skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
That's Goldman's very argument. It may be true in a sense - the investors in Abacus should have been aware that somebody, somewhere would benefit, at least a little, if Abacus failed.

Nevertheless, the following are facts:

- Paulson was involved in creating Abacus
- Paulson would gain nothing if Abacus succeeded
- Paulson would make a billion dollars if Abacus failed

If you're contemplating investing in Abacus, that's important information. Goldman neglected to mention it.
As much as I understand the developers point of view on this, it is different as an entrepreneur. For a startup it is vital to not have half of your companys knowledge walk out the door. This article just says that there are valid reasons why job hoppers can be good employees.
Mark Suster doesn't say that you should never change your job, nor does he deny young people to have some more tries for orienatation.
Logo identity guideline template for download
I wouldn't be surprised if we have a Great Power inspection system, with a representative of every major power, whether nuclear or non-nuclear, at every declared PGS site. Any non-declared PGS ICBM launch would then be considered a nuclear attack.
Not sure how plausible that scenario is, but it's a very interesting angle.
Creative Marketing Often Wins
Okay, fine, ACA sucks. But Goldman still knowingly lied about who was involved in selecting the reference portfolio.
A big part of my job is proving intent in just such cases. It is, as you point touch on, really difficult.

There could be a very "innocent" reason; the sysadmin could be simply obbsessed or interested in individuals lives (it's actually not an uncommon problem) and not even consider that something indecent might appear on screen. She might not find it sexually interesting etc.

If the intent really was to photograph nude children then I'd fully expect there to be lots and lots of evidence showing this (particularly in terms of other indecent material on her computers).
AFAIK there's no public API for putting icons in the menu bar, so it's not surprising that an app doing something hacky causes problems.
I used to read these stories and salivate at the thought of these superhuman investors. Now I read just see them as gamblers making big bets with someone else's money.
College students struggle to go without media for 24 hours
http://tinyurl.com/nsstatusitemguide

Perfectly legal, documented APIs for adding an NSStatusItem to the global status bar. I think it changed in Tiger?
It looks nice. But it would be nice if clicking on the logo return back to the front page.
But a girl who has been changing boyfriends like her clothes in the past is more likely to do so in the future. Maybe that's because she doesn't fullfill her side of the equation in general.
They weren't paying GS to analyze the deal, just to make it.
"100 portfolio managers buy and sell 100 million shares a day"

Luck should have been mentioned but the sheer volume of trades and absurd average over 18 years makes it seem like they DO have some special sauce... and a lot of it.
I normally reply with a comment where I state that I meant to upvote and accidentally downvoted.

Psychology takes care of the rest - within minutes someone else will have upvoted the comment based on my comment. This mechanism could probably be used for malicious purposes if you cared enough about karma and not enough about basic decency.
This line of thinking is dangerous. Investing in the stock market is always a _risk_. I doubt you find yourself thinking "Oh if only I had bought 2,500 lottery tickets instead of that Powerbook, I'd might of afforded my entire college education." Of course not, because we've been taught that thinking like that is ludicrous.

Now before I get blasted for that comparison, obviously the lottery which is meant to be random is not exactly equivalent to an open market where information flows can mitigate some of the risk and provide indicators of good potential investments. But, investments are always a risk regardless especially as you are just getting out of school, have loans, and don't have much money you can afford to loose in bad investments.

Having graduated from grad school two years ago myself I've been doing the following: 1) In general I've been paying off my loans as quickly as possible as their interest rates are higher than the rates of returns I would see from putting money into the market. 2) Because the market was in a special place after grad school, I've temporarily violated my #1 rule and put about half of my spare money into retirement funds tied to the market as it was fairly obvious that the market would probably rebound strongly (which it did, yay!). 3) As the market's rebound levels off I'm redirecting more and more money back to my loans. 4) If you're going the route of retirement funds, invest in Roth IRAs before you're making too much to not be able to invest in them.

Once you have reduced your debts then take your money and go play in the market, but only with money you're willing to loose.

BTW - I realize that my current investment strategy is pretty conservative, as I'm attempting to experiment with living nearly debt free. I would love to hear alternative theories if there are any.
Index Ventures announces Index Seed
and unless you plan on working alone, you'll have to hire people. You can't hire people the same way you talk yourself into entrepreneurship. They're not going to be co-founders, they won't have a great upside, they're going to be paid a salary to do a job for you. Figuring out how to hire the right people is probably harder than anything else I've done.
I'm really looking for a way to view all the people I'm following that I have not categorized into the list, would love a "sort by unlisted" other than that it's looking great.
Most who are fairly paid, valued and treated as human beings won't "walk out". If they like the area and have friends and family close by and they are respected by the company, they will stay.

