skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
When I first saw the headline, I assumed it was going to be about the CDO packing problem discussed at http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/helping-wall-street... . The basic idea is that if you're buying a Collateralized Debt Obligation, you can't tell whether the people structuring the deal have intentionally given you an unfair share of bad loans, even when you know a lot about each of the loans in particular.

There's also a fairly trivial argument for the incomputability of the EMH: for each Turing machine, issue bonds that compound interest in perpetuity and pay it off if the Turing machine halts. Since the value of the bond is positive if the Turing machine halts and zero if it doesn't, in an efficient market investors will price the bonds in a way that solves the halting problem.
An excellent point. You are correct.
Good question. Since the Government bailed out the banks that were too big to fail they have midwifed the merger of a couple of those banks so the banks that were too big to fail are now even bigger.
classic twain.. way ahead of his time..Its a pity we still interpret the statistical significance of events by their interestingness and not by the frequency and end result. Shark attacks get way more coverage in media than Deer accidents even though a deer is 300 times more likely to kill you than a shark (http://www.dalecarnegiecoaching.com/2009/06/which-do-you-fea...).
Bug Trackers also play an important prioritisation role - a central location to decide what work is most important right now.

If we wrote only unit tests, pretty soon someone would hack up a system to take the names of the tests, and put them in a list. It would be called testzilla.
Very good article. I'm definitely rethinking some of the admin tools I'm developing for a community website I'm working on.

Admins being able to login as any user (viewing only) doesn't look so good any more.
John Tierney: Salt Good or Bad? Nobody Knows (Yet)
When i read the title i wondered if this was HN material.
This quote makes it worthy i guess :)
If you're not listed on all the 'free stuff' sites, you should definitely get on them all.

Easy enough to get listed for free, and it's a good, non tech, ready to buy(ironically) audience with an middle age female bias.

Things that do fantastically well which may be similar - "Get free business cards, just pay shipping" etc

(I own a small UK based free stuff site)
When did 4chan become the Batman of the Internet?
It's this sort of crap that gets economics a bad name. Real-world markets are rarely (if ever) maximally efficient, regardless of whether P=NP or not, for all sorts of reasons to do with human psychology, friction, etc.
Squeryl: Scala DSL for SQL databases
From the AGPL:

"Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, you have permission to link or combine any covered work with a work licensed under version 3 of the GNU General Public License into a single combined work, and to convey the resulting work. The terms of this License will continue to apply to the part which is the covered work, but the work with which it is combined will remain governed by version 3 of the GNU General Public License."

So, if you write a wrapper licensed as gplv3 (say, a set of Clojure bindings), distribute the source for that and for neo4j, and load the wrapper (a gplv3 licensed work) into your program, the network interaction cluse of the agpl should not trigger, no?

Disclaimer: IANAL
The debt that MBAs leave school with, and the peer push towards making it big (the finance crowd) create guys are just too singularly focused on the financial aspects of a situation, whereas many developers are happy to simply be working on a cool or interesting problem. Personalities can also be totally in conflict as the author mentions (I certainly wouldn't want to spend considerable time with the MBAs he describes), which can be a pretty terrible recipe for a startup "team."

I wonder if the higher ranked entrepreneurial MBA programs are better at producing more palatable characters for startups.
Five Pervasive Myths About Older Software Developers
A midday nap markedly boosts the brain's learning capacity
Web Certification Fail: Bad Assumptions Lead to Bad Technology
I felt the same way.

Basically, first you'll notice the lenses are colored yellowish. They make everything feel a bit "warmer." I know that's extremely subjective, but I can't explain it any other way. I suppose one could argue the same thing could be accomplished by tweaking your graphics card settings or monitor, but this just automatically makes things feel nicer. Also, it's not so extreme that everything looks yellowy, it's very subtle.

