skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"Better set of products than stack overflow"

This doesn't make any sense. That's like saying the Yankees have a better team than the Saints. Apples and oranges.

I don't use any 37s products, I have email.

However, I find StackOverflow invaluable. I will spend 20 minutes searching the web for answers, and when all hope is lost, I can ask a question on Stack, wake up in the morning and someone will have generously shared their knowledge, providing a perfect solution.

It is simply incredible.
Leapfrogging Per-Capita Income in Developing Countries
Yes I am. Be uncharitable.

I think it's all a matter of degrees. If the "right" policy offends people's religious ideas, nationalism, instinctive irrationality's, or whatever else, this might have consequences that outweigh the benefits of this policy. People being irrational can do damage.

An obvious example is civil unrest which is often a good reason not to implement liberal/libertarian policies in many places.
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Really? Although I found it to be in very poor taste it was on your own blog and I'd be surprised and disappointed if this was the case. Any moderators willing to confirm or deny?
Ad expert: Google’s Super Bowl spot was a live traffic test
Greece Can Default & It Will be Fine, but the US & Britain are Really Screwed
It's like any real estate on the web. The best of the best are NOT hanging around Yahoo Answers. I've tried to get answers there and it's pitiful. You have to create a place where the most talented congregate. Location location location.
Fun fact: chatroulette exposes to other chatroulette users 1) your IP address 2) the fact that you're running this random-ass network-exposed Flash app. IP addresses are geolocatable, so it's not so anonymous. Would be cool to have a helper app that geolocates the user's IP and shows you where they're from. (I found this out in 5 minutes using WireShark.)
The problem is if B is random. The question is:

If I were to ask you if A is random, would you say ja?

And B (who is random) processes it like this: "If he were to ask me any question whatsoever, the answer would be randomly ja or da. That means any question about that answer can't be answered, except with maybe".

That's why B is justified in smiting the asker for not asking a yes/no question.
M$ can do a SDK. The question is whether they'll stomp 3rd parties as they've done in the past. If they just get the things right that Apple got really wrong, they could even come off as heroes.
Using node.js to bootstrap a server from client JS
Have you tried stressing the server with thousands of clients? I'm curious how Node.js holds up and how much RAM it uses per connection without (or with?) major TCP/IP tuning of buffer sizes, Nagle, etc.

I ask because you have no scale-out capability given that all the users are stored in a simple JS object (great for a demo of course). Any plans on this front?
Surkov is one of those smart guys in Kremlin administration. But the plan to build a silicon valley in Moscow is just ridiculous. As well as other government plans on innovations. There are at least two reasons for that:

First and most important is that innovations exist not just because government wants it. At least until the government is the client (and I suppose that's not what they're going to be in this case). Innovations is a result of public and individuals needs, a competition of prices and efficiency (and other things). And it also takes a certain infrastructure for them to work. Russia lacks these things. Most people simply don't care about better quality of life or at least are not willing to do anything about it. Then there's no infrastructure: an example of that would be a broken national post system or absolutely no financial and banking culture (very limited usage of credit cards). I could name a lot of successful US startups that simply wouldn't work in Russia for those reasons.

Second is corruption, of course. I can imagine it's slightly simpler for IT business to stay out of it, but only until you're making a certain amount of money. A common saying in Russian business is "Sit quiet and try not to reflect the light".

The problem with all those plans of building something innovative is that government should not initiate them at all. If they ever wanted to make any difference, they would probably be trying to build a healthy environment for businesses. Business does not need any help. What it needs is to eliminate obstructions on its way.
I think they've struck on something that Android has been ignoring: fun. The original iPhone was full of fun, interesting usability tidbits - the momentum-based flicking, the bounce you get when you hit the bottom of a list, the turning of album covers... etc.

How "fun" your UI is directly contributes to discoverability. Android's UI is very dry, and IMHO it makes the UI harder for a novice to pick up and learn. You can inject a lot more features that aren't immediately obvious, and must be learned - but you must make your platform "fun" enough for users to actually bother discovering these things.

Given what I've seen so far, I think MS has realized this also, and I think they're on the right track.
So excited. In twenty years, it'll be interesting to look back and see if this had any effect.
it was submitted to HN too(made the front page)...got an email from pg for it...called me an asshole and said that he was embarrassed that such meanness was posted on HN
Gold and silver used to have value because our currencies were based on it. This prevented governments from printing money to inflate themselves out of debt. That is, a government with a fiat currency can devalue their own currency to also devalue the real value of their debt -- debt which is conveniently denominated in their own currency.

Commodity based currencies prevented this sort of shenanigans because of the non-zero cost of adding to the money supply (the cost of mining gold and silver is much much greater than the cost of adding a few billion dollars to a government accounting ledger).

