skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
haha I can easily imagine Steve Jobs dictating commands to his engineers like Captain Picard does on the flight deck:

"I want a device so amazing, so jaw-dropping that Jesus himself would want it. It's got to be like the iPhone only bigger, like the Mac OS X, except even more engaging. Make it so"

On a serious note though, working out the problems of fatigue from gestures is typical of a technology in it's infancy. The problem of RSI from using a computer mouse isn't resolved fully, for example.
You mean the mega angel-investors-slash-repeat-founder or the venture capital funds?

Presumably, they all know. They probably insisted on it.
The US has become more health-conscious but also, in the last 50 years, has began to be exploited by manufacturers. Note, this person would be shocking still in Europe.

Chemicals and corn by-products are stuffed everywhere in American products. Even in crazy places like maple syrup and ketchup. I went back to the States at Christmas and we went to an upscale grocery store, yet my wife couldn't find almost anything (yogurt, etc.) that wasn't processed and littered with crap to make it "taste better" and save the producers money. I'm sorry but there is nothing in yogurt that needs corn.

The Heinz ketchup here in the Czech Republic tastes identical to the one in the States, but without any serious additives and no corn products at all. People don't eat fast food and they use natural ingredients. You can't sell GM foods here; it's not allowed.

The obesity in the U.S. is staggering, and what's worse, no one cares enough to force the companies producing it to shape up and stop getting their profit from poisoning their fellow man.
The distance selling act - which gives you the right to say no and return it within 7 days - was lobbied for by the online retailers.

They felt people wouldn't order online if there were too many scams. Now that people are comfortable ordering online they are presumably lobbying for it to be revoked.

One reason for the shipping refund is that importers use it as a way around VAT. They typically sell some item for 1e with 25e shipping and so it comes in under the VAT limit.
One thing that's always bemused me about scifi is future superhumans adapted for ultimate survival (e.g. the Nietzscheans in Andromeda) are tall, muscular, lean, brave, intelligent, etc.

Whereas for survival, you want humans that are small (so they need less food), weak because they have slow metabolisms, hairy to keep the heat in, fat because they are good at storing food in case of famine, cowardly so they avoid risk at any cost, dumb so they just repeat procedures that are known to work, and so on.
I find this far more troubling than their recent TOS changes. It's one thing to make arbitrary and capricious changes to the technical terms of their developer agreements. It's quite another to arbitrarily censor content. If Apple really aims to be the savior of print journalism they have a moral responsibility to take their role more seriously and more sensibly. I think it's pretty clear at this point that Apple is the wrong steward for the next generation of online communications technology.
Smart move to launch it on a friday. Friday is usually the semi-slacking day for researchers. Most of them (includig me) don't mind playing around with something like this on a friday.
There is a big tag at the bottom of each page saying you submit it under cc-wiki.
This is a good thing, it's better than you having to read through 100s of pages of their own license to discover that they reserve the rights to put in a pay wall later.
That's just a clever 404 page, it didn't really break.
The reason for the change was many shady operators offering very low prices for goods but overcharging for shipping.
The Future of Multi-Touch: Behind the Scenes with Stantum, JazzMutant Co-Founder
Apple iPad proves popular with pets
1 in 6 city teens: E-snooping? Hack, yeah
how do you get a society where something like this is uncovered, and half of the comments are abusing the family that uncovered it?

oh, and the past tense of shine is shone :)
Obviously we shouldn't prosecute people who call the President Dude, but I do think that a level of respect is called for with all our Presidents.

It's a pet peeve of mine when people call President Bush 'King George' or other epithets, even if I do disagree with his policies.
I had to call the US last night for webhost support (this host needed a call to cancel a domain from being hosted, and an email to add a new one - a paper trail), and as she had to pause between sentences for labored breath, it was then that I felt a little bit sorry for her, but at least she was employed. That was my trip to the circus.
> If you flunk an interview, you don't move onto the next interviewer. If you fail, the interviewer comes back and says, "Ah, well, the guy you are supposed to meet with is in a meeting. He's key to the interview, so we're going to send you home and have you come back another time."

What's the point of that? Why they don't say it straight?
First, this title editorializes the article, and summarizes it too aggressively.

Second, while I agree that there's a problem here, the DOJ doesn't simply want "warrantless access rights" to "most US email". What it's claiming is more subtle: that mail that is older than a certain threshold and that has been open requires only a court order, and not a bona fide search warrant.
Advanced Regular Expression Tips and Techniques
"A little snippet of the future": museums, education and virtual goods
where there is smoke, there is fire. Sounds to me like what initially was an ability to view students working in school quickly digressed into illegal abuse of the deployment. That district's insurance company must be terrified at this point, because lawyers are going to come out of the woodwork to jump on this one.
You don't want them dumb: adaptability is paramount for evolution. Smart people are more adaptable.
Interesting, thank you. Is the presence you need to maintain in the UK essentially a glorified P.O. box, or is there more? What order of magnitude in fees are we talking about (if you don't mind)?
From Social Design to Modular Innovation in News
That Javascript Guy: Class 1 - Finding Something (Today @ 8:15AM PST)
For me, counting down days from 365 to 1 produces "Thank goodness it's May syndrome".
100 years ago you had to visit the traveling circus to see a fat person.

