skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is going to probably become a branding nightmare for Google.

I know many of the Android phones have "with Google" printed somewhere on the casing (on my Eris it's on the battery door), and the Android brand has been fairly well associated with the concept of "Google Phone".

AT&T is presumably free to switch the services out as they wish - but I have to wonder if their replacement apps will provide a user experience that is at all tolerable. If things break, don't work as expected, etc. the assumption from the average user is going to be that Google is broken. They don't know or care that AT&T has replaced their services with Bing/Yahoo/etc.

On top of which, users who hear the Android name may expect certain things such as Google Voice, support for GMail, Google Calendar, etc. and be mighty upset when they aren't there.
There was a site here on HN that was basically about what books you were reading and finding books your friends were reading. What was that site?
1. The capital of the US has changed twice, from New York to Philadelphia to Washington. It could well have changed to St. Louis in the 1870s. Admittedly the mesofactors seem to have a more continuous change in mind.

2. Surely the height of Mt. Everest is changing, unless the upthrust - erosion of the Himalayas is coordinated with the change in the mean sea level.
You're not in business unless you're selling something. I still think they should have tried to monetize with the fat middle of companies. I had a feature request list a mile long when I used it.

The consumer friend-CRM space is wide open. So is the small organization CRM space (i.e. the vast majority of cotweet users who were never asked to pay a dime for anything powerful)
Web2py from shell without web based admin
You've got a good point! The post under discussion actually contains a slightly modified version of the email I sent to my friend. The original version had a paragraph toward the end that more specifically tried to show her a few ways that programming could be relevant to her daily life - she's got a job that would particularly benefit from some automation in the form of a few self-rolled Ruby scripts.

I've given a variation of this "how to start programming" email to someone else before, and with that person I made the mistake of not pointing out how programming could be relevant to their daily life; I think that email was significantly less useful as a result, so I'm trying to iterate a little bit.
Reminds me also of the themes in pg's 'How Not to Die' essay[1]. There will be deadlines missed, mistakes and blind alleys, but if you can 'not die' for five years then you've probably built a solid company.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/die.html
It has a single cut in it, because the entire thing wouldn't fit in their studio. Slightly disappointing, but entirely understandable.
Email Signature Gone Wild
At that point it seemed obvious to me that he was kidding.
Good point.

I've sent her an email.
I've worked in 1-2 week sprints for ages, and it works really well. As pointed out in the article, 1-2 weeks is a horizon/deadline that you can _feel_. That pressure focuses.

As a humorous side note, the following quote really reminded me of the cadence of http://friedisms.tumblr.com/

"We want to throw work overboard, not our sanity or our sleep. Late nights are a sign of scope failure. Hero mode is a sign of scope failure. You can’t compartmentalize burnout. Yes, we start new iterations every two weeks, but burnout carries over. The scope hammer helps eliminate burnout."
It is a lot of time, but don't forget that to watch TV you basically just need time. To work you need time and attention, and at some point you don't have the energy to give work the attention it needs to get done.
This is hardly surprising for anyone with basic college physics. I also read somewhere else that the filling of the Yangtze river dam in China will speed up the Earth's rotation.

Not quite the same physics, but enough to warrant a link: http://xkcd.com/162/
Thanks Ramit. Did you self / indie-publish or convince a publisher? Assuming the former, what support did you need in the way of editing, layout, printing etc?
Oh boy, a chance to upgrade my ass-sucking skills!

Why, I'm reading Hacker News on ycombinator, of course! And boy, is it ever great!

I shall go far in this world....
There is a branding issue here - technically, there's a distinction between "Android" and "Android with Google"... but what users can tell the difference?

On the other hand, most of my friends and acquaintances don't actually think of "Android" as a brand either - they know the Droid, the Nexus ("Google Phone") or the MyTouch.
good points. For sure, I will implement your suggestions in the coming days. Thanks!
I'm always tempted to pick up Naked Came the Stranger whenever I'm at the bookstore, but I know I'll never read it. THAT book is truly the result of hacking the best seller list.
For many people, time management is really relationship management. I read that on a blog somewhere.

A lot of grown ups, most things we do, we do for other people, in one way or another. So when we pick a thing off of the to do list, we are picking a person to serve.
I think people who invest their own money deserve as much credit as founders, because they're taking personal risk. Institutional VCs, not as much; the worst thing that can happen to them is that it takes 10 years to have a hit and become partner instead of 5, whereas entrepreneurs are out of a job if they fail.
No complaints from anyone yet. but better safe than sorry. Yes the Yahoo APIs are coming soon, but it will be a long time until the other game providers follow...
Regardless of how patent-heavy mobile devices may be, this represents a major change in Apple's policy.

