skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>>>This is the obvious way in which markets are different: even though prices get way overinflated from speculators chasing trends, there is in fact a real fundamental value buried in the noise and sooner or later the people who are good at finding that value will outweigh the noise traders and trend chasers.<<<

The problem is that they only do so in the longer run, where as people expect performance on a daily basis from a trader. Here is where social influences come into play. Who do you think will get more commendation from their bosses? A trader who makes an investment based upon intrinsic value that may take years to show? Or, someone who "rode the markets" that day?

The problem is that the free market hypothesis assumes that we are rational beings capable of making cold judgments. Our "rationality" is inexplicably tied to our emotions we may not realize it, but this is something as ubiquitous as our ability to learn language. Ask anyone with a mood disorder and they can tell you just how different the world looks when the balance is tilted. You may argue that I am citing an extreme case, but evidence points out that mood disorders are nothing but abnormal functioning of circuits within our brain. They just happen to expose just how fragile our worlds are.

On the other hand, I've always wondered if it is possible to take advantage of this and make an "infinite money generator". It's a thought experiment really;

Let us say that you have this program running on an impressive machine that scans the entire internet and parses out information related to financial markets, and categorizes it on the basis of stock, the perception attached to that stock and the emotions associated with it (twitter/facebook/the latest fad). It also has data on how this "herd" has behaved before. Let us also assume that AI has born the fruit of accurate simulation of humans at a larger scale.

If we input this data into the program and use it to predict the market do you not think that it will be more successful at making money than a machine designed to work only on the "facts"?
Please don't submit these sort of "Scientists Now Believe" articles. The universe "Must" not have been born inside a Black Hole, that's just something one 10-day old paper is claiming.

Let is settle for a while before shouting from the rooftops that it's a groundbreaking bit of science. Many others have suggested before that black holes may be feeding baby universes, but it hasn't stuck.
He isn't disputing the fact that it has net-positive value creation. He's just saying that it's a tiny lever in terms of impact. You'll immeasurably increase market efficiency, but you'll still get a lot of money because finance is an area with a very high money-to-value ratio.
Last year, when I asked couch.io for an account, they suggested that I go with a competitor cloundant because they were not ready for users. It really impresses me when companies/people show such honesty. I expect that now both couch.io and cloudant will do a good business (as will MongoHQ): as easy as it is to run services on our own servers, it is also great to just let someone else worry about admin (like using Heroku, for example)
> What really disturbs me about PHP is its type conversion rules. 1 == '1' or even worse 'foobar' == 0, or '123n' == 123. This is cause for so many subtle bugs.

Weird cases like 'foobar' == 0 are extremely rare and 1 == '1' is actually what you want most of the time. I've learned to embrace the type-less nature and use casts when I absolutely want to ensure a particular type. I no longer even consider this a problem.
Testing HTML5 Applications
I disagree: HN discussions are discussions, not blogs. The primary motivation for posting something here is to engage in a conversation. It's a very different form of writing as compared to blogging, for example. Running a blog is like running a 2nd business (in addition to your primary startup) - i.e. you have to spend a lot of time not just writing, but getting traction, promoting it, etc. Of course that would be a distraction for S&L, since building a search engine (not getting blog traction) was their goal.
This link works:

http://thefastertimes.com/theweb/2010/07/14/why-i-use-facebo...
Google Fiber for Communities, Launch
It all started here: http://twitter.com/couchdb

