skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Sure. Looking over the list, I'm reminded why I enjoy reading these people. Even when I disagree with them, it is obvious that they love their field. They have a lot of fun with it. There's a kind of joy found in doing something that you love and have devoted your life to that comes out in their writing. As a result, these writers make actual value judgments. They don't write sterile corporate prose guaranteed to offend no one.

* Lawyers Guns and Money, global conflict, international relations, political science, some legal history: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/

* The Monkey Cage, real political science by political scientists: http://www.themonkeycage.org/

* The Edge of the American West, mostly history professors but some philosophers too, but less academic than Crooked Timber: http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/

* Brad Delong, econ prof at UC Berkley; strong focus on economic history; leans left: http://delong.typepad.com/

* Tyler Cowen, econ prof at GMU, leans right: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/

* Marc Lynch, foreign affairs prof who talks about the middle east; unlike pretty much every middle east expert, he actually speaks Arabic and has some idea about what actual Arabs are talking about: http://lynch.foreignpolicy.com/

* Matthew Yglesias, foreign policy, some economics and politics: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/

* Ezra Klein, health care and economic policy: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/

* Felix Salmon, a former bond trader who talks about finance: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/

* Julian Sanchez, national security law, background in philosophy, leans right (but not in terms of national security): http://www.juliansanchez.com/

* Ryan Avent, who also writes for the Economist but his personal site is more focused on urban planning and transportation economics, especially with regards to climate change mitigation: http://www.ryanavent.com/blog/

* Brad Plumer, environment and climate change: http://www.tnr.com/blogs/the-vine

* Cosma Shalizi, statistics, social science that uses statistics, lots of book reviews: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/

Also, here are two sites I use to find random long form articles to read on my Kindle using Instapaper. These are more hit or miss but they cover a much broader range. These sources won't tell you about hot news stories per se, but if there's some weird NYT Magazine article that everyone is talking about, you'll find it here.

The Browser: http://thebrowser.com/

Long Form: http://longform.org/
I say try it and see what happens. See what works, what doesn't, customize each contact and improve based on results.
>Yep, Android's has lots of cool features that iPhone has not, but a lot of its core functionality isn't fucking done.

Like? I've had a G1 since launch, and I can't really agree with this sentiment.

Yes, Android has had some very rough edges in terms of UI, but, if we're talking core functionality, I've never felt like anything was flat out unfinished. There've been a lot of things added iteratively over the last two years that I wouldn't want to do without now, but everything has been building on the same fundamental base that they shipped with 1.0.

I think it's hard to claim that the competition isn't also guilty of shipping unfinished products. Take a look at the evolution of the iPhone -- all the moaning about copy+paste, multitasking as an afterthought, the fact that cross-app data sharing is still impossible under Apple's ToS, or the fact that Apple fed people a line of bullshit for nearly a year that "if you want to develop for the iPhone, make web apps."
weight, my friend.
One API to Rule them All (Embed.ly)
Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Tool
It's just a shame that FaceTime only works on Wifi. Does anybody know if you can call another Voip service or is it limited to iPhone 4 owners?
I believe you're 100% in the clear ethically.
App Inventor for Android - Android Software Development for Everyone
If I were getting a 50% equity stake, I wouldn't expect a salary. That's basically a cofounder role, and the risk/reward work out appropriately. I'd expect to live off my own savings - but I'd also expect significant input into the business, including the ability to change its direction if the original idea really wasn't working. Basically, if you give up 50% of the company, you're in this together, better act like it.

I might expect a relatively small (cover living expenses) salary if I were taking on, say, a 20-30% equity stake as a cofounder in a pre-traction startup. This is sort of a no-man's-land of risk/reward tradeoff, though. There's an awkward dynamic when you're paying someone else's living expenses and yet their salary is still well below market-rate. It's worked for a couple startups (Hotmail was one, Intuit may've been another, though the equity stakes for Intuit all got renegotiated when they almost went bankrupt), but you don't see it often.

Once you're down in single-digit equity stakes, it's expected that you'll pony up market-rate salaries. That's what fundraising is for. :-) The equity stake for early employees is there to compensate (and incentivize) them for the possibility that their salary may not be their tomorrow, not for the lack of a salary.
Not all Android phones have a phone button. The G1 does, the Nexus One (which I have) doesn't. Mostly, there isn't really a standard for what an Android phone should look and operate like. I don't really expect this between manufacturers, but even within manufacturers there can be pretty significant differences between devices.

Also, because Android doesn't have a particularly strong stance on how UIs should work and should be laid out, there also hasn't been a very strong stance on how buttons on the phone should be laid out and what the device should look like. For instance, the back button can change functionality quite a bit between apps. Or also, the G1 has a camera button but the nexus one (foolishly) doesn't. Most devices have a UI completely unrelated to the phone hardware.

