skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I've recently read a good book that I think is insightful here. It was written by a Bush Administration official and is called "How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack."

No matter how you feel about the obvious pro-Bush slant this book is worth reading for two reasons...

1. The author actually spent time talking to the CIA people who carry out Ops. He got to ask them "why do you do this?" and "why does this work?"

2. The information shared wasn't available until the Obama administration declassified it. So it gives an unprecedented look into how intelligence agencies work and how much of their work is simply psychological.

After reading the book my opinion is they're screwing with Wikileaks. Again, the real expertise the CIA has built up over the years is in how to get people to think what the CIA wants them to think. In this case I believe they want this editor to think he's being spied on at every turn.

Increased paranoia, especially on someone who is already prone to it, will eventually drive a person over the edge. As this post shows his instinct is to fight back in public meaning the more paranoid they can make him the more likely it is he'll start ranting in public and (they hope) discredit himself.
>Would you publish nuclear launch codes?

Afaik, wikileaks has never been about publishing launch codes. It's about revealing cover ups and there should be no government cover ups. If they are trying to hide something they've done then it's probably because it's illegal.
> The whole point of advertising something as an investment opportunity is to say that it’s offering better odds than roulette.

Roulette advertises 35:1 payouts. Most investment opportunities advertise under 20:1.

Yes, the actual returns are different than the advertisements - the "expected" is much closer to 1:1 in both cases.

But with roulette you get "free" drinks'.
> Well what kind of classified material?

Any classified material. I don't think they should be discriminative based on some ill specified metric; if they feel the material should be classified then they should attempt to keep it so. If Wikileaks feels it should be public then they should attempt to make it so. Therein we have the makings of balance.

> Obligation to who? Government? Why should we have an obligation to them that trumps our moral sense of right and wrong?

We certainly don't have an obligation, that's silly. They have an obligation to stand by the laws they impose. Otherwise whats the point :)
Monetizing a browser add-on by replacing websites' ads
I thought of that too, but decided it would have been easier to put "invisible" watermarks throughout the movie stream that can be detected even after compression. Say imperceptible color variations that a computer can pick up if it knows which frames to search.
The integration problems are the same regardless of the UI technology.
So as soon as the US classifies something it is no longer valid, in your view, for anyone to show it? I guess they can do whatever they like then! Just classify everything that would otherwise be illegal.
There are multiple documented cases of congressional staff doing whitewash edits in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_actions_prom...

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Just...
This may just be a matter of taste in the case of chrome, I think they are extremely ugly.

http://is.gd/b0ydO
10 Mistakes You Don’t Want To Make As A Freelancer
Ask HN: How do you solve hard problems if you can't make incremental progress?
Yes.

I wrote a biz plan and raised funding, then learned NOBODY read it. Focus on the demo and the slideshow, skip the biz plan.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it acceptable to discriminate based on age, except under the terms of the ADEA, which only protects people >= 40 in the workplace?
I'm sure incompetence plays a part, but two other factors at play are the fact that no one person really understands how things work, and when things start getting that distributed it's probably fairly likely that there are logical fallacies that have been built into the system and adhered to by strict processes for decades. It doesn't take much fudging for a bureaucracy to paper over these edge cases, the accounts shrug and say close enough, and the consultants are then put in an impossible scenario where different parties give them different business logic and no one has the authority or will to reconcile the issues from the top down.
You write a business plan for the precise reason that you can determine what you should and shouldn't commit to. If something is in the business plan and you knew it would kill the business, then you take it out of the business plan!

Business plans are good. They don't have to take a lot of time. I did a business plan and put charts and numbers in it. As the business progressed, without intending to stick to the business plan, the charts have turned out to look almost exactly like the charts I put in the business plan. The numbers are different, but the shape is almost exactly the same.

If anything business plans are a way to test your ability to predict the future and nothing is more important in business than being able to predict the future. If you can predict the future, it doesn't matter what kind of business you create, you'll make the right decisions based on your understanding of what the future holds.

Of course, you don't need to have an ability to predict the future to run a successful business. Some people make great decisions on the fly. However, it's a really great feeling to look back and see that you have created the life you want intentionally with vision and you know for sure it wasn't just dumb luck. It's a real confidence boost and having known in advance how the future will be play out enables you to make better decisions with the trust of others. Just show them the plan you created 3 years ago and how your business has matched.

When you do that, it's easier to convince others that the business moving forward will match your future plans as well. This is true of future partners, customers, and employees, not just investors.

I've noticed a lot of people argue certain types of work are irrelevant when they simply don't want to do the work. They'll say, "It doesn't matter to use prepared statements, concatenating strings is fine!" But they're just lazy. It's not fine. Business plans are relevant. Strategy is relevant. Understanding the market is* relevant. Putting it on paper helps others understand what is in your head.