So it seems to me the value of gold is at least in part tied to the sense that governments will need some part of their money supply to be commodity based, and at least in part to the sense that fiat currencies will eventually fail.

Can someone clearly explain the positive argument for going off the gold standard?
I confirm, Saint-Petersburg is okay, I live here. I think Moscow is actually less safer, because it's bigger and it attracts a lot of different people from unstable Russian republics. It's also waaaay more expensive.
Why do you care what Stack Overflow does?

Ha! Hoist on your own pitard. Don't get me wrong, I tend to think along the same lines as you: who is this DHH and why is he all opinionating everywhere? Why should I care?

But then when what do you and I do? Go opine about it on some forum. Ironic, no?

The way I see it, either you accept the commentariat for what it is (a big, pointless circlejerk) and jump on in, or ignore it and go do productive things in life. No fair bemoaning how lame it all is for others to read.
You confuse StackOverflow (the company with 3 employees and Joel as a founding partner) and StackExchange (a product of Fog Creek based on the SO code). StackExchange's revenue is less important than the revenue from StackOverflow which is currently derived from ads and the careers site.
your point about "small business" versus "startup" is completely devoid of meaning

Small businesses usually aim to stay small businesses; 37signals is not going to grow to 500 employees and become like Salesforce. Startups, whether or not they take funding, aim for larger success and an exit, either a buyout or an IPO (whether it's within 5 years is beside the point). Those differences account for a big difference in management strategy.

An uncharitable summary of your argument: 37signals has been too successful to know what they're talking about.

You've misunderstood me. Since I think that there's a big difference in running a startup vs. running a small business, I don't think it makes sense for DHH to presume to give business advice to startups. Jeff Bezos? Sure, he could give advice; he's had a startup.
Actually, alzheimer's can't be diagnosed premortem. It's only diagnosed by characteristic neural striations during a necropsy. Before death, the only conclusion that one can draw (along those lines) is some kind of dementia, not the particular kind. (citation: Dr. Corballis, GT PSYC 3020 - Biopsychology)
There's an affiliate link in this URL.
Productivity denial of service attack for OCD sufferers.
Money supplies need to be inflatable to keep up with the creation of wealth, which isn't static. While prices rise quickly in response to an abundance of money (booms), they don't fall quickly in response to a lack of it (recessions) and this causes a lack of necessary liquidity that feeds into itself (bank runs) making the recession worse and worse. Prices are sticky, businesses don't like to lower them in accordance with what supply and demand would dictate.

Fiat money was an answer to this, it allows the Fed to inflate the money supply during hard times to keep the money supply liquid enough to keep trade going. Of course, they're supposed to deflate the money supply during boom times to stave off unnecessary inflation and prevent bubbles.
If you're doing the Internet and that is your idea of effective communication then your business needs killing.
Really slick!
It seems ironic that these advertising agencies can't seem to figure out how to get clients. If they were good, couldn't they just advertise for themselves and make clients approach them, without the pitching madness.

Also, the needless use of flash completely disqualifies them.
I am a bit surprised by the comment 'your idea rarely gets the reaction you think it deserves'.

Don't most people find that the most people respond positively to the 'ideas'? I find that actually getting those same people to sign-up or use the services later is more of the challenge.
Same experience here. Maybe they should keep that site up as a demo for how much flash sucks. Whenever anybody suggests using Flash, they could just be pointed at those sites.
I heard about the concept from Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma.
http://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Busin...
The book talks about the buying hierarchy in the context of disruptive innovations. It's highly recommended.
What's more, there's a well-documented problem ("the fastest gun in the West") whereby the first semi-correct answer will quickly rise to the top, drowning out later (but more correct, more thorough) answers.

I haven't noticed this. I know I have personally answered questions months after an answer was accepted, and have gotten plenty of points. In some instances, the "accepted answer" was even changed to mine.

Stack Overflow's problem is that 80% of the answers are from talkative people with no clue, and 100% of the questions are from people who have never heard of Google.
I have had just about enough of My Little Pony.

See this opinion piece from the SJ Mercury News (from yesterday) for a well-formed opinion: http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14385237

But in summation:

- Schwartz will depart with $12.8 million in severance

- The company will pay his health insurance premiums for two years

- Average Sun employees got a maximum of three months of pay

- Average Sun employees got a maximum of two months of health insurance, in some cases less.

In January, Jonathan wrote to Sun employees: "For those that ultimately won't become a part of Oracle, this will be the first step in a new adventure." Then a few days ago he wrote a cute little haiku to announce his termination from OraSun.

