skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
What I would really like is a "What you can do to help calm the hysteria" post. If you understand what cybercrime attacks really are, you know that it's ludicrous to suggest that we're "losing a war". But most people don't, and those people are susceptible to this warmongering.

I can explain to my friends why a bunch of teenagers pinging my website too many times is not comparable to a ground invasion of Pennsylvania. But even though this might make them skeptical of the hysteria, it doesn't empower them enough to fight against it. If Washington really is heading towards trying to control the web, what exactly should we, those who know better than to go along with this, be doing to combat it?

Somehow writing letters to my congressman just doesn't feel like really getting things done.
or is it just a coincidence that I saw a few dupes today, and then my post went through?

btw, i did remove my post since it was a dupe.
Hands on Firefox 4 Beta
First off, thanks to everyone who responded. I do a lot of java because of coursework (and a research project through school), but I primarily work with python for my personal stuff, as well as your basic html/css/js which I think everyone should know at least some of. I've looked for groups in my area through sites like jelly and coworking as a way to get to know people, but can't find many in my area (central NJ). Any advice on where else to look?
Unfortunately this does not cover questions like "how to do get information X from Google Adsense or Google Analytics". Anybody knows a good place for such questions?
Wow, I love this. Time to look into beta glucans! :)
releasing the source != pushing out over the air OS updates
'Twitter-Like' Technology Could Make Cities Safer
webapps went into public beta today. gaming went into private beta today. GIS will be out soon enough.

The point in the democratic process we're pushing is so the site doesn't have seven questions on day one and someone checks it out and goes "Gee neat..." and never comes back again. The 400 people committed to the GIS proposal have committed "to visit at least three times per week, to ask at least three questions during the beta phase, and to answer as many questions as I can for at least three months." That's a pretty good head start for a site where you want expert answers to your questions and you want them fast.

We're still tweaking the specifics of how much commitment a site needs, but we're certain it's more than a link on a few websites the first day. The design of the software goes a long way, but in order for these sites to not fall flat they have to give answers fast, and they have to attract experts. You can't make that happen by just launching a URL; we're working full time on making sure we figure out how to do that.
I believe that's the point of this site. The tagline is: "Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.". The media alarmism and sensationalism are damaging to humanity's fight against cancer.
"As you know, it has the iBookstore, which joins the App Store and iTunes Store as the third store on the iPhone. We have over 150 million credit cards on file ready to purchase your apps. We think we’re number one on the web." -Steve, June 2010

150 million credit cards with one-touch purchasing.
I'd say that becoming a parent will definitely come between you and your idea of happiness. You'll have to re-evaluate your relationship to happiness and satisfaction (and sleep and pain) and that in itself is difficult and not fun.

In the end you may be able to develop the skill of redefining happiness to suit the state you find yourself in, which everyone can benefit from.
Of course it's a win. They can say "look, it's all there, not our fault you can't understand it." They could even behave like scientists and answer reasonable questions about their work [1].

Answering Frequently Asked Questions with little human interaction is actually a solved problem.

Your arguments might carry some weight if they were flooded with an unreasonable number of FOI requests. Or if they were flooded with a large number of unreasonable and not-repeated questions. None of that actually happened. All that happened is that a few critics asked for the data and they conspired to hide it.

[1] Last month a guy from Princeton emailed me asking for help using code he downloaded from my website. Instead of conspiring to hide it, I emailed him a more recent version of the code told him what to tweak. I'm not even a professional scientist anymore.
The current UI is very well designed for SC2, the video highlights what it takes to play in perhaps the top 1%
I am one of the people that has ideological problems with the app store, but after reading the article I chose not to upvote it. It seams to ignore all of the things that the app store does provide that have been enumerated in many comments here already. As much as I am annoyed when Apple fans upvote or downvote things on HN based solely on loyalty to the brand, I can't give the linked article much credit.

I did find this link from a comment on the article page interesting though:

http://building-iphone-apps.labs.oreilly.com/ch03.html#ch03_...
Multi-Layered Images Projected Onto Water Droplets With New Display Technology
These seem a bit obvious to me. "String searches are case-sensitive"? "Strings and integers aren't equivalent"? I was hoping the article would be a bit deeper.
mtw DaviN used to have like 90 apm and that was enough to school great players like Zacard.

Sure, that was Warcraft 3, but apm isn't everything, it's what you do with it.
Free Distributed-Software Timing Program As Good As an Atomic Clock
a lot of times articles get resubmitted with a slightly different URL (from feedburner for example). i've not noticed any exact dupes getting through.
That's how I felt at first, but in 10+ years playing SC I've found the opposite. High APM is important for two reasons:
a) Scouting constantly, producing units, upgrades, building buildings, attacking, harassing, retreating, maneuvering. With multiple units/control groups. There is a ton of stuff to be done.
b) Optimizing the workqueue, ie. is highly correlated to how good your multitasking is. For instance, leading two units to scout in 1 sec is not good enough if you send them to the same path because your accuracy is bad. Sending them to two different meaningful locations, with a plan for each of them, is. However, correlation does not imply causation.

