skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You seriously flagged the parent article? That's out of line. While it may be wrong (I personally don't think it is) it's chock full of interesting analysis. It's exactly the kind of article that belongs on this site. Please think before you flag.
Both this anecdote and the parent comment can be found in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman". (N.B. The quote marks are correct: the title itself is a quote.)
I hate to tell you this but they're already logging and storing stuff at a shallower level: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...

Of course, if they want to try cracking my SSL connection to my US VPN, let them at it.
Couldn't you say it's adversative passive? What about this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_voice#Adversative_passi...

(it happens to inaccurate in respect to Japanese, since the mentioned indirect passive is not always adversative)
this is really bad.
AT&T Wants to Keep Track of Your Dog
It's a different problem. I can get a database that holds 30 GB, although I suspect the actual DB was much larger. I can't get a database that holds >PB.
Cooliris » Google Images » elrod
Yeah there were a ton of awesome PHP frameworks and Python web frameworks in 2002.

:-(
Fundamentals of Graphical Perception
The port of mini-Kanren to Clojure is a great contribution - thanks!
I'm happy that iPhone owners now have something even better than Google Voice. But how can Apple possibly defend the Google Voice rejection now? I hope the FCC gets involved again. I'm offended on Google's behalf.
You know what I want?

I want a handheld that is so easy to program that you can do real app development, right on the handheld itself. Not just toy app development, the real deal. It might not be as awesome as Eclipse or Xcode but if it's doable without an external host, kids will start playing with it.

The Newton could do this, 15 years ago.

From my limited knowledge only WebOS is close to being simple enough that you could reasonably develop for it without a "real" computer and all its baggage. Which is too bad, because it's a long ways from taking the world by storm.
the mental 'quiet' that comes from being absolutely terrified is probably the most interesting part of motorcycling, I think. Considering the danger, it's probably not worth it, but it is very interesting how time seems to slow down, and how I seem to become more competent in times of extreme fear.
It's the policy change where Steve would like to fuck Google up and doesn't care who knows it.
Nice work Spencer, great blog post as normal. I think you're right on with the idea of marketing to "normals," or the "target market," whichever term you feel more comfortable with. It's a really tough transition and one that normally comes with compromises and alterations to the service/product. We're just starting our journey across that chasm, and it's not easy. Your team's design skills are far better than ours and it's a struggle to make everything intuitive enough for most folks to say nothing of the product focus!

I had to chuckle fjabre, "Cross the Chasm" is what I was thinking as well as I read this one. This is also referenced in Godin's "The Dip" (just to make sure I cover all my buzz-worthy maven authors).
Write docs for the standard library.

Yeah, I know: Not sexy.

Still, stuff like that would have greater benefit to the various Ruby communities than yet another Rails plugin.
I'm well aware of it. This goes one step further though, and from my reading of the document it would require a hash of every document you retrieved to be compared against a table of 'illegal' files.
Panama outside of US influence? We invaded them not that long ago, the current political leadership there were participants in the events leading up to and following Operation Just Cause. I rather doubt that much of import happens in Panama without tacit approval of US authorities.
Since the start of the war in Iraq, deaths (in action) of US servicemen have been lower than the preceding decade.
Training is actually more dangerous than war these days!

It's a little bit worse if you include suicides.
Yeah, but that makes the award itself somewhat superfluous: giving recognition to research that's already widely recognized.
Watch some of Charlie Rose's Interviews
As the author of this post, I wanted to let you know that this post wasn't intended for a highly technical audience.

I mentioned in the comments that I explicitly reached out to the influencers in the "new media" sphere because they'd be a lot more responsive than, say, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs.

Maybe you're right, though, I should have given it a try. I don't know what Bill Gates's email address is. I do know Steve's, but my experience from emailing him is that he won't even bother to respond. Some "influencers" put themselves on a pedestal and don't bother engaging. Steve is one of those holier-than-thou types.

I focused on those who had an audience online for that very reason.
Well said!

> Plenty of wikileaks ppl are not Americans -- you cannot expect them to follow your laws.

A more than valid point. I had not considered the community nature of the site, nor the state in which it's owners are based.

> You know, the one where the last time the government got too uppity you decided to kill/exile the lot?

I assume you're speaking of the war in Iraq. Hmmm... I see a significant difference between a citizen breaking the laws of his own country (as this is what I was referring to) and a country breaking no laws to stop a tyrant who was slaughtering his own people. Wow I'm sure this will be a popular opinion here.

> So you believe [...] the government should be allowed to break its own laws against the citizens. [...] if they "Went away" that would mean a vast array of laws would be broken.

