skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"it's a team of smart people with tens of millions of dollars of venture capital."

This is probably a weakness, not a strength. If cuil were a bootstrapped one-person operation it would be very easy to cut the cord and move on to something else.
Advice: Run a Marathon You Can Win
Steelcase 454 Concentrix

Old, make sure you get the one with steel 5-way legs & hard casters, and without arm rests (unless you really want them). These have not been made new for ~20 years, but you find them occasionally on craigslist, or stuffed way in the back of used office furniture warehouses.

My first one lasted 15 years, I found two more last year ( @ $25/ea ).
I'm thinking of writing a couple more posts about the little details that improve the overall look and feel of interfaces. If you guys have any thoughts or ideas about it, do let me know.
Why would they? It's a second rate tablet with a bunch of bugs priced to compete against the iPad no matter what it's called. I think the reviews might be different if had been released at the price they originally announced. It's probably not a terrible product, but they priced themselves into a category they can't compete in.
this faux controversy gets tiring

Just be glad you're not in vaccination business. ;-)
Gladiators' graveyard discovered
I agree. I don't care much about the CSS part, but found this article very interesting and helpful in general since its so thorough and detailed and plan on using this in some desktop GUI projects.
> So, which one is it... is the video beautiful or stally and sputtery?

Screen/Picture quality is unrelated to video quality. The frames may looks gorgeous but if you only have 5 of them a second it won't be great video ;)
Yes.

if it had met the originally price point

and specification

(in all seriousness I suspect if the exact same device had come out in a blaze of glory from Arrington then the press would have delighted in cutting it down to size)
of course! isn't that where you leave your patents?
I'd like to see a quote from Microsoft... aren't there other non-exclusive XBLA games like Braid and Peggle?
the c stands for crap

the goal here isn't to find the one funny/stupid article...with this site the goal should be to find one article that actually makes sense
I think snowboarding is the kind of culture that wouldn't respond to something that direct. It's an outsider's culture, so the branding you want in snowboarders' heads is "the best riders ride Burton" not "be like Shaun by purchasing the new Shaun White Limited deck".
I think you succeeded in that balance. While I was reading it crossed my mind that even though I don't need CSS for cocoa, having both a precisely algorithmic description in CSS and a plain-English description of the same concept really helps to internalize the content. Neither one of the two would work as well as both of them did.
This observation is pretty hilarious.

But surely the reason that technology progresses so fast is that there are always people complaining and striving to improve on these trivial inconveniences. I have no doubt that the motivation for the development of these technological wonders was due to some ungrateful jerk who insisted that the amazing could be even better.
You would expect something with a disambiguation page for your search, and a topic-specific page for what you are looking for would have relevant information on that topic, but:

http://www.cpedia.com/wiki?q=Haskell&disambig=Functional...
Spending a summer in Alaska can help give you an appreciation. I was there in 1992.

Me before Alaska: "I'll never be a sell out."

Me during Alaska: Covered in cold fish slime mixed with refrigerated seawater. Shivering my ass off shoveling crushed ice in the back of a refrigerated trailer. Sliding around on my belly in a tender boat hold with a gaff, wrangling 75 pound Halibut into a cargo net. Living in a tent on the beach, and going into town to make a phone call and pay $1.75 to take a shower. (Not an everyday occurrence!)

Me after Alaska: "A nice cozy job in an climate controlled office? Sounds nice!"

The guy who was my skipper for a very short time? He lived in the southwest near Dillingham and there were no roads near his house. He had no running water or electricity. To check his snail mail, he had to go down to the river, untie his boat and travel 2 miles downstream.

(Not sure, but I think there were basically no roads anywhere.)
My favorite Merb subsection: "g. I'll be at RailsConf in Berlin"
My Friend Twitter - on the recent dev ecosystem shifts
If you search for George Bush, all you get is an airport. http://www.cpedia.com/search?q=george+bush

And a search for Cheney does not show the former Vice President: http://www.cpedia.com/wiki?q=cheney
Toronto Hacker News Night
A couple of days ago a posting hit the front page of HN for a Toronto Hacker News Night. After a bunch of voting on both the venue and the night we have a winner: Sin and Redemption - 2010-04-29.

Since there was such a huge response from Toronto, Waterloo, and, even, OTTAWA hackers I created a Toronto HN twitter account to organize around. That way we won't need to spam the HN front page every time we want to have a get-together. Follow @TorontoHN to keep up to date on things. Of course, if pg has a problem with me using any part of his branding, company name, whatever, I'll take the twitter account down immediately, but I don't think he will mind.