I wouldn't just pick on Android but I think it's a problem that Windows and Linux have had as well. The experience just isn't that cohesive and it makes them more difficult to use. I'm not really a fan of Apple, but it's definitely one place where they've put in a lot more work than others.
I've never used the n900, but on the Nokia n800, slide out the camera and the video chat app opens up. Click on a contact to call.
10% of which water? My guess is in the 'bay area city state', which doesn't include a great deal of agricultural land, that figure is much higher.

And since California, minus the BACS is going to be that much more rural, it's going to tilt just a little bit in favor of those users.
How about "My service is way better at X than wonka corp, - also, we value our customers privacy highly and wouldn't dream of publishing your email address in a publicly available support forum."?
I always thought those should just be soft keys anyway. Why not make the home button bring up a soft version of the 4+1 (last one actually confirming the "home" action)?

As long as there's no lag, it would be a lot better than accidentally hitting them while typing.
This is going to be huge.

From the NYTimes:

"A program by a nursing student at Indiana University enabled a phone to send an emergency message or make a call, if someone fell. It used the phone’s accelerometer to sense a fall. If the person did not get up in a short period or press an onscreen button, the program automatically texted or called the person designated to receive the alert. "

"For example, one student made a program to inform a selected list of friends, with a short text message, where he was every 15 minutes. The program was created by putting three graphic code blocks together: one block showed the phone’s location sensor, another showed a clock (which he set for 15-minute intervals), and third linked to a simple database on a Web site, listing the selected friends. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/technology/12google.html?_...
This is an interesting idea, but it seems too complicated to gain the kind of ubiquity it needs to work as a viable currency. As a case study or a prototype for future attempts it looks great, though.
It's easy when you can see the future.
I know it seems retarded, but things like copying second life cost the company pretty little. Ten or twenty people's work for two years, thrown out and discarded. We're looking at a couple million down the drain. A lot for you or me, but not worth worrying about for them.

Sure, those things might be somewhat embarrassing, but I doubt they have a significant effect in the long term. (Except, that is, when they turn out to be a good idea and succeed.)

Also, for Apple to be a real competitor to Google, they would have to threaten Google's core money-maker, online ads, especially search ads. It's possible iAds will end up being such a competitor, and were I Google, I'd be concerned. But I'd be much more worried that for many people, "the internet" would become "facebook," and thus I wouldn't be able to show them ads.
Ÿ组合：书签
Part of "reasonable hours" is not spending time on stupid things that end up being wastes of time. Obviously, this can be hard to determine in an early stage startup, but mostly this comes down to the personality of the other founders, that they aren't pushing for things that don't increase the chances of success or aren't constantly having the company change gears before finding out if the current route is going to flesh out or not.
No media outlet is unbiased -- and that's fine. Whenever I read an article (especially opinion pieces) the first thing I do is check the byline and research the author a tiny bit.

I stopped watching TV years ago, and have mostly dropped radio as well. I enjoy reading news with the time to stop and think about what I just read. My main sources are (in no particular order): The Economist, NY Times, BBC News, The Guardian, NPR, and the Globe and Mail.
Wondershare USB Drive Encryption User Guide
Learn how to password protect usb flash drive and other portable storage media with Wondershare USB Drive Encryption. Keep your confidential data safe and secure on USB devices.
"Hear, hear"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hear,_hear

(semi-apologies, incorrect cultural idioms are a pet peeve of mine)
In absolute numbers economy of China is much, enormously bigger than economy of Iceland. Not per capita, however.
The PBS Newshour

You can watch the 1 hour, no commercial, programs online on their site. In my opinion this is the only professional national nightly news program in America. They do not lack journalistic integrity or show 'fluff' stories. Usually the program consists of 3-4 main stories where they bring on 2-3 highly qualified commentators with opposing or unique viewpoints and the discussion is moderated. At one point in the program they give a rundown of the days other stories in a brief rapid fire list, delving into more detail depending on the importance or gravity of the story.

This Week with Jake Tapper

Sunday's at 9am. Excellent and unbiased. Tapper asks really hard questions of both sides of the political spectrum. Last week he had McCain, this week he had David Axelrod. He owned them both a few times.

--------

The quality of news in this country from the main stream media is deplorable but there are a few gems out there.
Xperia X10 Mini Pro in India Now
>Oh and in regards to your issue of going back and editing, I had the same issue, until I finally discovered what that seemingly superfluous trackball was for, precise letter by letter control.

It's really amazing how many people don't realize this.

