skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Here's the link to Nilay's tweet that you referenced:

http://twitter.com/reckless/status/12440641435

He was indeed previously a copyright attorney.
I think it'd take much more than ridiculous key handling to make Tom's head explode..
I can take Starbucks beans and make a decent cup of coffee at home (decent, not exceptional). I've never liked the brewed coffee in their stores -- they do a horrible job of brewing it. Of course, most "big tub o' coffee" brewing methods produce at best a mediocre brew.

Before their espresso bean quality really took a dive, they started introducing the first generation of their automated espresso machines. The same beans that, depending upon barista, produced a decent, sometimes very good, shot from the hand-operated espresso bars, produced an espresso approximating warm, flat cola (really) from the automated bars. I knew one store manager of 10 plus years who would dive in and tweak the automated bar until in produced espresso that was a more palatable "shadow" of a good hand-pulled shot, but his motivation was personal interest and he could not keep the machine producing at that quality -- it was a constant struggle of adjustments that could not be maintained in a commercial environment.

I've heard it suggested that they may have started "burning" the beans more in an attempt to compensate for the weakness of the espresso that the automated bars pulled. Also, my impression is that corporate attention shifted to identifying and marketing more categories of merchandise.

I hardly ever drink a Startbucks, any more, but I've heard that the quality has improved somewhat since Schultz dove back into operations and told people essentially to fix their quality problems. Apparently, the beans are not being burned as badly. They've also been rolling out a second generation of automated bar (as well as some different automated bars for locations having different volume requirements) that produces a better shot than the first generation.

Their in-store brewed coffee still sucks. Their overpriced instant coffee tastes better -- as I've experienced when they first launched it and were offering side-by-side taste test comparisons.

P.S. Their best "take home" beans/roasts, in my opinion: Sumatra, and the holiday blends (particularly end-of-year, although Thanksgiving is, I've been told, a fairly similar blend), depending on the year.
Software Development And The Sunk Cost Fallacy (or, Javascript)
This is very smart on Google's part. What Android seems to lack is polished apps (at least on the scale of the iPhone), and wooing specific developers could go a long way to remedying that.
Desperate attempt by Apple to stem the Android tide ;)
HackerNews has leaderboards though. http://news.ycombinator.com/lists
I think looking at source code is passive. Having to type it in is not. There's something... different about typing it in, learning by doing.

Yes, but instead of getting kids into doing by forcing them to type, I think it's much better to just make the source accessible and encourage them to tweak.

You may not know this about Smalltalk, but not only can you browse the source code of everything quickly, you can change it and have those changes active instantly on a key press. In fact, the whole thing was specifically designed as a digital Montessori toy for kids.

I think forcing today's kids to type in source code will just be seen as unnecessary drudgery. If doing is what we want to encourage, why not just make it easy to do and provide some guidance in that direction?
You can get a regional job without Chinese language skills (what I did), or if you're a specialist in a niche field here is another way to go. Or invest and setup a new business here.
Startups are too busy innovating to be lobbying/donating?
The article mentioned that only public accounts would be included.
It's a good article, and a good intro to the pitfalls of statistical interpretation, but I think it reaches the wrong conclusion. Yes, when one has a very limited data set and needs to draw a conclusion in a hurry, and one has full confidence that there are no confounding variables in one's experiment, then paying very close attention to small differences in p-values can make sense. But how often is this the case when testing a new logo or signup page?

I'm less mathematically sophisticated than the author, and would choose a simpler approach: ignore weak results. If one determines that there is a 95% chance that 51% of people prefer Logo A, either stick with what what you have, go with the one you like, or keep searching for a better logo. If you can't see the effect in the raw data without rigorous mathematical analysis, it's probably not a change worth spending much time on.