I imagine by the time we get the 23andMe account it'll be really creepy. ;)
Getting away from HDMI will be nice if for no other reason than not having to buy hideously overpriced switch boxes. Also, the HDCP fiasco will come to an end. I'm sure that last bit will be replaced with something equally absurd.
Hey HN, I'd love it if you could give me feedback on my first little app. I did this on my own as a pet project. At some point it reached an acceptable state of stability and usability, therefore I launched it. It's a MVP for sure.
Please tell that to why the lucky stiff.
Makes perfect sense. If Google didn't increase its footprint with android, they would been at the mercy of Apple and other mobile OS manufacturers. Maps is one of the important features of iphone it makes perfect sense that they are working on their own product instead of depending on a competition. Now, consumers will have another factor to take in to account before choosing one phone over another.
It seems very popular, so maybe it's just that I'm not cool enough (not in the target audience/mixing with the right crowd, virally speaking) - but being upfront about what something is and what's great about it, would seem to me to be an important for encouraging adoption. OTOH, I'm noticed many successful projects don't do this, so maybe it isn't important. :/

My history shows 5 pages from the landing page before I found one that said what CouchDB is (the faq), and I'm still not sure what distinguishes it.

btw: awesome logo and poster.
Good reference, but I wish it flagged up which bits were 1.2-specific.
We have five engineers on our team, and eleven in the company (I think? I forget if we hired one more in Colorado).

We use a somewhat-modified scrum. Stand-up meeting daily at 10am, board with hour-estimated tasks divided into stories that migrate from on-deck to in-progress to done. We also have a nice burn-down chart (on paper, updated with markers by hand) that we update daily.

Overall, it works quite well for us. The businesspeople can easily check the chart for a "where are we on this stuff?" question, so they like it. The task board and chart are good for similar things for us.

We modify how we do it just a little every iteration, but it does keep working better. For instance, how do we managed added tasks on the burndown chart? Do we adjust the red and green lines and deadlines? Do we have a separate "tested automatically" category on the task board to assess test coverage for the story? But it's little stuff like that, window dressing, that we tend to adjust. Overall it's working quite well for us.
it is a couple of cents, all proceeds go to charity
The announcement on the Google blog:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/introducing-our-googl...
Old Spice ad all about hardware wizardry, not software.
A well designed language or library can decrease the likelihood of specific bugs, and especially security problems. Imagine the existence of a library which made it easier to use SQL placeholders than to concatenate user input into a string. Imagine PHP without register globals.
I didn't realize CouchDB was < 1.0! Seems like you guys have been forever and have been rock-solid!

Congrats on hitting "the one" then!

Loving your updated design, by the way. Here's a great example: http://www.couch.io/case-studies
Mixpanel (YCS09) - How Real-Time Data is Changing Business Optimization
Large Studio in Great Neck
Email files to your Dropbox
There are real arguments against inflation other than it not being pretty. See http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_4.html#Steinhardt for an explanation of why one of the early theorists who supported it has come to reject it.

(That tidbit notwithstanding, I am insufficiently informed to have a worthwhile opinion on this subject.)
Yes, but academic psychology can also coin terms that are a bit silly.

There is a real distinction here, to be sure, and I'm glad that there are academics working on it. But "entity theorist" vs. "incremental theorist" is bad terminology for the distinction. It's "entities" (i.e. people) that do the learning, after all, and learning isn't necessarily "incremental", especially not in the sense of regular increases along a scale of fixed units. Implying that people are "theorists" of these things, either by calling them so or turning the terms into -isms or -ists, is also misleading.

What you really have are people with different kinds of mentalities or attitudes towards the relationship between ability and effort. If we need a new term, it could be based on that, such as "effort-oriented mentality" vs. "aptitude-oriented mentality" (or something like that).
Same here. Or if it's not monetized, I'd like to see a social network built of something like this.

I've known older engineers in the same boat: they work alone and the people around them have no idea what they're talking about. At the same time, on a lot of the forums (fora?) I frequent, there are n00bs who could get much better answers by talking/chatting/PM'ing a single person instead of broadcast asking a question they don't really know how to frame in the first place.
Co-founder Wanted for Interest Intelligence Platform
It is the feeling I got from reading it, so yes. I think lots of people are offended by the end goal of "the game", so they do not even analyse what the means to get there are.