Now we just turn on the television and turn to TLC or Discovery Channel to see the same thing.

What exactly has changed besides the technology? Any good circus promoter or television producer will find a fatter guy than the last fat guy.

I get it, we're all fatter today, but I don't believe this example proves anything.
You misread. They are claiming that mail older than 181 days or mail that has been opened falls under the lower standard.

Edit: To your main point, I think your emphasis on the fact there is still a court order is misplaced. Of what practical value is a court order if there is no burden to show probable cause (instead only 'relevance to an ongoing investigation'), and you have no opportunity to challenge (or even know about) the order. How many requests under such a standard do you really think are going to be turned down?
Page Rank 0 to 4 in Under Four Months, How I did it
Yes, but the expression "thanks god" could be interpreted as a strong desire to leave what you've done this week behind, as if you didn't care at all about it.
You're at least partially confusing individual survivability with group survivability. Absolute cowardice, while beneficial to an individual, is ultimately so problematic for the group that it will result in everyone's death.

Dumbly repeating procedures that are known to work without analysis will not only cause stagnation, but also likely cause industrial and environmental collapse unless a system is so tightly controlled that it is impossible for any procedure to lose effectiveness. And unless technological improvement is impossible, this is clearly a suboptimal survival strategy, as survivability may not be improved.
Weekend Reading on Startups
weekly round-up
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1269233
Unfortunatelly, Movie OS is horrible security-wise.
When we set up in the UK I'm pretty sure we had £100 of authorized share capital, but that we only had £2 of issued shares. So each of the two founders had one £1 share!
"'If you were only going to do one thing today, what would it be?'. Simply answer the question and the app will take care of the rest."

Sure.
Liz Keogh: Learning through testing and BDD
I wasn't aware of that, but it's a good point, and definitely something that should be addressed.
> At some point you need to stop raising money and start raising revenue.

Actually, you need to start raising revenue before you stop raising money because you need to keep raising money until you've got sufficient revenue.

My point was that you're continuously raising money until you hit that point
I'm confused. According to Wikipedia, a search warrant is a court order.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant
the same society that says "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear"
This is the process I took to get to page rank 4 from january to april. Before this I've never had a page rank 4 website, so while i'm sure I could do this again in much less time, I wanted to give those getting started an idea of what they can do to improve their PR, and demystify the whole process. With so many articles like "PR5 in 5 days", it can be demoralizing to not see results for awhile.

I did not spend a full 4 months on SEO alone either. I have another full time job, and was also working on usability studies etc. Enjoy, and let me know if you have any questions!
China's extraordinary growth is because it's in the process of industrialization -- which, by definition, only happens once for a given country, and in which ideology does not have a very significant influence. Examples of industrializations of this sort include the Gilded Age in the US and the 1920s and 1930s in the USSR; contrary to what Chang expects, they don't go away once they're completed (but, since governments do not create them, they aren't endorsements for the government which conducts that industrialization; cf. Fernand Braudel's _A History of Civilizations_. For an extrapolation of the same character, but not in the context of economics and thus easier to recognize, see http://xkcd.com/605/).

Is China under its current regime stable over the long term? I don't think so. If the very guards in the prisons have no belief that the state will endure through their lifetimes, and their junior officers think nothing of complaining to foreigners about the incompetence of the civilian leadership, the state will probably not weather a strong internal challenge.

Do I think this challenge will come from a democratic opposition? Of course not. China is seeing a large amount of enthusiasm for the country and little enthusiasm for its government; in this circumstance, the most likely result is the overthrow of the Communist government in favor of a nationalist government of some sort (which will probably be enough of a headache for the rest of the world that we'll long for the good old days of the export-minded Communists). Expect a replay of the 1911 Revolution and the overthrow of the Qing; I wouldn't even rule out an era of "postmodern warlordism" in the interstitial period before the next government solidifies its power. It sounds silly, but China is a very large place, and asserting one's authority over the whole country -- especially after the collapse of a dysfunctional bureaucracy and/or a civil war -- is a non-trivial exercise.