Instead of adjusting your significance test for each 'peek', simply ignore anything less than 99.9% 'significant'. And while you are at it, ignore anything that's less than a 10% improvement, on the assumption that structural errors in your testing are likely to overwhelm any effects smaller than this. Drug trials and the front page of Google aside, if the effect is so small that it flips into and out of 'significance' each time you peek, it's probably not the answer you want.
Has anyone read the bio on the author? The guy was the CFO of Crazy Eddie back in the day and got seriously worked over by the SEC. This is seriously interesting stuff.
The Original Techcrunch 40: Where are they now?
Sigh. Too bad I sold my APPL three years ago. Got it when it was $19 though.
I'm not trying to downplay it, I'm merely pointing out that "programmer" refers to a different job today than it did historically.

See also this piece, which goes into more detail about the actual work done by programmers: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~nathanen/files/cbi-gender.pdf
Bookmarks for Entrepreneurs
Technically true, but the reaction to a purchase order is typically to issue an invoice.

In any case, the argument is still true -- you invoice on a certain day, but payment can happy any time. So just replace "PO" with "invoice" and it's still correct.
Linkable: http://entrepreneurcensus.wordpress.com/
Food for the Eagle, Adam Savage's speech to Harvard Humanism Society
How to print from an ipad
Sorry, I didn't mean to lock it. I wanted to set it such that all edits would required you to sign in to Google first, but looks like that is not possible, unless I also know ahead of time the list of people I want to permit to edit - and send them an invitation explicitly.

Basically, I just wanted to prevent anonymous edits (but still have the document be publicly readable/writable - except you have to sign in first). Looks like that's not possible with Google Docs.

I've returned it back to what it was before, sorry for the inconvenience. You can always reach out to me if you have any questions.

http://cofoundergoogledocs.com
Report From a 1994 Web Usability Study
Thanks for the promotion (yes QB is weird and difficult).

However the article isn't about software, it's about why it's useful to use different accounting perspectives depending on what information you're wanted to get from your books.

So e.g. for daily operations you need a different perspective from budgeting.
That's the benefit of building and protecting a strong brand. HTC for example may sell one specific model of Android device with a camera but who knows it even exists? They don't advertise. They have dozens of different models that look very similar. This makes it difficult for consumers to identify a feature they want, identify the model of device it's available on, and obtain it. Apple traditionally rips down a lot of those barriers by offering a simple, heavily advertised, product line that is easy to obtain.
A bit gimmicky... One click? Really? Isn't that dangerous? Every time I click a file it would be shared... Besides that, how easy does this make it to accidentally share data you don't want to?

Seriously though, it looks interesting... I can see the practical value of this.
Very true. I don't think that Mr. Ive would approve of this design for a final build.
I had a statistics course at MIT where the professor would bring up one of the solutions to this problem at least once a week for the entire semester:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction
Humanity+ (AKA World Transhumanist Association) meeting this Saturday in London
I acknowledge your clarification and I agree with what YOU have said, but let me rant a little against the startup mentality that is prevalent here on HN. The general attitude seems to be that you're wasting your one chance at living unless you haven't accomplished something bigger than yourself and have left a legacy. It is a rousing sentiment, but yet, at the end of the day, I can't help but be sobered by the poem Ozymandius. Yes, you've left a legacy, but only for one, maybe two, generations before that too is forgotten:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Speaking of poems, poets would tell you that you've wasted your life unless you've loved; loved so deeply that you die a little when it is lost. So which is it? Legacy? Success? Love? Family?

In the end, I think you've nailed it with your last sentence: living your passions. If your passion is, literally, passion, then love. Make love your life. If your passion is external admiration, then succeed. (Please don't become a doctor or lawyer if your goal is admiration. Only do so if your passion is helping the sick or defending justice.) But to your point, at the end of your life, make sure you don't have a 100" flat-panel TV and a mountain of regrets.
I've been monitoring it since I started it, and there's been some "mild" jerks, but that's probably 3% of the it all. 97% has been "good"
$70 for 10Mbps here in the US. Comcast hates their customers.