The laid off employees' haiku? Mike Cassidy, who wrote this editorial for the Mercury News, says it would go something like this:

State unemployment /

over 12 percent today /

Losing health insurance soon.
I use EasyList, and all these ads are blocked.
I think you underestimate how many perverts there are on the internet.
Climate change affecting Kenya's coffee output
Judging by many of the questions on SO, I'm surprised the people asking them can even manage to use a web browser with the default settings.

If someone ran a malware-ad campaign on SO, I'm sure a significant number of people would be infected.
> An obvious example is civil unrest which is often a good reason not to implement liberal/libertarian policies in many places.

It's only a good reason because there are other good reasons to implement those policies too. Civil unrest would not be a good reason to begin beheading petty criminals, no matter how scared people were of being pick-pocketed. I'll give it to you that it is a matter of degrees, but the amount of fear that would be required to outweigh even the smallest iota of real benefit would have to be enormous. If robot trucks saved just one life per year on average, it would be morally unacceptable to obstruct their implementation even if they induced the same amount of fear as all the fears of planes crashing and terrorist attacks.
i just downloaded a .tar.bz2 version of acrobat reader from http://get.adobe.com/reader/otherversions/ and it includes a common.tar archive that has "Adobe Pi Std", "Courier Std", "Minion Pro", "Myriad Pro" and "Adobe Sans MM" opentype fonts.
Back when I was in university doing my undergrad (only 4 years ago), in the two years that I spent in that particular university - out of all the people that I talked to, only one of them was actively looking to start a company or do something. It was a Russian foreign exchange student in his 1st year. He had already started and succeeded in business back in Mother Russia and was using his hard earned cash to now get an undergrad as an international student.

The Russians are intelligent, smart, and resourceful - they have all the qualities needed for entrepreneurship and it will take very little effort on the part of the Russian government to create an environment to attract them.
The Implausible Conspiracy has got to be one of the all-time top strawman arguments.

Consider: hot dogs are sold in packs of 12, and hot dog buns are sold in packs of 8. When you run out of hot dog buns you have hot dogs left over and buy more buns. When you run out of hot dogs, you have buns left over so you buy more hot dogs.

Somehow the makers of hot dogs and hot dog buns manage to get this done without decoder rings, secret handshakes, ominous chanting, or ritual sacrifice.

(see also http://xkcd.com/140/)
"The fact that other communities haven't moved into their sections en masse is not their fault. It's YOUR (ie. everyone else) FAULT."

The first sentence is fine. The second not so much. "Fault" assumes that moving to SO/contributing etc is unambigously a good thing. I would not be suprised if at least some developers thought their existing communication channels are just fine.

"For example, I tried to get the Grails community to use StackOverFlow when the site first started and their attitude was that they would rather just use the mailing list and sift through Nabble.

http://archive.codehaus.org/lists/org.codehaus.grails.user/m....
"

This sounds like a valid choice to me.

"The problem isn't with StackOverFlow, it's with the other communities refusing to adopt something new."

They may have good reasons to do so. Just because you are enthusiastic about SO doesn't mean everyone has to be.

(Due Disclosure : I don't use SO at all. I once saw an algorithm question on SO I could answer and when I tried, I found out I had to use OpenID to log in. Couldn't be bothered.)
Google’s Walk in the PARC
I think you might be right. Bootstrapping a start up is damn hard and damn stressful. And it takes a long time. As someone mentioned earlier, 37s is a 10 year old company that is now highly profitable, but it took a long time for them to get there and build up the following they have now. There's something to be said for trying to grease the skids on Act II and get there a little quicker than with Act I, especially when you were successful with Act I.
Clay Shirky — Doing work, or Doing Work?
Asking for help from about 10-20 people, unlimited college students
Could be, pedalpete. I find people are generally positive and encouraging, certainly polite. It can be difficult, even a little uncomfortable when face-to-face, to try and visualize another person's idea. People will grasp at tangible analogs as a way to understand a new idea, which can be tough to stomach as an entrepreneur when you clearly see a unique vision. No one is ever as excited about the idea as the entrepreneur... or else something is wrong!
Even the 1st gen iPhone touchscreen was better then the recent Androids & Co. ones
DHH is strongly typed.
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You're doing it wrong!

Way to only compare the iPhone to crappy Android based devices that are known for their horrible touch.

The Nokia n900 has superior touch accuracy and resolution, as well as having a stylus to give even more power. Who needs zooming when you can click on any link?
If you're too weak to put slight pressure on the screen, there's always the Zune HD, which not only has excellent responsiveness, but has a smoother, richer interface.
Much less to inflict that and the costs associated with it on the ones they love.

