skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Driving is one place where tactile feedback really matter and touch screens are a POS. If the driver has to take their eyes off the road to change the radio station somewhere someone will get in an accident and die. On my G35 I really do not like how all of the radio preset buttons are smooth and flush next to each other no matter how 'nice' it looks. It makes it near impossible to push the correct one without looking. I added little bumps via super glue so I would know which button is which without having to look.

Going out of your way to add a generic ipad that is designed to require you to be looking at the screen and not the road is a bad mix. You could use it as a glorified screen and have special software that always ran and connected to the car via the usb port (exists on the iphone) and didn't let you do anything when moving that would be in a step in the right direction. Still, adding a distraction to the driver is usually not worth the risk.
This is exactly what I was thinking as I read the article. I think of it as a sort of mantra that can be applied in a variety of directions, whether you're a startup founder, an early-stage employee, an employee of a larger organization, or just a human being trying to make the most of your time.

i.e., "Am I doing something worthwhile?" -- which could mean different things depending on the context, the goals or principles of the person, or what have you. I guess it depends on how you define "value" :)
I'd imagine they want to deter people from following in my footsteps, so publicizing their actions serves as a warning.

If anything, I'm encouraged to start a publicly-available database based on crawling Facebook. Don't associate your name with it, crawl from your Ipredator account, and make sure your data is spread far and wide. Then they can sue the Entire Internet like the music companies are having so much success with.

Information wants to be free.

(Also, what's the worst that could happen? You get sued, and Facebook gets a few thousand bucks from your savings account and your used mattress? OH NOES.)
Thanks!

For what it's worth I've enjoyed the first four chapters well enough to recommend it to any other prospective buyers.
Live counter of number of iPads sold (sortof)
> Considering how many people in the world are starving, ill, undereducated, and unemployed, I'd say we're doing a piss-poor job of 'efficiently allocating the world's capital'.

Considering how many in the world aren't starving, ill, undereducated, and unemployed, I'd say we're doing an utterly frigging amazing job of 'efficiently allocating the world's capital'.

Seriously - the question isn't, "Why are some people poor?" It's, "Why AREN'T some people poor?" Poverty is the natural state of humanity - we evolved from being apes and crawled out of forests, jungles, and caves. The fact that there's any literacy, lifespan over 30 years, immunization from disease, infrastructure, and knowledge is marvelous in and of itself. The rate that those things are growing lately is astounding. Humanity is doing a pretty amazing job lately.
Apple vs Microsoft - Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates - Can elephants dance?
Apple's iPad: The End Of The Internet As We Know It?
I don't give campaign promises much weight in this discussion. You are correct that both McCain and Bush paid lip service to the idea, but Bush, the guy who could do something about it, didn't do anything.

You can try to argue that Bush -- the guy who had control of both houses of congress and was able to sell an unpopular war -- was politically powerless do do anything, but that's just not persuasive. He decided not to make it a major issue... and he benefited tremendously from that decision... America felt rich while we waged a very expensive war and paid $5 per gallon for gas.

To use an analogy, maybe it was a Democrat who lit the cigarette and fell asleep, but it was Bush who saw the smoke, mentioned that a fire might start and then completely ignored it until it became a blazing inferno.

(I am not a member of either party so I am not intending to absolve Democrats of their share of the blame... but in this case I think most of it rests firmly on Bush's shoulders).

By the way, this was right before Mankiw got fired:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bush-adviser-warns-of-fanni...
Innovation: Only mind games will make us save power
http://www.ederman.com/new/index.html
Liquidity provides mobility - there's been a couple times in my life that I'd have converted to any religion on the planet if their chief deity promised me a buyer at even half the market value of the asset I wanted to sell.

People don't want liquidity the same way they don't want a tune-up in their car. Nobody wants "a tune up", but people want a working auto that doesn't break down. No one wants liquidity, but a heck of a lot of people want to sell something they have so that they can get on with their life, move somewhere else, buy a new home, invest in something exciting, and so on. If you think freedom and mobility are valuable, then liquidity is valuable too - because liquidity can be very important in letting you do go where you want and do what you want when you have something important you need to sell or relinquish before moving on.
Speaking of typing, has anyone here tried out the new Dragon Dictation app? Sounds like a natural for the iPad (I'm waiting for mine - got a preorder of the 3G).
I guess they have a list of addresses blacklisted? Yeah, that was the only cancelling reason.
Resurrection Fern
Facebook was founded by an outlaw scraper. Game recognize game, they're just neutralizing a threat, don't worry about the legal window dressing.

