skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> Even just defining "think" sounds hard to me.

Well, to 'think' in the OP's article context means to think about. Think about fish, it swims, think about cars, it moves. The replies are more about 'information processing' and 'innovative reasoning'. So people often can not find the correct word for an abstract idea. The human brain stores a huge namespace of world view and knowledge, sometimes the natural languages are not enough to decode and describe its complexity.
I heard a fascinating interview on BBC Radio 4's "Woman's Hour" show with a deaf lady who described how her Father, in their all deaf family, would take great delight in ushering them all into the shower (not on) and shouting as loud as he could so they could feel the vibrations echoing back off the tiled walls. The [hearing] neighbours apparently weren't friendly toward them, can't imagine why.

They'd also use floorboard telegraphy, hammer on the floorboards to see if anyone is in the house, they hammer back if they feel it.
I had already purchased this book, but it will still be nice to have a PDF version. Thanks SitePoint!
It doesn't make sense to sell to CN and then beg users for money. If they stayed independent it'd be more logical.

Why don't the founders who cashed in put up some of their own money? What exactly was the purpose of selling if the founders are still broke and Reddit is hovering around break even?
I think to be fair, in order to use FaceTime: both parties have to sign up to certain provider, buy iPhone4 (we're talking as per current. What will happen in future, who knows?)

By the way, as I don't have iPhone4, I curious about this scenario, what will happen if I'm on FaceTime chat with someone, and another people call my number? Will the call go through and the FaceTime chat dropped?
No, he actually means powerful and scary, in this kind of realization that we, our feelings, our inclinations, our rationality, our subconscious can be accessed and manipulated at will by 60 seconds of video.

Ever since I watched "the century of the self" I can't help but feeling utterly repulsed and violated by marketing in general. And watching the recent apple marketing, is like watching the master puppeteer at work
Subvocalization is and interesting idea, but it's more about how to encoding information into your brain, how about the decoding process? For instance when you write an English essay can you finish it without a speaking voice in your head?

And oh yes, we all think in formulas when doing mathematics. I have problem vocalizing formulas with Greek letters to others but I can quickly write them down. I think it's because Greek letters were never officially taught in China.
What would do you need to see before joining an early stage startup?
This question is aimed at talented programmers, who have successfully built a project whether it be for work, or another startup.

What would you need to see from someone with a web app company proposal to feel comfortable joining as CTO/Lead engineer? Let's assume that you did not yet know the person.

I'm asking b/c I have several plans that I am in the final process of developing but would like feedback on how to get real talent to join as co-founder. I know I can get your run of the mill coder easily, but what do I need to come to the table with to a top 10%er.
>I very highly doubt that tihsprhsaesicmorephesnilbe.

I read it first as "this phrase is _more_ comprehensible" but knew it wasn't right.

Also you spelt "mispelled" incorrectly ;0)>
>Your critique also applies to inflation. If a vacation that costs $1000 this year will cost $2000 next year, people have an unnatural incentive to purchase it today rather than wait until they actually wanted to purchase it.

While the family's vacation buying decision is changed indeed in both case, they end up making the economy better in the inflationary case, thereby increasing the real money value they'll eventually get back in wages from the increase economic activity.

No one wants runaway inflation, but some inflation is better than any deflation.

>Further, inflation means that you have no incentive to save money since it will be worth less in the future.

Savings in general (as in cash in the bank) is not that valuable to the economy as a whole. Investment is much more useful.

Savings (macroeconomically speaking) are only really useful for flattening out peaks and nulls in the monthly income vs expenses.

>ou are making a broad generalization that deflation is bad, when in reality what I think you are going after is price stability.

No, I'm not. Broad based inflation from too little money in circulation itself is extremely bad. You can have a LOT of inflation and still have a pretty good life, but the economy suffers under even a little broad deflation.
1. Maybe 2. Yes. This would depend on my choices. If I had two or more choices of a startup to join, my biggest concern would be the competition in the porn market. If the startup did come up with an innovative and disruptive idea, then it would likely be quickly copied, perhaps with better funded backing. If another choice of startups was equally innovative and disruptive in a different market (though still a market with potential) then that would probably be my first choice.
Why did Conde Nast buy reddit in the first place?
The founders are broke? As far as I know, the founders are now angel investors (and no longer work there).
i think spolsky was saying in the context of a company. firefox started as an open source initiative, it's a different construct.
Is "Michael Tiemann2" the real name or a typo?
You're saying it's easy to prove that someone likely to have classified-TS access who said they leaked classified-TS information did or did not leak information?

And to support that argument, you're citing Glenn Greenwald?
Talk about a story in two parts - they build Biro up as an inventor and maverick art-and-fingerprint expert who identified a new Leonardo, and then tear his credibility to shreds!

