skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
No one complains about UX in ads, people complain about relevancy. And that complaint is only heard about ads that are supposed to be highly targeted. No one complains that billboards on the side of highways are not relevant to them -- mainly because the cost of the billboard is entirely on the creator of the ad, users pay (in network bandwidth and slower page load times) to have ads shown to them on web pages, so wanting to see higher relevant ads, if they have to see ads at all, makes sense.

No one says "I'd buy the product this ad is advertising, but the experience of using the ad is terrible." That doesn't even make any sense. Ads don't have "users" like software does. And ads that don't end up resulting in sales are ads you won't see long, no matter how engaging they are.
Human Smoke

http://books.google.com/books?id=8HKQEJlAl9gC&printsec=f...

Churchill, Hitler, and "the unnecessary war": how Britain lost its empire and the West lost the world

http://books.google.com/books?id=PYESsQRyIIMC&printsec=f...

Both books are iconoclastic looks at how WWII came to be, and whether it was truly a "just" war. The second is by Pat Buchanan, but neither book is crazy or racist. Both are extremely well-researched and documented. Pat Buchanan's book is explicitly in response to the "just war" trope which was used to justify the US occupation of Iraq, but I think I see the same motivation in Human Smoke.

The most interesting single tidbit I learned from the two books was that Roosevelt was an anti-semite:

http://books.google.com/books?id=8HKQEJlAl9gC&lpg=PP1...

(I looked that vignette up in Morgenthau's memoirs. The story he tells there was meant to justify to the younger Morgenthau Roosevelt's policy of restricting emigration to the US by Jewish refugees.)
The problem with software is that generally a single bit wrong is a total failure.

This doesn't mesh with my experience to be honest. I often come across code that contains nasty bugs but is still somehow working accidentally. And even more often, there are bugs that stop just one feature from working while the rest of a large system pretty much acts as if the bug didn't exist.
Really (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-1). That was the first flight of the new Soyuz TMA with a glass cockpit.

The capsule’s failsafe mechanisms where triggered and the it fell back to the harsher ballistic reentry instead of the normal controlled one (nobody was harmed). It seems that a system which has been in use since 1979 somehow got confused by the sensory data. Some sort of odd bug, they have never been able to reproduce it.

Fallback to ballistic reentries also happened later with TMA-10 and TMA-11 – in those two cases a damaged cable and a pyro bolt malfunction (which nearly got the crew killed) were responsible respectively.
There's a difference between what they are doing now and the Ubisoft Mess. With Assassin's Creed they exerted effort to enforce DRM, with the PS3 they are just not making it easier for you to break DRM.
Most of it is written in a custom language called HAL/S (High Level Assembly Language / Shuttle). Some of the nitty gritty is written in assembly.

HAL/S looks a little bit like basic or FORTRAN. It was designed to be very readable and uses some interesting formatting. When you print out a module (lets say GG1ASC), it uses three lines for each line of code so that the superscripts and subscripts are above and below like they should be.
Chinese Reactions to Google leaving China
If you're willing to put in at least a month of hard labor, DFW's Infinite Jest is worth the read.
And Gmail.
Gray on black, eh? Great place to plug Readability:

http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
Yes. I think I must have heard this recommended over 10 times but I've never made any effort to get a copy because I'm not interested in motorcycle maintenance. Is that a legitimate reason not to read it?
I was disappointed not to be informed of the experimental method. Did he normalize the data for each time period? (Dollars/Person within 20 feet), or is it unnormalized and we could just be looking at a situation where more people came later. How long were the time periods of each trial? How much better did he do at each trial, in terms of percentages?

Also, since he apparently has the data, I'm dieing to know how much one of these guys does make per day.
As much as I enjoyed both Pale Fire and Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, I cannot, in good conscience, let these be the only Nabokov books to be mentioned here. Having read all his nonfiction and his autobiography over the past three years, I must warn against starting with either of these, two of his most difficult, novels.

You see, Nabokov toys with his readers - he leaves puzzles throughout his books; he writes in defiance of literary criticism (part of his impetus in Pale Fire); he foreshadows with a trail of anagrams. To throw someone in media res of two of his most complex tales (perhaps only surpassed by Lolita and The Gift), might give a premature distaste for Nabokov's heady style.

What I would personally recommend for someone new to Nabokov would be any of Despair, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, or Transparent Things.

If you like Nabokov, you may also want to try:

Rushdie, Salman - The Satanic Verses

Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
I think a better question would be, do any languages have features that help _you_ follow an aspect-oriented paradigm? At the end of the day, you can use just about any paradigm in Java. By no means does it enforce OO. Ditto for just about any other language. But certain features make it easy to use OO, so when using it, you feel compelled to use that paradigm.