But the main thing is that it has a different focal length. What I was able to gather is the following. Most reading glasses have a focal length that you'd have for reading. (~12-18 inches or so) These have a focal length which is 2-3 feet which is the viewing distance for staring at a computer screen. I'm pretty sure this is the main thing that helps eliminate the eye strain that I used to experience.
Somehow Mint convinced a million people to give them their bank logins. It probably just takes time, credibility, and a really attractive service. Though, hackers might never be your audience.
Targeting Mobile Audio: "One of the most powerful forms of mobile advertising"
The content (search results) mimic too closely the ad results.

Using whitespace to separate them (or a thin blue line, like the google sidebar ads) may help. Icons would brighten the design too.

It's difficult to scan the list and look at prices because they are not aligned.

I would suggest and icon in a column on the left, with the stars (rating) and price below it, then the name, description, and links on the right.
Apache was king (and still has the largest install base), but nginx is probably the best webserver you can use right now.

http://wiki.nginx.org
> I don't buy that they are as efficient as actually possible.

It doesn't much matter if they aren't without something that is more efficient.

Consider the following line of "reasoning".

(1) "X is a problem and we must do something."
(2) "Y is something."
(3) "Therefore we must do Y."

The "fact" that markets are not as efficient as possible does not imply that we should use something else instead. We should only use something that is actually better.
Women, Men, And Other Things Done Wrong By Silicon Valley
Doesn't this only prove that there cannot be an efficient market for these special "Turing machine" bonds?
I use nginx because it consumes a fraction of the resources that Apache does (even when doing nothing but serve static files).
A checklist for improving the writing style of technical blog posts
Seems so simple. Why isn't this used more?
Quickly separating programmers from non-programmers
It's great to know that the he's given up on patents but for once I'd like one of these guys to propose a workable way to actually get rid of them.

I myself have no clue how you could go about it. But saying they have to go without proposing a way to get rid of them doesn't actually help the issue very much.
I prefer the apostrophe-free version myself, but for what it's worth, apostrophes for plural acronyms seem to be fairly accepted. Here's an example from an nytimes blog: http://www.nytimes.com/adx/bin/adx_click.html?type=goto&...

Grammar public defense attorney out :-)
YouTube does have a download option for specific channels (e.g The White House http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P21yLeBFKHY). My guess is that we will also see paid-downloads through Amazon (or equivalent) for things like music videos. But I can't see YouTube offering the download option for dog-on-a-skateboard vids.
And in the UK the Nokia Ringtone... although not addictive highly annoying and ubiquitous.
OT but it's funny that I entered microsoft's website and I see an advertisement for a "security essentials" product. Shouldn't be the OS include those by default?
I owe my lack of wrist problems to playing piano. I learned to keep my wrists straight and NOT rest on the desk or the keyboard. And I second the comments about getting an external keyboard for that reason - laptop keyboards pretty much force you to bend your wrist downward to rest on the laptop. I also have my chair set to a height where I can rest my forearms on the desk but keep my wrists floating. I've never had a problem with pain.
I appreciate the detailed post, but there was no need -- "/s" is often used to connote sarcasm, in written text. Recently, American politics has some groups label any regulation or public service as "socialism"; eg, "the FDA is socialism!". The parent post struck me as fitting this pattern, since it claims that regulations to prevent widespread market collapse are socialism.

Since you seem to be knowledgeable about it, I'd like to ask a question. I've usually heard "communism" used to describe State-owned industry, whereas "socialism" is worker-owned. For example, profit-sharing, privately-owned co-ops, or credit unions would be socialism, under this definition, and North Korea would be communist but certainly not socialist. Is this definition outmoded or incorrect? I'd like to have a more accurate vocabulary for discussing these sort of things.
Excellent feedback! Thank you so much.
Future of Web Apps Miami 2010 live feed
I wonder what the founding Apache members are up to now?
...and how do you ensure that the unit tests are correct? Another layer of automated tests? Accept you will make mistakes, but code in a way that makes finding and fixing them easy.