Some coders argue that documenting their code is bad too, but that's absurd. Some argue that gathering requirements is irrelevant. "Just iterate!" they say. Hog wash.

Of course business plans are good and they do help. You can survive without them, but it doesn't make business plans bad.
I was too harsh earlier. The main point I'd like to make is that themes are independent of the core UI refinements that need to happen. Shapado faces 6+ months of work before it can have quality of SO.

I support open source software, but who is going to sit down and do this painstaking work. It's easier to work on theming or mongodb, rather than make the titles spaced correctly ( for example ).
By "other popular Web browsers such as...the Linux operating system," do you think they meant Konqueror or elinks or something?
Pure Python code can do a lot. Large parts of the stdlib are extension modules, and can release the GIL (e.g. one of the tests on the bug tracker used time.sleep()). In practice, if your code is IO-bound, it's doing work in an extension module, and if it's CPU-bound, it should be doing its work in an extension module. So there's actually not a huge problem.
There is anothing thing common to all those companies. They are all PUBLIC.

Its true that the IPO market has been quiet lately, but it is waking up. And there is much more spending money there than in these 10 companie's accounts.
The thing I like the most about BBC is how they have people from different ethnic backgrounds all having opinions as if they were White American middle-class US military adventures supporters.

Watching some of them - especially of Arab origin while reporting from Palestine - is almost like watching Jews giving pro-Nazi reports from Aushwitz. So much fun!

And if you feel offended by this comment Mr/Mrs "Land of the Free" go read your f*ing 1st Amendment at last!
Is this some sort of early April Fools joke?
Do Not Discount the Wall of Worry
I generally try to step away from the problem for awhile. Even if it's only for 10 minutes. I come back with a fresh perspective that usually helps me get through it.
If you are a startup, leave government contracts for someone else to figure out.
By the time it comes thru and makes you a boat load of money, you will be long dead (as a company).

This was said by PG or someone definitely smarter than me.
I try to attack the problem persistently and creatively. Often I will walk around and just ask random people what they think. Sometimes even describing the problem in non technical terms for the non techies to understand. People usually have some ideas that you haven't thought of. I've found that any idea can set you off on a path to solve the problem.
Build web database = create spreadsheet
The part I don't understand is, for this particular problem, it is well-known enough that a simple visit to Wikipedia would've been enlightening.

I remember reading up on it awhile ago, and it seems like the Wikipedia entry already had the dancing links algorithm by then.
Eye-Tracking Tablets and the Promise of Text 2.0
The challenge content producers face is not so much on the technical side, but rather on finding an audience.

I'm sure you've seen this:
http://www.learnivore.com

Something like that where I could upload my videos and have a (tag based or provider based) e-mail go out to an audience would be the real selling point.

With content publisher upgrades available for "featured video", or featured video within a tag. Something like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
Kudos to James Cameron for his attention to detail - shows that Avatar was really a labor of love.
Eh, Personally, I think passion is overrated. It's like a marriage; How you deal with the fights, the bad times has a lot more to do with your long-term success than how hot the relationship is in the beginning.

While I agree that any given person is likely to work harder for themselves than for others, I know some entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs because they hope to work less hard. I know during the three or four years I bled into my company, I certainly worked harder than most people, and way harder than I'd consider working for someone else. but right now? I'm probably putting in closer to 20 hours than 40 hours a week. (part of that is just that it's been a long time that I couldn't relax, and now I can spend more time at the gym and stuff, but part of that is that I am an intrinsically lazy person.)

The thing is, for the vast majority of us, there is a maximum amount of work we can productively do in a given timespan; You can temporarily exceed that, but you will become less productive in the coming weeks.

(granted, I'm only ramen profitable right now, so maybe I shouldn't be speaking yet.)
The jokes are still relevant.

Q: How many Prolog developers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

A: No
Would a wiki work? If you can find one that has page-level authorisation based on the username, then you can host it and give individual clients' usernames access to specific pages.

Not sure if Mediawiki allows that.
ah, I see the kool-aid drinkers use the down-vote instead of reasoned debate.
Good points (you and URSpider), it's just a regulation that really bothers me. Anyway, when I finish my MS in mathemetical finance, I plan to lose money through options instead :). (It's much faster that way lol!)
I'll probably be there, although I can't guarantee.
"Seeing progress without doing any work yourself is priceless in regards to motivation."

I used to think I could always be a lone wolf. I'd hire out people when necessary but otherwise, I thought, it'd be just me.

