skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The Plus Side of HN's Now Large Userbase (or, Thanks HN)
I posted a blog entry of mine yesterday. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1295462) I had exhausted my research options so the post was me asking for help.

Less than twenty-four hours after submitting it to HN -- on a post that got no up-votes or comments -- I had several people contact me with suggestions, tangential ideas, and even a PDF copy of a presentation made three days ago that talked about EXACTLY what I was mentioning.

HN might have more noise these days, but the signal is still strong.

Thanks, HN.
Given the amount of money that the agricultural corporations would be happy to throw in, and the public's demonstrated weakness for propaganda and inability to actually decide anything for themselves, I don't have much confidence in people coming to a reasonable, considered conclusion.
Hi, I develop for both iPhone and BlackBerrys. The iPhone is way ahead in performance, although the hardware is similiar - BlackBerrys just don't have a dedicated GPU and therefore no OpenGL acceleration. Also everything on RIM OS is running in a JavaVM with GC, while iPhone Apps, being in (objective-)C, run much closer to the hardware itsself. Now the funny thing is, despite programming in a higher-level languages on BlackBerrys, iPhone programming is actually easier due to the thoughtful API-design.
She's encouraging people to parody the Comedy Central executive's actions. A picture of them wouldn't do that.
Many of the things Daniel said resonated with me. Certainly, the online community around startups can have a low signal to noise ratio. But, there's a much bigger world outside Twitter, HN, and similar outlets.

I'm an attorney and most of my practice is IP and business litigation. But only a handful of my clients play to the broad consumer market. If you filter out the Mom-n-Pop shops and the VC-backed tech companies, there's a huge population of companies in the middle that started with Angel or F&F funding and have found really interesting business models entirely on their own.

There's a lot to learn from the mistakes of others, and the various startup "movements" can be a wonderful source of community. But at the end of the day, the founders I work with who have built successful enterprises generally have done it on their own.

At the end of the day, if you want to build a brick wall, you just have to start laying bricks.
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The problem in both cases is the absence of any standards governing the exercise of the prosecutor's and investigator's discretion. The appearance of impropriety in both cases magnifies the problem.

If REACT wants to make it a high priority to issue subpoenas to recover information from third parties that might relate to someone else's wrongful possession of a phone for a brief amount of time, then so be it. Last I read they were focused on major counterfeit software operations.

At the moment, though, it appears REACT suddenly developed a zeal for prosecuting a trivial offense merely because the offense is high profile and involved an influential victim. That's a problem, and it's the same problem in the Gonzales case: the improper exercise of discretion. The public is entitled to know how and why REACT is utilizing its limited resources.
Wow. Thanks for this comment. I know this is what up-voting is for, but I felt like this needed an extra shoutout.
I think your ideas are incoherent at best if you expect, f.ex., economic investment to be driven by some sort of elite class of philosopher-kings rather than the people who actually manage to earn that money in the market. Venture capital is a means to enter the higher echelons of the merchant class, and you want the merchant class to be disenfranchised therefrom?

I'd also like to point out that, to whatever extent these philosopher-kings exist, they already have some degree power to drive political policy, but this power is strictly limited by the vulgarity inherent in a democratic system. By which I mean obviously beneficial policies which the intellectual elite already agree on are often politically infeasible due to public opinion.

I don't know what, in concrete terms, you want this intellectual elite to be on top. It can't be in terms of political power or wealth, because by definition those are controlled by the very political and economic classes you'd like to leave to their own devices. And I don't know any other substantive way in which they can even be an elite--living in nicer apartments, as you mentioned earlier, is a prize hardly worth even mentioning.
Introverts make for better networkers
The 21st-century textbook
Well, to put it in the most extreme example - if you were drinking pure formaldehyde that had an additive that made it taste just like a delicious lemonade, would you feel taht you had been tricked into thinking it tastes good?

Taste is supposed to identify healthy and needed substances vs. deleterious or poisonous substances, so when this is subverted artificially, it feels like a trick to me.
Very apropos. Many of the worst effects of the Irish famine of 1846 can be attributed to British farm policy, such as an unwillingness to block the export of grain from Ireland after the famine started.
Perhaps you should open a company that exploits those arbitrage opportunities?
> Why all the hostility towards the writer?

Because he wasted our time with idiotic complaints and comparisons. For saying nothing everybody already knew.
Thanks for your suggestions. We're working hard to get better every day. There is obviously a lot of work left for us to do, but that's what helps us jump out of bed every morning.

I agree short quotes, clips and photos are fun. But it's not where "it's at." I think Twitter already won that battle.

I disagree completely with your description of longform blogs. You're focusing on what's cool at the cost of what is essential.
Assuming non-homophobic heterosexual parents, why would they be the "wrong setup"?
What's essential?
Did you know we support embedding Github Gists? Just paste the gist URL and we do the rest.