The first way is to make the test logic self-evident so its easy to audit. Another approach is to use something like Ruby's Heckle tool which mutates code. If the code can be modified and the tests still pass, then the tests are incomplete or incorrect. Perhaps other languages/platforms have something similar.

...I'd like to see the unit test that checks things look ok Internet Explorer

While testing aesthetics is pretty much impossible, Selenium can test the functionality in multiple browsers.

or that the system generally does what the client pays for...

If you haven't reduced the client's requests to a useable specification you can write tests from, then that's your fault. Computers can't do your job for you.
I think a lot of people could do better by looking at the range of customers for their product, a-priori deciding that some segment of that range should pay money and that the other segments can be used for harvesting attention (or links, or what have you), and then crafting their pricing chart to match.

One teacher responding to my customer survey recently wrote the comment "15 cards is too few for a teacher to use the free plan. It should really be 25 to be appropriate for a classroom." Indeed, it is almost like I planned it that way...

This will probably have better results than the typical "Plan A gets you 5 units of goodness, Plan B gets you 10, Plan C gets you twenty!", especially as customers from all of the plans tend to waaaay underuse their allocations anyhow. (Related thought: your plan names and the story they tell are probably as important as the numbers under them, if not more so.)
The adverts aren't in the video, they're on Youtube.
Twain tweaks his wording to make a point. Of course you are more likely to die in bed then on a train, but dying on the train isn't the issue. Dying under the train is.
GPU accelerated computation (like CUDA/OpenCL) within the browser, using WebGL
Countering "myths" with your own generalizations seems like a bad idea. The part at the end - "Young is not necessarily bad. Old is not necessarily good." is probably the best takeaway.
"In the marketplace of ideas, the currency is page views"
This post is a lot of fun, but with a very good point. I particularly like the end of the story where she says You're getting restaurant gift cards and socks
Is buying ads on Facebook targeting teachers too expensive? I use the FB ad-buying tool to do a lot of market research (it gives numbers of target audience), but have yet to pull the trigger on actually buying the ads.
One of my advisors told me that the difference between the MIT style and the Stanford style of startups is:

* MIT style is cover your test sheet so no one copies you.

* Stanford style is go out with your competition and share information so you are both stronger.
This sort of thread would be remiss to not include the quote popularized by Twain about there being three types of falsehoods: "Lies, damn lies, and statistics"

Amusingly enough, it's got its own Wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statisti...
The function you want to provide is quite simple, implementing an "app for x" search engine, so i guess you should focus on that and try to provide something really user friendly.
I suggest a few things:

-Improve graphics a lot: Nice theme, Icons, highlighted prices and why not a small preview screenshot directly in the search results so that i don't need to open all the app singularly?

-Reduce results. If i'm searching an app and you simply return all the google market results why shouldn't i use the market directly?

You should calculate your own results based on vote/downloads/manual_pick and maybe highlight new apps(that may be worthwhile but have still not enough votes/downloads).

- Make it easy to download, QR-Code easily accessible.
Apple App store's dirty little secret - why some iPhone apps succeed?
You'll need to give me another example. Year to year returns after fees from a mutual fund vs. S&P500 is too trivial as long as there are no tax implications (and you can get the latter from your CPA if it isn't a retirement investment).

We're not talking complicated statistics where everything starting with the assumptions must be suspected, we're talking N% return in X year.
Alibris to acquire Amazon partner Monsoon Works.
I've often thought about this. In the US, addresses are traditionally written in the format:

[City], [State] [Zip]

The state (and often even the city; there are free datasets for this though they're not perfectly reliable and more expensive) can be inferred from the zipcode, so it seems logical that we ought to prompt first for the zip and then help users along by filling the state on their behalf. I suspect his is not done because people are so used to the City -> State -> Zip pattern, asking them to fill the zip first just breaks their expected flow; a "surprise" that makes them think.