Disrespect them (low pay, no pay raises, no down time, 80 hour weeks all the time, uncertain/unstable company, etc) and they will leave.
Summary: Saul and team announcing UK based seed fund, joining with TAG. Robin Klein to be venture partner.
Wave your left hand while you get ready to punch with the right.
"Don't fix the UI problem, work around it! Who cares if a good comment is downvoted and a possibly worse one upvoted, as long as the user's total karma is correct?" Is that your suggestion?
The only potential caveat to "There's zero evolutionary reason for aliens to behave altruistically" I can think of is that it may be quite improbable that species make it to long distance, space travelling status without being friendly. Perhaps if they are mean they will wipe themselves out, and so the species that live long enough to journey far into space do so because they're friendly enough to live long enough.

The rest of what you say I think I agree with (though I have no idea what a low albedo impactor is).
The article is basically a puff piece. How about a more critical view of SAC and hedge funds in general: http://www.fool.com/community/pod/2005/050401.htm
Facebook is a Ponzi Scheme
Psychology is "manipulation of people"? Really. I didn't know that.
I had asked PG for exactly that (and other possible solutions) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1275394
I clearly understand this, the point is that Apple choosing to use discrete for all apps that may slightly use core image for example is overkill...
I just don't understand why the fact that ACA and the longs are pathetic and should have known they were getting screwed materially influences the question of whether or not Goldman committed fraud. If they did (and it seems pretty clear that's the case), they should get off because they're an alpha dog?
Whenever one of my comments gets zeroed, I always assume someone missclicked. May or may not be true, but it makes me feel better ;p
My guess would be that they have a blacklist of well-known celebrity and fictional character names that gets your request flagged for further review. Misspellings might avoid triggering the blacklist.
I do not conflate law with morality; they are distinct and have a definite relationship. The moral for any individual is what is in that person's long-term rational self-interest. Law is a subset - it should only extract justice in the defense of individual rights.

So correct, objective laws (good for people) must be moral. Although correct laws necessarily cannot enforce morality (instead, they must be limited to the protection of individual rights), they are limited by morality - they must not criminalize moral actions.

--

If someone came to your house and robbed you, would you just say, "Hey, that's life. People are going to rob me, so I just have to accept some losses. I'm not going to defend myself or go to the police"?

--

On to Foxconn:
Yes, Apple should take responsibility for the Foxconn suicide, along with Dell and Sony, all of whom use the same factory in Shenzhen, where four more employees have since committed suicide. What does taking responsibility entail? Getting more control over Foxconn's security procedures, demanding prosecution of the particular managers that actually forced the suicides, all under threat of halting production and using a different supplier, or manufacturing in a different country if necessary.

If that doesn't work, Apple should spend some bucks and literally advertise the problem to Americans - take the moral high ground and say "we took the lead in quitting these guys, and our competitors - Dell and Sony - did not."

If they don't do this, and the people making the devices keep getting murdered (forced suicide), they lose legitimacy morally. Morality is essential in business, because without it, long-term profitability cannot be achieved.
Unless it's poisoned.
My Facebook problem: Whenever I go on their site I get a terrible Facebook headache. It's like being in a loud restaurant, a packed mall, and a crowded amusement park at the same time.
don't know if you are serious in this question, but I would be interested in people's honest opinion.

Is apple over valued(or i guess i should say over priced) at its current market value. would you expect apple's value to go down relative to the market over the next year or so?
I've been asked for loyalty from companies many more times than I've ever been shown any. It's pretty rare that a company really sticks by their employees.

For the younger generations, after watching their parents work 20+ years at the same organization and receive a cheap watch, they have no illusions about who will be providing the loyalty and who will be receiving it.
Good idea - now it does that.
No, they are. They decided, for no goddamn good reason, to switch on the discrete graphics chip when certain APIs were called, after doing a whole lot of work for years and years to encourage the use of said APIs.

AMD is doing this the right way- turn it on when you plug in, and let users toggle the thing manually. Optimus seems like an interesting compromise. But API sniffing is ridiculous, because 3D != Intensive 3D That Must Be Fast.
Not exactly. The launch from Vandenberg on April 22 was an HTV-2, which appears to be a weapons test, but a non-orbital one. It was tested on a target in the Marshal Islands. I don't believe the HTV-2 reaches space, and it certainly isn't orbital. It's described as a "hypersonic glider."

Vandenberg AFB launches a lot of payloads for testing weapons, so launching another non-orbital weapons test is nothing new. They have regular launches of the Minuteman ICBM to test a missile-intercept system. If I recall correctly, the Minuteman is the target and we launch an intercept missile out of Alaska to pick off the Minuteman. So far, I believe they've all failed.

The rest of the article is about a vehicle that does enter space and stays there for an extended period of time, and which may contain weapons. That's why it gets more attention.