Thanks for the awesome response gals and guys, I can't wait for the 29th.
An off-topic Complaint:

I was going to read this article, but halfway through the first paragraph some stupid ad blocked my view. I'll definitely think twice before clicking through on anything pointing to inc.com again.
You could store an encrypted password with the key hard coded. This is a little better, because it makes it more difficult for a disgruntled employee to walk off with the database password. Saving the key in a text file is little better than saving the password in plaintext. Saving credentials on a server that can be accessed only on the internal net is better than saving them on a public facing server. The problem is that these solutions are not typically available from your cheap hosting service.
One thing I do not understand. The graphic design crowd is the biggest force behind Mac popularity. And "graphic design software" and "Adobe creative suite" are synonims. So Adobe has the power to inflict huge damage to the OS X platform if it wants. Isn't Apple even slightly scared of this?
Braid was Microsoft exclusive for over six months. Peggle is a pretty good counter-example, although it did add local multiplayer and good Live integration.

Microsoft is extremely aggressive with exclusivity agreements with XBLA these days.
I agree.

Humans intuitively use probabilities all of the time, but they are not necessarily proof that a crime has occurred.

On the savannah, we did not need to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that an animal was about to eat us. We HAD to err on the side of the worst possibility. Or we'd be dead.
If it was about quality, why allowing C++ ? Why disabling GC ?
same here. super annoying. not sure I'll ever read anything from inc.com again.
Why Most Businesses Fail (A Theoretical Model)
Yet there are now a lot more incremental advances per year than 200 years ago. Revolutions can only happen only so often. Apart from that, an "average technology" today has on average much more applications than back then, IMHO (convergence, I would call that). And it's adopted faster and is available to more people (=cheaper).

Also, I think that today's breakthroughs have much more prerequisites in humanity's knowledge and capabilities in different fields than 200 years ago.
I think you guys are missing the big picture here. This is a brilliant PR move. The hilarity contained in this thing is on par with encyclopedia dramatica. It will become part of the 4chan, lolcats web culture and what can be better than that?
That explains the robust Danish automobile industry.
Are we sure this isn't just an experiment of theirs? Some 20% project from one of their engineers using info they already had at their disposal?

For a side experiment, I'm not going to fault or bash any company-- we've got a few of our own experiments which aren't the prettiest/best sites in the world.
Very interesting... I have a friend in china that produces steel beams for the comm. construction industry. I really have no idea about how to sell though so probably nothing I can do with it. Also, I think you need a import license from the govt. atleast for steel.
Previous discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1248222

What time are we meeting at? In order to RSVP, we could use http://guestlistapp.com.
I have no informed opinion about XCode. I meant being limited to C++ and ObjC, both of which lack all the advances in language design and runtime safety that have been widely adopted since the 1980s.
The “Interactive” in Interactive Browser Themes
I have no doubt that the motivation for the development of these technological wonders was due to some ungrateful jerk who insisted that the amazing could be even better.

Minus the fraction what was developed by those who thought, "Wouldn't it be marvelous if...?"

Also minus the fraction who thought, "I bet I could make tons of money by..."

Actually, I think we could to without the contribution from ungrateful jerks and be just fine!
Definitely, i like your style. I am learning how to make pixel-perfect interface elements. How about the the whole armada. Maybe you could roll out a jQueryUI skin with a proper documentation on how you did it. Remeber the sleek Winamp skins we used to love so much? I couldn't find a complete walkthrough on how to make one.
I work at Fog Creek, and this is just incorrect. Profit sharing is a simple formula known to everyone in the company, so you can easily figure out how much everyone made in profit sharing at the end of the year.

Honestly, I know it sounds too good to be true, but all compensation is completely open and honest.
"Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs."

Why does it really scare me when people that claim to programmers say stuff like that. If what you say is true, that you are "surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.", then you really should not be programming.
Putting the number of 'slots' available on the signup page is interesting. I wonder what the rationale for this is ... and it lets you infer what rate of signups they are getting (assuming it isn't just a marketing gimmick).

The fact that premium is just twice the pro limits but costs slightly more than 2x premium stands out as a little odd. Why not offer incremental storage capacity in the same way as bandwidth?
In the last two minutes the raganwald page was removed.

The page for us is interesting. Huge amounts of content, flashes of brilliance, and moments of sheer terror. http://cpedia.com/search?q=wikispaces
I have an idea: on a touch platform when you press a button you don't see the surface of the button. In a couple of places Apple has created a nice "flare" effect:

http://skitch.com/memengoinc/n68cp/screen-shot-2010-04-10-at...

I couldn't replicate that one myself either. Maybe you can? It will probably help you designing mobile websites. :-)
ISP's already profit from moving bit's from A to B. They want to make as much profit as possible.

