skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
It's only FUD when comparing with a similar non-open-source piece of software - i.e. Postgres vs. MSSQL, Apache vs. IIS, OpenOffice vs. MS Office.

A standard shrink-wrapped version of the for-money options doesn't come with any kind of support that the open source versions don't have.

But when comparing e.g. GitHub with Git+Linux+SSH+Nginx+Python+Trac+.... it's completely fair. And that's one of the easy setups.
I'd be more interested if they can make Tk look less crappy, e.g. by emulating the GTK theme.
No, that's not the fundamental cause of hurricanes.

The fundamental cause of hurricanes is the difference between water and air temperatures. If both go up together nothing changes.

The difference is measured from absolute zero, so if both go up 1 degree there is actually even less of a difference than there was before.

Since the water is warm, and the air cold, and every model shows water temperature rise lagging air temperature rise, global warming should cause less hurricanes.

The higher intensity might be because the water would become warmer, and air temperature is not a constant. If a hurricane should happen to form when it's cold out, it'll be somewhat more powerful.
Of course it wasn't really Kevin Costner. It was Ray Kinsella, the character he played in Field of Dreams.

Oddly enough, "Ray Kinsella is full of shit" is a title I would have clicked on sooner, even though I didn't know who he was.
The future of games and reality and weirdness and points and things like that
Reminds me of a speech by Bobby Kennedy:

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.
I agree. In fact, I love this type of advertising. It made me laugh, I enjoyed it, and I even shared it with my friends.

It's a win for me and a win for them.
He was writing poems and showing an aptitude for languages at a very early age -- I wonder why as a child he was pushed into only doing physics rather than a wide variety of studies? We seem to believe that since physics is the most difficult subject to master, that means the most intelligent people have to do physics. That is pretty poor reasoning; I would think people with higher IQs may be better off as polymaths with a wide exposure to arts AND the sciences (and engineering).

Goethe, for example, had a very high IQ and even though he wrote about science, his greatest contribution to humanity was his literature.
There was no science on hurricanes. It wasn't wrong science, it was no science at all.

It was just a guess, and guess by an institution that supposedly is based on science. So they loose some credibility now.
I've put Duck Duck Go as my default search engine in firefox for the time being. Going to see how it works out.
Disclaimer: I haven't read the book OR the article.

It's encouraging that Robin Hanson (who's a former physicist) has called the book excellent: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/01/from-eternity-to-here....

From his description, and from the bits and pieces I've picked up on other blogs, while the book is a popular science book, it's skewed much more to the science side than the popular side.
SocialDevCamp Chicago Event
Meetup this Thursday, March 4th (6-9pm) at OfficePort Chicago to talk social web.
Now Tk can use the GTK engine:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979368
No, it doesn't go as far.

http://journal.dedasys.com/2008/11/24/slicehost-vs-linode

Which is unfortunate, because their pricing isn't that bad if that's not a factor. And they seem like good people with good service.
I think testing / getting feedback on your vision is vitally important. You aren't going to get buy in from all (or any), but it will give you more of a sense about your venture's risk profile. You can then better evaluate if you want / can continue your time and effort investment.

I'm running on a dime and a dream quite often so this exercise is very important. I'd argue that your examples (which are very, very good ones) demonstrate market participants that could take on a much riskier venture than many would be capable of undertaking.

My point is to not blindly push forward (a mistake I have made many a time, and one that I've seen others around me committing as well), but to size up what you are venturing into whenever possible. I'm completely fine with attempting to turn the tides of an industry or make a new one, but I want to know if that is the fight I'm gearing up for ahead of time if possible.

Thank you for your insights!
America's "Coolest" College Startups
A google referrer url gets around it.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Obamas+Nuclear+Power+Breakthr...
Slight rewrite: "'Deniers' use it to point out that yelling 'The science is settled!' is unjustified."

'Tis clever how you manage to insult the "deniers" by beating them with the truth of one of their key points. Maybe you're a "denier" too.
Isn't the problem with this that Reddit does silent domain level blocking after a certain number of spam reports? At least, that's something I recall reading before, but it might not be true of course.
Thx. Please email me your impressions after some time.
My way of doing it was to actually start a business in the domain. Grasshopper invited me to write a little about my story. I hope you find it somewhat helpful: http://bit.ly/bM4mp4

Let me know if you need help with anything.
So the trick is to give people what they need, which is not necessarily what they ask for. That doesn't necessarily defy the article's thesis, since it might be possible to phrase questions artfully enough to diagnose needs vs wants, but that might be tricky and take great effort.