Read about Zuck's wget magic here, and how he illegally scraped (guarantee it was a TOS violation) all the Harvard online facebooks in 2003:
http://www.scribd.com/mobile/documents/538697

As Balzac said, behind every great fortune lies a great crime :)
I honestly don't know - no first hand experience, and the stories I've heard are all over the map with a variety of good and bad outcomes. The only more specific thing I can think of besides getting professional advice is to search online for past legal cases involving your employer to get an idea of their historical policy.
Unfortunately, capitalism ensures that "efficiently allocated" means "allocated in proportion to the combined wealth of the purchasers." It is, however, _very_ good at that. I really wish liberals had the balls to redistribute wealth directly and explicitly, and then let the free market provide the services (instead of filtering it through a government program first.)
The complaints stem largely from the fact that most of the available apps are not nearly as good as Geometry Wars.

A $10 precedent isn't bad. A precedent of $10 for apps of that average quality level is bad.
As a big fan of the BBC and with greatest respect to their journalism - it is ass covering.

The reason is that so long as they only report fact they're quite safe. So when they say

a voice says:
The transmissions says of one of the individuals: "He's got an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]. I'm going to fire.

Then they can't be said to be inaccurate - the video does indeed include someone saying those words. The article just leaves it to the reader to decide upon its accuracy - a very safe option.

That said this video doesn't really need a 'report' so much as a pointer to its location. It speaks for itself - chilled me to the bone.
I think you missed my point:

> The administration could be punished only once it finishes its goal.
Ipad SDK
U.S. to Seek $16.4 Million Fine Against Toyota
Making it cheaper for WHO to unload their bond holdings?

The person who buys and holds for some time wouldn't notice the fractionally smaller spread. The majority of trading today is done automatically, and it's all this trading that sees the benefit. But, again, how useful is this sort of trading? Surely at some point it must move from "efficiently pricing securities" to gambling with the froth.

How would trading change if the goal weren't to flip your security to someone else a bit down the road, but to hold it for its intrinsic value, as higher transaction costs would encourage?
What about some measure of negative karma for not responding to a point? You could either concede that your opponent had made a strong point and/or respond with a counterpoint. If you left a point unanswered, it'd show a hit against your profile and sit in your dashboard of unanswered points.
Even if you get sued, how would they know it's you? ie. how would they know who to serve a lawsuit to?

By the time they get a court order to take the data down, if they even bother, people will have already distributed it, and it'll be another 09:f9:11:02-type fiasco.

I hope he releases the code he used, although I wouldn't really blame him if he doesn't.
I agree. I'll trade beer (or similar) for an invite too. Email is in the profile.

I've been a member of a few invite only communities over the years and I think there is value to be had with the model (eg ancient facebook). Inevitably though the community grows and some other strategy needs to be chosen. Maybe with a community as small as web designers and devs though - this strat is sustainable.
A partial video is currently on the frontpage of CNN.com. They don't show the part where the helicopter crew actually opens fire, but they do show the guys on the ground and the helicopter crew saying "we've got guys with weapons... that guy's got an RPG" and such.
That's silly, zero sum thinking. Unless the market for a good is saturated (everyone who would buy it will), making the production process more efficient creates both wealth and (often) new jobs as the producing company can now grow.

As an example, imagine someone develops a bit of tech that improves software development by 100%. Would a dev shop with this tech fire half their programmers, or would they expand their speed and scope and grow faster as a result?
That is definitely true, if the Luftwaffe continuted bombing RAF airfields exclusively, much of Europe could be speaking German today.

However, the point being made was that Allied forces weren't exactly blameless in their conduct in the war, despite the amount of attention given to German war crimes in Nuremberg etc. The bombing of Dresden was referred to as 'terror bombing', in that very little tactical military advantage was gained by conducting the bombing, but civilian casualties were horrendous. Apparently so much incendiary bombs were dropped that the intensity of the flames created sudden 'draughts' of air that were powerful enough to suck someone off their feet into the flames.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...

Also, a side of the war the Golden Generation would rather sweep under the carpet:

http://www.amazon.com/Taken-Force-American-Europe-during/dp/...
A/B Split Testing Calculator
I understand how you are defining value. I am just rejecting that definition because it is both different from how people typically define the term and not particularly useful. For instance you are claiming that software has no value, only the consumer end-products you create with it. Most people would say software has value equal to the increased efficiency it gives you. In that same vein I am claiming liquidity has value equal to the increased optionality it gives you. How does your definition help me better understand the world?
iPhone game development on Windows with DragonFire - Getting Started
That's not exactly true. The TOS usually applies to people crawling the severs and mining data. Still, there is no clear way to know how a court would rule on something like this; each case is different.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browse_wrap
There's nothing ridiculous about that. There's a clearly visible link on the bottom of each Facebook page that links to the Terms & Conditions of accessing Facebook pages. Some relevant parts:

"If you collect information from users, you will: obtain their consent, make it clear you (and not Facebook) are the one collecting their information, and post a privacy policy explaining what information you collect and how you will use it."

"You will only use the data you receive for your application, and will only use it in connection with Facebook."