But, after either selling off for not much or losing motivation to work on several products I solely created, I finally decided pg was right. The right partner is priceless.
You actually reminded me of someone: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1221319
how about large groups? how do you start talking when you are in a large group? I find that very difficult.
She says:

"Slick slide decks with little behind them rarely get funded."

Sequoia says:

"We like business plans that present a lot of information in as few words as possible. The following business plan format, within 15-20 slides, is all that's needed"

I'm sure it varies by industry, but I know more successful people who followed Sequoia's business plan strategy over hers.
Excellent story. Makes it that much more exciting that I was just in Paris and got to see it in person.
I must say your social life will be fairly limited with £1000 unless you try and go for a cheaper place to stay. I think it's still worth a shot because London is a brilliant place to be. I may not have much money to spend but even walking around town is a treat.

Plus, the English countryside is very beautiful (if you're into that kind of thing). You can easily get away for a hike or walk to many places within an hour's train ride. If you go further, there's a lot more to explore.

If it matters to you, I have a few Italian friends here. And generally, there are a ton of Italians in London. It may help if you feel homesick sometimes.

I should really find all out about the taxes, so yeah do email me. I'll keep you posted.
On The Fear Of Reading Code
I'm surprised that this game is 2 years away. Isn't that plenty of time for someone else to create a clone? Sure, the graphics are primitive, but it doesn't matter for a game like this.
Dell Moving Factories Out Of China
That would be around £1700/month, if you setup a company for the money to go through your takehome pay will probably be around 70-80% of your company's income (so around 1200-1360). That'll be fine if you get a flatshare, if you want to get a one bed flat to yourself it'll be tight.

Also see if you can find a business reason to be in london (i.e. that's where clients are, etc.), because if you have a legit business reason for it then you can claim the cost of your rent as a business expense and pay for it out of pre-tax income for upto two years.
The thing is here, no-one is incentivized to deliver. The bureaucrats who specify the system don't really care as it's not their money, and they justify their positions by sitting in meeting and writing reports that only each other will ever read. Then there are the consultants who are paid hourly...

Typically it goes like this:

Bureaucrats: Here is a 1000-page spec document that we have spent 3 years writing. We captured all the requirements at the beginning
Consultants: We can do this project for $X. However it will take a long time and a lot of people for us just to understand your spec, so any changes to it will cost $Y.
Bureaucrats: OK whatever.

Consultants: work work
Bureaucrats: Wait, we've changed our mind about this!
Consultants: lick lips
This is typical of a stabilized industry. It has happened countless times. Railroads, petroleum exploration, airlines and now information technology.

VC will move to another industry: green tech, biotech, and nanotech. Web businesses should focus on more established trajectories that other industries adhere to. We'd be well served to stop listening to the VCs and start listening to the 37signals.

People keep coming to me with ideas and I say, "What's your strategy?" They say, "Get a lot of users, then get VC." I say, "No." They are often deeply offended, but I simply tell them, if aren't creating something of value that people are willing to pay for, your chances of survival are slim to none.
The timing of this post complements nicely my upcoming iPad app discussed elsewhere on HN:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1220306

Thank-you :)
I have a programming problem, and I'm pretty sure I'm aware of the basic components of the solution... it's just that I get swamped in complexity pretty quickly when I try out different combinations.

I know this is a very meta question but this is not the only case. I'll solve it eventually but I'd like to ask for common strategies.

Edit: Some of my strategies are: to absorb more information about similar stuff while I put solving it on back burner, to try to describe the problem clearly, to bounce the problem off other people.

-------------------------

Okay, here is the specific question: I have a map of categories of things (a few words) and descriptions what these categories mean (longer text). I also have another list of category names that sometimes uses different words or abbreviations, and I need to match the second list to the first one precisely.

I know all about tf-idf, vector space similarity between a document and a term, wordnet as a source of semantic relations between words, and it's ok to have a human map some of these. The problem is I don't know when a matching score is good enough and when I need to fall back to a human.
Yes a small competent team could build the IT system for a fraction of the time and money

A team that can do that AND is willing to navigate the treacherous minefields of internal politics at a government department doesn't exist.
Netflix Wii streaming discs to arrive in mailboxes tomorrow
When I consulted via a firm, they regularly billed clients $200-$300/hr for the work of developers and operations folks who were getting paid ~$20-25/hr.

Granted, this was in fly-over country, but the gap between billable-hour and developer-hour is quite often massive.
And there was fallout from it. It happens here, yes, but it is very much frowned upon.
Just to clarify, I wasn't advocating holding the kid back. I was just saying it is important to have that social interaction with your age-peers, especially as a teen.