And of course, there really was no reason to disparage the auteur behind Waterworld aside from being linkbait. ;)
We are collecting donations for a n interesting charity at the event. Check out TechGYRLS http://bit.ly/1ty3zI - programs to teach technology skills to teenage girls.
Top 5 Free PC Maintenance Softwares to Fix, Clean and Optimize Your PC
The entire notion of "science" being "settled" is flawed. It's never settled; revisions will happen constantly. We go from a general understanding to increasingly specific understanding, overturning bad assumptions as we go. By arguing that "the science is still ongoing" a denier is making a non-argument.

As a parallel example, consider the ongoing argument about evolution. The science is still ongoing about the specifics of evolution, but the general theory would be incredibly hard to overturn at this point.
Isn't the driver the difference between surface temperatures and stratospheric ones, right? It all goes back to the adiabatic lapse rate. The question I would have would be how greenhouse gases would affect that. Anybody have that information?
Yes, because I definitely want to embed a tag that tells google exactly when anybody accesses my page. Don't they have enough data on us already?
Hacker News for iPhone now supports login, voting, posting comments, and more
What's your industry?
ZFS & MySQL/InnoDB Compression Update
Alinsky advocated the process of isolating and demonizing ideological opponents. Sorry, I thought the article included that key piece of information. It may have the last time I read it. That is a problem with presenting Wikipedia articles as evidence. They can change at any time.

And, BTW, the Fallacies List article has really grown too big from what I considered its best version several years ago.
> So Python's package system is more simple / brainless.

That's sort of my point. site-packages is basically a deep, dark pit that you can toss stuff in without trouble, but there is no obvious way to actually manage things once they're in there.

Basically I think Python really needs something like 'gem', and I feel like I'm the only one, which confuses me. shrug
Whoever does a thorough comparison of a number of these new "nosql" systems, including features and some benchmarks, will have him or herself an extremely popular article.
Next Coffee perks up student lender's fortunes
The kindle as a simple xhtml browser. So any basic website that works well with mobile browsers will generally work.
If you die sooner your achievements won't have to last for so long to qualify. (Though that's probably not what you want.)

I guess your best stab at achieving immortality in your works is mathematics.
The domain name is intellectual property. So you should spend an appropriate amount of money to protect it.

It's far cheaper to just buy up the available names now than to hire a lawyer later to go after someone using your name.
The Mozart effect: Studies of music’s effect on children
let me clarify - i meant contributing to an OSS project.
I agree with your caution. Again with my example, if you look at Xerox, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, and a plethora of companies that have tried to make money selling PC hardware, you see that although the mouse and GUI have obviously "won," actually making money from them has been a challenge.
Oh, yeah, that confirms it. You're definitely a denier, you just don't know it yet.

Take it from this "denier", the vast bulk of my "denialism" comes from what you're saying. Where there should have been humility in the face of chaos, there was claims of certainty, and where there should have been more research, there was a push to rewrite the foundation of the global economy in the service of dubious truths.

Lecturing the "deniers" on the nature of science is a waste, you need to be aiming it at the "warmists".

The science of climate is indeed changing and refining, but you don't get to just ignore those changes and refinements and hold on to the interpretation you started with so many decades ago, nor do you get to be sanctimonious at those who are refining their views. The fundamental problem of AGW as "science" is that it's changing and refining itself away from AGW-as-a-problem and potentially right away from AGW-as-a-detectable-signal. "Deniers" are the ones who are actually willing to follow the science as the most-likely-correct interpretation is changing. The ones who are sticking to AGW-as-a-world-shattering-problem should probably be called "clingers", if we're going to toss labels around.

(Actually, I don't intrinsically have a problem with the idea of AGW, I just think the evidence is that it's utterly swamped by other signals, rather than the dominant signal as the whole last 20 years of propaganda has been claiming.)

I actually find it amazing the number of people trying to pull this feat off, to both admit that the science has been wanting and there's a lot more to learn about this chaotic system and indeed the very data itself shows strong signs of having been corrupted but handwave handwave therefore I am justified in continuing to hold the beliefs that I formed on the basis of this bad science and corrupted data and I am justified in calling you names if you don't. I'm having some trouble with the handwave step.
I for one would like to see more doc on the bang notation---I've been using DGo for a couple months now (I think I first heard about it on HN) and this was the first I'd even heard of the bang stuff, much less knowing which ones are available!
Chain: Digital Humanities project
I am curious at how Apple does it. With their secretive nature, do they go out to show customers what they are building? Or Steve Jobs just has great insight into what customers need and build it for them.
Character Strengths and Virtues
I ended up in a deadlock. No new mushrooms are growing and the existing mushrooms are in a pattern where they won't die. Does this mean I won or lost? ;)
I had written this for an HNer who had asked some questions about what went on at the meeting, but looks like they deleted their comment. Thought it might be useful for others to see what to expect:

The meeting is pretty informal. I didn't bring anything special with me and haven't applied formally to AlphaLab yet.