I don't think the timeframe for this is particularly long, either, except by the standard of CEOs. I think most of HN's readers will see a breakup and new regime in China within their lifetimes; if I had to place a bet, I'd expect it to occur 40 years from now, give or take ten years -- that is, once the generation currently in their 20s and 30s ages into political power.
You don't need technology to see what was then considered "freakishly" obese, today. You can just go to any public place. Technology has nothing to do with it.
I'm a single founder as well, and here is what I've done:

1) Look into chef to automate 99% of your sys-admin tasks (setup, tear up, tear down, deployment)

2) Set up pingdom for monitoring your servers externally

3) Set up hoptoad (http://www.hoptoadapp.com) to monitor for exceptions and errors internally with e-mail notifications

4) Set up a laptop with a MiFi for remote access - you're going to keep this in your car whereever you go (if you're in a city or something, set up VNC on an iPad or something and have access to a workstation where you can look into emergencies)

The above will a) notify you of critical things happening and b) give you a way to act upon them. Thats pretty much all that you can do at this point -- and I'd look into Rackspace managed services to see if you can leverage them for basic system troubleshooting (this is on my ToDo list).

By the way, we've got a single founder community going, its new and we're still getting to know eachother but it is great for moral support - let me know if you want to join.
Silverlight 4 vs Silverlight 3: a little bit faster?
You're right. Thanks! But, I wasn't moved to comment by the 181 day standard or the "opened" standard, both of which are, excuse my bluntness, retarded. The real issue I have is the fact that there's still a court order involved.
There's a difference between the need for more civil discourse and the need to address people by their titles. Uncivil discourse is unproductive, but I don't think "dude" is particularly uncivil. "King George" is.
True, here he would still turn heads.
Corn products are stuffed into maple syrup? I think you got that backwards: we stuff a little flavoring into corn syrup and then call it maple!
True, but the goal is to encourage quality comments. I think there is more benefit to allowing code markup in comments than there is potential downsides with people gaming the system. The system can be gamed anyway be a mildly persistent troll, so don't punish your good users by making commenting too hard!

The system achieves the goal of "good comments" by putting up a friction barrier to terrible comments like the ones on YouTube, not impassible barrier to someone who intends on posting a bad comment.
I'm glad that somebody is still tracking this story, and it hasn't just dropped on the ground.

Too often, it seems, a news story outrages us, but the furor quickly dies down. In the end, nobody even notices the ritual scapegoat.

A little while back, somebody proposed here (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183587 ) a web app that would allow us to follow a news story entire life. This reminds of that, and why it would be a good idea.
Completely the opposite! I'm utterly baffled that I couldn't come up with a counter-example off the top of my head. I thought the "first time founder" phenomena would end up being the minority of cases.
Ask HN: Anyone interested in co-hosting a weekly podcast?
SEC Charges Goldman Sachs With Fraud
"WE"KEA - Crowdsourced Design & Products
> it was about novelty - the natural DNA in your cells was, in the judge's view

Except that the judge said that it wasn't. The judge said that they can't patent discovering a gene - they can only patent doing something new with or to said gene.

That's why the applicants wrote the claim the way that they did - they claimed suppression of said gene to accomplish something. The problem with that claim is that they didn't invent a means of suppression. They assumed one, hence they didn't actually have an invention, which is what the judge actually wrote.
That's a good way of training yourself, I weened myself off the left-pinky control key by doing the same thing. I now press it with my left thumb - which is easy on my new Kinesis keyboard. Moving your hands off home row to hit arrow keys also slows you down. It adds about 500ms latency to your workflow every time you do it.
Thanks Tony! For Ev, I counted blogger as his "first time success". His wiki doesn't list anything about his web consulting company.
Http://www.movshare.net/37814/video/wnqqqo8rj0app
Opera Mini boasts one million iPhone downloads in a single day
"Absolute cowardice, while beneficial to an individual"

If this were actually true then evolution would go ahead and make everyone absolutely cowardly. Evolution works because traits that are helpful to an individual become more common; because the individuals with those traits reproduce more. Nothing stops evolution going down paths that are bad for the species.

(Of course, if it gets so bad that the species goes extinct then we simply won't see that species any more. But nothing prevents this from happening.)

It isn't actually true though: risks have their rewards.
I agree, this sentiment is horrible, if used for those reasons. For those of us working on personal projects and startups, we should make it "thank god its monday" a sentiment to convey we're happy the rest of the world can now get back to work and we can continue our slow conquest of the world ^_^
Hey everyone, this is a followup to http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1248585. We're trying out a few new things this week, trying to take what worked well from last week and improve on it. Please join us if you're looking to learn some of the fundamentals of jQuery in a rapid-fire Q&A-based approach!
I'll echo the advice I heard from Phillip Zimmermann back in the early 1990s: If everyone consistently used encryption for all their email (that's 'everyone', and 'all'), then the effectiveness of government access to email would be lowered to a near-moot level. The sheer complexity and resource requirements to decrypt _all_ email traffic would exceed the government's capabilities. I know the NSA has incredible capabilities....but not that incredible.