Edit: I shopped around, inspired by this post. Comcast advertises much lower rates, however they are "for the first 6 months" and they are for TV subscribers only. Verizon offers some staggeringly bad deals. You're just kind of SOL when it comes to good broadband in most of the US (just like mobile phone options).
Say 'surge' again. I dare you!
Google warns that privacy opt-in rules could create "dystopia"
Those are not mutually exclusive. Though just picking up the iPad is noct very good and holy.
If I could connect arrows to other stuff, I'd be all set.
Though interestingly there's no longer a link to the leaderboard on the top bar.
This is the epitome of hypocrisy. Google censors Nazi stuff in Germany but refuses to censor Tianamen Square? Nazis have a right to free speech as much as any chinese person does. If you obey the law in Germany, then obey the law in China. Be consistent - either make information free or don't make information free.

But don't go selecting what you want to censor and what not. Google is not supposed to decide what we get to see or what not. Google is supposed to follow the laws of the country they are operating in. Let the government decide what we get to see or what not - and we can choose to bypass it.

If google had censored nothing anywhere, at least that would be a fine and consistent approach.

But they cannot go censoring Attaturk insults or Nazis, and then refuse to follow the law in China. That's nonsense and hypocrisy.
Anybody using F# for web apps? Thoughts? Comparisons?
The timing is pretty interesting. Happens less than 24 hours before the embargo on the HTC Incredible is lifted which by all accounts seems to be an excellent device.
Debian Project elects Stefano Zacchiroli as next Project Leader
Spanish is not "foreign" in much of the U.S. either. I would consider the use of the word "foreign" in "foreign language" to be a meaningless coincidence. The point is not whether people can speak an exotic language. The point is whether people can speak a second (or third, or fourth, etc.) language which is distinct from their native language, whether they have applied themselves to learning a means of communication different from the one they were raised with.

It seems from reading the article that a lot of people still don't get that ASL is distinct from English. That a foreign language chair would say ASL is not sufficient to sustain a culture is absurd. One of the first things my German professor told me when I was in school was that German is not English in code. The same goes for all languages, including ASL.
Hacker News is actually quite good at containing the `spam'. E.g. this discussion is limited to the comment section of one article.
students who go to Microsoft or Google can expect to make about $5,000 a month. A friend of mine god an offer from a financial who was trying to give him $6,000 a month.

I'll also add that my cousin is a global controller for a relatively small (I guess?) hedge fund on Wall Street and he cut his teeth working a job during college. Also, he went to Ohio State.

In Computer Science, at least, you will not be taken seriously unless they are paying you (by them or any other company).

And again, going beyond that, my friends who are working on Wall St. (CMU kids) are being paid.

Unpaid (and poorly paid) internships are for suckers.
Google Is Blocked In 25 Of The 100 Countries They Offer Products In
Accounting is one of those things that I drag my feet to learn and practice (along with taxes) when I would rather be coding.

Xero is the best app that I've found for keeping the day to day record keeping simple but you still need an accountant to have as a resource to ask questions and to check the books, especially around tax time.
Most of the hard work of promoting the Android platform to developers has already been done by Apple.

Originally, I wanted to spend my tax return on a Mac so I could partake in iPhone development. Given Apple's recent actions, I'm just going to get an Android phone, and use my current laptop loaded with Ubuntu to develop for it.
Really? From April 2005 to April 2010, AAPL appreciated by 583% whereas GOOG went up by only 219%. AAPL has multiple winners and personally, I would own AAPL vs GOOG.
Instant community: audit a course at your local college or university.

Even if uninterested in a degree, attending a class helps keep motivation and meet peers.
After reading that, it still sounds like they were actually coding, and they also served as systems administrators.

edit: sorry - admins, not engineers
Can anyone speak to the legality of the CSS kill switch?
That's a pretty blinkered point of view. If you can't trust your law makers to understand technology, why trust them to understand any other complex subject? You could use the exact same argument against legislating against global warming.