It should be noted that high APM does not make you good, but your APM will go up while you're getting better. Think of it as obtaining a natural aptitude with the game's mechanics. After a while, it may develop as a bit of a reflex, leading to high spamming APM, but there's no doubt that during that time, the player is 100% prepared to squeeze every single bit of (meaningful) actions into all that "spam".
because all ideas are worthless but some ideas are more worthless than others ;)

On a serious note, some ideas can produce multi-billion dollar businesses while other ideas have limited, niche potential. Hence a greater incentive to keep the idea secret.
I hope this continues to develop.

At the moment it seems there is a need to know the ids/classes of your entire page by heart - or resort to looking at your own source, it would make it _much_ less painful if when you click in a box that expects an element ID that your cursor could then be used to click an element, to generate the xpath (like webinspector/firebug).
Because sometimes opportunities for your execution can only be had by be stealthy or by being first.
The point with APM is not that much higher is better, but that below 80 APM you are not competitive.

Lots of Korean champions have APM in the 200 range and beat those with higher APM.
Geohash Algorithm
> Reheated spaghetti bolognese 'prevents cancer'

Now I have a legitimate reason for making way too much spaghetti bolognese, well beyond it being my favorite meal of course.
am I mistaken in thinking that part of this problem is a desire to not pollute the namespace since most(all?) lisps are unable to properly privatize functions?
I've only recently (thanks to Rands) discovered the value of meeting with key stakeholders prior to meetings to hear their concerns, state my case, and insure there are no surprises at the formal meeting. Most of my meetings are becoming quick rubber stamp affairs! Soon I'll either be working on more complex projects or I'll be able to get things done without having formal meetings at all.
You underestimate the amount of energy swimming takes, and overestimate the amount of effort it takes to ladder-climb-panic.

It takes continuous, prolonged effort to stay afloat, and a fair bit more to move forward. The less you move forward, the slower your progress and the greater the energy you need to reach shore. You start drowning when you can no longer stay afloat - that is, when you can not quite move enough water downwards to support your weight. When you have no air, you have no patience. Water is quite difficult to lean on, and you will still easily climb out of the water if presented with a grip (but will may not be able to crawl far on the ground).

Swimming is excellent exercise. It will tire you out thoroughly and quite unexpectedly, but you will want to keep close to firmament.
Yes, definitely. It's really hard to find people interested in start ups around here, let alone HN. Someone should create a web app where we could indicate the city where we live on a world map.
AT&T, Alcatel Software Glitch Slows 3G Network
So many developers underestimate the need for good, quality visual design and aesthetics in their work. In my experience most non programmers evaluate something first on how it looks, and if it doesn't look good, they won't be interested in how well it actually works. Most programmers on the other hand seem first to be interested in how well it works, without taking into account the look and feel.
While I don't agree with the original poster (and FWIW, my company is currently working on an iPad app) but your arguments are sorta silly too. You can process your own payments and get the money much faster and with less hassle for less than 3%. If you're monetizing your app, 1GB of downloads is a trivial cost as well. Ask any Facebook developer, Apple's raping you on those two for 30%.

The distribution is good and bad. Good if you get high on the lists, bad otherwise. Overall I'm not sure you can call it a win, half the reason the App Store is the best distribution method is because Apple prevents all others.

I'd disagree with OP largely because of technology. You can't build a compelling 3d game using web technology yet. You can't take advantage of the GPS chip or gyros or camera, etc. Most apps worth having will be more than a website can accomplish right now.

You're paying Apple 30% because they built the platform, which was an enormous gamble for them that paid off handsomely.
Kkrieger - Impressive FPS Game/Demo in Assembly that's just 96k
Poor Python programmers...they can't trail their delimiters, because they don't have any!
http://touch.facebook.com is a better app than the native client (on Android.)

m.facebook.com is trash, and really so is the native client. Though I don't think a native app could do better than the touch site, except for the obvious ways it can't integrate and do notifications (which I have turned off anyway.)

http://i.reddit.com is a touch better than RedditIsFun, though RedditIsFun is faster and has better caching, so I use that. This is on a Motorola Droid, so on a current-gen device i.reddit might be better.
Yes, but in that case it's just a technical limitation, you could have a unified micropayment platform (wasn't DVD Jon trying to build one? Or something?) which would make it as easy for web services as it is for the appstore.
It makes sense to stay in stealth mode if you believe that someone else can execute on your idea before you can. For a simple idea (e.g. Foursquare for dating), if your idea gets out, there could be another team who could whip up a prototype in a few weeks, so maybe it's better to stay stealth. For something like RethinkDB, there's little risk in revealing your idea, because it would be very difficult for someone else to execute their idea first.
But, not in the express editions.
Interesting opinion - but you're not the only one. :-)