In some discussion thread in the distant past, someone pointed out that Apple has never used its patents offensively. And a quick check through Wikipedia seems to confirm it: The only mention of patents was in cases where Apple had first been sued for violating a competitor's patents.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc._litigation

Up until now -- well into their reign in the mobile device sector -- Apple could claim that they were only amassing patents as a means of defending themselves from other companies with patents. Hence, this preemptive strike is unusual.
Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory
we have a gym at work, so I just go to the gym at work during lunch. Its a really nice perk to have.
Press F1 for Help, pwned.
I started a little blog about trying to learn to code from scratch: http://newbiehacker.wordpress.com/ As that blog post says, it is really difficult finding resources for people who want to learn but really have no programming background whatsoever.
Actually they're not. Bengtson is an architect, and Madsen doesn't have a formal education at all. While they're by no means stupid they aren't geniuses either. But they're dedicated as hell, and that's what makes the difference.
I had the same problem: the place where you click determines whether you go forward or backwards. right edge of the slide = backwards (but not on the 1st slide.)

The only way to go forwards I could figure out is clicking on the right side of the slide.
agreed. Ideally we would have more than one video. And each one would target a specific audience. One thing is sure is that the only way to become good at fantasy sports is to do a lot of research. Both on the provider site and on others sites, blogs... This is obviously very time consuming.
A bit OT, but might I suggest it's Chrome that is buggy? If it works in all the major browsers except Chrome, then might it be Chrome's responsibility to make it work?

My general test is, if it works in 3 of the 5, then it's the other browsers' fault. There are simply too many browsers now and a I wonder sometimes if google did more harm than good by not putting more effort into one of the existing browsers than by releasing a completely new one and increasing the workload on developers.

Are they trying to further innovation or hinder it by creating one more hurdle for web developers to jump? We could make all our sites work in all the browsers, or we could spend time making more sites and bringing more value to the world. I have four browsers installed on my machine, ie, firefox, opera, and safari. I test sites in all of those. Making it work in a 5th means it might break in the other 4 and that's just ridiculous.

At some point, you have to say it's "good enough".
There's some truth to this, but it's probably overstated. Almost all of the smart people on Wall Street are quants and, except in large-scale layoffs, they aren't likely to be let go.

Also, the deciding factor regarding whether New York can become an innovation/startup hub will be if the rents come down fast enough. So far, signals are mixed but more negative.
He doesn't seem to motivate his post, but I think reading (more) (books) should not be a goal in itself...
Then you should judge and upvote his post. Please do not tell people how to vote -- that itself is judging. Users are given the ability to upvote or downvote and the community should see that through. Its always interesting to me how many people jump in and try to establish rules on upvoting and downvoting. I'm sorry but every member of this community should upvote and downvote as they please.
Don't be mad at Apple, be mad at the patent office . . .
A lot of discussion on HN in the last few days has made it seem like Apple is in the wrong for trying to defend their patents.

This, however, is exactly what patents are for.

Take a look at this list of items that they are attempting to defend:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-20-patents-apple-hopes-will-crush-its-smartphone-competition-2010-3

Everything in there is an important innovation, for which Apple has enjoyed a lead time but the purpose of a patent is that no other company may use the innovation without permission and/or licensing fees.

All that said, I am suprised that there is so much negativity towards Apple, even from PG, rather than at the patent office which we all know ain't working . . .

Every large-cap business is respinsible to their shareholders to defend their IP - Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Amazon, etc, etc all employee mills full of attorneys to manage and defend their patents, why should Apple be held to a different standard?
We actually run all those calculations "offline" basically we are trading disk space for speed.
Was hoping you'd tell us!

Obviously its a video chat program... question is exactly what good is it? Would love to hear your ideas. :)
The speaker argues that your memory of an event is based largely on the end of the event itself (such as the pain at the very end of a colonoscopy). Hilariously, the end of the speech itself ends strong but then there's a crappy question-and-answer session at the end that sort of ruins it. Or my memory of it, at least!
Acne: A Basic Understanding
Both good points.

> First, what is the problem you are trying to solve? Second, what do you think are/will be the key components of your approach?

Before Forrst existed, I didn't really enjoy sharing design- or development-related things on Twitter or Tumblr -- it felt like sharing these things into a black hole. I wanted somewhere that felt more close-knit, and where interesting discussion could be had around those things. For me, Forrst is that place (and I'm hoping others will agree). I don't think you necessarily need to be a designer-developer combo; designers with an interest in development (who may or may not write code, too), and developers who appreciate (or create) design, both could potentially find a good fit on Forrst.