In lots of ways its strategies to show that you are interesting. To learn how you can captivate someones brain for a while. How you break through the normal filtering of the world. To understand when something similar is done to you. I even enjoy it when I know it happens to me, so it is a bit of a game.

There are things like body language saying yes, while words are saying no. Or several stories are being told simultaneously, unsuccessful ones being dropped and new one are started, to keep listeners. Or how to show that you are successful without appearing to be bragging.
If people call any simple style of development/review that works "agile", then what about when developers go through the motions to do "real" Agile Development (TM) and it doesn't? Is that not "agile" anymore?

That's like when TDD advocates claim credit for the benefits of doing any testing at all, but only acknowledge the costs of doing orthodox TDD (if that). It's dishonest, and makes it harder for anyone to have any kind of meaningful discussion about what does and doesn't work.

I'm not arguing that there's a benefit in having a development / testing / review cycle, but when discussion turns to capital-m Methodologies, it tends to become us-versus-them, more about following the methodology's branding and other trappings to the letter than whether things actually work.

[Edited a bit for tone, and to make it less personal]
http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~tibs/stat315a/glossary.pdf

Note entries for "large grant" and "nice place to have a meeting."
Quora's decision to use python seems to support your theory:

"PHP was out of the question. Facebook is stuck on that for legacy reasons, not because it's the best choice right now. Our main takeaway from that experience is that programming language choice is very important and is extremely costly to change."

From: http://www.quora.com/Why-did-Quora-choose-Python-for-its-dev...
We don't enjoy life 'despite' its one-shot-itis, we enjoy life MORE because of it.

I'm sorry, but nothing I've seen out there bears this out.

For the most part, people get through their days by ignoring their mortality somehow. If this wasn't the case there would be nothing to explain the plethora of people out there working dead end jobs they hate, stuck in relationships they don't enjoy or telling people they have plans to do 'something else' at some unspecified point in the future.

I know that's a remarkably pessimistic take on it, but really, look at your average person out there. If they were actively conscious of their mortality (and trying to make the most of their one shot) why would they be living the way they do, without trying to change something?
That's neat, but the voice world has been doing visual IVR for at least 20 years now. That it is easy to get started and accessible is nice, though.
Can someone give me a quick synopsis of what I would use this for?

Is this only for Facebook size scaling or is it of use for those of us just starting out?
Will this let me invoke a URL on a remote third party server, and use the result of that URL call in my dialog?
You might consider pinging somebody at Lulu (print-on-demand self-publishing company). They might be interested in partnering with you in some fashion... since they specialize in helping authors get published, there might be some synergy there; even if it were no more than a Lulu advertisement on your site. Other self-publishing outfits (CreateSpace, SmashWords, etc.) might have a similar interest.

Disclaimer: I'm a former Lulu employee and still like those guys a lot, which is why they came to mind first. :-)

Also, if you're interested and need any help making a contact there, feel free to email me. I still have a few connections left over there, I think.
Love begins where power ends.
For me it brought to mind the discussions a few weeks ago about standing desks. Would simply working standing be sufficient?
Didn't Packard Bell invent the green/purple standard?
{"error":"bad_request","reason":"invalid UTF-8 JSON"} when i try signing up
"I am amazed at how trivial this error is."

Agreed. However...

"Probably their QA got fired after this event."

I doubt it. I have seen many QA staff at a variety of companies get so used to IE's various oddities that over time they will simply stop opening some kinds of bugs against the site on IE, even perfectly legitimate bugs like that in the article. All it takes is for product management to punt mixed content warning bugs during a few releases before QA also stops reporting them. If someone does later bring one up, over time it evolves into "Oh, that's an IE thing we can't fix." These are smart people doing generally diligent work, but they do tend to get worn down around IE.

