skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Predictions are hardly a problem. They are fun, we are wired to make them, we have foresight so why not use it. The point when making a prediction is not to be right, but to go through mental scenarios of possibilities based on the present and try and make a rational decision based on that.

And, if someone made a correct prediction in the past, it does not mean he will in the future. Life is great because amongst other things it can take you by complete surprise.

Anyway, that hardly would be on the list of "problems". And google is mainly a service provider than a tool maker. The main service which is search and advertising both of which have plenty of problems which would significantly improve people's life way above predictions. If they solve the many problems of search I would be way happier than if they told me in some sort of big brother way who said what when and why he was wrong and who is right and who should I believe and...

Just keep your feet to the ground google. The world is not yours to occupy, you know mighty empires have tried and failed. Just retain your focus if you may.

As for the micro payments, I was doing some data analysis yesterday and it does come to 0.5 cent per user from advertising revenue. So requesting micro payments might be an annoyance by requiring logging in at all times, etc. Even if the system was so as to not disturb me at all, I would rather not have to pay 0.5 cent. It seems nothing of course, but god knows how many articles I read a day. Especially since the web master hardly would gain much. It might be perhaps a good idea to be an alternative for the user to choose a non ad version of a site and pay 0.5c to do so. I doubt it would catch on though. The internet wants to and needs to be free. Its popularity and usefulness is dependent on the free consumption of information supported by advertising.

Now, google could of course lower the share it gets from ads on sites, I mean, they have a really high profit margin and it is a little bit selfish of them.
That's a far cry from what you said. They all had analogues, and you could have explained them to someone before they existed. Perhaps it wouldn't have been clear just how much better they were, but they weren't completely original ideas that had never been done before and were impossible to explain.
You Spilled Your CouchDB in My Riak
3D Express Coach: The Chinese bus that solves traffic jams
Renaissance geeks (1998)
The author has an agenda. However he also has a point.

During the Bush recovery there was much complaining about how salaries didn't go up. Well it turns out that the amount spent by employers on employees did go up at normal rates for a recovery. However increasing health care costs absorbed that surplus, and employees did not directly see more. In fact employees got moved to crappier plans and so saw less income.

It is too early to tell whether Obama's plan is going to cost us all more or less than the distorted market has been costing. But it is certain that the USA cannot long afford to let current cost trends continue unchecked.
Part of that is that wikipedia is US centric (even it it tries to be NPOV in things like names this definitely leaks through), another part is that the majority of the editors would not be able to verify source in Cyrillic.

The same happens happens with the names of towns and of people all over wikipedia so it's no surprise to see it happen with the names of classes of submarines.
Not exactly what you're asking, but I took a chance on replacing my chair entirely with an inflatable exercise ball, and I'm quite happy with the result. It took a week or so to get used to, but my balance has somewhat improved and my lowe back actually seems a little stronger. I'm also putting the money I saved on a chair into buying an adjustable height desk so I can stand & work when I get tired of bouncing on said ball.
Also proves that all possible cubes are reachable, since they can all be solved.
And Scandinavian metal is very very metal
A Practical Guide to Designing with Data - New Book
Same here. I bought two Aerons for just a couple hundred a piece from a guy who got them from an office that went out of business. He had like 10 he was selling. I'd imagine this scenario isn't that uncommon and should be easy to find on CL or something similar.

Also, search nearby cities/regions. I had to drive an hour or so for mine, but it was worth it.
Since you own an Aeron, what is the difference between sizes (i.e. A, B, C keep cropping up)
OK, I started it a second time, let it churn while I was busy with other things ... half hour later, still churning. Not going for a third time.
Posts that are written this poorly do not inspire confidence in the author's conclusions.
site wouldn't load for me, tried a few refreshes. Couldn't find it cached on google, so I'm pasting the content here.

Hey Google

You used to be a toolmaker. You used to be all about organising information. What happened ?

Forget competing with Facebook and go make some amazing new tools.

Creating a successful social networking site is like starting a successful new nightclub, it isn’t about solving problems it’s about being cool, and being cool ain’t what you’re about.

You’ve got cash and smart people so go invent some bad-ass new tool to take on a really big problem.

Google PagePay

Micro-payments, so bloggers can charge half a cent (or pence if you roll that way) for someone to read a full post.

Mirco-payments would change the world, a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t monetizable would become monetizable, a whole bunch of people would be able to get paid for doing what they love.

Solve the "I love to do it but I can’t get paid for it problem".

Google Cred (ibility)

Use your mad data props and data mining skillz to record and assess predictions made by pundits and public ‘experts’.

Google can tell me what I want to know it’s time it helped me work out who was worth listening to.

"Won’t added accountability cause people to be less likely to make public predictions ???" Good, if it causes people with back predictive powers to stop talking as if they were experts that’s a win.

And how great is it going to be to find out that the most reliable economic predictor didn’t go to standford, it’s some guy who no one has ever heard of who runs a beans farm in some out of the way place.

