skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Well, in the case of the US the voter has consistently and demonstrably voted against their own interests for a while now. How else would you explain e.g. the flood of money from the middle classes to the rich since at least Reagan, the corporatism (as opposed to just "capitalism") we now toil under, etc.

I often hear lower middle class people suggesting it is more important for the mega corporate monopoly they work for to get big tax breaks, etc., than for they themselves! I think these people always want breaks for the rich because they envision being rich some day themselves. Ironically the very policies they are in favor of appear to actually be preventing them from prosperity.
It's trivially true that being an expert and being successful are different things. Being successful generally means being a key part of a value chain that comes together at a certain time/place in society. Some experts do this. Some non-experts do this. Some non-experts become experts in the course of doing this. So what? A lot of people naturally put in 10,000+ hours doing the things they love the most anyway, and I'd bet they like being successful experts. This looks suspiciously like trying to console yourself, saying "there, there. you done alright in your own way". That's perfectly valid, but doesn't require rejecting other conceptions of what's desirable for personal growth. Certainly not publicly.
I think the intractable evaluation problem is salient for many other fields as well. A machinist might know a particular design can't be built, but may not be able to quantify why. I think it's certainly possible that the universe ends before sufficiently complex problems can be processed by a GA or even adequately defined.

On the other hand, displayed UI could probably be tackled by GAs even if the evaluation function is never codified. Stick a couple hundred no skill workers in front of a screen and you could get a couple hundred thousand evaluations an hour; in effect industrializing design.
"Basically, It's Over" by Charlie Munger
Giving Up On Patents
Superman comic sells for $1 million.
BugMeNot works.
By always framing such issues in this way (is a dolphin similar to us in some ways) we keep maintaining the age-old attitude that we should only care about those who are like us.
If it has the tendency to run away if you try smacking it with a baseball bat, person on not, it is more sensible leaving it alone if possible.
Yup, these are great slides, especially pg 11-14 about memory models.

Weakly consistent memory models contain all sorts of horrors for programmers that think sequentially consistently. Can the following program throw an assertion error?

//Initially, x = y = 0
Processor 1: x = 1;
Processor 2: while (x == 0) {/*do nothing*/}; y = 1;
Processor 3: while (y == 0) {/*do nothing*/}; assert (x == 1);

(On an ARM processor this assertion can legally fire (x can equal 0 for Processor 3); and you can s/Processor/Thread/ and still have this result hold)

Volume 3A of the Intel Architecture Manual is worth a read if you like these type of puzzles (http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/).

For those that want a formal approach then good things are happening in Cambridge:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/weakmemory/
Facebook is doing this already, and gmail can add it in no time. Not a good prospect for ETacts.
FWIW, Pat House is a fantastic speaker. If you ever have the chance to see her speak, go. She was in the trenches during a very exciting and interesting time in the software industry, and besides for being a major player in the industry, she has a lot of interesting stories and insights to share.

Discounting here role as a co-founder would be a mistake.
You'd still have to trust their server with your gmail password
Has someone been able to improve the (spatial or temporal) resolution of fMRI scans using this technique?
Where is facebook doing this? I haven't seen it
Jason, you've always been a total douche. I'm glad the rest of the world is finally catching up.
How I Was Able to Ace Exams Without Studying
Facebook frequently suggests to me people I haven't been in contact with for a while.
Sounds sort of boring.

A great video with a lot of exciting ideas (even if they're articulated somewhat stormily at times). This is definitely a viable advertising platform--one that makes good use of the attractive qualities of capitalism, by inspiring competition and desire for collection within consumers, trading exposure--and (hopefully) real human currency--for fabricated (yet, if implemented correctly, completely desirable) points.

nickpp's point is off the mark. Human currency carries with it an unfortunate (but absolutely and obviously necessary) burden of seriousness. If you spend it foolishly, there's a chance you'll "Game Over"--and (as my mom always used to tell me) there's no reset button in real life, sorry. Implementing a system where individuals apply a certain (limited) extent of value to a new, less dire, capitalistic system, is a win-win for everyone involved.

Blow all of your points on a retinal-based bar-code scanner that barely works? Oh well, at least you can still make rent.
How to be a Persuasive Writer
To be a persuasive writer is one of the hard tricks of writing. Persuasive or Argumentative Essays entail writing facts and reasons in a creative but credible manner that makes people accept or adopt a certain belief, stand, or point of view. Writing a persuasive piece is hard because your purpose for delivering the facts would be to convince your readers that your idea or opinion, which is based on factual evidences, should also be embraced.
> socialist countries such as Germany and Sweden

Whoa, whoa, whoa - Germany is not a socialist country, not even close. They spend their tax revenues less corruptly which is why they have better social services, but the state doesn't own important industries. Actually, the state used to own most of the construction, chemical, automobile, etc industries as a legacy of the WWII era, but they consciously privatized them and those industries thrived. Social services and socialism isn't the same thing.