You'll meet with 1 AlphaLab employee and they will stick close to the 20 minutes you have with them. I'm pretty familiar with the AlphaLab process, so we skipped those details and instead talked about my idea. They asked about the concept, business models, the market, what some of the competitors are up to, things you would expect. At this stage, they weren't brainstorming too much with me, more listening. Then they asked about my background a bit and asked me where I was in terms of talking with potential customers. Then they opened it up to any other questions.

I asked about when is best to apply, early, later, asap? - turns out they do not look at any of the apps until after the deadline. So it does not hurt you or help you really in any way to apply now or 1 minute before the deadline. This was important for me since right now I'm a solo founder actively looking for a technical co-founder (get in touch with me if you're a developer looking for a new opportunity with interested customers!). I was advised to wait until I did find someone before applying, or if the deadline approaches, include a plan for how I would plan to outsource or find help to build the app.

The other aspect is even more informal networking with the current founders of AlphLab and some of the other hopefuls who hang out before and after their meeting times. This was helpful for some feedback on the pitch, brainstorming, stuff like that. Plus interesting to hear what everyone is working on!

I don't have a good gauge on how the meeting went, but it seemed to go smoothly and I left feeling even more pumped up about the opportunity. Good luck!
Or instead of getting all frothed up over nothing, you could host the files yourself.
Will do. Any particular ones you'd want?
While firebug is clearly superior, web inspector is much more stable. It ends up being a combination of both (or one of the older, less-featured, more-stable versions of firebug).
HTML email campaigns - is sending them a waste of your time?
I think Tesla investigated how to transport electricity without wires but I don't have any references.
This project isn't a product of Google, it's simply hosted at Google Code.
Why not interview someone that wasn't already on Mixergy? Andrew did a pretty good job with AirBnB, but if you think there's more stuff to expose we're all ears!
My girlfriend is studying for the LSAT and I've been helping her a bit. It's been a great lesson in logical reasoning. (I'm definitely sending her this page. She'll love it.)

She's not a native English speaker and she excels at logical reasoning (aced a couple classes at university.) Meanwhile, I (an English major in school) excel at parsing (English) language, but my logical skills, while proficient, are nevertheless lax.

What I find illuminating in helping her is how much language works to obscure logic in argumentation. At the same time, I have discovered I have a tendency to often ignore key logical signals and just jump to whatever method suits me. As an English major, I have a particular weakness for analogies.

For the record, I vote for the Fundamental Attribution Error (a bias rather than a fallacy) as the most interesting obstacle to consensus.
More accurate title: Twitter migrates parts of it's system away from MySQL to other data stores including Cassandra.
The Forensics Panel
vs DragonFly :-)

I really like the console of Web Inspector that mixes the input and output, like a bloody console and shows the errors even if the inspector was hidden (which is linked to the fact that it's webkit bundled basically)
Come to think of it, daylight saving time (DST) switching dates actually vary between the EU and the US:

- US: March 14 -- November 7

- EU: March 28 -- October 31

So, in two weeks, PST will switch to PDT--while CET won't switch to CEDT until four weeks from now. I guess I can rely on the Gnome widget for local times, they keep updating the DST info packages...
Most of the fittest geeks I know either do bouldering or martial arts.
London YC/Hacker news Meetup
Following up on this item:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094828

Is this still on? Is anyone arranging anything? It's very close, perhaps too close, perhaps we should pick a different date ...
Clickable: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1094828
High Availability MySQL: Plays well with others
It's worth considering that industrial index he cites includes some things that most people might not consider manufacturing per-se, including construction, mining, and utilities. According to http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/Current/default.h... the only sectors in the index that have seen growth over 2% compared to 2002 levels are utilities (electric and gas) and business equipment (which seems to consist of "industrial and other", "transit", and "information processing"). Unfortunately there is no breakdown among them.
I miss Steve Yegge
I mean, I miss his blog. Is there anything entertaining to read these days? Joel doesn't write interesting stuff anymore, Steve Yegge stopped blogging and PG almost never writes... Recommendations?
Worth skimming the posting and then reading the comments (that often have interspersed comments by the author), if for no other reason than what appears to be the coining of the term "technology vomit" (for those insanely long lists of technologies in job postings or resumes).
The Guardian Politics API
I don't use Firefox at all, because for what I do it's clearly inferior. I don't think I've launched Firebug to do anything other than log in the last 6 months.
I wonder the same thing - personally, I think AAPL and Jobs are just that talented that they can "get it right" (extremely hard to do) ... I'm sure they do get out of the lab and get some real world feedback to some degree. But also remember, Jobs has seen his fair share of failed product introductions!
Yes, it seems to be missing the part you were looking for. It is referenced in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals , which at the bottom includes the classic line "pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." In general, as that page shows, his approach was in the end nothing more than "The ends justify the means" and the employment of logical fallacies for the consumption of the public has definitely been used by his disciples.