Do any languages make it easy? Ruby, for example, allows it. But it feels like it was never intended. Someone actually just posted about this on HN: http://cfis.savagexi.com/2007/09/05/rails-unusual-architectu...
Ya, those are vi standards. Wish they would at least support emacs p,n versions as well, as that's what I've remapped my gmail to. (and also what most unix's support by default in shells etc..)

Kind of weird that the vi standard is what has stuck with Google, anybody have an explanation apart from just the first peeps who did it being vi junkies?
Eh... Go play, I built the site to learn how these technologies would work together. I learned that its cool and very simple to hookup but that means with simplicity comes some extra work to secure it. I'll work out the kinks later and do a writeup but what I learned and post the source.
I've used sqlalchemy, i've used django, and here's the thing, _every_ time I've used them, I've needed to know and understand SQL to learn/write and debug them.

Eventually, some bug comes up, and you need to peek at what queries the ORM is generating, and then peek at what is actually in the database, and etc.

But at this point, you have to not only know what's going on with your particular SQL dialect, you also have to know syntax hoops for whatever particular ORM you're using. Instead of even just language + SQL, you've got language + ORM + SQL , which is even worse for focusing on whatever I was trying to build in the first place!

Whereas, with a NoSQL solution, you're (probably) dealing with JSON, which works nicely and reliably and transparently in pretty much every language ever.
There are a number of problems with the God Delusion. The attitude its abhorrent, some of the arguments are bad, and its too long. Not worth it, IMO. There must be better pro-atheism books out there.
ZipCar Begins to Rev Its IPO Engine
Didn't work with US address and Russian card :-)
I'm sure you're right - I was making my point rather hyperbolically.

But I think the point is valid: a lot of work to help "the homeless" is ultimately motivated more by removing eyesores and eliminating guilt-trips than actually helping people. Out of sight, out of mind.

And yes, I know it's human nature, but that doesn't make it right.
I'm with you on this one. I don't see the problem with affilate links. It doesn't change the value you get out of the product.

Sure there might be a few odd people out there who live of affilate links but is that a bad thing? If someone sees value in the information they've been provided where is the harm?
I think they get the disdain they deserve; it just isn't expressed online. (You didn't log in to reddit to chastise them, did you? Neither did I.) Whoever these people are, they shouldn't treat their online reception as a guide to what people really think of their behavior.
I think a problem with affiliate links is that they can only reward people who cause sales to occur. This is good if your commentary on the book was so useful it made someone buy the book. But what if your criticism is so useful, it caused a prospective buyer to not buy the book. You did just as much a service to him/her by providing a valuable opinion, yet you get no reward.

Next to every Amazon affiliate link should be a "Donate if I convinced you not to buy" button.
This is probably way more PT Barnum than pg would like to be; but it would be pretty awesome to use the proceeds to fund a "community selected" startup. Startups could opt-in if they didn't make the regular YC cut; but were in the next N% of applicants.

pg could make a poll with links to the various pitches and the one with the highest vote totals gets funded. Of course, you'd have to worry about poll-stuffing and the like; but I think it would be an interesting experiment.
no, in my experience building real world stuff, they are both data stores, and pretty similar beasts; most of the docs I see arguing one way or another focus on, imho, silly nitpicky differences.
we know that he refuses the help all the time and has for years and that they still keep asking him if he wants it.

christian missionaries are completely well intentioned, but its still proselytization as is this...

would you like jesus in your life? no? what about now?
have you tinkered with map/reduce?
Some other site where this sort of discussion is on topic?
am i the only person that finds this creepy?

(yes, i understand that in some sense he's helping the homeless guy; no i cannot yet fully articulate why this bothers me).
Analyst: Apple Will Ship Over Six Million iPads in 2010
Public Knowledge Explains: Short Codes
"Housing first" has been pretty successful so far. It just makes sense on so many levels, including economic. Just Google it for more info. The fact that there is only one homeless man left in Times Square is kind of amazing. Of course there are other factors (keep in mind homeless numbers in NYC are up overall) such as a policy to move the homeless away from touristy areas such as Times Square.

On a side note, my girlfriend is opening a residential shelter for women on Monday! Three levels of housing (short, medium, and long term) and almost five years in the making. It's called Florence House (part of Preble Street) in Portland, Maine.
> Achieve less

Finally, something I excel at.
Some influential and interesting books on how humanity interacts with technology (and vice-versa):

* The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul
* Tools for Conviviality, Ivan Illich
* Shop Class as Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford
I've seen several MBA beancounters drive software companies into the ground. A few of them, I was surprised to learn, had engineering degrees. I thought that, maybe, they just didn't cut it as engineers and went into "business/management" as an alternative.
Seeing how guided tours are done by Apple and discussing the pros and cons might be relevant for HN, don’t you think?
Is it hard to validate things server side? From the little I know about the setup it seems like you publish from a client, and it gets pushed out to all clients automatically.