And I was glad that Gladwell's Blink didn't get a mention.
Charisma-kei businesses are common; I had a client that was clearly such.

The president of the company was constantly spying on all his programmers, and often switched the strategic direction in order to conform to the latest trends that he spotted on Digg. No one was paid more than about USD25k/year, despite having a huge office in Akihabara and backing from a large angel investor in Korea. (There was no business equity or anything like that for the workers, and no housing assistance either)

That isn't really a big deal; just another failing IT company with no direction. However, the "Japanese Charisma Kei" twist is that 25% of the company gross was given to a fundamentalist church the president belonged to, and that he continuously recruited people to join his cult. My gf, who I met there, had joined and subsequently left that church because she thought they were insane. The President let church members come to the office and hassle her about going back to that church without remorse. (She eventually left the company to work at a bank.)

All of this changed when I joined the company, mainly because they had a new director that was appointed by the angel investor. I can't say it changed much for the better. You see, the director believed he was receiving direct communications from aliens about zero-point energy and that it was his mission to create a new civilization based on that knowledge. He also refused to take baths (he used a peroxide solution to wipe his body with instead). As far as employees went, he frowned on the use of doctors (preferring instead to tell them to learn the secrets of "Ki healing").

I stopped working with them after 6 months. I have never regretted it.

(As an aside, I don't have any problem with people's personal religious beliefs or the fervor with which they practice it; it was the personality cult and the organized harassment in a place of business that was completely bizarre and far beyond anything I have ever encountered in Canada or the US)

-edited for terrible grammar. Ugh.
'Although the foods were identical aside from their wrappings, the children said they preferred the taste of the McDonald’s-branded burgers, carrots, and apple juice in the vast majority of tests.'

interesting
Did you submit some feedback reporting this issue?

http://www.sitepoint.com/contact
> Maybe that system is just more prevalent in the asian education system.

Sadly the modern Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese are choosing an alphabetical system rather than Chinese characters. The one and only civilization today still using logograms is China.
VoltDB versus NoSQL
You earlier spoke of proving a negative; by easy to prove, I meant that this is a positive, and an existence proof is sufficient.

If something was leaked, but noone can point to it, or the consequences of it, is it really leaked?

The way you phrase your sentence about Glenn Greenwald, you seem to imply that I should know something about him. What are you imputing?

It also seems an ad hominem attack. I cited the article as reason to doubt the Wired story; but the article should be attacked on its own merits. And the reason to doubt the leak of TS cables is because I haven't seen evidence that they've been leaked. The video certainly was leaked - I saw it - but I've seen not a peep of these alleged cables.

It doesn't make any sense. Why would a 22-year old kid have access to thousands of top-secret cables? Why should we trust an attention-seeking ex-convict who says he had an IM with a leaker who spontaneously contacted him for the first time ever (randomly choosing him from twitter #wikileaks, of all things), and boasted to him that he leaked such cables? When Wikileaks denies that they have such cables?

When these stories come up in the news, who benefits?
Fair enough, that part wasn't entirely obvious from the description.
repeat, repeat, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes
You might find this interesting, but this is was just before the 3g came out. http://blog.vovici.com/blog/bid/27710/iPad-Returns-Why-50-Bu...
The only reason they're begging is because they think they can squeeze money out of Reddit's loyal (and generous) userbase. The costs to improve Reddit is nothing to CN, considering the millions they must waste on Vogue parties and whatnot. The total cost to run Reddit is probably less than Anna Wintour's personal expense budget!

My guess is that this is the brilliant idea of the McKinsey guys, whom CN has asked to streamline their operations. Some bean counter MBA probably suggested that Reddit be put on an austerity program, and if CN keeps listening to them then Reddit won't have much of a future.
I've mentioned this here before but when formally learning German language for the first time I'd often recall BSL signs (or French words equally) instead of the correct Deutsch word. This indicates to me that the same internal token was indexing all my foreign language words including the signs.

Occasionally I'll think with a sign just as occasionally I'll drop in a foreign language word into internal speech.

My youngest at 16mo is getting quite a few signs now (and has a couple of recognisable utterances - "dake" (his bro's name in modified form), "what-this", "cheers"(!)). He's pre-vocal but he can express quite a few things and he can attempt to manipulate us using mock cries. This last point to me means he's thinking about what he wants to acquire (chocolate, ice-cream, whatever someone else is eating!). He also makes responses to signals that he's going to defecate and asks for his potty (sometimes, he's just managing to do this now) - again this seems to be relatively complex thought.

It would be interesting to me to see if his brain pattern indicates, to those doing the research, a pattern similar to a sign language user or not?
http://www.reddit.com/reddits/mine/
As an American living in Japan for an American firm, it's always a culture shock when I talk to other dad's at my kids school events. If I find the person I'm talking to is working for a "Militant" + "Work == Life" company, I need to shut up, lest I shatter the illusion of the security of lifetime employment. It's also a bit strange when I run into people that have worked for the same firm I'm in right now and left because it was too "Liberal".

