --which-leads-to--> Emotion

Some of these neurological responses may have become so ingrained and automatic that they seem "uncontrollable", but they are the results of many smaller controllable choices as to how to perceive a specific event.

It's the same reason why I find something enjoyable that you do not, and you find something attractive while I do not... we've made different choices along the way. It is a clear sign of emotional immaturity to believe that you are not in control of how you perceive events (which in turn creates the emotions you experience)

You are certainly not in control of the events that happen, nor the emotional release, but you can control how you perceive and choose to interpret things.
Afraid of the Cloud..? You just need to ask the right questions…
Besides the Joel Test for programming processes, I always try to ascertain:

Their finances, business model, etc.

Can they fire people who don't work out and how careful are they in hiring.

Plus there are many warning signs to watch out for, like unwarranted secrecy.
Having some content from the next page showing at the edge of your screen is an interesting way to avoid having to waste screen space on scrollbars. I do have to wonder how well it works in practice. How can you tell the difference between a web page that simply doesn't fit, and an app that is indicating that there is more content (but not necessarily relevant to what you're currently looking at)? Also, it seems like this would be a constant reminder of how frustratingly tiny your screen is, and that's not a good thought for a mobile UI to engender.
This was an issue covered masterfully in the 3rd season of The Wire.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wire_(season_3)
Or maybe Java programmers are just not the type of programmers who dump their code on the internet for free?
Thats scary. Wow.

Any more to the story? Intrigued by what you said and why this guy freaked out over it. Details?
In Japan there's no "murder" without a body. Most yakuza murders don't result in found bodies. Therefore Japan's "low homicide rate". Most of these murders aren't reported.

Here's an interesting NPR interview with an American crime reporter/author investigating Japanese organized crime: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1202372.... Some yakuza boss promised to pay money and inform the FBI on cronies in return for safe entry to/from UCLA for liver (?) transplants for himself and three others. After the transplants he didn't fulfill promises to the FBI. The author broke the story and has suffered consequences.
Thanks for the reply. I will have to find that Joel article.
Shelley Powers has tried to block the HTML5 standards process using procedural objections, long pointless process discussions, and personal attacks on the editor of the HTML5 standard, more than anyone else that I've seen, at least for the past year or two that I've been following the W3C side of the HTML5 process. I'm not sure she's the best person to reference when trying to defend people who are trying to put up procedural roadblocks to publishing the HTML5 working draft.

Larry Masinter is also a veteran of web standards. He seems to be the sort of person who thinks that standards purity, procedural issues, and the like are more important than actual, real world, shipping, interoperable implementations. "<masinter> well, I'm not sure 'matches reality' is always the most important goal" from http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090922

So, I do not know if he is trying to slow down the HTML5 standards process because he is employed by Adobe and they consider it in their best interest to slow the process down, or if it's merely because he's an architecture astronaut standards wonk who truly believes that objections claiming that canvas is out of scope of the HTML working group and that it would be better served by splitting it off into some other (currently unspecified) committee. I will note that the W3C HTML working group was chartered with canvas present in the working draft it adopted from the WHATWG, and the only reason it is being split into a separate specification is because of more procedural objections from the very same parties who seem to be opposing any innovation that came from the WHATWG and browser vendors.
This "archive of quality Hacker News 'Ask YC' posts grouped by subject" looks worth checking out: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive

(Thanks to jmonegro for posting it to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126993.)
Possibly but why wasn't there a second spike with the Gen-Y baby-boom (born in the range of 1980-1999), a much larger group than the original Baby-Boomers?
Your point of view is surely valid.
Though what I get from posted article is the fact that url shorteners don't always shorten urls.
Thus proving that the philosophy behind the service is either not "to shorten urls" or simply bugged.

I can imagine an url shortener service, which actally at heart wants to shorten urls, already from first line of implementation has something like if(entered_url.length <= generated_url.length) return entered_url
No this isn't true.

A cost is "sunk" as soon as the money (or time) has been spent. The fact that a cost is "sunk" shouldn't be confused with determining the value of an expenditure.

When you start throwing in "value" the whole concept gets confusing.

Sunk costs _only_ mean that the fact that money has been spent on something should not affect future decisions. What you got out of spending that money should absolutely be considered in future spending.
The photo I posted showed where I was sitting.