Hopefully there's a way to deny certain publishes from clients, cleanse input, validate etc etc on the server, before it gets relayed to the other clients.

For example the channel '/client_count' should never accept any publishes from outside the server. Wonder how easy that is to adjust.

It does seem pretty nice and responsive though :) Nice job.
> I must say you really sold the Musashi book to me. Definitely going to buy it next time I buy books. Thanks.

You're going to love it :) I damn near never guarantee someone is going to love a book, but I figure almost anyone here would. Everyone, literally everyone I'd recommended or gifted a copy of Musashi too is crazy about the book.

At the risk of getting way ahead of myself, Taiko by the same author is quite good too, but larger in scope - more characters, more history, a bit more work but still a good story. If you really like Japan or Yoshikawa's writing style, check that out afterwards. But for now, you're in good hands with Musashi. Feel free to drop me an email if you've got thoughts as you're reading, my email is in my profile.
Agreed, and look up some Youtube videos while you're at it. This man understood science and the world with fantastic insight.
Let me argue the following standpoint: programming is hard, algorithms are hard, and compile time type checks are not much more than spell correctors.

Any algoritm operates and creates state. It is nice your statically typed language prevented you to add your socket file descriptor to an int. So you fix your 'typo' and add the index of the file descriptor (assuming your open sockets live in an array, or similar scenario). But what if your algoritm requires you to do a subtraction? You still have a bug.

No type check can check runtime dependent data. You pass in a List but the list requires to be at least of length 2? (Actually you some languages can tackle this too, but these sort of requirements become arbitrary complex.) You will deref the list out of bounds and you have a bug.

So now I just sketched two scenario's where you still need to actually run your program to catch bugs. And your type system did nothing.

A very certain kind of bug -- mostly typo's or slightly higher level mistake -- are caught by a static type systems. The question is, is this worth the restricted semantics of the language?

The advantage of a static type system is clear; these mistakes are caught where and when they are introduced, not where their result is used.

The disadvantage is also clear: restricted semantics. How would macro's look for lisp if it had type checks?

Without types, your language is better at creating macro-like abstractions. You can capture patterns with these, and prevent a lot of typos that way. (And a write a lot more concise code.)

And even more, think about Java's performance hit on ArrayStoreException ... So even such statically typed languages need to do runtime type checking more often then you would like.
Please stand by. It is our most requested feature, and should be ready soon.
They don't solve the same problem though. All static typing does is make sure you don't have any type mismatches. Sure, it helps enforce assertions about your inputs and outputs, but there are a million ways your code can compile without issue and then proceed to fail spectacularly. The fact that, as this article states, tests are optional is another issue entirely, but it doesn't change the fact that static typing is only useful up to a point.
For the same reasons, if you want to understand why relationships are hard and what is really going on between people,

The Mystery Method by Mystery - About half is a real down-to-the bits theory of love and attraction. The other half is advice about how to pick up dates at bars. I only wanted the first part, but both are fascinating. After reading this, it's like the veil was lifted and I could see the fnords.

The Game by Neil Strauss - The story of field research into practical romance by a great writer and a peek at the author of the first book above. The author masters seductive romance and discovers that it is not the same as love. In the end, though, he needed the first to have a chance at the second.

Once you accept that love and romance are hard and not free, these two books are a start at finding and building a quality relationship. Of course, you'll have to ignore that they market themselves as manuals on how to avoid one.
God Is Not Great for example.
Just curious, what's your objection to AES?
Ask HN: Review my side project - Reel Roulette
I've just released a small side project website that came from an idea I had with a buddy during our plan ride to SXSW Interactive. You can see the site here:

http://reelroulette.net/

It's supposed to be a gimmicky and easy way to find motion designers. Basically, you can upload "reels" and people can view random ones and vote on ones they like. It's kind of like Chat Roulette, except with no penises (so far).

You can read more about the making of the site here:

http://almosteffortless.com/2010/03/26/reel-roulette/

The thing that makes me happy about this site is that it was built in about 30 hours of work between 3 people. I know it's nothing too special and has plenty of room for improvement, but people seem to be enjoying it so far.

I'd love to hear any ideas you may have about improving the site, and I'm pondering potential ways to make money from the thing without spoiling it. It's been fun as-is, but it would be nice if we could justify spending more time on it than we already have by way of making some cash.

Any feedback more than welcome. Thanks!
I've just released a small side project website that came from an idea I had with a buddy during our plan ride to SXSW Interactive.

It's supposed to be a gimmicky and easy way to find motion designers. Basically, you can upload "reels" and people can view random ones and vote on ones they like. It's kind of like Chat Roulette, except with no penises (so far).

You can read more about the making of the site here:

http://almosteffortless.com/2010/03/26/reel-roulette/

The thing that makes me happy about this site is that it was built in about 30 hours of work between 3 people. I know it's nothing too special and has plenty of room for improvement, but people seem to be enjoying it so far.