(Yes, he writes some verbiage trying to cloak the fact that he completely believes "the ends justify the means", but in the end that's all it collapses to.)
Actually, I seem to recall reading somewhere that after the US, Switzerland pays the most for healthcare. That said, I doubt we'll be able to remove profit from health insurance companies in the near future, so it's kind of a moot point. :-)
Managing Our Way to Economic Decline - 1980 Harvard Business Review article
Nice list. My personal pet peeve with Web Inspector is no hot-key for inspecting an element in a page (Command-Shift-C in Firebug)... instead you have to open web inspector, click the magnifying glass, click back to the window, and then click an element.
Single page: http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-0301-brain-musi...
Really looking forward to this. Hope to see lots of HNers in chat!
This is he giving a talk about this:
http://www.themonthly.com.au/origin-universe-and-arrow-time-...
I almost always buy the .net when I buy the .com. If I buy a domain with a weird extension, I'll also make sure I can get the .com version that includes the weird tld - Like, if I bought icey.tv, I'd also buy iceytv.com.
One other note: according to the CPI, $10,000 1913 dollars is almost $215,000 2009 dollars.
Doritos 2K10
Opera's Jon Von Tetzchner on browser choice, the iphone and Google
This is literally the only reason why Firefox is still installed on my Macbook Pro. I have managed to switch completely to Chromium otherwise.
"My net worth is less than $10,000."

I doubt you'd even have to worry about it then. Chances are good you'd be able to keep most (if not all) of your stuff.

(Insert standard IANAL disclaimers here)
Password Chart
... edit, snarky remarks removed, unnecessary ...

Here are a few ideas:

You have to talk to people

Network

Go out in the world and leave your computer to actually generate interest by talking up your product

Join the chamber of commerce, go to the events, get local interest.

Do some broad marketing with twitter, the radio, tv, local ads, signs, flyers, send out direct mail.

Narrow marketing, cold calling, PPC ads, setup meetings with people you "think" might have interest.

Pick up the phone, call a company you "think" might want your product - if they don't they may even tell you who does.

Call all your friends, their friends, their parents, their cousins and neighbors.

Think outside the box. Go viral with a video, a strange campaign, a giveaway, advertise on podcasts, or on blogs.

Email bloggers to review your product.

Ask your tweet followers to help you spread the word with a hash tag.

Create a page in Facebook, blab about it a little and have your friends help spread the word.

Go to info-sites in your niche and pay them to advertise.

Join some forums, be a voice, make some friends, and try hard to be a part of the conversation - not a spammer.

Post a beta/try me link to HN, Reddit, BoS, KillerStartups

----------

Or, you could put up a website and cross your fingers. (I'd cross your toes too if you're going this route)
I can point to a dozen examples of far better usability in the WebKit Inspector, but rather than do that, I'll just note that almost all of these are fixed in the Chrome version of the Web Inspector.
Jesse Schell’s Monstrous Bonus-Point Police State
http://ipadtest.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/jesse-schells-monst...
Made me think of Google. They used to make a big deal out of having the largest index. They don't do that anymore. Maybe it's a good idea to transition from pushing One Thing at some point, lest you leave the opportunity for someone to outshine you on that One Thing.
Do B-Schools Set up Entrepreneurs for Failure?
I right-click on the element and select Inspect Element (without opening inspector first).
It sounds to me like you're not familiar with Conway's Life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conways_Game_of_Life
Tempting Software Startup Categories
Now if only firebug wouldn't break Adblocks Element Hiding Helper.
One I wrote: http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2009/11/09/nosql-ecosyste...

Another, that goes into even more detail (imo, too much for one article, but a good article all the same):
http://www.vineetgupta.com/2010/01/nosql-databases-part-1-la...

Benchmarking systems w/ very different data models is difficult to impossible, which is why you don't see that in this kind of survey piece. You're best off by picking one segment and focusing on that. Yahoo did that with the ColumnFamily stores (cassandra, hbase, and one they wrote internally) here: http://www.brianfrankcooper.net/pubs/ycsb-v4.pdf (note that Cassandra 0.5 results are on page 16 and 17, not inline w/ the rest)
How new proposed NFL overtime rules affect win probabilites
Yes, it definitely depends on how one defines profound.

For my own part, this is common sense rather than profundity. I don't have a smart phone, I don't use Twitter, I don't worry about getting my inbox to zero, and I disconnect from the internet when I'm trying to get something done that requires focus (writing, coding, projects, etc). The fewer distractions... the better.

Perhaps I'm just young and impudent, but it bothers me that this might surprise anyone, or that this might be unintuitive. It's the unintuitive stuff that I consider profound.