"By "application" we mean any application or website (including Connect sites) that uses or accesses Platform, as well as anything else that receives data." - note that by this definition a Facebook crawler is an applicatiom

"You will only use the data you receive for your application, and will only use it in connection with Facebook."

"You will have a privacy policy or otherwise make it clear to users what user data you are going to use and how you will use, display, or share that data."

"You will not transfer the data you receive from us (or enable that data to be transferred) without our prior consent."

"You will make it easy for users to remove or disconnect from your application."

etc.

These things are easy to look up, it took me about five minutes to find them. In fact, they have the right to limit the way even publicly faced content on their site is used. Things like copyright and data protection laws come in mind. You might not agree with that but it is absolutely in their right to do so.

The FB Terms & Conditions don't mention robots.txt at all.
Surely if true, that means any web crawler must first locate and understand every single websites terms of service before it can be sure what it is allowed to do.

For a start though, you could easily state that facebook freely allow access to data, without requiring you to read terms&conditions.

You could argue that by freely allowing access to all of their data, without requiring you to read and agree to the terms of usage, then their claims have no basis.

If they did want to restrict access, or make sure every crawler had first agreed to T&C, it wouldn't take long for them to add that.
So, let me get this straight. In Iraq, anyone seen carrying something that resembles a gun or who happens to be in the general vicinity of someone carrying something that resembles a gun is subject to immediate summary execution without stopping to make sure its a gun or sorting out who the people might be or why they might be carrying something that looks like a weapon? And then helping an injured person get to the hospital is also grounds for summary execution? And all this is according to the rules of war and the rules of engagement? And here I thought the Nazis were hard core.
As far as I can see, they weren't creating a facebook application, so I'm not sure why the Terms & conditions are relevant.

If you run a public website, you have to accept that people may crawl your website. If you want to prevent it, don't let them crawl it. That's what robots.txt is for.
Aussie pair buys 19 iPads in US haul
sorry for the ambiguity. was meaning 'console' as in 'games console'. I was comparing it to XBox, PS*, DS etc.
I would love to see this. And then I'd like to see Ray La Hood cross-examined by Toyota's lawyers, asking why he made so many inflammatory and stupid statements, recommending for example that Toyota drivers not drive their cars, and which destroyed so much value for Toyota shareholders. What would also be hilarious is seeing Mr. LaHood explain to a court how he and the Federal government, and the UAW, do not have a serious conflict of interest, considering they own Toyota's competition, and stand to gain financially from every piece of dirt, fair or unfair, that gets flung.

If I was Toyota, I'd be doing the happy dance over all of this.

-- Fred
So is yelling at your kids, driving over 30mph, etc., etc.
Yeah but their content probably gets more links. Clearly it is one component of an incidentally winning strategy.
The fact that they are net-successful doesn't mean that every aspect of their approach is a good idea.
Both of those are about "loading requests" which happen pretty rarely in the larger scheme of things (on upload, new server for app, too much traffic so need to scale jvm). On my current project, it's 3.5-4 seconds. Definitely not ideal, but it's not that common an event.

I'd like to run some benchmarks for normal requests, where I doubt there'll be any real difference.

Thanks for the search.
You might not agree with that but it is absolutely in their right to do so.

Well, they claim it is their right. The courts will decide if it actually is.

Plenty of places make claims to rights and make you sign waivers (dojos, for example), but fail in court. This could be interesting.
The information is copyrighted. Redistribution without prior written permission from the copyright owner is illegal.
Dissection of the Apple A4
I also roll my eyes when people compare it to a PC replacement. It's not, just like your xbox or nintendo ds is not a pc replacement. It's an entertainment device.

The problem is that we see web surfing and think it must be done on a Work Machine (tm). And therefore we also need to be able to edit word docs, answer our bosses emails, video conference on skype, etc.

Nope. It's about having some time to play games, read a book, browse the web, watch a video, glance through your pictures at a leisurely (singletasked) pace. If you expect it to replace a PC then just get a tablet PC or an android phone with a terminal. But that's not what most people want to do for fun.
Two possible things will happen.

1) Prices on the apps will drop.

2) The complexity of the apps will increase until they have the perceived value of what the purchaser wants.
bing sucks.
Can you copyright someone elses name and the names of their friends?
The Emerging Languages Conference
As far as I understand, the problem was not crawling the website, it was the way he used to data he gained by crawling.
CGI Portfolio –Warhammer, Wraithlord, Alien Abduction,  Pentagon Directory
I personally don't see any harm in asking the question "How much value does my job create?" While finance is an exciting field that does provide significant benefit in certain areas (i.e., liquidity, efficient pricing) the majority of the field is engaged in enormous zero-sum games, much like a casino. I think it's no wonder so many people get burned out in finance while entrepreneurs stay active and excited in what they are doing.
This story can be killed now; the video is now the center picture/video headline on CNN.com. Apparently the mainstream media was waiting for confirmation that the video was real.
Sorry, the meaning I've been trying to get across is intrinsic value and I think we agree. I'm not trying to say that liquidity has no value. It clearly does have value.