One of the biggest goals I have for Forrst is to help people connect and engage with like-minded peers.

Am I far off in inferring you see Forrst as a place where you could potentially meet a designer or developer to collaborate with? I think this may be a very interesting -- and plausible -- side effect of having a very focused community.

> Forrst seems to be trying to make a forum/community for designers, developers, and designers/developers, but I wonder if designers really want to learn about Common Lisp web frameworks, or whether developers are really interested in design problems. I also wonder whether trading links, code snippets, and images can produce the same kind of trust as that produced by working side-by-side on an actual project. That said, this may not be the goal.

Agreed, not 100% of the content posted on Forrst will be relevant to 100% of its users. There are some things in the works that should help to address the filtering problem -- being able to find things that are highly relevant to you is something I hope Forrst help with. Like I mentioned before, I think that even if you're not 100% hybrid dev-designer, anyone with an interest or appreciation for the other side would be at home on Forrst.

Feel free to email me at kyle AT forrst.com (or reply here) if there's anything I can clarify for you.

-Kyle
I guess people feel like he doesn't deserve credit.
MongoDB 1.3.3 (just released) has basic support for geospatial indexes
all the from..to predicates can take a prefix in from. (i.e., LIKE foo%, but not LIKE %foo%).

('to' is optional, and technically, so is 'from'.)
I have a friend who likes to share his "Daughter with a Barbie" story. However, we need a little back story first. A professor at McGill University, he's an avid role player and war gamer, amongst other things. He raised his children on that, and they had a grand old time. They have pictures, and all sorts of things around the house from growing up playing D&D with dad. The daughter is still very much into gaming, and is apart of our regular gaming group (along with her dad). And she is still in high school.

So, onto the story.

Apparently, one day at McDonalds, she ordered a happy meal. She was rather young, when McDonald happy meals with toys were awesome and fun. Anyways, being who she was, she would normally pick the cards, or the other "Boy" toys. However, this time, she asked to get the Barbie. Her father was shocked, because this was unusual for her, but she got the Barbie. Anyways, they went home, and she ran to her room with the Barbie. After some time, she came out, and proudly displayed her barbie to her father. The barbie had been changed, shortened hair, different clothes and other assorted accessories. She explaimed proudly:

"Look dad! It's Lt. Ripley!"

I can only hope my kids and I have that kind of relationship when they grow up.
good discussion to have... Actually when we started Pickemfirst, we used Google accounts for authentication. This became a problem because we needed specific settings on our cookies so that they are available to third party sites. Plus people complained it was too difficult to create a Google Account. Might be different with FB connect though...
AppsXL
University Newspaper on iPAD
World's largest solar-powered boat unveiled in Germany
You could turn it into a salute or blessing like, "May your delusions be benign and your compulsions have utility"
(Uh oh...I just realized the threading on these back-and-forth conversations may become a little crazy.)

Anyway, here's the deal.

You have clearly thought a LOT about this and have all the elements in place. I'll just suggest a few different ways of thinking about what you wrote above.

1. Publishers don't care about your posting rhythm or how many Twitter clickthrough rates. In fact, many don't even care about your book topic.

They care about your platform and how well other books in this vein have done.

I noticed that you yourself indicated that there are few books on failure, while many books on success. Why do you think that is? What would make your book different?

2. A series of musings is usually a very bad book. Who is the market? Do you already have a presence there? For example, publishers started approaching me once they noticed that iwillteachyoutoberich.com was popping up in the personal-finance space.

3. On a tactical note, typically authors find an agent, who then finds the publishers. If you really want to publish a book, go find agents who have written books similar to yours and send them a pitch letter.

4. Also on a tactical note, driving 20k uniques in 2 months is very good. However, from looking at your site, you haven't captured those people. In other words, they came once and left, never to return. Think carefully about how to capture these people so you can continue sending them material that they want, love, and expect.

I can get into outbound marketing if people care, but suffice it to say that many, many startups overvalue social media and ignore channels that actually convert. Hint: Twitter. (Test it and see for yourself.)

4. MOST IMPORTANT. What is your goal? You indicated you don't care about the ego boost of being an author. So carefully consider whether a book is really what you want to do. There are many, many other channels (ebook, blog, etc) that don't require the back-breaking work of writing a book. Mine took 2 years to complete. A book is specifically useful for building your brand and spreading your ideas. But in most cases, there are other channels that work better.

(Incidentally, we should come up with a name for areas where people who work tell others NOT to do it. Examples: Authors, musicians, lawyers...)