Here's a news story on the launch from Vandenberg: http://www.santamariatimes.com/news/local/military/article_7...
If that happened there's no way muslims could continue to use the line "Islam is a religion of peace".
x264 project announces first open source Blu-ray encoder
Every comment gets some accidental down votes, so I think just accept your slip as part of it's accurate overall score.
I'm just saying that if they do find out you're not who you pretend to be then your account will be closed. A primary reason for this would be to prevent identity theft (e.g. accounts that appear to be a real person and add a group of people who all work together/study together/went to the same school).
Never forget the 80 / 20 rule.
exactly... The idea is great, but needs more thought, because as you rightly suggest, not all 3D graphics = intensive, and not all types of app (ie status bar apps doing nothing) require discrete graphics card switch on 100% of the time...

THIS, is the issue.
Ask HN: Review local used textbook startup
Hi HN,

Please take a look at my friend's startup, matchio (matchio.com). They're trying to create an easier way for students to buy and sell textbooks with their peers. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Clickable: http://matchio.com
BootOUT Labs, Vancouver's Internet Startup De-accelerator! LOL!
I think we'll evolve towards general computational intelligence, improving our calculating substrate as we learn more about fundamental physics. Eventually, matter and 3 dimensional space and time are all just one very narrow view of reality. Transcending these things renders us invisible to those still bound to them. Likewise, intelligence that came before us followed the same path.
As for me, I feel like its one big orgie going on.
Using a service often does not always translate into that service generating spectacular, analyst beating results.

Looking at businesses that you are familiar with is a good starting point, but is -no substitute- for analyzing the numbers generated by the business. It's better for scuttlebutting, that is, visiting the stores and seeing how customer levels fluctuate. Are there more people visiting the Apple Store this year than last? That kind of thing.

A good case in point - I visited a hamburger chain, tasted the food and hated it. I thought the food was mediocre and the prices were too high. But, I decided to keep the stock anyway. Why? They had a new 32 year old investor who fought his way onto the board of directors, fired members of the old management team, made himself CEO, and cut expenditures to the bone. The result? They company steered clear of bankruptcy, became debt free, generated a 10% free cash flow yield, and has so far generated me an 80% return.

The thing is - had I just visited the restaurant, I probably wouldn't have noticed this. Red dots being removed from styrofoam cups (cost cutting), a picture of the new CEO in the restaurant (change in management), and sliced rather than cherry tomatoes in the salad (cost cutting) may have been indication of some change; but not enough to tell me about the big behind the scenes changes without the company's financials.
What's the comment link? I'll fix it for you.
> work 20+ years at the same organization and receive a cheap watch

Or worse, a pink slip.
So how come it's not called the Age of Apple? Apple has done just as much to change our culture and dominate tech thought in the last couple of years.

Is it that we're not bullish on Apple anymore and are pushing facebook?

It'd be interesting to see where facebook falls flat. If Foursquare doesn't get brought out, I'm guessing it's in the mobile location space.
+1 on the insane fast pace. Their connect team is actually quite small, and they got a bazillion things done for F8.
Agreed. I've whinged about Zed's whinging in the past, but it's another thing to create something. Kudos to Mr. Shaw.
The Michael Corleone analogy goes far. Apple uses the organized crime / drug dealer method of security: if you do something they don't like they terminate you (pun intended) to scare everyone else into complying.
Well, yeah, that is my suggestion. And for extra bonus points, it works right now today. If it gets fixed in code, great.
heh, perhaps ;)
A more serious possibility: Hawking's just not aware of Independence Day. It's so hard to read books and watch movies that he just isn't aware of pop culture in the last 20 years. So he's coming up with ideas without being aware of 'related work'.

This is a profoundly saddening prospect, but I'm probably wrong.
I feel sad about this whole ordeal. I feel that this is unwarranted provocation. (Disclosure: I am a muslim. And long time hacker news participant.)

Muslims value their prophet a lot, as they also value Jesus, Moses, Abraham, and other prophets. The prophets are human, but they excelled in their lives by the choices they made, they served as great examples and deserve respect. Out of respect to prophet Muhammed, muslims would always follow with a short prayer every time they utter his name. Most muslims will refuse to name their children "Muhammed", because they don't want to call/yell their children with the name of the prophet, so they use variations on the name, such as Ahmed, Mehmed, Mustafa.

Dead threats by the fanatics are unfounded and despicable. But, following on this with a provocation like this is equally unfounded and hurtful towards the muslims.

As for people who feel like their freedoms are restricted if they were not allowed to draw and make fun of prophet Muhammed, I have hard time understanding them. Muslims are not dictating them to actively respect him. Not at all. They are just asking them not to go over their way to actively insult his memory.