Markdown etc has been a much-wanted feature, even for ourselves internally. We try to focus on normals as much as possible, so it hasn't hit the top of our priority list yet, but it has been rising in the list without a doubt.
I'm not sure what your point is, from that link: "Today, defacing a flag is an act of protected speech under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, as established in Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397 (1989), and reaffirmed in U.S. v. Eichman, 496 U.S. 310 (1990)."
Be sure to watch the linked video
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/04/good-learning.html
The bigger news is IMHO the launch of the Nokia Symbian SDK. It finally looks like Symbian is going to become a platform that is pleasant to program for...
Maybe so. But if so, then REACT shouldn't have any trouble explaining why the investigation of this single phone was so important. There are thousands of IT businesses that have been cheated, defrauded, stolen from, and counterfeited, and yet Apple's already-returned single phone gets preferential treatment.

Why? Your explanation might be perfectly valid, but it's not the explanation REACT has given. They haven't explained anything at all.
The Muslim in me is offended by these drawings. At the same time, I respect your right to draw something I find offensive.

All cultures have their soft spots. You have every legal right to hit those soft spots. And in most cases, nothing will happen - just like you have a right to offend people, people have a right to be offended(without being violent, of course). Yet, when you play with emotions of millions of people, simple numbers dictate that a few will go apeshit. And when they do, they should be punished.

I don't see us having a EVERYBODY USE THE N-WORD DAY. How come? Largely because it will get your ass kicked.

Now, you can argue that n-word is different than these cartoons because it is based on more solid and recent events. Fair enough - but I thought this whole debate was about free speech? Specifically, that free speech should not get you killed or your ass kicked no matter what. Yet in each society, you will find speech that will get your ass kicked.
http://blog.cubeofm.com/cofounders
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I don't think he is trying to explain googles/facebooks. He mentions them but none of they payouts/percentiles he has are 1000x/.001

From the article : "More likely, you’ll end up with a solid 2x-5x return from a startup that grows into a viable long-term business." Also, if you look at the expected value contributed by the unlikely 20x return, its .4 out of a total of 2.35.

He's trying to hit hard ground balls, not homeruns.
Except this is offensive to even the Muslims who are perfectly reasonable.
/* printf("Starting Windows 95!\r\n"); */

printf("Starting Windows 98!\r\n");
How does the state determine your sexual preferences? Do they take a blood test?
Earth Day was 5 days ago :-)
There is a pretty good discussion of this in

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html
They are a bunch of morons.

Give us their names, so we never deal with them ;)
Hitchhikers guide to Haskell
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Right on! This is one of the best responses I've read. As you point out, there is no such thing as "the Islam" on matters such as these, there are various traditions. A similar debate is raging in Europe over the wearing of head scarves, again a traditional approach from a small sect in Islam.

One quick clarification though: AFAIK, Mohammed is always depicted with a veil in Islamic iconography.
I wasn't saying a verbal contract is not as good as a written one, I was just saying a verbal contract cannot amend a written one. ie. If he signs a contract stating he can work independently on nights/weekends, they cannot amend that contract verbally and change their minds. Amendments to written contracts must be agreed upon by both parties in writing. Though I'm not sure if this applies in the Netherlands...
It's a fine line, but if the patients are willful participants then I guess that's a different story.

If they are not willful then I'm unmoved on my stance.
but which label goes with which group, I've heard many, many. And no one has mentioned dork, dweeb, or other terms used to belittle the not popular. I know several definitions for geek

Geeks people who bite the heads off of chickens and other circus freaks.

Geeks people who are really into some niche such as game geeks, or mathgeeks.

Geeks socially awkward losers.

The definitions of geek and nerd are location and temporally dependent. That means if you grew up in KS during the 80's your definitions are far different than if you grew up in San Jose in the 90's.
I read this book ages ago. It's not a "how-to" manual, as some people here seem to think. It's a mathematical adventure, how his childhood lucky bet set him on a particular obsession to see if such betting was amenable to mathematical analysis and prediction. I'll leave it up to you math experts to criticize the math in the book itself, but it was a really fun read even for someone like me, who can only do basic arithmetic. I guess that makes it sound like I'm easily impressed, but this is my way of saying it's also a good way to advocate the usefulness of math to people who don't see its real-world practical aspects.
Actually they are, e.g., in Germany. (If memory serves me right.)
um sorry, but that's not even in the same category of parody / satire.

The Qur'an doesn't explicitly forbid visual depictions of Muhammad.
"Productive" -- depends on what you're producing.

I find myself using the iPad to do research, mockup, sketch and design stuff. (The sort of thing I've always have a hard time doing at a desk and that has stubbornly remained 'on paper'.) Then I sit down at a workstation to "do the work".