Hope that helps. Let me know if you have other questions.
I went through New York publishers for my first (Portfolio/Penguin) and second book (Workman Publishing).

A while back, Tim Ferriss and I did a video covering lots of stuff on writing/marketing/entrepreneurship.

Specific clip about self-publishing vs. a NY publisher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffYVm5g6oSk

Full 88-minute video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JesBi91m39E
3 Classic and Timeless Wedding Wordpress Themes
it took honda 606 takes to do the "cog" advertisement.. hope they did it in less
This is a great reminder, if you are impulsive, and want to achieve goals quickly. There is another type of developer however: the "perfectionist". Some people, who claim to be "perfectionists" tend to miss deadlines, because the product is not good enough yet. "Perfectionists" (as myself) need another reminder: Don't work on something for too long. It might take 5 years to get it right, but try keeping those deadlines. Release things, even when they are not perfect (whatever that means). [moral: being a perfectionist is just another way of procrastination]
Let me just answer that with one link:
http://www.billbuxton.com/multitouchOverview.html

Questions?

Tbh, i hope apple gets sued to hell by companies whose patents they use. Their is a huge mountain of patents at companies like Nokia & Palm :)
The roundtrip thing is an edge-case that doesn't really justify inflicting the non-deterministic pain on everyone. Python 3 and Java have taken the 'one true internal encoding' path and while hardly free of warts, it's an approach that is practically saner. The alternative is making some people's hell everyone's hell, forever.
Your Reality is Out of Date: Introducing the Mesofact
I just read the whole thing in Chrome. What doesn't work for you?
I love this presentation! It has a strong point and doesn't fail to entertain. The best slide is #17.

You should be able to be a fashionable construction worker, a cross-dressing politician, a preppy tattoo artist, or a sex-crazy golfer

Instant classic.
Considering that a number of analysts point out that the involved people appeared aware of, but not concerned by, the security cameras, it seems unlikely that any exposure was unexpected.

I think that's the key question. From what I've heard, the assumption is that they never expected the Dubai authorities to connect up all the videos. After all, the hit was staged to look like a natural death.

Remember the goal isn't just to kill the guy. It's to kill him preferably by making it look like a natural death and definitely by not getting your face on the nightly news. Ideally nobody ever suspects anything so nobody goes back and pieces together the video.
That was great - well worth 30 minutes. He seems to take so much more of a 'scientific' approach to his work and general thinking than I do - I am now sitting here thinking about my own thought processes and the ways I analyze problems. (I rely probably too much on previous experience, rather than new analysis.)

I also liked his question to the Reddit community re: does up/down voting produce a system that gives us what we want.
"I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it."

-Sherlock Holmes, A Study In Scarlet
I know, I was doing it more to point out how sensationally stupid claiming the average American consumes 3800 calories is. The average American male weighs 190+lbs (IIRC) up 30lbs on 50 years.

My problem with calorific calculations, and even bodyweight averages in themselves is that they're so bogus. Post-war diets are vastly different than our current diets. The factors that effect body weight are also vastly different, I'm sorry but we've got thousands of medicines that weren't available 50 years ago, and one of the major contributing factors to weight loss is disease.

Americas weight problem isn't going to be resolved by figures and statistics, and it's certainly going to be hurt by poor statistics like those provided in the study in question.

How can a 190lb average American Joe consume 3800 calories working an Average sedentary job not be gaining a pound of body fat per week? The figures are ludicrously disjointed.

I understand that everybody is different, believe me I work in construction, I likely eat a thousand calories more than I'm recommended and I'm presently losing weight. My BMI says I'm going to drop dead, my vitals tell a different story. My heart is a near-perfect metronome when at rest (literally ~60 bpm), my body fat on my limbs is exceptionally low (especially my legs due to lots of moving heavy weights).

When I'm told I'm obese because of some voodoo astrology bodyweight index by a doctor who's showing all the signs of high blood pressure and could stand to lose a good 10 index points himself, I don't listen and in 20 years down the line I still won't be listening to the new doctor who's taken over the dead guys office because he'll be well on his way to rosy red cheeks and shortness of breath from picking up a tongue depressor.

Governments are paying for these studies that are providing sheer utter crap and they're trying to resolve weight issues by indirect action and instructing their overweight medical professionals to tell their patients to lose weight.

Here's my very simple solution: Vehicle free down towns nationwide. Not only will it be phenomenal for the environment (air quality, noise pollution, etc.) and provide a boon for public transit infrastructures, but it will also mean everyone is forced to get at least some exercise in during a work day.
> I'd like to hear opinions from people who don't speak English.

I'm sure people who don't speak English will read that and answer you straight away ;)