Well, I was assuming that if the owners/maintainers of the site went to jail then the site would go away. I was not trying to say that the government should reject 1st amendment rights.

Again I was assuming 100% US citizen involvement in this. It was a bad assumption, granted.
1. I think the issue of physical safety is disjoint from this discussion.

2. I'd rather deal with open-container laws and be able to vote.
The OS that went with it (RISC-OS) was pretty special aswell. Easily better than the monochrome Mac of the same era.

Had some features that we haven't caught up with yet on windows - like filetypes which are registered independant of extention.
But it's consistent with the article's main idea: to rock before you talk.

That is, while it may be annoying to a reader, it should be preferable to a rocker. :)
Is google's search business dying?
This is why Apple and Google are at war.
Indian army makes grenades out of chillies
"Douglas Crockford does no eval."
This is what we get for assuming every user wants native code to have all their privileges as it munges untrusted data. I keep hoping something like a capability-based system will come along and trump both Unix and Windows, but if a litany of security trainwrecks isn't enough motivation, I can't imagine how it could happen.
It looks like Adobe does a better job on the horizon - look at the right hand side of the picture.
So the idea is to turn a large empty building into a datacenter.. How is this interesting or original?

Google asks what new business types would become possible given a lot of bandwidth, and you answer "datacenters!" ...

Why does this sort of thing get attention?
The most amazing thing about it is that they found an image of Mr. Crawford smiling, something I don't think I've ever seen before.
For legacy stuff that's true. For new projects we can and should make better decisions (if politics aren't in the way). Many DB systems are free and open source. If you have Unix servers you can choose from PostgreSQL, MySQL, Cassandra, Riak, CouchDB, MongoDB, Voldemort, etc. There is no reason not to choose the right tool for the job. You can assess them all if you have the time and resources.

It's not the physical world and we basically always have whichever tool we need available to us. I mainly use open source software so that may not be true for everyone I suppose. That's their choice though.
OMG sign up for the developer program and calm down. Or buy a zenPad. Or both.

Only people who have written assembly code for an embedded system, or installed an open source OS on a mobile device should even be allowed to make these "everything should be open" comments. The capability for you to tinker has been around for years, and in that time what have people created? Apparently nothing as good as Apple's closed system.
It's sort of a paradox. If the accomplishment was notable enough to be awarded then the award was superfluous, and if the accomplishment was not notable it doesn't deserve an award.
In this case, is the data schema-less? They started with a defined schema and maybe now they don't. Your data defines the tool, but you define the data.

I can store JSON in a MySQL column and you'd say I'm using the wrong tool. But I decided to define a schema instead, then I'm using the right tool? It's pretty arbitrary. Some requirements do lean one way or the other but most of the time there's not much of a difference.

The areas where clearly an RDBMS is the correct solution or where NoSQL is clearly the correct solution aren't an issue. I think there are huge areas that do overlap. NoSQL is being advocated in far more situations than just where it's clearly the correct solution.
Some seriously good points there, Peter.

I also do not question the motives or integrity of the people behind this, and like you I don't care for the emphasis on students.

I don't care so much that they get paid; hell, I wish people would pay me for doing open source software. I don't think it will alter any future motivations of anyone.

But it may be entirely possible to achieve the desired results without the pay out, and archive other useful goals with that money.

Now, it's easy to harp and suggest all sorts of imagined plans, while RSOC as it stands is real. So big props for making this happen.

I think, though, that some separation of project acceptance and funding for expenses would have been useful. E.g., first have people (really should be open to anyone) pitch their project. Then, if accepted, they can argue for financial support, if they can show some documented need.

Yeah, it's more work, and maybe the sort of thing that makes the difference between a nice sounding plan and a real program. But I agree that waving the $$ up front might be the wrong incentive.
I think his point is these days good research doesn't need a medal to publicize itself. I imagine the situation was different when they made the rules (1936).
Damn Line2 does exists, for one moment while reading the article, I thought the author was joking and talking about that imaginary VoIP app of everyone's dream. Then I searched in iTunes and it's a reality.
So the argument I'll make (and I'll admit I'm biased) is that the internet is a rapidly maturing industry. There are newer less mature industries that are more likely to be worthwhile (I just started working for a company that is tackling a really mundane task - getting people to put solar panels on their roof).

It's very akin to the last mile problem. At some point you have to stop working with bits, and start working with atoms.
A study on the business model of free software + $ for services/training/certification. How effective is it... where are those that didn't make it?
unfair? what's so unfair about protecting your own turf? or better, pissed off that pesky little competitor.
Might be more effective to find these students and surprise them with a check. Or otherwise support them and their code.