I used to work on a case management system for legal aid attorneys that did these lookups and we had to explicitly train them to enter the zip code first (changing field order or tab order didn't help) -- otherwise, they'd never have used it; and some of them still refused to use it, but those who did appreciated the time savings.
However, for the hiring age most start-ups are considering, there are more men than women, not taking into account education or other factors (Between 1990 and 2000, the male population grew slightly faster than the female population).

Women are only the majority of the population (in the US) because they live longer.

Immigrants with tech backgrounds tend to be mostly males, too (and probably immigrants period).

(some data taken from http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/a_gender.html . More data I didn't look into here: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/women02.html )
Square peg, REST hole
Microsoft are worried about being hit by antitrust action by regulators for abuse of their monopoly, so they offer many applications would otherwise bundle as a free download.
Thanks for remind me.... for the Aolserver
I don't like glasses with anti-reflective coating , they get dusty so easily! So I think the reason why they might reduce eye strain is because every 30 min you want to take them off and clean them :) here is your needed pause for your eyes
I'm a bit skeptical of the "science" they used to carry out this test.

For one thing, I can't believe the left off the NBC chime. This seems much more recognizable to the average joe than any other branded sounds they claim are the most addictive.

I am a bit annoyed at how many journalists use such ridiculous hyperbole in naming their articles.

"The 10 Most Addictive Sounds in the World"

Most of their top 10 belong to American brands, etc. I doubt this study truly applies to the entire WORLD. And I'd like to think that the company who did the study did not have such ridiculous claims. (though with names like Buyology Inc. and Elias Arts, I am a bit more skeptical about their ability to carry out an unbiased scientific experiment)

The problem is that journalists have no external check on them. They can give such ridiculous inflated claims with no repercussions. Almost every other field has some kind of consequence for making wildly ridiculous claims using absolutes and things that aren't true.
You need to go further:

Jealousy is where you're thinking of what the other has and you want it.

Envy is the same except you know you can't get it.

Since envy gives no one a (material) benefit, whereas greed gives one or both sides benefits, yep, it's absolutely the worst. Of the 7 deadly sins, envy is the only one without any direct reward.
Living in the UK what I appreciate most of all is the amount of information now available on food packaging. You can give me all the advice in the world, but without that information on the pack it means very little.

The recommended daily limit for salt is 6 grams as far as I know. It's quite difficult to stay within that limit if you eat what is seen as a healthy diet. Breakfast cereals can have a surprisingly high salt content. Two slices of bread instantly take a gram of salt out of your allowance. Like soup? Most cans contain 2-3 grams of salt. Packaged meals can be packed full of salt, especially curry.

The only way to be healthy is a balanced and varied diet in my opinion. Keep your saturated fat levels down (> 20g a day), eat fruit and veg regularly, and at least keep an eye on your salt. And of course, combine it with some regular exercise.
It wasn't named "a patchy server" for nothing.
Guys... www.softflex.com is a life saver. No fancy keyboards just pads that you wear like gloves to cushion your wrist.
I have the HD only programming from Dish Network. Even though I get CNBC and MSNBC, that doesn't count in NBC's eyes, so I can't watch live coverage.
Thank you for those suggestions.

Along those lines: I'm implementing a "Staff Pick" feature triggered by keywords (Pandora is suggested when "music" is searched for).