My current phone is a Nokia 1208 - it offers all necessary functionality, a good battery life and was cheap to buy unlocked. My only criticism is the phone's thickness of 1.7cm - and that's why I'm interested in the C-models.
YouTube Captures "Life in a Day"
The Emperor was outed on day one, which sort of underlines my point. The new clothes story could also reflect the intelligence of crowds. Or the inability to dupe a crowd for very long. Life isn't beholden to the story, obviously, but I have some faith in the intelligence of groups of people. Too much faith to believe that we can be tricked outright for decades. There's no incentive to keep quiet about a conspiracy in the field of lit crit. There's little money in it, and little power. If there were a conspiracy, there would be plenty of whistle blowers within the fold of lit critics who would lose interest in the farce and call out their peers. Since that's not happening, it seems much more likely that there's less BS in the field than us outsiders would like to believe.
http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/894/pro-webmasters
It's effectively pure fascism. It works fine so long as you treat your workers decently and they don't revolt.

I mean, say what you like about fascists, but their factories always run at high capacity.
Amazing Safety Database for Cosmetics
Making of the AT-AT afternoon adventure video
> If you're charging $1.00 and have even REASONABLE merchant fees you're going to wind up shelling out $0.40 - 0.50 of every dollar to the merchant processor.

And that's without taking account hosting and distribution, as well as the handling (and forwarding) of feedback and crash reports
I have several ideas that could make millions. Honestly, but I am only one person and I don't have a team of developers. Wish I did, but I don't. I also don't have the money to quit my job either. So I keep my ideas extremely close to center so I can work on them one at a time.

Heck, I even have an idea that would change the way politics in general is viewed by the public. Its revolutionary and could have a huge influence on changing the world, but I currently can't develop for it because I don't have the time. Its an amazing idea and I wish it was out there, but I would rather wait till I personally can change the world. I don't want someone else doing it, so I keep my idea private until Im ready to start working on it.
It is not a small language

Guy Steele, in his famous talk at OOPSLA '98: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8860158196198824415 explains why "small" languages are not good.
Pirate Bay and MegaUpload Escape Domain Seizure by US
Please note they used Daily Mail as the source. Daily mail is notorious for made up or inaccurate stories.
OK, then you should buy stock in Yahoo!Answers or Mahalo and short Stack Overflow.
The app store doesn't charge 30% of profit, it charges 30% of revenue. It's a big difference.
Yeah, I know a fair number of people who say they have no interest in gaming, but that sc2 replays are damn entertaining to watch. Given how balanced the game is, and how good it looks, I hope sc2 can start attracting some serious sponsorship and advertising money.

Both HD and Husky's channels have over 100k subscribers, Day9 is quite popular, and even non-competitive show matches can attract over 5k users on ustream. I'm a huge football (soccer) fan, but I honestly enjoy watching competitive sc2 matches more.

EDIT: What I should add is that the commentators add serious entertainment value when they cast the matches.
It's amazing how many food sources listed in their raw form aren't themselves guilty, but the industrial manufacturing processes and additives used to enhance them are.

Edit: I can't help myself. Some examples:

Bacon causes cancer:
"High doses of inorganic phosphate salts – which are used to enhance the texture and flavour of processed meats..."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1102368/Additives-...

Eggs cause cancer:
"The chemicals, residue from drugs given to chickens..."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-50995/Cancer-chemica...

Rice causes cancer:
"Cotton production relied heavily on arsenic pesticides. It left residues in the soils which are still there and is being picked up by the rice."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-444222/Rice-tainte...

Spices cause cancer:
"...foreign producers are colouring spices to boost prices and profits."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-347287/Cancer-chec...
Publishers Need Popcorn, Not Paywalls
Partially true information can be just as misleading as completely false information.

For example, I looked up "Cannabis"; only 1 entry saying it causes cancer. But I know from other articles on other sites that there are properties that fight cancer. (I don't know if it "prevents" cancer though).

Needs more data?
This looks like it's going to be a kick ass product! To be able to get an up to date snapshot with all the information a non CFA could ask for is GREAT!

Who cares if the digital SLR is better, if its complexity makes you use it far less than the point and shoot then you'd be better off with a point and shoot. I rather a program less powerful than Quickbooks that gives me everything necessary that I can monitor every day to make crucial decisions than one I skim once a month because it's too complicated for my business needs!

One problem tough Jess - no banks outside US :(

I'm in the Cayman Islands, but I bank in different countries and a product that can help my business monitor everything at a glance would be GREAT!!!