The trackball's actually part of why I'm holding out for a Snapdragon with a keyboard to replace my G1 - holding shift with the trackball makes block highlighting a breeze, and alt+trackball acts as a Home/End for your current line.
#1 thing I look for is traction: people that obviously want to buy what you have to sell, as measured by them actually buying what you have to sell. If they have that, then I look at the size and interestingness of the market (I don't really care if you have traction as a consulting business, but if you have traction in an exciting consumer market, my e-mail address is in my profile). Then I'd meet the founders and other employees to see if its a good fit for me personally.

If you don't have traction, it's a much harder sell. In that case, the first thing I look for is the team. Are you someone I could hit it off with over drinks? Do you have deep expertise in your area of your startup? Are you driven by data or by dreams? Do you have a plan for how you're going to attack your market, or is it just "There must be riches out there somewhere"?
There's a lot of "cool" happening here, but the alarm clock conversion feature didn't thrill me. It feels very "edge case" given the brilliance of some of the other ideas.

The thought that the bottom section of the phone can detach and flip around seems clunky to me. Like someday that piece might get loose and fidget a little, making my phone feel cheap and broken.
IAMA dual-citizen of the United States and Israel. I've grown up processing a lot of news about Israel, both local (Israeli news outfits) and foreign (most journalism written in English). I've had more than one occasion to see an event unfold firsthand, and later read about it in the media.

There is no unbiased news. You must read between the lines, corroborate and reconcile different accounts, and generally think in order to piece together a picture of an event, even with reputable sources, because even reputable sources are really just a big organization that sent a reporter somewhere.

In fact, the reality is even worse: many topics of news have no singular "truth" to them. As soon as a reporter ceases to be strictly recollective, news becomes an editorial affair -- and that's ok, so long as people recognize it as such. The problem is that few people are equipped to make that distinction.

Most people never learn to take a piece of writing and tear it apart critically. It's a skill that requires time and practice to acquire. Without it, people conflate the hard news and the subjective bits. Quality journalism should include a mix of hard news and analysis, but the news market today sells to the lowest common denominator, who generally want a simple narrative in 500 words or less. This leaves little room for the ambiguity of the real world.

I constantly question what I read because of my experience with reporting about Israel, and I often think about how little I really know when reading about other places and stories that lack a neat narratives.
I think it's fair game. However, instead of building a feature and then pitching it directly to the user, I would create a landing page for it.

Something clearly laid out e.g. "(big text) Having Problems with X? -> describe the pain-point feature -> describe the app -> pricing / call to action"

This is better for a few reasons, I think:

1) It's less in-your-face. You don't want to be a sales douchebag and make the customer feel obligated to use your app because you've solved a competitor's pain-point. So instead of direct emailing them the pitch, you say "hey our app solves this problem - here's a page explaining why."

2) It's scalable, since you can just send other people to the same page without having to pitch them all the time. You could even set up some adwords campaigns for the specific phrase "XYZ app with ABC feature" and see what happens. You never know - people might be googling for a solution.

3) It's less creepy as it implies that the feature was built for the benefit of everyone (which it was) rather than the few customers that you've stalked :)
Here's a quick explanation, but I'm sure some googling will find you more details explaining why they chose to break backward compatibility.

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2008/12/python-3-0-s...
I'd recommend just turning off your phone and muting IM notifications. Tell people in the office that you need to work for a bit to get some stuff done. It's the little interruptions that keep you from getting big things done.

It's been working wonders for me over the last few weeks. BTW, I'm the geek in the NYT article. Here's my setup: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/06/business/kord-...
Oh, wow.

This explains who the asshole in the black van was.

Backstory: In Japan, it's pretty common around election season to have politicians rolling around in vans with loudspeakers, asking you to vote for them. You just get used to it after awhile.

But a few weeks ago, when I was walking to the station, a black van with illegible handwriting on the side had the loudspeakers turned up to about ten million. I could hear them literally three kilometers away, and anything less than five hundred meters was painful.

Of course, because they had the volume up so high, the distortion made whatever they had blaring out of their loudspeakers totally incomprehensible.

The other pedestrians, shop owners, and anybody blessed with the gift of hearing all looked pretty pissed.
"I’ve never met an on-screen keyboard I didn’t hate. Android is no exception."

Swype. In beta now, but I got in on the beta, and man, does it make on-screen entry a lot better than any other on-screen keyboard I've used.
The screens are a bit hit and miss for me. The alarm clock, music player, and bottom half of the home screen (messages) are beautiful. The top half of the home screen (weather and time) is horrible. The others - meh.
So is Google now going to have a toy-app contest, like they did originally for real Android apps?