Reducing results is an interesting idea. Based on my initial feedback from users, they seem to be happier the more results I show them. In fact they judge the quality of the search engine by how many pages of results it shows for a given query. Perhaps it's a presentation issue and I can try striking a balance somewhat.
Google pack: various software downloads in just one click
Sorry, I obviously wasn't clear enough. What I meant was: Capitalism is a system to manage resources. Since it seems to end up with an extremely short term focus when it isn't tightly controlled, I wonder if there aren't possible alternative systems that would do a better job. We can't know if we never try.
Upvoted for pure awesomeness. Coming from a struggling background my mom was a hoarder and I struggle with getting rid of stuff all the time which bugs the hell out of my wife who is a neat freak and likes to have her homespace look like a magazine/catalog home shoot.
I'm probably out of touch with what is stylish when it comes to packaging, but in general I could probably care less what my part comes in as long as it works as advertised. Another thing is that the system requirements and other additions to the packaging is generally helpful for people. I remember my mother bought me a printer as a present and didn't know that it came without the cable.Luckily I had a spare in my basement but it still stands that people who don't really research their products or just normal people in general benefit from all the information plastered on the packaging.
As an Online Marketing Account Manager for an agency, I'm constantly explaining to clients why building the site for his new shiny widget at shinywidgetworldonline.net instead of ponying up the cash for shinywidget.com is a terrible idea.

We do a lot of branding and brand-shepherding and it always amazes me how little people care about things like names and logos. They'll budget <$500 for something that's going to be the first thing every single one of their customers associates with their business.

Obviously, if a company has a monopoly (Craigslist) or some other truly unreproducible competitive advantage, than these sort of blunders can be nullified. But I've never worked with one in the 5 years I've been doing this; I've worked with plenty who thought they did.
I kid you not: selling software is a TOS violation.
Ask HN: Showing off customer feedback useful to you? (new from YC 07)
Actually, I would contend that the pre-forking architecture WAS the correct architecture for first 10 years.

Remember how much PHP crashes?
Hey guys, we've been working with London's agencies for the last few months to develop Habit Stream, which help find the nice things people are saying about your business and then re-broadcast the best bits (customer tweets, press coverage, Amazon reviews, etc) through more scalable channels (like widgets & ads).

We've been getting a strong response from the agency side, but we're just starting to learn how we can best help startups, blogs, and small businesses. Basically, we think everyone should be able to benefit from the unsolicited testimonials that are popping up all over the web.

So, we would really love to hear your thoughts. It's all self-serve and there's a free trial. Thanks!

PS. You may have previously seen us as Minivid and/or Fuzzwich. Stream is a totally different approach to solving the same problem of making social advertising easier & more effective.
Please steal this model. And even if you don't go the 'dead tree inventory route' consider selfpublishing via Lulu.com or the like once you've got a blog/website with a solid userbase (OnStartups, I'm looking at you).
What's the rationale behind doing this ? GPGPU stuff is used for the most part in pipelines of float intensive calculations, javascript is mostly used to implement user interface functionality in interactive websites, I can see that it is 'interesting' in an academic sort of way, just like the javascript based key parallel key breaker was interesting but I can't see anybody that is looking at production taking this as their preferred route to a solution.

Am I missing something ? Is there an application that would benefit from this (seti at home is mentioned, but that is wired in tightly with using idle cycles, information not generally available to the browser anyway, and it would be at considerable overhead compared to the C/C++ approach).
Flower delivery
Arena Flowers deliver flower arrangements nationally in the UK and London. Send flowers with Arena if you want superb flowers delivered at great prices.
There is a lot of lively discussion going on last couple of days on HN about diversity, and I very much like Patrick's take on the whole issue, putting it into perspective.

I was a contractor at a large company that prided itself on diversity, and from what I could see, the were successful in their hiring and promotion. What they were not successful in is accepting or promoting diversity of thought. Once you were in the door, you needed to get on board with their way of thinking.
Full Disclojure: Building an equation solver in Clojure
The Business of Climate Change Conference 2009
How Do I Copy Thee? Let Me Count the Ways ...
"If you are free market, the government can do no good."

Absolutely false, and I bet you can't name one scholar from Hoover who agrees with you.
by pure happenstance, a co-worker linked me today to mark's how to install windows in 5 hours (http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/08/04/xp). i hadn't read his blog before, and he's got an entertaining style
It wasn't obvious, you forgot the sarcasm emoticon.

(Incidentally, did you know "sarcasm" comes from the Latin sarcasmos, which means "to tear flesh"? Me neither!)