Any word on new regions?
Atrocity in Kerala
If you're interested in the pro webmasters site, it's likely to go into closed beta in a matter of days... you should commit to the site today so that you can participate in the closed beta. The closed beta will be 7 days long after which we open the beta to the public.
Amid layoffs, Microsofties reveal further turmoil in Redmond
The PR value of launching a complete product can be higher than trickling out iterations on an idea. "Today we're announcing we think we know how to build a faster database" vs. "Today we're announcing we've built a database that benchmarks 10X faster than MySQL" -- which one gets more headlines?

Of course you could trickle out ideas and then launch, but that risks being regarded as "old news" when you finally do release a product. That's totally unfair but often does happen.
pfptw2m
> http://i.reddit.com is a touch better than RedditIsFun

It definitely isn't as good as (let alone better than) AlienBlue or even iReddit as far as I'm concerned
Congress is using their current power to get more power. It's supposed to be up to the executive branch (using veto etc.) and the legislative branch (declaring a law unconstitutional etc.) to hold them back. But really, the branches have an agreement to mutually increase their power instead of acting in the best interests of the people they "serve." As far as I can see, there isn't anyone left who's powerful enough to stand up to them.
Many to many meetings are often a huge waste of time and a poor way to get things done. The fact you're going retail to the individual people also gives you a LOT more influence than you would in the large meeting.

It seems like more work, but due to its high levels of relative effectiveness, it is so much less work because it works so much more often.
SQL Best Practices in less than 20 minutes [video]
Yes. You can define functions locally with "flet" or "labels" and never touch the global namespace. This alone is enough so that you don't have to resort to lambdas to avoid polluting the global namespace. In addition Common Lisp provides both generic methods and packages, which both provide a means of managing the global namespace, so one should never use lambdas for that purpose.
I didn't even realize it was an attempt at a serious story. "Age causes cancer" sounded like a spoof. Not to mention saying alcohol causes AND cures cancer.
Genghis Khan wiped out more ethnic groups than Hitler even had a passing opinion about, but his tactics are still taught at military academies and war colleges and his basic doctrine--maneuver warfare--has for centuries been the most effective.

Moral judgment and proficiency are two different things. Ford was a brilliant industrialist who happened to be an anti-Semite. It doesn't mean we can't learn from his example, though we might think twice before we build massive statues of him.
Vitamin D is also really important for immune health. Especially for knowledge workers, who don't normally get enough sun. Recent studies have found that Vitamin D actually activates your T-cells, so without adequate levels, your immune system will act like a depressed dog during a home-invasion and just lay down.

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/10/vitamin-d-its-...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=another-r...
Right... That's the point.
~$1000
I think you may be in for a hard reality check one of these days. Everyone has ideas, million dollar ideas, and excuses as to why they can't implement them.

But only after you've tried to execute them (and failed) will you discover that its not as easy as you think, and that your million dollar ideas were garbage.
They're only using Daily Mail articles
If you read the about page http://kill-or-cure.heroku.com/about, you will see that the source is the Daily Mail and the explanation seems rather tongue-in-cheek.
Getting input/feedback from key stakeholders before the meeting is a great idea. Unfortunately, you will occasionally run into people who either "don't have time" to review materials before a meeting, or who deliberately hold something back to use against you in the meeting (you'll also run into people who say they've reviewed stuff in advance, but then suddenly "realize" something in the meeting). Establishing the ground rules in advance (so that everyone knows that stakeholders had time to review the materials) can help - sometimes people are reluctant to admit that they didn't review in advance. Unfortunately, there's no sure way to avoid a surprise, and sometimes people legitimately identify a concern during the meeting. When that happens, the key thing is to make sure that there is a clear action plan for dealing with the issue. You want to make sure that people walk out of the room knowing how the issue/question is being resolved, and what the deadline is. If not, you will probably find that you have to have the meeting all over again.
Another question could be "why are we often being told that ideas are worthless?"
IMHO it's because the focus should be on getting things done instead of sitting around while trying to come up with a "perfect" idea.
This advice is valid in a specific situation that companies in stealth mode are just not in.
I agree with the idea that specialists are probably not a good fit for an early stage startup. There are a lot of hats to wear. But front-end vs back-end is a false dichotomy.

If you can get your hands on a brilliant illustrator who can also do pixel icon design as well as strong layout and UX , then even if their HTML skills are shakey they're going to be a strong asset. Similarly, if you have a back-end dev who writes really solid, performant, maintainable code and can handle infrastructure and sysadmin work (eyeballs drifting involuntarily in Zed's direction) then who cares if he has no experience stitching together CRUD apps with the framework dujour.

In other words, hire the best people you can get your hands on and put their skills to use.
The segregation actually isn't so bad the more I think about it -- people with tons of karma from questions about mundane windows sysadmin and inane adolescent theming shouldn't be running roughshod over people trying to figure out how to do something in gmail.