ISP's have the same basic problem as the airlines. They are selling a commodity service that requires high capital costs and have little to differentiate themselves with. The only way to increase profits is to drive down costs because they can't offer much outside of "fat pipes".
Tech Stars looking to mentor new startups
Facebook Theme - AVATAR | userstyles.org
fair enough, but in these cases we still get a second order benefit from ungrateful jerks. Let's complete the sentence "I bet I could make tons of money by X because people think Y sucks and would hand over cash to avoid X"

of course, hats off to those solving problems for thinking "wouldn't it be marvelous if..?" I hope they don't go out of business
That is not what I was told when I asked last year. Thanks for jumping in and clarifying.

Just to be clear - does that apply to Joel and Michael too? If so, a tip of the hat to both of them.
Well then, I guess the mods can kill this. I wondered if this might happen, so I have a screen shot:

http://twitpic.com/1ek18g/full

The moods could also relink this thread of conversation to the screen shot.
How many good iPhone apps have already been built with Unity, Titanium, or MonoTouch or with an embedded Lua interpreter?
>Atheists Rule

wow. is that a problem? ;-)
I love Diesel Cafe!
that HE didn't know existed ten seconds ago

Get it right because it emphasises the entitlement douchiness :-)
Since the formula is based on number of days worked, I've always assumed that they just use the same formulas for themselves (and they get a lot more because they've worked at Fog Creek much longer than anyone else), but I guess I've never asked.

But I think the point is more that I know I'm not getting screwed over compared to my peers in the company -- it wouldn't really bother me to find out that they take extra for themselves since it is their company and all...
Funny for sure. Probably a late edit where a non-technical editor or a script replaces any acronyms with "Expanded Acronym (EA)". When I was a journalist that used to be done for style reasons as a matter of course, even if the acronym was widely understood.
I have to give this guy some respect as the only honest franchisor I've ever seen:

"We make 6 percent of sales on the franchises. All franchises work the same way: People say they want to sell your product. So you give them a Franchise Development Agreement that explains all the ways we can beat them down. I don't know if I would ever sign it. We can get out of the deal a million ways, but they are stuck."
Couchio - NoSQL is About Choice
I would like to be able to color code the folders in MS Outlook with a right click just like FolderIcon XP does in Windows.
I'm particularly annoyed by that being a ps3 owner. You'd think they would spend their resources making xbox better, not screwing over people with PS3s.

In any case this just makes me avoid Microsoft products more.
This is hilarious:
http://cpedia.com/wiki?q=cuil
I read the paper version of this and the other articles on the page had a similar bizarro-world quality to them. It took some time to see some logic to the ISP POV, which I think the article doesn't do justice.

Forget for a moment any notion of fairness or the traditional arrangement of customer > ISP > Internet as a whole. Take a look at the arrangement in terms of value transfer (give) and extraction (take).

The consumer-oriented ISPs give network connectivity (and maybe some other ancillary services such as an email account, anti-virus, NNTP, etc.) and take money from customers.

Google gives content (search may be more important to users, but content such as video is the focus in this case) and takes eyeballs on ads.

There is no formal connection between Google and the ISPs. There are two important informal connections: 1. Without Google (or other similar entities), the product of the consumer oriented ISP would be much less valuable to the customer. 2. Without the ISPs, Google has no way of giving its content or taking its eyeballs on ads.

At present, the ISPs perceive an asymmetry in revenue between [them and the consumer] and [Google and the consumer]. They are interested in connecting the dots from Google to the ISP in a more formal way. The only question is who has more to lose by pursuing their point.

Google can't take value from the customer without the ISPs. The ISPs' will offer less value to the customer without Google. Will an ISP without Google provide enough value to the customer to justify operating that way?

The relationship between each entity is not totally unfettered. The regulatory environment must also be considered. If the ISPs annoy the customers too much, there may be regulatory change (such as Network Neutrality, etc.). This in of itself may be good or bad for the ISPs and their complaints and threats regarding Google may be a diversion for the purpose of increasing their government supported monopoly power.
Why weren't their users chrooted to their own directory?
Yes I agree completely that elementary concepts and techniques of arithmetic (the concepts behind which may not even be so elementary) are essential and must be understood by any math student, but I distinguish strongly between learning said concepts/techniques and repeating them ad nauseam in frivolous repetitive exercise that demand no originality in reasoning whatsoever. I love math and would be considered by most to be a decent student, but just looking at those problems gives me a headache, and never have I encountered a circumstance in which carrying out those types of calculations by hand was remotely necessary.

I will note that the memorization quote is particularly true with more abstract topics where definitions are crucial to understanding ideas and writing proofs.
That argument has no weight at all. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1253621 has a good dissection of it.
Peering strikes me as akin to free trade between countries. Can peering relationships survive large imbalances? If packets were trade and peering relationships borders, who are the net exporters and importers?
Free advice: put the length of the video before the video. If I can't forecast when I will get out of a given activity I am a lot less likely to enter into it.
A thread around here recently said that to get HW acceleration for Flash, you either need to talk Adobe in to writing it for you, or you need to pony up $$$ for their SDK and do it yourself. Except, the SDK is two major versions old, v.7 instead of v.9.