It's complex, let's just give up with laws. Not a good stance.
I setup a VPS on Linode, and they actually added the SSH RSA/DSA key for the 'admin console' login (Lish) when I asked about it on IRC. So, for first-time setup, you can lookup _that_ key, then from there, lookup the system key itself. This avoids a compromised key, at least from you to Linode.

Hopefully Linode doesn't have any internal gremlins.

Of course, the weak point there is SSL where the keys themselves are transmitted, but it did well to quell my paranoia.
Amen to that. Also for companies job fairs can look a bit disappointing.
I think it can, but the sale counts as a liquidity event, which means the LLC's members must pay taxes on the income they derive from the sale. That's why you have to get bulletproof tax advice. In addition, there may be issues with securities laws, so you also need an expensive lawyer experienced in dealing with this problem.
When the entire stock market was on sale during the worst of the recession and crash, I considered buying both AAPL and GOOG. I bought a few shares of GOOG, and opted not to buy AAPL, at all. I have ethical issues with AAPL, as well, so that probably also had an impact on my decision. I would have done very well on AAPL, but I've done well on GOOG, as well. Looks like AAPL might have been a slightly better investment...but I'd have to do math to be sure. And, I agree with you and think that GOOG will come out on top in the end.
Yeah, but I know that I don't want to work for Red Gate because they're Windows only -- so if I went to the interview I know it would only be for the iPad.

I have friends who work there and I've heard great things, but I just don't think what they work on would interest me.
I'm usually using a G-test, which is known to be inaccurate unless A and B each have at least 10 failures and 10 successes. So that puts a minimum size right there.

After that it is all a question of how many trials you were prepared to run, and how aggressively you need the answer. I tend to push to be conservative because the product manager is guaranteed to push the other way. For instance if you've got less than 500 trials I like to push for 99.9% confidence because, "If the effect is really this strong, we'll get there pretty quickly." After that I ease off. I've never tried to sit down and calculate any kind of optimal way to do so.

If I was to try to formalize it, I'd be inclined to set things up so that for some underlying bias which is smaller than what we're hoping to measure (for instance a 2% bias), our odds of picking the wrong answer are the same each time. I don't have any analysis behind that idea, it is just something that sounds reasonable to me. If I was to head down that road I'd probably run some Monte Carlo simulations to show that I'd be highly likely to wind up with test result answers in some vaguely reasonable time frame with whatever volume the website had. But again I haven't tried to do that analysis.
Cable Cut Disrupts Internet Traffic in Middle East, Europe
That would be a solution to using pairwise statistics to come up with an answer to an A/B/C/D test. That is not a solution to the challenge of evaluating an A/B test at multiple time points.
njl, if you scroll to the very bottom of the spreadsheet, there's a row where there's 3 other startups that inserted a small plug for themselves there; feel free to add yours to that row.
The ISP only guarantees the 1Gbps speed for outgoing and INCOMING traffic out of your house to their network. It can't guarantee the same speed at any destination servers in the world. If the destination server in US has a slow ISP, you can't get 1Gbps to it. There are also a number of routers and gateways in between your house and the rest of the world. It's worse when going across Continents. They all impact the speed.

It's like the ISP forms a 1Gbps-island. When all the islands in the world have gone to 1Gbps and the inter-links between them have beefed up, you will get 1Gbps to anywhere in the world. Keep dreaming.
Yeah, because God forbid anyone in this country from actually producing something... Damn system.
Well, really multi-paradigm. Using it functionally was certainly an option, but there was also progn, loop, etc. the imperative types.
Maybe, if Apple weren't collecting a commission on app sales. The brilliant thing is, whatever app hits the price point that maximizes profit * quantity, Apple collects the commission. Apple doesn't have that much motivation to artificially lower prices, if they just let the market go to work the market will maximize profits for them.