Overall, the tablet is making me more productive, even though what's getting produced on it is never finished work.

It obviates a netbook for me, because it more cleanly splits my computing into buckets where the netbook pales to the laptop because it's underpowered, or pales to the tablet because it's burdened by the desktop OS and keyboard/mouse assumptions.

Certainly, YMMV based on what "work" you do. The rule-of-thumb I've been using is to ask people how much they still use paper in the course of being productive. (that is, when you still use it because it's a good solution; as opposed to merely being stubborn, natch)

If you still use paper in the course of your work, it may help. But if you generate almost exclusively text, it probably won't.
> You might have been burnt by the static OOP languages…

I have. This is crushing. And the fact that they won't die any time soon makes me feel worse. One of my colleague even said to me with a straight face that "serious" programming couldn't be done but in C++ (if only he had omited the "but").

I think the problem of Haskell isn't it's learning curve. It's where you have to start from: scratch. Someone who know C, Java and Python won't be able to use much of their knowledge to learn Haskell. On the other hand, Haskell could be taught as a first programming course. (Like Ocaml was in my case).

> including writing compilers ... http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/

Is this still OO?? The core language is based on pattern-matching! The way I see it, the OO part has been pushed to the periphery. If I do parsing in OMeta, I doubt I could claim I did it in an OO way.
I am pointing out a similar debate and suggesting that people form their own conclusions. I personally think that speech about other people's religious or cultural beliefs is an extremely complex issue and that there is plenty of room for reasonable people to disagree.

I'm a Canadian and while I admit they are imperfect, I fully support our Hate Crime legislation that forbids many forms of speech that are permitted in the USA. At the same time, I understand why the USA takes a different road and I support that as well.

So to sum it up, my point is, "Isn't the debate about flag burning interesting in the context of the debate about cartoons?"
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"(though I will admit, intentionally offending Muslims tastes bad to me too)"

Such delicate and tender social sensibilities we all suddenly have. As a Christian, people deliberately trying to offend me is merely part of the background noise of my life. Can't say I see it every day, but every week is probably fair.

Does "intentionally offending Christians" taste just as bad to you? I address this to everyone who would agree with that statement, not you personally, because I'm sure the answer is "yes" for some people. I mean it more an a question for introspection, because it's been a long time since I've actually been offended by anything.

And if the answer is no, my followup question would be "What's the difference?" and "Are you sure that's a social incentive structure you want to set up?" Allowing people to cow you with threats like this goes beyond even religion; "give me my handouts or I'll commit violence" is a threat that has been used in the real world, after all, it's not even theoretical. It's better not to encourage that.
The boomers were commies, "me generation" was greedy, gen-x were slackers and gen-y are entitled. How about instead, middle-aged bosses hate the fact that younger people learned to game their system, and are creating a new system. It's more or less how it always works -- to the point I'm fairly certain there is a genetic component to it.
Startups: Meet the Press – Your Way
A Predator at the Chessboard
One thing I should point out here: "information architecture" refers to what information goes on what page (a design concept). It doesn't refer to anything such as database schemas or any other programming concepts.
4.) <--- put a space after parentheses and before the title
AFAIK, Mohammed is always depicted with a veil in Islamic iconography.

That is factually inaccurate -- that is certainly one historically mainstream option, but it is not true in all times and all places.

See generally the Wiki article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depictions_of_Muhammad
I dislike Spotify for the following reasons:

* The music industry is a major shareholder. Spotify is great for them because they can continue as gatekeeper and make Spotify a worse proposition to artists not signed to any of the big four.

* Artists not signed to the big four does, in fact, get a lot less per play than the big four get when their music is being played. So if I am a premium subscriber, and only listening to "indie" artists, the big four will still get my money.

* Artists have to go through digital distribution channels such as RouteNote and DittoMusic to get their music onto Spotify. Why not let them upload their own music directly?

* The big four bought their share in the company (around 5% each) for chump change.

* It is a lot easier to censor music when it's all in the same streamlined interface.
The OS isn't written in Java. Apps and layers on top of the OS are in Java.
This is a free book by Ward Farnsworth. It's my favorite chess book (I've had it bookmarked for years). If you like chess, but never bothered to study it in book form, I recommend checking it out.
Try 123456789 * 9 * 2.
Ask HN: How would you build the perfect team?
I'm in a unique position where I have an indefinite amount of time to build a highly skilled team piece by piece. This team would essentially be small, agile and not specific to a domain. It needs to be able to handle everything from development to business to marketing.

Given as much time as you needed, how would you seek, identify, assimilate and grow a team such as this?
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I seem to recall him saying that he had intended on giving it to HP in the first place in his interview in Founders at Work. I don't have access to it, and I'm going off of memory, so you're probably right. :-)
I'll accept that there is no such thing as "the Islam" and that in practice it's a very diverse religion.