If someone has an existing project it seems likely they will look after it over time. They've already shown the interest and initiative, so give them a boost.

If someone needs to get funded by RubyCentral to hack on something, what happens when summer ends and the money is gone? Who takes care of the code then?
Where to get startup cash now  - AirBnB (YC W09)
First, thanks for the information. I didn't understand from the site that Ulysses is actually more of an organizational tool. It wasn't until I read this[1] review article that I understood that.

However, you yourself made a few mistakes. Technically, LaTeX is not a formatter, it is a markup language for the TeX typesetting system. In addition, it is actually not an interpreter (in the same way that HTML is not an interpreter).

LyX is, as I said, a WYSIWYM editor for LaTeX. It is also allows LaTeX insertion and imports, so it should be arbitrarily flexible, not handicapped.

Finally: parading your lack of knowledge of classical mythology or modernist literature really doesn't do you any favours.

Hmm. Actually I have read Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegans Wake, as well as the Odyssey. James Joyce is probably one of my picks for greatest authors who ever lived. My little remark was one of whimsy, commenting on a little phonetic wordplay, not an expression of ignorance.

[1] http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/review/ulysses_is_a_heroic_wr...
I liked "Every time you declare a variable in the global scope, douglas crockford kills a kitten."
Correct. He'd start to get so horny that he couldn't focus, so he'd have to masturbate (which was a small relief) or have sex, which was a great relief, and gave him weeks of productive work.
I really love how they're challenging a lot of the accepted norms and trying to improve, but in an open and transparent way. This is open source at its finest. Even if I don't like every single decision they make, they're trying, and I think they'll have a better browser for the effort. Breaking UI conventions should always be done with care and deliberation, but it can bring a lot of benefits.
I want that too — I don't think I'd have my job today without all those days in the back of math class programming my TI-83.
"Leaked PDF without secret plan to decrypt SSL connections"

Oops.
If Apple was trying to spite Google, why is Google Maps in the default install? Why not Bing maps, or Yahoo! maps, or Mapquest maps, or ... ?
I found the linked-to article at Streaming Media more interesting than Gruber's Theora fear mongering. http://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11746

Specifically this:

For 15 years, Xiph.Org has carefully "played by the rules," fully within the bounds, intent, and letter of intellectual property and patent law. For the past ten years we've informed the entire world, including MPEG LA, of our specifications and algorithms in detail. We've requested in open letters that any group believing we are infringing to inform us so that we make take immediate corrective action.

I predict that MPEG LA may counter that they know groups have been pressured into licensing patents in order to use Theora. This has been a recent back-room assertion. You might want to ask point blank if MPEG LA itself or any of its constituent members has engaged in this practice, thus manufacturing the evidence that "vindicates" their patent allegations.
Title is link bait. They don't even mention CA until the end. Also kind of a cheap shot comparison since it's really apples and oranges..

Sure, if it stabilizes Iraq would obviously see a lot of economic growth over the next decade but that's kind of a no-brainer. The country is in ruins so any economic growth would be exponential for it..
Left in the dust by Netflix & Redbox, Blockbuster on the cusp of bankruptcy
Yes. Courts can also order you to destroy property, breach (most types of) confidences, alienate people from money in their accounts, etc etc, and lie about doing all of the above.
no camera?
woah, now that is something to be feared!
The comments here look bogus to me: they sound phony and the accounts are all young. This is just a stupid quiz about privacy with Facebook apps.

I tried it for you with a bogus account. Not worth anybody's time.
Google doesn't dominate every market, but I think they're doing quite well:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2009/03/googles-market-shar...

and

http://www.artofseobook.com/search-engine-market-share-by-co...
General Model Train Guide for Beginners
Besides model railroading, there many hobbies that people engage in during their free time. Most real life situations can be imitated in different ways in order to suit different utilities. Additional design features in a given set up can alter its associated meaning, attitude and values. The term gauge refers to the distance between the inside surfaces of the pair of parallel rails. On the other hand, the ratio between a model and a prototype object, for instance1:250 of size of the actual train are called scale. It is advisable to comprehend the lexicon items associated with the pastime. Bench work needs to be constructed properly and precisely, since the entire railroad weight upon it. It is necessary to observe safety precautions while handling tools.
Three outliers does not a trend make. I'm surprised you didn't throw google in there as well, since that one instance is all everyone ever talks about.