Solve the "Who do I listen to" problem.
Yeah, it's like kids who show up to their first interview and say "I have 15 years experience", meaning they have been playing with computers since they were little. Ermm, no, work you didn't get paid for doesn't count. You aren't being paid to program. You're being paid to solve business problems with code. Even for hardcore geeks this is true, the problem a compiler writer is working on is actually the problem of the CFD guys who want to optimize their simulations, and their problem is actually the problem of the auto guys who want to build better cars. Or if you're working on a filesystem your problem is actually the problem of the database guys who want to process transactions faster, and their problem is really the problem of traders. Experience of that is what matters.
What if you're making a product that caters to enterprises?
Operating Systems exam questions
And yet, people also play a lot of games where they can lose, for example games like chess. Why shouldn't a "dangerous" MMORPG also be able to provide an escape from reality.

Another example of a "dangerous" CRPG would be nethack, which also is played by many people. ("dangerous" meaning permanent deaths and stuff like that).
Go ahead, link to your event. You've got me curious and you know you want to.
How to discuss the P=NP paper online?
I missed the point where evidence that hypnosis works has been established. That is, I know it works from personal experience, but a lot of people have been claiming that it's hogwash for a long time, and unambiguous empirical study of the matter has proven rather difficult. Thus it's interesting that this study takes for granted that the distinction between hypnotic and non-hypnotic state is well-defined. If that really has been established, it's news.
AdGrok (YC S10) Simplifies Keyword Bidding And More On Google AdWords
Sorry, but I completely disagree. Do some contract development work for awhile. People start pouring out of every crevice and crack with their brilliant ideas that they're absolutely sure will work. I know from experience that very few of them will go anywhere. Sad, but true.

The only way to build great products using your gut it to scratch your own itch. This is a completely valid approach that can work really well, but even then, you're better off doing this customer validation thing. You might be the only customer out there. And yeah, web apps are cheap to build compared to chip fab plants, but why spend several months building something and then another 6-24 months pushing it to get traction (the really hard part) if you can find out that there's no market with a few days of work?

Finally, I know quite a few successful entrepreneurs who are huge advocates of the customer development model, so I hardly think that being a great entrepreneur requires you to avoid talking to your potential customers before you start building, and hoping that you're just the 1 in a million genius who really does get it. You're almost certainly not Steve Jobs, my friend. Survivorship bias is the only reason we think we might be...we don't see the millions of failures who thought they could predict the market's desires without talking to them.
I have been running a product based company without investment based entirely on sales.

I put in my own money to buy a small supply, sold it based on direct sales.

Used the profit to buy more supply and get basic marketing material printed, sold that next supply.

Improved my packaging/printed marketing material/got a website built etc.

It has been slower but this is my first proper business so it means that I am learning fast, maintaining control and proving myself.

I would recommend this way to anyone that isnt doing a "next big thing" project. It keeps you on the cutting edge of customer feedback.
Cause and effect, though? :-)
Bug: If you simultaneously add twitter and stackoverflow information, and it asks you to authenticate, and you authenticate one of those, all the "other public profiles" information is lost (not saved). You have to authenticate twitter by itself, then SO.

Suggestion: Could I have my bio at the top? My bio is far more important for stating my value proposition than a list of cookie-cutter skills.
Also, the skillset should be collapsed and not take up so much vertical space.
Actually, in the saner world, companies don't have to worry about health insurance because it's provided by the government.

Should the government also be providing even more necessary items like food, housing, and transportation?
Ask HN: Save for retirement?
I'll try and skip a big intro.

I am 27, after having dropped out of school and dicked off / traveled / had a good time for most of my 20s.. struggled doing free lance web devel stuff for a year and a half, and eventually took a full time job.

I make ~55k a year after having lived off ~20 or less for the last few years, I have a few grand in debt (7% apr).

Saving for retirement at this point seems like not a great bet.

It seems like any meager thousands I could put into an account at this point would be much much better suited to capital for investment / risk taking rather than sitting in a 401k I can't open for 40 years.

I don't really have much of a life-plan beyond the next year or so. But I do expect to make a lot more than 50k a year in the next 40 years.

Does anyone else think like this? I also have been just paying the minimum on cc bills for a while, assuming that in the future they will be 'easier' to pay.
This is a huge factor. A large amount of the real estate boom and bust has been concentrated in a fairly small section of the US: CA, NV, FL and maybe AZ. If you want to move out of CA's central valley to a job in, say, Boston MA, you're going to be screwed: the fall in home values in the Central Valley is much much larger than the fall in home values in the Boston metro area. And that's not an isolated example: people don't generally leave on economically ruined area for another. They want to go to places that are not economically ruined, and such places tend to have more stable real estate markets where prices took much less of a cliff dive over the last few years.
I've been bitten by the lack of progress measurement and having "agile" requirements before. In most cases my physical presence is a crutch for a bad process, it allows people to make ad hoc decisions because they can grab me and talk in the hall for 10 minutes.

If people being physically present is no longer a given then some level of structure has to be put around decision making and disseminating the results of that to the rest of the company. Too many times I've lost days of work because X was changed to Y and I wasn't at my desk when people were herded together to make that decision.