I can't say for sure why this happens but I've seen it most with IE mixed content warnings.
Humor is fine, but stuff that sounds childish (4chan memes, fart jokes), or sarcastic tends to get downvoted. IMHO with good reason: sarcasm isn't a good way to make a point. Sarcasm is about making your conversation partner look like a tool instead of bringing up an actual justification for your point of view. Good debate should be done with a "cold, hard facts" attitude and a non-aggressive tone. It's fortunate that even with the constant change in the user base, HN still strongly encourages moderate posts.

I actually upvoted you because I think -4 is overkill, but I must admit I don't get the point of your post. I don't personally see it as sarcasm... just a failed joke?
Looks like it has integration for DB Queries, as well as SOAP requests.
Can I get a plug-in for IE6?
Actually, I enjoy reading those theories on hacker news. Cosmology is so mystifying.
I'm not a CouchDB pro by any means but I've been following it from a distance for some time.

The main feature of CouchDB is that it's a fast, scalable database that also allows you to host your apps inside of it, with each "view" being stored in the database itself.

I believe some people use it for large installations but as far as I know that is not the primary focus.
Either that our we're all inside of a bunch of nested lexical closures. Maybe time isn't inherited from an object hierarchy, but is a locally bound variable inside of a closure function? Meh... functional & OO start to look pretty much the same if you squint your eyes just right.
As always, family prevents me from making a Saturday meetup.

However members of HN are always welcome to lunch on the Santa Monica Promenade on Thursdays. See http://promenade.thursdaylunch.com/ for details.
Yeah, I quit Facebook. Am I supposed to continue ranting about it afterwords?
I think that the point is that 'money for a year' is not FU money. Just money for a year.
I was confused by:

> In fact for $3.20 (the price of a latte) I can play around with Clojure code on a high performance 8-core 64bit server for two hours.

An m2.4xlarge spot instance is ~$0.80/hr and has "26 EC2 Compute Units (8 virtual cores with 3.25 EC2 Compute Units each)".

Are the cluster instances that much closer to bare metal than 'normal' ec2 instances or am I missing something?
When I was in grade school, the police passed out warnings about "blue star" rub on tattoos that contained heroin. That was total bullshit too.

Every time I read "proper" journalism I am reminded of how decadent, formulaic, and protocol-bound it is. I could almost predict what the next paragraph was going to say:

New term & scare words: "i-drugs" "download drugs"

Warning from officials

Concerned parents

Short, bullshit scientific-sounding claim of effects

Another official warning

New stupid policies: "stop using that cell phone on campus, druggie!"

"Be aware", "take action"

Be aware of what? Take action against what? Let's defrag the actual facts:

1) There is some software that claims to get you high. There is also software that claims to find you love, money, fame, etc. All bullshit.

2) The Oklahoma department of narcotics issues a "warning" about this. No claim, research, or proof of actual effects. No case studies, nothing.

3) The reporter took this and asked a bunch of people about it, who then reported being scared.

4) Article ensues, proper protocol is followed, no actual facts conveyed, "journalist" goes home.
Plus, you can probably put currency funds into a retirement account. I think that would function the same as holding cash, but I haven't completely thought through it.
Good point. The site has been updated and the pricing is per month.
Are you implying the article is just hype? I don't really see the relation.
How much were the testers paid?
Testing the Android Waters
http://www.appspotimage.com/ has an api built for that. Also this is builtin to the app engine api (thats what they use) so if you feel like doing a little python hacking you can make one yourself that will send it to s3.
Why tech conferences are the worst place to demo tech products.
That's a false dichotomy; it's not a question of whether specific public broadcasters have or have not been a "thorn in the side" of the governments that sponsor them. And even that is a subjective assessment, since we don't know what hasn't been reported as a result of political influence, or whether intra-governmental conflicts haven't been affected by some factions having more influence over the press than others.