My point is that liquidity's value comes from its secondary effects of allocating resources more efficiently. It's important to have this awareness because increasing liquidity might not always be the best way to increase the efficiency of allocation.

Same with software. Software tools have value equal to (amount of things produced with them) - (value of things produced without them).
Please define flipping a security when you're holding a futures contract for the near month. You need to step back and understand the totality of the complex financial markets before you presume to understand peoples motivations by dictating to them how long they should hold a financial instrument. People use the markets for varying motivations and their holding periods are one, of many things, that vary.
TweetDeck and Google App Engine: A Match Made in the Cloud
The article doesn't say how startup is measured. Does Firefox take 2.3s to get to main() or 2.3s to show a window on the screen?
Some of the "too big to fail" issues we saw was definitely because companies got into multiple lines of business that Glass-Steagall would have prevented.
Army of Facebook Lawyers:

"Their contention was robots.txt had no legal force and they could sue anyone for accessing their site ..."

Lone data collector dude:

<blink> <blink>

It turns out the lawyers are right. Huh.
stupid unix tricks:

curl http://somesite.com/download/latest.tar.gz | tar zx

(saves having temporary files lying around everywhere)
Congratulations on a fairly even-handed post.

However, two points I disagree entirely with:

"From their point of view they are in a helicopter, scared, and afraid that someone is going to shoot a RPG at them."

Guys in chopper: Wrapped in bulletproof glass and several inches of heavy armour, with enough firepower under their thumb to reduce a battalion of tanks to scrap metal (remember attack gunships like the Apache were designed to repel Soviet tank formations from coming over the Rhine during the cold war).

Iraqi guys on street: wrapped in cheap cotton shirt, with a 70 year old assault rifle under his arm. Completely oblivious to the angel of death hovering above (the chopper was circling for quite some time at the very start of the video; no-one, least of all the RPG gunner, seemed to notice).

"Think about how bad they must feel knowing that they killed innocent people when they thought they were killing the enemy."

Think about how bad the poor Iraqi mothers must've felt during the closed-casket funeral. Or how they feel now, seeing their husbands/sons/brothers being gunned down all over YouTube. I hope none of them have internet connections for their sake.
Also cool, Steve Blank reviews the fall 2009 quarter of Entrepreneurship Thought Leaders talks: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2327
I had a standing offer from Google that I passed on, because I was busy doing other stuff. When I decided it was to move on I contacted my Google recruiter amongst other connections. Google didn't reinterview me, I was just extended an offer.

This process was slower than the entire interview loop at the company I am currently at.
The first commenter was me. The financial markets are horizontal in the goals they serve. Drawing connections to specific utility can be done, but doesn't have to be done. For example:

Efficient markets -> lower transaction costs -> greater access to the markets by everyone -> farmer sells a futures contract to lock in price and hedge risk -> farmer uses capital to buy equipment -> farmer grows more crops

Your definition of utility is valid, but your desire to draw direct connections between end game utility is misplaced because there are millions of connections that can be drawn. Each market participant interacts with the markets according to their own definition of what is and is not important to them. You seek to define value for every human using financial markets in the world.
The open source php for the google profiler is in a link on the article, very easy to modify if you wanted to do the same thing.
I think modeling it on the old 'black ops' intel/counter-intel activities is the right strategy. Sometimes, it's only a few people (or an individual), but the effect can be tremendous (see: Russian oil pipeline explosion).

I think much of the senior military leadership 'gets' it to the extent that they know to be worried. The middle management, however, ignores threats that are non-kinetic in most cases.

Great article!
Fizzik looks to deliver a smarter, more social web browser
How about crawling search engines? For example, instead of crawling directly on facebook, crawl on a search engine with "site:facebook.com".

In that case, your data is gathered from the search engine and has nothing to do with facebook any more. And I doubt the search engine will sue you for using their service.
For that, I usually use 'curl -I http://example.com/, in case you don't want to install a separate package (or, for some reason, dislike perl).
"Measured" is a misleading way to rephrase the title. The mass wasn't measured, it was predicted theoretically using computer simulation.
They seem to have been restored. There was, however, definitely a window of time when they were ghost deleted.
Ask HN: efficiency, efficacy, effectiveness?!
The more I read about the subject the more confused I become.

I tried to identify the types of those "functions" and work out "definitions". Please correct/expand.

Effectiveness
x -> Bool

Efficacy
x -> (0, 1)

Efficiency
x -> (0, 1)

Effective = 100% efficacious

Efficiency = essential / (essential + non-essential)