So for many platforms, you're SOL for hardware acceleration. Do I have it completely wrong?
I'd argue that they are, undeniably, an awesome thing. :)
http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2010/04/08/introducing-cpedia-...

>I find Cpedia best on topics that I thought I knew about. I find out things I should have known but didn’t. I’ve noticed productivity has slowed in the company since we have had it up for internal testing, as people ask each other about stranger and stranger trivia, or exclaim, “I didn’t know your middle name was Hector?”
Facebook Rapidly Gaining Search Share, Blowing Past AOL And Ask
I can't believe I haven't put the words "Gnu" and "Facebook" together in my mind before....

Of course, something like this should be done. There are important questions about the technical architecture (I only ask one thing -- DONT USE XML...), especially because of privacy, but there are also opportunities to explicitly and collectively decide processes (Yay democracy!) -- if the users of FB could vote on issues of data sharing, things there might be really, really different.
Maybe they're looking to get into the parked domain business?
And I have very little faith that any company shipping a crappy UI will get their act together and ship an upgrade that "fixes" it. Microsoft needed more than a decade.

Choppy video, maybe that can be fixed. But the crappy UI is probably forever.
Clickable link: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Am3Hh0VwEoxOdGRWNnM0...
Orrin Hatch made the same mistake about 10 years ago during a hearing on file sharing. The CEO of Napster corrected him.
ICensored: Apple, Porn and the Magic of CSR |
Awesome, if I ever want to murder you, I'll get two guns, one with bullets and one with blanks, recruit a friend, double blind them so I don't know who has what and we'll both shoot you at the same time.

Since it can never be ascribed to more than 50% certainty which of us shot you, we will both go free.
I think we could do without that as well and still be fine. It's just as effective to think about it from the positive standpoint. (Some would argue it's more productive without the hurt feelings and acrimony.)
Finally. An Oregon Trail reference that remembers that fording the river never, ever worked. Caulk the wagon and float was the way to go.
Here's an article from Cuil's blog about the launch:

http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2010/04/08/introducing-cpedia-...

"I was a stay at home dad, I dropped by Kleiner Perkins to try to get some money to write a search engine". This has to be an elaborate piece of satirical performance art.
I think starting it at 7:00 PM is probably a good idea. Sin and Redemption is a pretty small pub, we should probably make a reservation.
Yes, I'm sure this is exactly what their VC's were hoping for with their $millions.
Yes, they definitely have a signal-to-noise problem:

http://cpedia.com/search?q=sam+ruby

I've been trying to find just one good article, but so far, no luck.
Just look at http://cpedia.com/search?q=Paul%20Graham&d=raganwald - I'd get more relevant and complete information from a markov chain...
Someone was predicting a more Balkanized and much less open Internet awhile back. In fact, IIRC, they were predicting this through increased reliance on proprietary walled gardens. We see it coming true right here. Being in one corporate camp or another trumps beauty and excellence.
China Is Eager to Bring High-Speed Rail Expertise to the U.S.
I'm sure there are a few, off the top of my head I know Battlefield 1943 was released on XBLA and PSN at around the same time. However, being the fastest selling download-only game ever, neither Microsoft or Sony were going to miss out on a piece of that action. Machinarium, on the other hand, isn't going to pull those kinds of sales. Still I guess, like the article says, with the weight of a big publisher behind them they might be able to get it done.
The amount of leeway one gives should be related to how easy the problem is to fix. Fundamental problems with the hardware should not be judged equal to easily fixed software bugs when counting pros and cons.
> Skilled computer scientists with some management responsibilities, for instance, often make base salaries of $180,000 to $210,000.

Huh. I guess I need to go find some management responsibilities somewhere, dealing with people issues instead of computer issues for part of the day can't be that bad...

> Behind the scenes, technology companies are making the case that agreements among companies are not anticompetitive and don't affect employees' salaries or the availability of jobs. They say such agreements are commonplace, used by companies to maintain good relationships with business partners.

> The technology industry makes the case that it would be harder to enter into collaborative ventures with other companies if they fear losing valuable employees.

That seems rather contradictory; if there's no effect on the employee's opportunities, what are the companies afraid of?

> Policing the labor markets hasn't been a central focus of antitrust enforcers in recent years. But the Justice Department did act against what it saw as efforts to manipulate the labor market. It brought a civil case against a group of hospitals in Utah in 1994, alleging that they had illegally conspired to hold down nurses' wages by exchanging information about their pay.

Maybe this could be an argument for not keeping salaries a secret; get rid of the information asymmetry.
Achieving the ELIZA Effect in StarCraft
I'm fine with this being reposted every month or so. In fact, I wouldn't mind if it were pinned to the top of the page.