Japan is just not changing fast enough and is going to be left behind by the more aggressive, mobile, and "liberal" workforce and companies. Traditional Japanese companies are like the dinosaurs, not able to adapt to change. Darwinism at work.
1) Sort of directory: http://www.reddit.com/reddits/

2) Usually, there are links in subreddits descriptions to similar subreddits.

2.1) MultiReddit! http://www.reddit.com/r/php+perl+python+startups

3) It should be improved, yes

4) I guess cross-post and double-post are hard, really hard to improve

5) search is a bit awful, yes
Or more accurately: if it works, don't fuck with it.
WikiLeaks will not be abandoned: http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/18289990888
Other then the fact that he says iTunes music is DRM'd (I don't think it is any more), I'd say this is a pretty fair review of the Android ecosystem.

Edit: This is completely irrelevant, but Chad Fowler looks way different with shorter hair.
Randy Komisar, VC on Business Models inc response to Chris Dixon Gigaom [video]
A provisional patent is cheap, and if you just want to defend yourself from someone else later patenting your idea, it works just fine. You just write up a nice human-readable description of what you're doing and submit it to the USPTO. I think it's like a hundred bucks or so. Filing a full patent costs about $500. If you're willing to work, meaning, read a couple of books, read a couple of patents front to back, it's not that hard to file your own (called "Pro Se" by patent folks). Once you learn the ins and outs of patents, it's really not that hard nor that expensive to patent something yourself. At the very least, if you do file your own, you get "patent pending" protection ("protection" meaning, you've legally allowed to warn potential infringers that you've filed the papers officially) for a good 3-5 years while the patent office reviews your application.
thought the link might live longer. I used guerrillamail to set up a temp email account
> no groupings of subreddits, or related subreddits

check this out

http://www.reddit.com/r/ada+applescript+Arc+asm+brainfuck+cl...
Interesting phenomenon. What I remembered was not reading the TC article, but thinking the things it said.
Here here.

I also previously worked at Fujitsu's mobile division and can attest to that.

They still have an entire floor dedicated to developing for Symbian. Their main translator is hamstrung by rules that indicate they must re-use old (incorrect) translations so that there is no loss in "language continuity" between phones.

It isn't the fault of my immediate superiors there; both were open, intelligent and hard-working. It is middle and upper middle management. They are relics from the bubble era ( subject to less stringent entry conditions) and were promoted 3 or 4 levels above their competence. The fact is, their underlings are of significantly higher quality. (My superior was one person picked out of 500; as opposed to her superior, who was chosen out of a group of 5 or 6)

Fujitsu's previous president was thrown out of the company on trumped-up charges about being aligned with the Yakuza (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8606515.stm). Why? Because he tried to spin off parts of the company that had been losing money for years.

I loved my coworkers there and part of me wishes I could be working with them today. Unfortunately, they won't adapt until an entire generation is in their grave.
2010 World Cup - Plots with R
I'm glad I learned sales experience in college. Like most programmers, I have a tendency to be introverted and avoid people to just do my work.

However, in college I forced myself to take two very outward jobs: Resident Adviser and Personal Trainer. RA's help incoming freshman become acclimated with college life, and I found it a very rewarding job (plus I got a practically free apartment).

I've always been interested in fitness, so I became a personal trainer at the local Bally Total Fitness. Because I was knowledgeable about my product (me) and could pitch well, I became the #1 personal trainer in sales in Dallas in a month. I was pretty proud of that accomplishment, and it taught me a tremendous amount about sales and interacting with people.
Skimming through the book, it is clearly written and starts with small steps for the JQuery beginner. I'm not sure how someone with no Javascript would fare. But for someone who has been using JQuery for a while it's worth about 5 minutes of skimming.
while i know it is possible to do many of the things i want with some tomfoolery, these should be built into the UI so anyone can find out about them easily.
I am absolutely confident that 22 year old kids have access to ridiculous information; I think that's far more of an outrage than any news Wikileaks has "broken" about the DoD.
Apple unveils four new iPhone 4 commercials, all feature Facetime
Google needs to be concerned about Apple, but FB threatens their main revenue stream. As more and more people get on FB and put all their information on FB, those same people have less incentive to go to Google to do any searching and instead will just search FB.

It's interesting how the internet exploded and had content popping up all over the place and now the content has ended up self aggregating to a few sites like FB and youtube.
Well-Funded Startup Eyes Glaucoma Niche
I was a technical cofounder and I have joined several startups as either the first employee or the first technical employee. This has evolved over the years, but the big thing that I look at is the person or team that I am going to join. It's cliche but true. That manifests itself in two ways:

1. "Smart People That I Like Having a Beer With" is a must have. There is so much that happens in a startup that its more like a family than a job. And in this case, picking your family is wisely is the path to happiness AND success.
2. Deep experience in their field and / or a clear way to generate early revenue (through network, former company, etc.). The hardest part of starting a company is early traction and if I can't bring it then I want it in the people I work with.