I don't think jerf was making an empirical claim - a "free press" dependent upon political financing and governance is a contradiction in terms.
It's "danah boyd." All lowercase.
Apple's iPhone 4 Woes Go Mainstream, Recall 'Inevitable'
Ask HN: Anybody want the SocialBenchmarks.com domain?
Please pardon the solicitation, but it does seem like a good domain for startups here. I had it for my own startup a while back but we ended up using something else.
I think they made some minute changes possibly? For some reason I remember going to cnn.com and seeing info about my friends right on the front page. Now you have to login.
Also, I think the takeaway is that FB should just figure out a better way of communicating privacy related features to the userbase, not just the developers. They need to sell these features to the userbase. Twitter has no privacy, and no one cares because thats how they promote the service. FB could launch 'FB everywhere' and still let it be opt out. Its when you sneak the features in the backdoor at some developer conference that joe blow gets pissed.
Notes from Jeff Johnson’s presentation at BayCHI
thanks ill check it out.
As best I can figure out, what I'd be paying for is your time, as you work on a project which you want to work on anyway. In return, I would get warm fuzzy feelings. Do I correctly understand the nature of the transaction?

If I didn't give you money, would you work on it in your spare time? If yes, why am I giving you money? If no, then maybe you're not all that committed to this project after all.
List of changes in 1.2:

http://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/1.2.x/changes.txt
There was actually an interesting study done on quarterly earnings releases that had some interesting implications as far as "soft data" versus hard numbers:
http://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedgif/951.html

There was a company "Quant the News" that launched a product that did sentiment analysis on company related news, but their website no longer exists. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/quant-the-news
I like reading such theories in the same way I like reading Sci Fi. They are fun for the adventurous mind, they can also be a source of inspiration.
Not to nitpick, but physical layer for TMDS (digital video protocol used by HDMI and DVI-D) _IS_ Cat5 twisted pair :)
Sweet...nice use of the extensions for a useful Safari add-on.
Sorry if this sounds trollish, but Shahan was doing "jobs Americans don't want to do."

Not only is this a good idea online, you can also hire domestic (local) concierge services to run errands for you during the day. My mother-in-law successfully runs such a business.
> But the efficiency of that method is laughably bad

Based on one anecdote from the book? The PUA methods attracts guys who are terrible with women. It's not surprising that there cases where the guys isn't going to improve much. This isn't an argument against the ideas or methods.
Apple Acquires Mapping Company Poly9
Unwanted Google ads on wordpress.com blogs
A couple lives trash-free for a year
And it's really quite simple.
That "all" is what I'm referring to when I mentioned confirmation bias. PHP programs don't segfault when you have a typo. You don't have macro expansion problems. It's not particularly verbose. Most languages have a ton of issues. Imho, the stuff in the PHP list is pretty minor compared to some of the warts in some other languages.
I wonder if this is because sitting and watching TV tends to correlate with poor diet (lots of snacking on unhealthy things while on the couch), whereas it's quite difficult to eat bad stuff while moving around all the time.
OK guys, but let's not all pile on and downmod him to hell just for signing with a URL, alright?

-1 might be appropriate, but right now he's somewhere below -4 and probably going to drop further since nothing below -4 is displayed.
Almost anything paragraph size can be squeezed down to 140 characters.

While I agree with the article at large, I disagree with this. There is definitely value in writing things between 140 characters and essay-length, if only to jot down complete ideas without grooming them into a lengthy piece of essay quality.
Thanks I will.
Dweck popularized her work using the terms "fixed mindset" and "growth mindset".
33.5 EC2 compute units and very low latency between instances. More details here:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/
This is a warning sign: "Men who spent more than 23 hours a week watching TV and sitting in their cars (as passengers or as drivers) had a 64 percent greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours a week or less."

23 hours per week vs 11 hours per week? I call this a warning sign because it screams of post-hoc analysis. Unless they then used these as pre-specified cutoffs for later studies, I would be very cautious not to overinterpret.
On the last day?
But how far can they get with just a relaunch? Unless they find the perfect mix of privacy, clean interface, and a huge influx of people, a relaunch would be all for naught.