Yes, I know this creates a new moving target. However, that beats being a sitting duck, though.
Sea transportation is cheaper than by truck.

(But of course, Italy has the option for sea transportation as well, so it's not that)
Yup. I figured that out after appropriate caffeine consumption. <sigh>
After seeing how some Gov't contracts play out, I can see a private space project getting much further on far less money.
The iPhone costs what the market is willing to pay.
Sorry, that's a hoax.

The phrase: "he insisted it's just a better browser" is rather too funny to be real, so I searched and found this:

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/12/17/1721232.shtml

In my opinion, several detention notes from this article are practically impossible to be true.

See for example #8, which, if true, would be shocking. I can't prove it, but I would bet a lot of money it's a fake.
You have to click through to his spammy sales page. In my experience, SEO is a common hideout for snake oil salesmen. Most of them make more money from selling SEO advice than producing any useful good or service.
Search engine that searches by images, not keywords
Decreasing finger movement reduces the number of distinct motions you make without reducing the overall number of distinct motions (though it does reduce overall motion.) I'm not convinced this is as good a proof against RSI as it's often considered, since it only ensures that you will type faster (keeping overall motion more or less static) or type less (which will weaken your muscles due to less use.)
Interesting...this is exactly what I was looking for, its exactly what I outline, and its design is top-notch as well. I always thought that a site like this would be very popular, I guess I was wrong...
I think people will protest what they know about. Regardless of your opinion on the people taking part in the tea party protests, there are a lot of people taking time off work or away from other activities to go to rallies. The economy is the front and center issues right now, and I really don't know what has to happen for online privacy to get a stage.

I am more concerned about the organizations that were so vocal during the last administration, since they seem to be out to lunch now. I really think your beliefs about what is right and wrong shouldn't change just because someone else got the job. I guess I want consistency of message and action.
atop is another useful alternative to top, shows i/o and network activity in addition to all the usual details.
Have you looked at BigBlueSaw for ideas?

Look into RC car/plane hobbyists and people on Make. Probably a lot of potential customers there.
I wanted to think of it as a notepad. But I like drawing and scribbling ideas down on my notepad, not writing emails or playing games.
Yeah, it is from work. I should have a disclaimer or something.

read: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1231870
You need to spend some more time with evolutionary theory. Populations do indeed evolve along with individuals. You own message explains why; there are selection pressures at the population level as well. See also animals that are always found in communities, like ants or humans. It's not either/or. It never is with evolutionary theory.
Short of a disaster that pushes humankind to the brink of extinction, natural selection is likely to be based on traits of people who mate and reproduce. The more likely you are to mate and reproduce, the more likely the traits you have get passed on. It might be a logical leap but perhaps because of this, humans might evolve towards whatever is more attractive to other humans.
Particularly when those cuts are delivered by people wrapped in the flag, promising safety.

It seems we have healthier debate over the government's ability to pass blanket public-space no-smoking laws, than the executive's new-found legal ability to ignore the constitution, the judicial and the legislative at its whim.

You can get tens of thousands to protest the deficit, or health care reform, or gay rights - but the steady erosion of our rights barely raises an eyebrow.
I welcome a dialog about Mexico; however, I'll be the first to admit that, as a topic, it's a stretch for HN. Relevant it is, though, so here goes.

The author lost me quickly though by simply echoing the new, trendy "root cause" of Mexico's problems. No, it's not America's drug appetite. A little too convenient, and recent, to be a root cause.

The questions should be: why has Mexico _always_ been a failed state? They've never been able to erect a functional and thriving economy. With all their natural resources, why have they been so mismanaged and squandered? Why have their citizens, for decades now, sought the U.S. for livelihood and opportunity? Show me the list of technological, medical, agricultural -- any invention or advancement that has come from Mexico. Anyone? Tell me then, why is this list so empty?

If anyone thinks that Mexico's problems are recent, and/or caused solely via the drug trade -- they have not been observing and analyzing. Go back 40 years...no drug problem to point to then, yet these same facts held true then, just like they do now.

I don't know the answers to the above questions. They have bothered me for years, for I don't believe there is anything inherently wrong with the Mexican people. They've been led poorly, and governed poorly, for sure. It's just painfully clear that their problems are not as recent as the Drug Years of the past 2-3 decades.
Firefox Remote Keylogger Addon PoC Released
I can't help but notice the irony in the current top of the HN current story page.

2. Obama administration wants warrantless access rights to most US email (cnet.com)

3. Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued (philly.com)

It's pretty clear to me that even the most well-intentioned government powers eventually wind up being used in the most sinister and disturbing ways.

Edit: for posterity, the other story is at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1270579
I actually have two Pleos. I never get around to playing with them, though. It's unfortunate.
Common Grammatical & Spelling Errors
Isn't the whole point of a large sample size to account for "quirks" in any given individual?