Jokes aside, I guess I'm a bit skeptical about these pseudo-developement envirnoments. It's a nice concept to demo but does it realy have any practical applications in real world? I mean, really practical, something that people create not just because they can, but because they need it.
I watch MSNBC and Fox, and average everything together. Good first approximation of the truth. YMMV
I think you are commenting on the wrong thread - probably because this and the other intended android concept thread are both at the top of the front page.
Addressing this line: No, I think that the "software matches the hardware" means literally nothing.

It means aesthetically the texture, color, or lines fit together. In this case the lines are the most important part. Maybe it's not important to you, but it's not a hollow statement.
Bloomberg.com. Least biased US source I can find.
I would argue that this is the intended effect. Playing games is the first thing that I did with my computer. This encouraged me to find out how to build my own games. Thats when I learnt BASIC and then went on to C and I am fudging around with Scala, Ruby and Clojure now. I learnt about architecture and beauty from games. I learned about image sprites and how beautifully they were used in Prince of Persia (Jordan Mechner's original) to create stunning worlds.

My scores dropped as well. But I do not think that academic scores are a measure of a person's intelligence. They are a measure of a person's commitment on how doggedly he would pursue a goal. I would argue that letting children play games explore ways of cheating and bending the rules of the system helps them become far better individuals than what today's education system can probably bring out. I guess most adults have gone sour to a point where they are jealous of kids having fun. :-) I remember in my friends place where my friend and his father would have fights about who would play the next game on the computer. You parents have to try it out once. I am sure your will have a better bond with your kid.

So my advice to parents is to ignore this article and be happy that your kid is playing games. Just ensure that the grades do not drop that low that it endangers his/her career altogether. Otherwise it is fine he/she would grow out of it. Or probably not and he/she might create the next world of goo for all you know. Either ways I do not see it as a bad thing.

BTW, I write from the perspective of India. My comments need to be considered with loads of salt.
I don't think Twain cared about whether someone somewhere could enjoy the story. Twain is commenting on the quality of the story, not certain individuals' personal enjoyment. Similarly, lots of people like Twilight — probably many times more than Last of the Mohicans — but it is not generally regarded as world-class literature.
Investment banks' World Cup forecasts - how they fared
What's wrong with creating things just because you can?

I remember two decades ago when I used to program using QBASIC as a 6 year old. I didn't need any of the applications I made - but it sure looked like fun.

This new Google initiative might not be about general masses, but more aimed at helping children with their creative processes.
Why doesn't the PDF have hyperlinks, but the HTML does? It seems this is an epidemic for PDF versions of text also available as HTML. Is it really so hard to make a PDF that has them?

(serious question, actually. I've never tried.)
Derren Brown did a stunt where he flipped a coin and got heads ten times in a row, which is even less likely than Paul the Octopus's 8 in a row success. How did Derren do it? He made lots and lots of attempts. The point is that while Paul the Octopus was improbably successful, how many other world cup predictors tried and failed very early on? Selection bias in action.
"Embedding a programming language into a system has an almost erotic fascination to a programmer."

That's a classic line, and too true.
I like to read FiveThirtyEight.com, not because I care about the issues but because I enjoy seeing issues explained with numbers and statistical reasoning.
I would jump at the chance.

I would imagine that working 1 to 2 years at an adult internet startup would give you the most insane knowledge about direct marketing, maximising conversions and the dark underbelly of affiliate marketing. It would be an absolutely fascinating ride.

Plus you're pretty much guaranteed revenue. There's a strong demand out there for porn, I hear :)
Ask HN: What would alien code look like?
Hi fellers,

Disclaimer: Not a programmer, but semi-technical and know a little bit about engineering concepts.

That said, lets be imaginative for a bit and pretend we made contact with an advanced space travelling race of alien. We have the opportunity to look their technology and programming behind it.

What do you think would be significantly different from the way they write their code and ours? Would they have the same logic as us? Could they use logic gates that we don't have yet? Would their computers have to be based in binary? What could they use instead?

Fundamentally, could their programs be translated directly into human code, like C++, or would a difference in conceptual understanding be so different that human code could not express alien logic?

Feel free to let your mind run with this. Would love to hear some crazy thoughts. Thanks
The entropy of Reddit
There has been a lot of academic interest in doing something like this for Java, generally with a pitch like "If we took all the scary syntax out of it, programming would be accessible to $GROUP_OF_INTEREST." My personal opinion is that, with the debatable exception of Microsoft Excel, every project along these lines seems to rediscover "Oh yeah, syntax is rather useful for doing non-trivial work" roughly forty five seconds after the conclusion of their most advanced published tech demo.
The iPhone homescreen has (or at least had until the introduction of wallpapers in iOS 4, ironically) been very much intertwined with the hardware design. The combination of vivid icons on a black background meshed beautifully with the dark glass of the unit's face, and was a large part of what made the original device so iconic.