He walked over, explained that he was extremely upset with my tweet about eBay, because his wife works there, and told me to be careful about what I say in public.

Then he took a deep breath, I assume to calm himself down, told me how he found me, said he was unfollowing me on Twitter. Then he left.
America has become a police state.
You're very welcome.

As for the Test, it's the first thing that Google comes up with for Joel Test: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

Also, before you commit, get a copy of all the non-disclosure, non-compete etc. papers you'll be expected to sign upon employment and make sure you can live with them.
Thank you very much for compiling this list. Will you continue adding Ask YC/HN posts to this wiki?
Underreported Yakuza murders in Japan, FBI liver-transplant-for-info swap [2009]
> The only time I ever use URL shorteners is when I'm trying to Rick-Roll someone.

Yes, I hardly ever visit shortened URLs. It seems like a great vector for malware when you have no idea where your click will land you. The domain name, at least, and the URL structure secondarily, of the destination site give some clues as to the content. I'm not sure why this downside is not mentioned more often.
Yeah, I do plan on doing a massive update/overhaul. It's pretty out of date at the moment, though still useful.
I'm rather unimpressed with both. Wave is really cool technology. I won't deny that. However it's UI screams get lost in me. Buzz it much better but it's still more complicated than twitter and uglier than Facebook. It's this horrible middle ground.
Oops - I hadn't seen that previous article. Thanks for the summary.
Rising wages in China are a good thing
To anyone interested in such events I would highly recommend "The Black Swan" The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

It never amazes me what you can experience, if you are living in a large City or get involved with a large group of people. When I was doing National Service, I once drove to the Hospital, about twenty, 18yr olds suffering from "nocturnal enuresis" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnal_enuresis). It is a very uncommon event in adults <0.5%.
Wow awesome resources. Thanks again for the links!
How does that follow? Maybe there are more laws, but people aren't being arrested for breaking them.
Why Google is Not Like Microsoft and Facebook
I would say it's the proponents that are doing it wrong. The supposedly independent and objective inquiry into the climategate scandal has already had one member forced to resign (the editor of Nature, btw)
http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/11/the-team-that-cant-shoot-...

and now another member looks very questionable

http://climateaudit.org/2010/02/15/more-tricks-from-boulton-...
Vim Tips for Ruby (and your wrists)
I suspect that it's mostly an issue of money. Releasing a game, even for free download, costs money in the form of staff, servers, bandwidth, etc.
You can hear NPR audio from the link. Transcript is at http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story....

This was an interesting story I heard a few months back, detailing how:

* Yakuza/organized crime figures carry business cards and operate in the open

* Companies and private citizens contract the Yakuza to settle disputes

* Most construction companies have some Yakuza tie-in

* Most yakuza murder victims do end up as cliches ... in building foundations ... and aren't reported as murder victims

* a Yakuza boss promised to inform on cronies for the FBI in return for entry/exit to/from US for liver transplants at UCLA (UCLA got a nice sum for expedited liver matching and transplant services too) ... and he brought along three friends for identical procedures.

* The Yakuza boss did not keep his end of the deal. (I guess the FBI just trusted he'd do his part.)

* The American crime reporter/author giving the interview blew the story, disgraced the Yakuza figure, and suffered some consequences.

Fascinating story overall. The Japanese official homicide rate doesn't reflect the truth.
Fallacies of Distributed Computing
The impression I get is actually that they couldn't figure out how to fit a decent mobile UI on the screen. It looks good in the photos where the rest of the content is shown, but I don't think it would be so nice to actually use.
Disco Strikes Out Again: Casey Luskin, Kitzmiller, and New Information
How To Integrate Your Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Friendfeed In Your Gmail
My current employer scores a 2 on Joels test.
The overall idea is that our educational system was designed for a world that no longer exists and is unsuited for what our world is becoming.

Essentially, he's saying that our educational system is designed to produce people that can operate interchangeably, and in doing so is suppressing individuality and twisting our values. He's saying that we've been conditioned to ignore the value of having roots and of being individuals.

This might have worked (and our educational system might have worked) when our economy relied on production and required "cogs", but it's crippling us now when we rely on ideas and creativity.