As some anecdotal evidence, take some of my college classmates who also started early. Most of us went back to high school, but a few just went full time college. After two years, this one guy wanted to transfer to Cal Tech. He was more than smart enough, but after the interview, they told him he wasn't social enough. They suggested to him that he join some youth clubs and get some social interaction with his peers, and they would reconsider him.

So he joined every club he could find, and it made a huge difference. He was much easier to talk to and just more fun to be around.

And then he transferred to Cal Tech.
In consulting it's typical to get paid a quarter of your billing rate, as a rule of thumb. I've seen places where it's a tenth tho'.
Dell hints it may follow Google out of China
That's 1 cup, mashed. I looked up 1 medium banana:

http://www.weightlossforall.com/calories-banana.htm

Edit: To note that I still do see your point about why certain diets avoid them. I think of bananas as the 3 Musketeers Bar of fruit. :-)
> NYC government could have created a small crack-team of internal IT people who could build the system for less than a 5th of the current cost.

So you're arguing that the NYC government is incompetent at running a project done by contractors, but it would be better at both FORMING and RUNNING its own team of contractors?

Sounds like nonsense to me.
Having a more varied fleet would be vastly more expensive for Southwest to maintain, because they've bet heavily on having fleet consistency. Their ability to handle baggage easily is only one aspect of this, and probably not the biggest one (I would guess spare parts is bigger). Other airlines that already have a varied fleet might be able to pull it off, but there's still large logistical issues.

All of Southwest's planes are interchangeable. They only need one collection of spare parts for maintenance. If one plane needs to be taken out of service, it can be replaced by any other plane in the network. They only need one type of spare plane at each airport to cover contingencies. Their pilots and crew can all be re-assigned with negligible attention to specialization, certification, or even number of crew per flight. Any place that has a SWA connection will always have the correct capabilities for any flight that goes to or through that airport. They can make logistic changes to their network without considering compatibility issues.

Compare this to an airline that dynamically re-adjusts the type of plane. You generally don't know baggage capacity until shortly before takeoff (unless you want to make everyone declare far in advance, which is itself a burden on travelers). This means that you need to either keep a bunch of spare planes of varying types at each airport, or fly empty planes around to meet demand, both of which are expensive. You also have to deal with, say, Denver having more 737s going in than out, and extra 757s piling up in Maui. In order to correct that you need to either fly empty planes, or use the wrong type of plane on some flights, probably over-large ones. Basically, airplanes are too big and expensive to realistically adopt "agility" as a business strategy. The overhead for preparing for/dealing with statistical anomalies piles up fast.
Any of you actively crushing it?
Two words: counterparty risk.

If you borrow from A (or if A invests in you) and lend to B (or invest in B, or, if B is a bank, deposit money in B), then any risk that B might default translates into a risk that A will have trouble getting its money back too.

One could, of course, say that every lender is responsible for not only checking out its debtors but also its debtors’ debtors and debtors’ debtors’ debtors and so on, and if a lender finds itself on the end of a chain of defaults, them’s the breaks. However, the experience of the late nineteenth century—never mind the Great Depression or the recent unpleasantness—teaches us that when this idea is implemented as law (perhaps I should say, as absence-of-law), we have periodic crises where the whole engine of credit seizes up, the economy goes into the toilet, and impoverished workers take to the streets.

Securities regulations weren’t passed to save you from the capitalist system. They were passed to save the capitalist system from you.
> The thing is here, no-one is incentivized to deliver.

Amen.

Incentives are everything, and if you look at most things without keeping that foremost in your mind, you'll see a hodgepodge of weird random effects ... but use that perspective, and most things make a ton of sense.
Murdoch Finalizes Paywall for Two British Papers
Business plan? Maybe a waste of time. Executive summary (i.e. ~5 page-equivalent of a business plan)? Well worth it.
But the value is in writing it, not in having it. At the very least, write it and then throw it away so that you don't get tunnel vision. Definitely don't go trying to farm that part out.

I hear a lot of people say they don't have any sort of executive summary or formal plan, because they think it's a waste of time. That's a convenient excuse to build something without having to think it through. That's fine if you're just building it because you enjoy it, but don't try convincing me it's a serious business.

On the flip side, I've also seen plenty of "idea" people who have only a business plan and nothing more, and then they spend all of their time trying to find someone to build it for them. That's even worse, because at least the builders, though they may not have a viable business, have something of value to show for their work.
If you don't mind, what in particular is good, what's not good please?

Not sure he'll go for cloud based, it's largely a psychological thing but ownership of the files and assurance of security is quite a big thing.
A PhD in finance should automatically deem you unsophisticated enough to make an educated investment. For proof, I give you Wall Street.