Sweden is closer to socialism, but still not right. There are real socialist countries in the world - if you wanted to choose some examples, you could pick a handful that run okay, such as Norway where about one-third of industry is state-owned, but you'd also want to look at North Korea which is 100% socialist.

Likewise, to get a balanced not-talking point comparison, you'd look at 2000's United States, but also 1790's to 1990's USA, compare pre WWII-Japan to post WWII-Japan (capitalism), pre-WWII Germany to post-WWII Germany, Hong Kong, Singapore, Deng Xiapong's market reforms in China, and so on.

The most interesting case for capitalism to me is England. Capitalist before WWII, its most socialist post-WWII, ending in the 1980's when Thatcher privatized and sold off most of state-owned industry. The most telling thing to me is what happened to the "council houses" - those are low income housing for the poor. They sold it to the poor for a nominal cost - basically just give it away. Now privately owned, the poor people took much better care of the housing, crime went down, destruction rates went down, etc, etc, etc. Anyway, long story short - if you pick a 10 year period of history, 3 countries you've cherrypicked, sure, you can come to whatever conclusion you want. Free enterprise/private ownership has really soundly outperformed state-owned enterprise in almost every absolute quality of life metric. You'd have to start getting into relative quality of life to make the case for socialism, but the case that, "It'd be better for everyone to be worse off for people to be more similar" is a hard case to make.
I assume that they haven't worked the math. I assume they are doing it that way because they've always done things that way, and that is what everyone expects them to do.

But if they went and looked at economic theory they would find that the expected price of a bundle is always less than the sum of the prices of the individual things that are part of that bundle. So theory says that selling things piecemeal should result in more revenue.

In the case of the Olympics you would do that by selling off sports one by one. If NBC values speed skating and skiing, let them have it. If CBS wants hockey, let them have it. If ESPN is willing to buy biathlon, let them have it. Any sports not purchased wholesale can be negotiated during the Olympics. So if nobody buys bobsleigh but an interesting story there happens, they sell the story just like any other story of interest gets sold.

A lot of paperwork, and a shift in mindset, but they should get more money that way. And interested viewers would get better coverage of a broader range of sports.
Good suggestion, but I'm not in California so no dice for now. Thanks though!
Some e-books and .NET 4.0 beta exams
Old-Style Writing
Nowadays, students are very much dependent on technology to do their tasks—no more computing, no more analyzing. Just simply input the data onto a device and you're done. In fact, some students find it awfully laborious to write down anything without the help of their computers. Most students are used to technology that even their handwriting is slower than their typing speed.
It's a box on the upper right side of the screen, with words such as "Reconnect to" or "Send a message to". All to friends one hasn't contacted in a while.
The fact that he does not have the right to upload them to YouTube!?
Dupe: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144930
SEO for Startups: Top 7 Lessons + A Trip to Y Combinator
Great concept, great execution.

But I would suggest targeting one-or-two local markets - I typed in my city, got invited to be "first", service over for me.

Localizing gives you huge advantages for PR / marketing / user interaction / etc. and you lose very little in the "getting traction" state.
The difficulty here for me lies in finding out where I'm just writing generalized code and where I'm crossing the YAGNI line. Does anyone have any guidelines on deciding where we are overgeneralizing unnecessarily?
So because you can't imagine it, it must not exist? Even though you can't imagine how the standard deviations could differ, the evidence of a difference is extremely strong.

And a 10% higher standard deviation is much less minor than you think if you are looking at an ability cutoff. If you have two populations of equal size with equal medians, one of which has a 10% higher standard deviation, then about 99.5% of the top 1% across both groups belongs to the group with the higher standard deviation. It is that extreme because the standard bell curve has tails that drop off very rapidly, so one curve has pretty much ended while the other curve is still going on.
Do something awesome.
Green Innovation: A Company That Picks Up Your Trash And Pays You For It
How I build a poker bot
No one cares about your website
Many comments and thoughtful discussion from last time this was submitted:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185830
Sin of entrepreneur: being a project manager, not an entrepreneur
How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web
Well, I think there may have been a plausible justification. Not that they could up with one that actually makes this acceptable, but they might be able to come up with one that, while still undesirable, isn't quite as blatant as "this system will inevitably create child porn".

IT people are often put in situations where they have to implement the will of the less-technically-enlightened who sign their paychecks, even when it violates the privacy standards that the IT staff would prefer. For instance, invasive filtering at work that logs all of one's activity by default and attempts to prevent external HTTPS or proxy usage is against the ideals of most who have to implement and maintain such a system, but thousands have to do it every day.