I've always sided for the ability to choose in this because I really do think there are things worse than death, especially when you're assured there's no recovery before the end.
TL;DR. And it made my browser crash.
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I was under the impression that "Silicon Valleys" aren't planned to happen, but that they just happen. It's a mixture of the people and tech happening. It's a vibe. It's a culture. It's people.

I moved to the Valley a couple years ago there are many developers here who are all enterprising, talented, entrepreneurial, and willing to try and fail. It is something that simply doesn't exist where I'm from (Reno) because most people there are more willing to simply work for whoever will hire them and spend the rest of the time doing whatever they want (usually watching TV or playing videogames).

Moral of the story: you can't really teach or wish for this kind of thing to happen. You have to build a community willing to innovate and try and fail.

Also, those who succeed must get fabulously rich and a lot of prestige and respect.
Usability testing for GoodCrush.com - thank you all so much for participating (don't go to the site before testing!)!
neat article, but why wouldnt i just use facebook instead of reading it?
I would still like to use that interface.
I understand that the article is purely about touch screens...but...

"I exhort all them to get their collective shit together and make something that doesn’t fail miserably when compared to retired hardware."

Nexus One doesn't fail...No...It doesn't. I think the screen overall is much better than the iPhone's. Period. Furthermore, I find almost everything else on the Nexus One is better than almost everything on the iPhone. Meh.

"I laugh at AT&T issues, mock iPhone users for lacking features I have on Android, and so on"

So. We are down a feature. We still win overall..right?...We clearly DO! have our shit together yo' !
Having recently used an N900, I had to laugh at this comment. The screen was awful. The fact that it isn't capacitive makes it feel like sad, old technology.

Maemo is nice, and the built in XMPP support was quite good.

The screen's resolution, however, was amazing.
HTML & Adobe: So, Formal objections retracted?
You said it. Occasionally my team starts to fall back into the old "million emails, cc's and catchup email" pattern when suddenly somebody will say "let's move this to a wave" and suddenly everything becomes very simple and easy to organize.
I have to say, I have grown to dislike these 'logic puzzles'. I have read 'To mock a mockingbird', and examined several of these puzzles and non of them are actually hard (as in: challenging) once you realize: often you just need simple things: double negation and massive case exhaustion (and especially the latter here is just tedious and not interesting). Often, you just need the case exhaustion.
The Ant Problem
Jevons paradox
Can we see the results of the testing too? Would be an interesting feature.
In economics, the Jevons paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.
I guess you are getting a lot of people throwing your old posts back at you, but...

Why not? You say yourself that the 1 in 20 shot at a lot doesn't usually make sense for an entrepreneur with other options. If you prefer a partial cash while betting big with the other piece, why should this mean you don't "believe in the business prospects that they're asking everybody else to invest in?" It doesn't mean this when anyone else does it.
Yes, as I read it. All of the solutions provided depend on it.
The quoted polemic, supposedly written by a Greek banker, doesn't make much sense. It starts off by describing Greeks as some of the world's richest people, then it claims that France and Germany are the problem (because their investment industry was looking for higher returns) and not Greece (which only took the money and misused it), and finally rejects the notion that Greeks will accept austerity because the money was actually stolen by the oligarchy that controls Greek businesses. If Greeks are so wealthy then they must certainly be able to solve the problem by increasing taxes and seriously pursuing evasion while cutting the bloated public sector. The actual fact is that the Greek government and large international banks have basically conspired to steal money from French and German taxpayers, and the average Greek on the street has joined the conspiracy by refusing to accept that the promises made to them by their government in terms of benefits and services were simply a fabrication that had no basis in reality.
did you really just use Stylus and Power in the same sentence? i thought it was 2010
> Who needs zooming when you can click on any link?

Can you click on links overlayed on locations on Google Earth? I'm guessing they're a bit too small before you zoom :)
I'm (also) pro everything. Pro Choice. Pro Abortion. Pro choose your own death. Pro Gay Marriage. Why?

I don't give a fuck what anyone else does.

If I have to, I will die while living off of a tube because my religion doesn't allow me to commit suicide. I also won't tattoo myself for the same reason. (I do choose not to follow some laws, yet I follow others)

Just because I personally believe anyone who commits suicide is going to hell (Note: I don't actually believe that previous statement), doesn't mean I'm going to stop him or her. Not my place.

=]
She probably is, she's just an intern.
I kinda' prefer the golden ratio, myself.
NSFW: http://www.reddit.com/r/nsfw/comments/9v6zt/curvy_in_all_the...
I have comments which seemed outside the scope of the 5 second test, so (to avoid biasing anyone reading this) I'm going to put them somewhere you can read off of HN: http://www.pastie.org/826710
BBC tells news staff to embrace social media
But why would that correlate with "negativity" across a subsection of people?