Instead of this hurtful and easy shot, why don't they all consider practicing their freedom of speech by wearing t-shirts that has bomb pictures and arabic inscriptions on it to the airports? Or, any other way that is offensive to the government?
I don't think I've ever used a touch device. I have used a treo and centro stylus device that also works with a fingernail.

Don't these things have some sort of mouse/cursor emulator mode, for fine control when it's needed? It'd be easy enough to use: get into fine mouse mode however you do that, and then you can drag your finger anywhere. Your finger doesn't directly manipulate what's under it; instead, the mouse cursor moves. Tap, double tap, triple tap, etc.
Employers Influence Job Hopping (Mark Suster's Take Is One-Sided)
The 'effing case' is that Goldman told the long side investors that ACA independently assembled the reference portfolio when Paulson actually played a significant role in putting it together.

Paulson had a list of securities they wanted to short. ACA selected what was (in their opinion) the best set of long positions from this set. Goldman then sold a synthetic CDO based on the long positions. The exact positions were disclosed, in explicit detail, to every buyer.

This is how nearly every synthetic CDO is constructed.
This post contains two .png (lossless) screenshots from Blu-rays that look absolutely horrible. I don't have much first-hand experience with Blu-rays, but I wonder if this kind of bad compression is a common thing?

I suppose the big studios do a decent job at encoding (though I might be wrong). Is this mostly a problem with smaller companies that might not be able to hire the proper expertise?

No doubt there will be an industry learning curve like with DVDs (with time they got better).
Nonsense. The following are facts that are known to every investor in any synthetic CDO (including ABACUS) who bothered to look up the definition of synthetic CDO:

-- Anonymous counterparty was involved in creating Synthetic CDO.
-- Anonymous counterparty gains nothing if the CDO succeeds.
-- Anonymous counterparty makes money if it fails.
Dojo the lastest version
I've been using BD Rebuilder and x264 to backup and remove the garbage (endless copyright notices, trailers, logo screens, etc.) from my purchased BluRays, and it's been doing a great job. I'm amazed by how far I can compress them down and still have an incredible picture quality, even all the way down to DVD-5. Recent builds have even been able to give me this quality with single-pass video encodes, cutting my processing time drastically. Many thanks to the x264 project (and for jdobbs's great BD Rebuilder) for all your impressive work.
Twitter App: Measure the size of your eBoobs
> Have you ever bought a Facebook ad? I have. I have talked to many, many people who have. We have spent hundreds, many have spent thousands or even more, experimenting with Facebook ads. They are worthless. Nobody ever looks at them, and nobody ever clicks on them.

Somewhat damning, if true... Has anyone here had a different experience?
I agree that you don't want half of your company's knowledge to walk out the door. My point was that finding people that are blindly loyal (something you're very unlikely to do) isn't the solution. The solution is to engender an environment that earns loyalty and respect from your employees.

Also, I was really arguing against Mark using it as a filter for ruling out resumes. I just don't think it works in either the positive or negative case. As with most everything in life the answer is more nuanced. If you rule out an entire category of potential employees, you're just limiting yourself.
It would be interesting to have figures backing these assertions. What sort of conversion performance did you see Joseph?
I can only conclude that Hawking has never seriously thought about it. There are NO galactic faring civilizations. If there were, they would be here now. I remember reading somewhere that it would take an expansionist civilization 10 million years to populate the galaxy. Given that the age of the galaxy is somewhere around 13 billion years, it is improbable that the first galactic civilization is on its way but hasnt reached here yet.

How about a nearby civilization, about our age? Charles Stross has done an analysis of the economics of star flight and came to the conclusion that interstellar travel makes no sense at all. http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the-high... It may not be possible at all.

I think that the idea that another civilization would want us for out resources is silly, for economics alone. If they wanted to leave their star because it was about to collapse into a white dwarf, there are better places to go. Any nearby M class star would have the resources to rebuild a civilization. The comet an asteroid belts can supply the materials without the problems of a deep gravity well like the earth.
I've been thinking this for years, glad someone articulated it.

1) Facebook's demographics suck. The people on there the most are broke college kids and younger. Sure older people check the site, but your average college kid is on all day - because they don't work.

2) When people look at an ad on Google, they are looking for something and the ad might be the answer. When I'm looking for something on Facebook, it is a picture/event/person/comment, the ads will never be what I'm looking for.

The one area I disagree is that I'm not sure a FB+1 will be able to undercut FB on price alone. If FB goes with a freemium model where only the people with 500+ picture and 200+ friends have to pay and businesses with fan pages have to pay, the "regular" users will probably stick around and keep FB the leader because of the network effect. The resulting revenue wouldn't match their valuation at all but it would probably keep them profitable.
Pay-per-performance is only one type of advertising.

Brand advertising is the big elephant in the room and might make fb a tonne of $ going forward.
A short introduction to the x86 instruction set encoding