There are many, many alternatives to the malicious "inevitable child porn" point-of-view. Maybe Pibrix thought that "stolen mode" wasn't activated until someone reported it, because someone higher-up than him had set all of the computers to report back anytime they are outside of the school's network. He's just one high school network tech, he's not necessarily the end-all here. We don't know how the rules for "stolen mode" were determined; perhaps they could be updated when students connected to the school's network. Therefore, when normal students complained of spontaneous light-blinking at home, when their laptops weren't even reported stolen, Pibrix could have sincerely believed it was a glitch.

We just don't know, so let's not target potentially-innocent people here, ok?

We should at least let this thing flesh out a bit more before we start with the marking of public enemies, right? This should scare anyone whose employer may potentially incriminate their employees in the employer's shady dealings.

I mean, I don't know, maybe he was guilty, maybe he did push for this system so he could watch the kids in compromising or private positions and get his kicks off of that, maybe he was saving all of the incidental nudes and posting them to 4chan. We don't know, and I'm not saying that the guy did or didn't. I just think it's a little early to incriminate this one guy just because he talked about how the software they use works and how to make it so non-privileged users can't use the webcam.
Google slapped with class-action lawsuit over Buzz
I don't think the issue is the specific price point. $25, $100 there's not much difference.

The hurdle is getting people to pay anything at all. We're all used to consuming internet content freely.

I don't think $25 is much to pay a month for quality interviews, but I don't really want the extra hassle. I don't want another subscription to manage.

I find the Mixergy interviews really really valuable, but hopefully there's another business model there (I'd go with sell DVDs, Books of interviews etc).
for me, the interesting thing about this article now is that it is the latest one on cutts' blog; there is no newer one which talks about mahalo.
Proof by fiction is even worse than proof by anecdote.
Patents are so difficult to go with. Some people know they have the best idea ever, spend the 13k to get a patent, and do good on it.

I'm not that confident that I could spend that much money upfront without a guaranteed return (not to mention I don't have that much money).

Also I read lots about patents that are challenged because someone somewhere else thought of it, and wrote it down 6 months before.
What do mean by this

Have a completely cold chain for its meat supply.

What's a "cold chain"? Does it control the meat from cow to selling it and therefore can control the safety?
all problems where you would have applied machine learning or statistics.

stock picking
computer vision
speech recognition
discerning mathematical models of systems, effectively all of science, using symbolic regression
Want to know a trick to haggling? Decide how much you're willing to pay for something, pull out the money and say "I'm willing to give you this. Otherwise I'm leaving." If they protest, walk away. If the seller can make money at that price, I guarantee you will get called back and you will end up having your purchase at your desired price very quickly.

At least, thus far, it's the most efficient haggling method I've found.
HCM - Tuyển nữ nhân viên bán hàng thời trang
sản xuất hàng thời trang cao cấp với các sản phẩm được làm từ các loại sợi thiên nhiên như lụa tơ tằm, cotton, ...
LeChat Studio hiện cần tuyển nhân viên bán hàng!
There seems to be so many different opionions on this. I think that a single founder is good for some people and not for others.

Some people need some kind of support, or some people can't do programming and sales.

But most of all, not all start-ups are the same... saying "two founders is better than one" is totally subjective to the start-up, surely?
How Random Is Microsoft’s Random Browser Choice Screen In Europe?
Shocking, really? The world will not fall apart if I'm not able to see Robert Scoble's foursquare check-ins any longer.
If you're not using it, you're crossing the YAGNI line.
Thanks for posting that, I was going to ask.

It feels odd that Y Combinator wouldn't fund single startups. If I wanted to apply for funding would I be better taking on a faux-cofounder? Of course I wouldn't do it, i'd just apply as me, but it feels false.
Is there much point in pointing out a dupe if there is no discussion on it?
Link appears to be dead.
Creately looks great, I'm definitely going to try it for some UML goodness.

Am I looking at the wrong signup form? looks small to me
http://creately.com/creately-sign-up
This problem has to be solved by pg, or whoever maintains the code here. It's really too much to expect users to review all posts to see if what they want to submit has been submitted before. It's also too much to expect that there is only one url to the same content.
Rootkits On Smart Mobile Phones [video]
Camel Safari in Rajasthan
Camel Safari through the Great Indian Desert is the right dose for any adventurer who dares
to think beyond veritable ventures. In the vast desolate desert, camel safari is real tests where you
are always on the toes to face the extremes that keeps on inflame your grit and determination.
You can have an option to choose less rigorous path but true fun is to accept the challenges run in the brutal Thar Desert.
And as a bonus it's a problem waiting for someone to solve
An interesting title to pull me into a blog that confused me, was it about design or content. Jason seems to be saying content is the most important factor of a web site, i'd agree, but we live in a world that enjoys sleek and sexy.