I'm probably missing half of what was there, but hopefully that helps. I'm not sure I agree with everything there, but that's mostly because I think this raises some excellent points/questions that bear a lot of thinking about and I haven't really had a chance to do so yet.
Tallinn is a great place. I worked there for a week last month. Nice people. I stayed in Parnu last summer briefly, that seemed nice as well. However, as the OP says, it's a very different place to Sydney.

I'd watch out for those icicles though.
In fairness, social data is just as tricky as any other kind of data (even if sociology is a "soft science").

First of all, lower crime rates doesn't necessarily mean that less crime is happening. It means that less crime is getting reported. There is a huge difference. For instance, you may notice that crime rates in Britain skyrocketed the same year they passed a handgun ban. As it turns out, they also switched to a more accurate crime reporting system that same year which caused the spike.

Secondly, crime rates are difficult to analyze. Saying "crime is going down" is like saying "sickness is going down". There are lots of different kinds of crime with lots of different motivations behind each, and those kinds of broad generalizations are rarely useful.

So while I do feel that the media is playing games with the American public, I also can't blame the public for not being more educated on crime rates.
I think most people know that now after feeling like morons last year
This is fantastic! Thank you very much for compiling this and breaking it up into manageable sections
haha here ya go http://www.javascriptkit.com/script/script2/simpleimagetrail...
Dear John@Adobe, if you did due diligence, then you already would have talked to the people at Adobe that participates in the working group, have found out exactly what was said on the email lists, and would have posted all the details and an apology for holding up the work due to minor process details. And you would have ensured us, that such behavior will never again be seen from Adobe.

What you did was to post an almost-ad-hominen attack, calling names such as "total ignorance/laziness", lack of "due diligence". Your only 'content' is quotes from 2 blogs that says Adobe is a nice kid without telling the details about what happened, what the w3c emails said.

When Hixie says "blocked by Adobe", you better come up with better arguments than "these 2 guys I've selected myself says that Adobe is a nice kid". If anybody knows anything about html5, it is Hixie. He has done an incredible job getting html5 forward, and he has fully earned his respect.
http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1265967771&count=1

And you would have pointed out, that Adobe would from now on take a back seat and not veto the canvas and other new html5 features as Adobe isn't a browser vendor.
Have a little dig about on the web. There are benchmarks galore.
If there's DRM involved, the conversion from disc to bare .exe would have a minimal cost involved, I suppose. But releasing your game as a torrent would erase the cost of servers and bandwidth.

EDIT: MechCommander was released as a torrent. Microsoft (you know, that Microsoft) owns the IP.
utterly creepy.
That's true - science is a method for deriving knowledge from observation. So, if many scientists are observing, one scientists' secrecy and falsification does not make the other findings "worthless".
How does anyone even find your site if you don't do at least some advertising? You could spend the rest of your life trying to get traffic from twitter and the like. It's obviously significantly easier if you have a network of people willing to broadcast it, which a lot of introverted dev types, or family types or whatever, don't have.
Very cool, but what a horrible website layout and design. Makes it hard to read and hard to see the photos.
For some reason, I really like their website design. Very simple and engaging.
Right now there are about 26 people online and I'd assume all of them are dudes.

These things do sound fun but where are all the chicks?
LINKIN PARK LYRICS - Breaking The Habit
You arguments make sense. What would you say to those who support bailouts and their logic, which if I understand correctly, is as follows:

if you dont bailout Greece, then the markets will get nervous about other bigger economies with debt (Spain, Ireland, etc) and call in the debt to these countries as well. Many of these countries are likely to default, which in turn would lead to more panic and more debt being called in, leading to a repeat of the financial crisis of 2008 (ignited by the bankruptcy of Lehman), where banks trust no one, every debt obligation is called on immediately, and everyone hordes cash out of panic. A vicious cycle like the great depression develops and even relatively healthy economies, banks and companies go bankrupt.

Then what? Yes, this process does weed out the weak banks/companies/economies. But it also destroys everything else, including social and political institutions and the worse case scenario is you have global anarchy, unrest, wars etc, etc.