In 2000, everyone thought they were an Amazon. A boatload of people were wrong about that.
From what I understand, mustard gas isn't hard to make at all. ("There are several routes to this compound, none of which require sophisticated technology and/or special materials.", Federation of American Scientists: Chemical Weapons Production and Storage) The process is more or less described in Wikipedia.
Yes, small oversight on their part. They might institutionalize the man in the middle concept though ;)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Africa is meant to be a mess, Western powers ensure it through foreign aid, propping up dictatorship all to ensure cheap access to raw materials.
If you look at Mozilla's Weave project, they're doing exactly that. The time they've spent on Personas pales in comparison to the time they've spent on Ubiquity, Test Pilot, Weave and other Labs projects. Using a computer should be fun, and so I don't mind a bit of ooo-shiny every now and then. It sure isn't keeping Mozilla from getting shit done.

Edited to add: a nice work around that I use for multiple identities in the mean time is to use the profile manager. Run Firefox with "firefox -P -no-remote" to start a separate instance of Firefox with the profile manager, create a new profile, and you're good to go. It is a pain, but as a workaround, I've seen worse.
I'm not sure your boat analogy applies in the world of economics.

Many nations have the ingredients for a robust economy; skilled labor, an abundance of resources, etc. but that doesn't guarantee anything.

A more apt analogy would be cooking. Simply having the right ingredients and throwing them in a pot won't magically transform them into a delicious dish. It takes a skilled chef to elevate individual ingredients to a combined dish.

There is a reason the Chinese economy has grown unchecked for the past 20+ years, surviving this recession and the 1997 asian financial crisis, while comparable economies took dives.

I could write paragraphs on why China's economic growth can be contributed to CCP policy but frankly there is enough documentation readily available on the web - much of it written by western academics.

To start, you can read about CCP policies on SEZs, exchange rate, NPL reform (once 20% of its total loan portfolio!!!), and its huge investments in green tech. The last of which is so much smarter than what our representatives in government are doing here in the states.
How is this substantively different from the Skype iPhone application, with an in-bound phone number? The major usability barrier to me there is the inability to have Skype run in the background on the phone (reasonably so, since it would kill battery life); does Line2 somehow work around this?

Edit: Never mind, I should have finished reading the article before posting. Line2 routes calls through the cellular network when the app isn't running.
How so? If a mathematician is good enough to win the fields medal, he (she) can probably have the career he wants.

I haven't done research myself, but I've spent a fair amount of time around researchers in math and the basic sciences and my experience strongly suggests that the purpose of the Nobel etc, insofar as they have any, is not to advance the careers of the recipients (who don't need the help if they're deserving) or to drive the recipients to do better research (the consensus is that, if anything, earning a major prize dampens a researcher's potential, though of course that has selection bias written all over it); the purpose is really to give those researchers who've already reached the top of the playing field something to aspire to. (I used to think these prizes were net losses for science, but over time it's become clearer to me that the role they play is actually fairly important.)

All of this is to say: the actual distribution of prizes is more a necessary evil than anything, and delaying conferral to the end of a person's career minimizes the bad effects of a prize and maximizes the good ones.
Yes, and if there's a better recipe for success in consumer electronics, I can't begin to imagine what it might be.
Chromium didn't like the site's SSL cert (presumably self-signed, the warning page is light on the details, or I just missed a link to more detail).
"We've requested in open letters that any group believing we are infringing to inform us so that we make take immediate corrective action."

This is nice, but does it really protect them? It seems that a patent holder has more incentive to take a wait-and-see approach.
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China is a brutal dictatorship that propagandizes and manipulates its populace. So how is this article credible? And even this particular person really thinks that his government's censorship is a good thing, why would it matter?
Cancer genes silenced in humans
I thought of inpainting in GREYCstoration - http://cimg.sourceforge.net/greycstoration/demonstration.sht...
Perhaps you missed the point of the whole exercise: To respond to a high-profile yet poor representation of RDBMS performance.

The OP repeated this reasoning more than once.

He showed that the facts cited by Digg do not make sense unless we take into account poor database technology, poor database configuration, or poor database skills, or all three.

Perhaps you disagree with that. However, that's not what you said above. The OP also discussed the nature of this micro-benchmark, and it's relevance despite his own poor knowledge of the actual data characteristics.

So in other words, he has already directly addressed your concern in advance, more than once on that too as a matter of fact. Considering that fact, you haven't actually responded to his article, you just wrote a "tends to" point about micro-benchmarks, I think it's pretty clear that Dennis Forbes knows a thing or two about benchmarks.

Blah blah blah to empty air, this comment page is pretty much a fact-free and nuance-free flame war anyway, so what's the point, sorta embarrassing for the esteemed HN crowd.
I loved that story (selling political-theme cereal) since I heard it in the PG Mixergy interview. Apparently they still have it on their site, too:

http://www.airbnb.com/capnmccains
http://www.airbnb.com/obamaos
Google is Testing New UI in Search Display Results