I think Jason is wrong, people do care about design, it just depends on what site you are on. I for one definitely care about design of the Twitter pages I set up for people, and one's I look at. I appreciate the time people have put into the look and feel of a web site.
One of the Mozilla guys pointed to a schematic for the new low cost Marvell Armada ARM chipset (the one advertised as bringing a new generation of $100 dollar Android phones) and it had On2 listed in the decoding section.

I can't find the link because twitter search sucks and the Marvell site all seems to consist entirely of Flash and PDFs.
Sigh. Does anyone have a PDF link?
Fundraising management software
Fundraising software (more properly called "donor management software") helps you keep track of your donors and prospective donors and all the information,solutions for nonprofit organizations; Manage fundraising and donor
campaigns,powerful database software.
Note that the rules are different (and probably less broken) elsewhere in the world. However, the US market has a tendency to affect people outside its borders and force the system on others via treaties.

But right now, one option for non-US software startups is to sell only to Europe and counties with sane patent systems.
This is my submission and I looked as much as I could. Not only does YC have no dupe check, there's no search either.
Ah, I interpreted your comment to mean that what ever happens we will be smart enough to solve it. I agree that worrying about things utterly beyond our control is senseless.
I think this is a great idea as well. I'm not sure if the end goal is to have reviews of dishes. If so, I think you need a more structured approach. A Yelp with menu reviews.
But having an efficient market doesn't imply that an algorithm \in P exists for that problem ??
Efficient markets just imply decidability of the problem.
It's not "proof by fiction" but a parable. He and Warren have always traded based on fundamentals, and he's saying the fundamentals got lost along the way. It's a fair point.
Actually, the current efforts with Universal Health Care and general Social Security in developed countries are trying to make sure there is no "Game Over".

And as for boring - I guess it depends on the player. Personally I find video games incredibly unfulfilling. Lots of fun while playing but leaving an empty feeling afterward, of time completely wasted. While real life is AWESOME! Everything I do and create improves my life and that of the people around me.

But again - it depends on the person.
I wouldn't dismiss this piece out of hand. As co-captain of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger's got a pretty good window into the global financial system. Both he and Buffett have a pretty folksy manner, but behind the goofiness is usually some razor-sharp analysis.

To make it more palatable, substitute 'United States' for 'Basicland', and 'investment banks' for 'casinos'. Then it becomes a pretty accurate picture of our current situation.
For happiness points, spend your money on personal improvements and your time on other players.
Amazon pays Microsoft for patent cross-license agreement
The blog post would have been a lot more compelling if it was from someone not out to make money selling his "concepts". I'd be much more interested to read about learning habits from someone with a "real job". For example, how person who accomplished _______ got the skills s/he needed to get to that point.
In many ways this would be similar to how Foursquare rolled out.

Perhaps you can identify scouts in particular cities who have expressed their delight in your service or create a signup page for people to get notified when you arrive in their city.
Posterous (I learned the official way to pronounce it - "pastarus")

Actually, the two founders of Posterous pronounce their startup differently, unless one of them caved recently.
It might depend on your personality - although you can be sure that you can be a good programmer 100% of the time, I know I occasionally make decisions that, in hindsight, are significantly stupid. Currently I can sanity-check things with my co-workers (or at least those of them that can spot signs of my stupidity) - if I were a sole programmer, that resource would not be available, so I'd either spend much more time checking my work, or end up wasting more time doing things the wrong way. Possibly even both.
The first one gives me a bit of pause. It seems awfully close to saying that you should design around SEO--- designing for users sorta, but always with an eye to how you can "leverage" your users for SEO purposes. Doesn't that come close to suggesting you might make decisions that, if they were made without taking SEO into consideration, would be a clear loss for user experience, and are really not what your users want?
It is bad enough with the Google password, but it is even worse with the credentials for my mobile phone (aside from that I don't know them) I simply don't trust anybody with that kind of info.
Can anyone recommend a good online accounting application for small businesses in Europe? Most of the ones that are mentioned here are quite USA centric. Tax requirements in Europe are a bit different, which I guess also presents a problem as they differ from country to country.

I'm trying to find something that works with the Danish tax system (where I currently live), and the only one I have found so far is: http://www.e-conomic.com/, but it seems a bit heavyweight for my needs (small freelancing business.)
More like, pay for the distribution. That's a pretty sweet deal for anyone.
On MBA's
The best link in the whole article is actually this one from the comments: http://sroucheray.org/blog/2009/11/array-sort-should-not-be-... which discusses the javascript array sort.
And we know where the MOTHER SOURCE TEMPLATE resides:

http://basecamphq.com/
it rhymes with preposterous

from: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=855744