I think moral hazard is important. But is it so important that we destroy the whole system? There must be a more balanced approach, but not sure what that should be.
They have a really nice subdomain just for Ask HN posts (although theirs is chronologically sorted, not organized like the OPs):

http://ask.searchyc.com/
Will this phone play Microsoft Plays-for-Sure (TM) branded Microsoft DRMed music? Songs purchased for the original 5GB iPod will play on the iPhone.
Anatomy of a launch post-mortem: What went right, what went wrong
Actually, it's a little bit more complex than that, but you're basically right. Sociologists actually look at the crime rates for men vs women as an indicator of social equality. I believe that the crime rates for women are going up while they're going down for men. So it's difficult to correlate crime with sex.

That said, age does play a significant role in crime rates. Our population is aging, and that's probably the primary cause of the decreasing crime rate.
Making a white label random video chat service is probably viable as a business.

I have no idea how Chatroulette can afford the bandwidth.
AbstractQueryFactoryFactories and alias_method_chain: The Ruby Way
What does this have to do with there being less crime?
The interface design of Windows Phone 7 Series, walk-through and commentary
YouTube Turns Funny On Its 5th Birthday
I think someone above more correctly identified this as a deadpan delivery of some sarcastic statement. This is probably more effective and funny. But sometimes people like to be very blatant about the fact that they're being sarcastic. Especially when talking with someone they don't know well. Like strangers on the internet.
But releasing your game as a torrent would erase the cost of servers and bandwidth.

A game via torrent? It's probably already been "released" for them...
You're assuming that the second crime is violent, which is curious given your assumption that a large fraction of prisons are in for non-violent crimes.

There's also the problem that convictions and sentences understate the crimes committed by those convicted because of plea bargaining. In other words, the fact that someone was sentenced for a non-violent crime does not imply that they didn't commit a violent crime.

And then there's the whole "gateway" theory.

I don't know how all these things work out - I'm just pointing out that the plausible theories go all directions.
Burn your Database? Announcing the Drawn-to-Scale Platform.
According to that interview that was posted here with the kid who runs it; he covers all costs with a few ads on the page. No idea how, but I guess that it works for him.
Greece got about $1b from 85 Broad via a swap.

They had approximately $300b in additional debt.

This article exists because many readers like to pretend that bankers are the root of all evil.
Major new app store to take on Apple, others
If it bleeds, it leads.

TFA cheerfully ignores the role of local news media in hyping up any story of violent crime and encouraging anxiety and paranoia when it comes to crime in general.

"Are your children endangered by crazed illegal immigrant serial killer internet pedophile terrorists in their school right now? Find out, tonight at 11."
Microsoft starts over in phone software
They're using a new feature in flash 10: p2p.

Check the comments on the other news.yc thread about chatroulette.
Great game. If only they could release the game under a GPL license as well. That would be a great way for open source developers who want to learn from the code, and possibly improve the original game.
Cities Prepare for Life With the Electric Car
And if the teeter totter shows he is as light as a duck, burn the denialist !
I don't think by "agricultural model" people mean "move out to the farms" or anything; I think he means more that the values of self-reliance in matters educational is what he is pushing. A bunch of city kids could adopt the "agricultural model" with no contradiction.

Personally, I think it's a bad moniker; it makes it sound like a step backward and invites misunderstanding. We need a network-age education that takes advantage of the things we had that never existed in agricultural times; it may happen to resemble the agricultural model in some ways, but it will still resemble the industrial in others, and in other ways won't resemble either.

(Incidentally, this is why I want to homeschool my kid(s). I want to give them the 21st century education they can't get anywhere else right now. Maybe their children won't find it so hard.)
All posts on this page have been looked at manually

Was all of the categorization done manually?

I ask because it looks stellar, and I'm just curious if you had/built a tool to help you make it a bit less tedious
Yup.

Edit: thx. No tools, just a lot of re-org over time after repeated use.
There are lot of so called 'hubs' in the windows phone - photo hub, office hub...

By customizing or packaging these hubs, I think network providers to design phones for a specific purpose or package a service:

- enterprise user (package ms office + data plan)

- consumer (package social n/w + music/video plans)
Breathing
Oh, you don't need a big site for this stuff to happen. These things aren't even close to one in a million. I've had tons of these and even weirder running sites with only 10-20,000 users.