Notice that none of this is really about the idea because if you have someone with deep experience or early sales, then the idea will evolve over time as it finds the right Customer Need.

Good luck!
It would suck to have that proposal in print if she said no. Talk about a constant reminder.
> The specific issue here is whether the WGA's registry is sufficiently accessible that it constitutes a "public" publication.

Definitely not. The WGA registry is confidential.
If you read the Federalist Papers, which were in essence arguments propounded at the time in support of adopting the U.S. Constitution, there is no naive assumption in these documents that pure popular rule would somehow become a pristine way of running a government. Indeed, it was just the opposite. In one after another of these documents, it is assumed that rule by pure popular will is basically evil and dangerous because people will be driven by baser motives to accomplish their ends.

Quoted for truth. Reading the Federalist papers is one of the most enlightening things any resident of the United States can do to understand why America operates the way it operates.

I'm reading Matt Ridley's book The Rational Optimist right now to get a twenty-first century take on some of the same issues. It's plain enough that human beings in general have very limited rationality, but that doesn't make it plain that human beings should be generally constrained in their freedom by an elite few.
I prefer iPhone 4's form-factor, yet I use Nexus One as my primary phone because of its seamless integration of google voice, free turn-by-turn navigation system, and built-in support for tethering.
A Question for Introverts
I have children, and I need to do more of this.
I Want My CIC ... The Benefits for Startups to Be Co-Located
Great idea, terrible landing page. Yes, I'd like to "Enter site."
UEFA Champions League
We will have tickets to all the big Champions League games this season including the final at Wembley Stadium in May
I think very few people would consider Social Security part of "welfare."

Okay, so now we have an illustration of mass irrationality in the political system. Looking at how Social Security is funded and distributed fits typical definitions of a welfare program.
This is kind of like how Mr. Miyagi teaches Karate. They didn't even realize they were mastering the standardized curriculum, until they had already done it.
Yes. Instantaneously. Always. But this fact cannot be used to transfer information from point A to point B instantaneously. Nothing ever discovered in the weird world of quantum entanglement allows information to exceed the speed of light.
GoLightly - A customisable virtual machine written in Go
Ability to focus.

Courage to try new things.

Willingness to accept some of those 'new things' aren't working as planned and change course or drop them.

Ability to examine situations logically, but also to get passionate about the offering.

Basic agreement that revenue and profit are king, and decisions should be made based on the numbers.

Clear vision for how money will be made.

Ability to articulate customer base.

Demonstrated ability to sell, or to find people who can.
> he says iTunes music is DRM'd (I don't think it is any more)

No more DRM but they do stamp info about you into the metadata so you can be tracked down if you happen to share the files. Amazon doesn't do this.
Ask HN: What are the chances that Paul the Octopus could have 100% accuracy?
For those wondering what I am talking about see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Octopus<p>I am just amazed that Paul the octopus had a 100% accuracy with his predictions for the world cup matches. I am wondering what is the probability of that?<p>Could there be other explanations for Paul's forecasting accuracy? It may seem silly but 7 predictions in a row are accurate? Isn't that highly unusual?
this struck me as slightly shameful. if they want to setup memberships and build a valid business model, great! but don't masquerade it under the veil of charity. they are a for-profit division of a for-profit corporation. they shouldn't have put it as a handout type excuse.

I suspect conde nast bought them thinking they were the "cheaper digg" and then didn't know what to do w/them.
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Yeah, cuz it mashes up in such a way that there's a "more" there! I didn't even intend that but that's exactly the drawback.
If I might go off on a tangent about one of his points I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately…

“Speech recognition is actually useful. Big surprise here. I can tweet, search the web etc. with minor edits to my dictated text”

For those who don’t know Android has a built in Voice Recognition API so any application can easily put use it for input while Apple has steadfastly refused to include this feature because “it doesn’t work well” (Dragon has an app but you can’t integrate that into an application).

This, to me, is a sign of what will cause Apple’s lead to crumble. Apple’s one real weakness is they demand perfection but some things just can’t achieve that. As has been pointed out by several HN featured articles Voice Recognition may never be perfect. But it’s still useful. It can still hit 90%+ efficiency much of the time and for many applications that’s enough.
Ask HN: Where do you get your unbiased news?
When I say unbiased news, I refer to updates on changes in world news, politics, and economics.

I listen to NPR's hourly updates 2 to 3 times per day via [1]Stitcher, then I also read NPR's website on occasion. Aside from NPR I find it hard to find an unbiased news source.