I'd love to hear any ideas you may have about improving the site, and I'm pondering potential ways to make money from the thing without spoiling it. It's been fun as-is, but it would be nice if we could justify spending more time on it than we already have by way of making some cash.

Any feedback is more than welcome. Thanks!
Please send us the link when you do!
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski has been compared to Pale Fire. I've read House of Leaves, and though it's textbook-sized (about as large as GED), when I got into it I finished it within the week. Definitely find one in print, it's just absolutely engaging.
If I commissioned a computer to be made that wasn't supposed to be able to span the new year then no I would not consider it a bug that it could not span the new year. Sure it would be great if it would do that (though only if I had asked that it would), but as long as it behaves exactly as expected then I'm happy. No astronauts die and my budget won't cut. Success.

A similar parallel in consumer computing is switchable graphics. The first models that supported this required a reboot to accomplish it. That wasn't a bug, just part of the plan. They have since gotten more advanced and allow switching without a restart.
The biggest differences normally arise with multiple queries running concurrently. For example, InnoDB & PostgreSQL use MVCC whereas MyISAM uses locking, and PostgreSQL normally wins most benchmarks with high concurrency on multi-core machines (8+).

I'm not certain I understand what you ran in the 'heavy' and 'light' threading tests. Can you provide some more details / explanation?
why does metafilter think they're in the right to change those affiliate links and steal those rewards? why would anyone bother responding to posts on their site knowing that not only can they not get rewarded for responding with a recommendation, but that metafilter is stealing the reward from them?

i don't understand the aversion to affiliate links. if someone buys a book from amazon based on my recommendation (and link), amazon thanks me by giving me a portion of their profit on the sale. that shopper doesn't pay extra money, the author doesn't receive less money, and i am rewarded for taking the time to respond to that person's question.
What I took away from this:

- always be testing, even (especially?) offline

- repackaging your offer can = drastic result

- incentives work

Agree that lack of full data was disappointing.
The basic concept can be summed up in 2 sentences: Do nice things for people and they'll do nice things for you. Treat them like crap or ask for too much too often and they'll treat you the same way in return. Which pretty much seems like common sense to me.

The idea of a give and take bank account balance is somewhat strange. I can see where the intent is with the metaphore, but I don't think it's an accurate, or, more importantly, entirely healthy one.

I prefer to keep my relationships a little more fluid, rather than keeping a record of who owes who how many favors. But maybe I'm in a unique situation with regards to my job, in that my employer is also a really great friend and it's pretty much a given that we'll both do all we can to help the other out, just because we like doing so.
I think asking for a referral is an extremely delicate thing in sales as well as raising capital. While you have little to lose from asking for a referral after a rejection, you also have much to gain from pitching this very carefully.

You don't want to come off as implying the VC is wrong to turn you down, consider acknowledging the possibility that your idea isn't ready in the VC's mind before asking for a referral.

"Hey Brad, thanks for your polite note... I get that it isn't right for you to move forward with our team right now. Quite honestly, I value your advice. Is there someone you know who might be able to help us move forward a little more, if not by investing at least by helping us understand where we need to get to and how to proceed? Someone who is perhaps specializing in ventures like ours?

"While we would love to raise money from someone like you right now, if we aren't ready we would appreciate steering us to someone who is in a position to help us sharpen our focus.

"Thanks in advance,

"Reginald S. Braithwaite, Esq."
One reason I would avoid those products.

It may be elegant but I would rather a more open device even at the cost of some "Ease of use."
The harm is just that you have to question the motivation for posting the link in the first place.

"Is this person posting this because they really like the product or because they get a kickback?"
> What kind of asshole is...

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/04/venture-capitalist-passe...
Before anything, read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Then try the Salmon of Doubt by him. Salmon of Doubt is a must, but it's made more accessible by reading Adams' fictional works first.
Seconding Jorge Luis Borges! Even before Godel, Escher, Bach! Although Borges is pre-computer era, and is long part of the literary Canon, I think the tone of so many of his stories make a lot more sense from the perspective of the Internet era. If Google were an author, I think it would be Borges more so than any other writer.

Borges constantly wove themes of what is too much knowledge, how are we ensnared and consumed by it, and ultimately how are beauty & wonder itself contained in that paradoxical process from which all things flow.
If I press Like this Reel, will it actually like the vimeo video? I ask this, because then it would be syndicated on my action stream both at vimeo and elsewhere (fb, friendfeed etc)

If that's not currently possible, I suggest looking into it. As user, I would like the action of Liking this reel be reflected on the source file.

If you do that, it's easy to see vimeo being interested in your product/feature/mashup or at least you can attract active vimeo users, whom discovering and liking is a large part of their activity.