That's not to mention that the cost of apps is so low compared to the expensive iPhone/iPad that they are already effectively commodities. Unless you see a lot of $30 apps running around, which I don't.
As Our Skin Sags With Age, So Do Our Bones
No, I don't think so. That doesn't seem to fall into any of the categories of things that have made me happy. I've accomplished a few things that I think "should" make me happy, but for whatever reason I don't feel any lasting difference as a result. Most things that have made me happier either gave me pleasure directly, or were the negation of something that was causing me stress.
Google A/B testing a new homepage
Erlang?
TSA to download your iTunes?
I use Cloud Servers on Rackspace Cloud. You have to know how to setup a server but the per hour costs are pretty good.
Exactly.

Apple managed to get quantity, and with that the quality that you can often expect from the top 5% given enough quantity.

Google's much more surgical approach makes sense in that they can't realistically compete in quantity of apps any time soon, and thus have to specifically seek out quality to compete with Apple.
Why Google can’t out-open Facebook with XAuth
Hmm, I'd say that the best standard is whether the vast majority of people would accept you as being a normal, functioning person. The best standard for hobbies is whether they make you a broader and more interesting person or a narrower and less interesting person.

The best hobbies, I think, are the ones where you're creating something, exploring the world, making yourself a better person, or at least getting some exercise. The worst hobbies, I think, are the ones which involve immersing yourself in a narrow stream of entertainment which somebody else has created for you; Star Trek, Firefly, World of Warcraft, LotR, professional baseball. Nothing wrong with any of these in moderation, but when you elevate the consumption of entertainment to the level of a hobby it becomes just plain sad.

(No, writing Firefly fan fiction doesn't make it any better. That may be "creative" but you're still unhealthily immersed in somebody else's narrow world.)
The glass back should also improve reception.
I'd agree that uni-directional transfer is an edge case when you have only one server.

Unfortunately for network security, that seems less and less the case these days. I definitely find myself ssh'd into two remote systems relatively often and have a need to copy files between the two. (Swapping arguments to scp is not good enough.)
classic chicken and egg problem with any market place or social network idea for a startup
Funny you say that. pg used an inverse-inverse title for his 2007 Startup School talk. It was titled :"Why to Not Not start a startup"

http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html
Beware the advice from those with vested interest. The more invested they are in the outcome, the more to beware.
Most men have not ever considered becoming a cosmetologist.

I suspect that has something to do with many men avoiding jobs that they think might call their sexual orientation into question. Many men have gone into cosmetology and done quite well. The reasons so few women go into CS has little to do with worries about their perceived orientation. You are comparing apples to oranges.
Getting more people to sign up for your mailing lists
...the reaction to a purchase order is typically to issue an invoice...

This is also not true, at least not anywhere I've ever been.

The typical reaction to a purchase order is to fulfill it, then invoice it. This is an absolutely critical distinction. Until an actual accounting transaction occurs, your books are not affected under any accrual method. A PO is not an accounting transaction.

So just replace "PO" with "invoice" and it's still correct.

No, replace "PO" with "invoice" and it becomes correct.

You obviously have something important to offer and your your advice is well intentioned. But your lack of precision on this accounting matter (just like a technical or legal matter) can cause more confusion than help. Or worse.

I really didn't mean to nitpick, but nitpicking was warranted at such a glaring error in terms. Lots of people here don't understand such matters and people like you and me should just leave this kind of advice to the appropriate experts.
Feedback on work is a critical aspect, you might be doing something in a completely stupid/inefficient way which works but is far from a good solution, and the only way you'll know it's a bad solution is if someone tells you.

Having a strong technical co-founder would probably be good enough if you're strong enough to learn programming yourself.

I suspect you'll learn a lot more if you put the time and money into making a startup rather than into a masters degree.
Maybe he recomposed it, word by word, in a slightly different context. Pierre Menard, author of the Quixote, would be proud.