But some traditions aren't simply "a traditional approach from a small sect in Islam"

The Hijab (head scarves) is an Islamic requirement. The different sects will disagree on its implementation, style, enforcement, and other details...but the vast majority of Muslims will agree that it's not simply "again a traditional approach from a small sect in Islam"

Depictions of holy figures is another example. Yes, there is Persian, Turkish, Indian, and other art depicting the prophet, the angels, god, etc. Yes, some Shia Muslims will have no problem depicting the prophet respectfully. Yes, some Sunni Muslims are more liberal than others. But in reality, when you look at the whole Islamic population, those groups are the ones that historically have represented a small sect in Islam. The vast majority of Muslims stand against such depictions; it's important to note that the vast majority of them will also simply boycott or ignore said depictions, rather than go through more violent channels.

Just my two cents.
I agree - it is very Tufte-esque.
Ask HN: Any hackers in Luanda/Angola?
Title says it all.

I am in town for the next 25 days and in case you exist, I would love to buy you a beer.

Reply or drop me a mail at hn@beastiebytes.com
My point wasn't that Apple is a business, and that other businesses should be treated the same.

I was working on an idea of "size of the crime multiplied by the number of people impacted" might define where the threshold lies. So murdering one person is significant in that it affects one person ultimately, and a good chunk of other people in the second order. Losing one's own phone affects a single person only, and not very significantly at that. Apple's losing their prototype is analogous in the actual act, but the effect on Apple's marketing multiplies it out big-time.

Other test cases for the thought experiment: bank robbery; simple assault; rape; creating a public nuisance. I think the idea can be applied successfully across all of these.

I don't know anything specific about the stolen iPhone case. I find the whole "zOMG I saw a picture of the new iPhone!!!1!!" thing to be ridiculous. So I can't address anyone's behavior in this instance.
Is it just me or is this post littered with nasty links and pay walls?
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I don't see how that's possible. It's not reasonable to get offended because of a harmless cartoon; anyone who does is by definition unreasonable.
Here's the thing though; South Park wouldn't be doing a show with depictions of Mohammed if the original response to the Danish cartoons _hadn't_ been death threats/attacks/embassy burnings.

I respect your view point, but mine is equally valid; that it's unfortunate that one of my core held beliefs, freedom of expression without fear for one's life, is disrespected by radical Muslims and spineless network chiefs alike.
What they're doing is, likely, illegal, but that doesn't really help you.

You can either quit your job and continue doing your startup,

or

You can tell them that what they're doing is illegal, get fired, and continue working on your startup.
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If you really compare and read both specs/offers you'll see the following;

0. with the apple price you also buy esthetics. Not a real point for most anti apple guys. But i care if i use the device daily and talk to customers.

1. Please add $139.99 to the price for the upgrade from windows 7 home to ultimate. (Ultimate is the closest to the variant free Mac OS X) You could also add some $ for the iLife packages you get with the $1999 price.

2. dell screen should be (reading their own spec) 1280×720 versus MBP 1440x900 resolution.

3. dell CPU = 2.26 GHz vs MBP CPU = 2.53GHz

4. wireless-G on the dell vs wireless-N on the apple.

5. gigabit NIC for the apple vs 100mbit nic on the dell.

6. FW800 on the apple, AFAIK not on the dell.

7. shouldn't you add shipping costs for the dell?

As others already said:

8. aluminium casing vs plastic is a real difference if you compare them in reality. But not everybody cares the same way about this fact.

9. size between devices.

10. backlit keyboard and multitouch trackpad on the apple and not on the dell. I know that this is not important for a lot of people so that's why it's stated last.

But the dell wins on video card memory!

There's your answer.
Feels like somebody doesn't trust #define's for their C++ code. While you don't get the type "safety" you get something thats a bit more natural.
The relevant bill in the House is H.R. 3458 [1] currently in the Energy & Commerce Committee.

[1] http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3458/show
According to the SEC, Goldman Sachs defrauded themselves.
See, I am not even debating on the basis of what the Qur'an forbids. I am all about emotions. Every culture has random shit that upsets them. And if you keep hitting the soft spot again and again, a few wackos from those societies will go crazy. There is no need to even goto the Qu'ran for this - just understand that every culture, every religion has soft spots which when hit hard enough, will make a few go crazy. To think that you can change these super, super minority via logic is lame.

To think this can change the view of a larger audience - there's nothing to change...super vast majority of Muslims are just offended when they find these stories and then go about their daily business. For me, it's like some dude cursing at my Mom. For 99.99% of the time, I will laugh it off. But do that enough times and to enough people and someone will be very ticked off.
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Too bad for them? Being offended is not the end of the world. I'm offended every time some tea-party person claims that * is tantamount to nazi-ism, but I don't threaten death as a response, and I would probably mock anyone who did.