Having people geographically distributed forces you to deal with communication up front. People are trained to use mailing lists, IM, bug trackers, commit messages etc. properly rather than assuming that if someone wants to know wtf just happened they can shout at you across a room. You hit problems like Mike being the only keeper of process Z early rather than on day 1 of Mike's 2 week vacation to somewhere with no cell reception...
Makes perfect sense
investigating... thanks

Edit - moved the bio to the top, will see what I can do about the skills
(I.A.NOT.A.Dietician/Nutritionalist, so more lay/anecdotal/armchair discussion follows)

I've had the same problems in trying to sort out truth and nonsense, so I just try to maintain an elementary understanding of the basic components of our diets and experiment. List the fundamentals of human nutrition and spend a day on wikipedia taking notes on what we do know. My rules:

1. Know my calorie requirements. How many to maintain current weight, to lose weight, to gain weight?

2. Pay attention to calorie ratios - Protein/Carbs/Fats. Am I working out this week? Anaerobic or aerobic? Do I have extra energy stores right now? What am I burning and what am I storing?

3. Protein quality & diversity of protein sources. Highly bio-available proteins? Simple or complex carbs, high or low GI? Saturated, mono-, or poly-unsaturated fats? No trans fat.

4. Vitamins and minerals. Where are the major gaps in my diet?

5. As little processed food as possible.

There's plenty of information out there on these things. Do your own research. Every week learn exactly what is in one particular food. See what works for you, then eat what you're knowledgeable about and what makes you feel right.
One problem might be that a lot of parents think they have to be the bosses of their kids. Or worse - for once they have someone in their life who has to respect and obey them.
CouchDB 1.0.0 Severe Data Loss Bug Discovered
Some Common Middle School Writing Prompts
Writing prompts are used by middle school teachers to arouse the imagination of the students so that they can come up with new ideas. Students learn to think divergently to find many answers before settling for the best answer. Here are how to answer the writing prompts.
Yesterday someone posted a slightly offensive sounding questions on MO (http://mathoverflow.net/questions/34953/whats-wrong-with-thi...) which was quickly closed. This led to the discussion that I linked in the title.

I am in no position to discuss the paper itself. However, the thread here raises interesting questions on how somebody's unpublished paper can be discussed in a forum. The ante is so much higher because, if this proof is correct, the result would be much bigger than even Perelman's. The attitudes seem to be split.

With scientific publishing trying to become more open source, what are your thoughts on discussing papers in a public forum like this? Would you let your paper to undergo such discussions?
Touché. Can't believe I didn't stop to think about this :)
if you are going to do this, make the checkout form look completely functional(credit card, email, address etc). Why? Because there is something like a 90% cart abandonment rate...and this way you get the real numbers.
The issue as I see it is that not everyone has great vision when it comes to building products/services one could turn a business into. In fact most don't which is why the 10-will-you-buy test is a good way of hacking around this lack of vision.
Precisely my thinking.
Most government programs are very popular, but it is strangely still popular to hate the government. The logical disconnect there should be obvious.

Most people will enthusiastically support programs that take $2 from other people and give $1 to them. If you have lots of programs like that they're clearly wasteful in aggregate, but each individual one will have vocal supporters.
Did you read the entire article?
The Basics of Writing Biology Term Papers
Writing a Term paper on Biology is a challenge. To complete writing a good Biology term paper working according to a set plan is essential. You have to know the various steps in writing a term paper. This article shows how to draw up a plan for writing research papers.
Mallory: A Transparent TCP and UDP Proxy / Debugger / MITM tool
SV as "the digital Florence". I like that.
There's private sector and then there's private sector. I am sure we all would agree that it is best to leave the money at the hands of the general population rather than take it from them and give it to a concentrated small elite.

Besides, whether it is the private or public sector wasting money on wars it hardly makes a difference. It's the people's money and the people would rather keep it or see it used for more productive ends to benefit all and not some elite.
Node.js, web sockets and talking mice
I know next to nothing about P!=NP, but am quite familiar with the statistics literature. Glancing at this paper made me immediately skeptical. Pages 12-27 are reviews of very basic results in statistics. Maybe it sounds like important stuff to CS researchers unfamiliar with this research, but to me it sounds like a basic review of results. That violates Scott's Rule 8. It probably also violates Rule 10 as well, but I'm not familiar with what's considered powerful in CS.

http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=304
Mark Bittman, food writer at NYT strikes a balance between food hyperbole and science that appeals to me. (e.g. full appreciation of health, weight, environment, pleasure trade-offs)

His personal goal of "vegan until 6" is an example. Veggies & fruit during the day, then a balanced dinner with protein.

A bit more detail and links to his sources (books):
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/article967801.ece
Transportation is more necessary than health? I mean if you ill I think you kinda stay in bed.

But yeah, it should provide food and housing for those people who can not get either as it does in Britain and I am sure there too to some extent?
The post needs a modification.

If you're building an incremental product, please do ask 10 people.

If you're building a revolutionary product, build a prototype first, then ask 10 people. Otherwise people will just ask for horses with wheels.
Anybody know what technologies / languages they've used to build Skype?
Icahn Wagered $1 Billion on Energy Stocks During BP Oil Spill
Thanks for sharing. We've had a couple of additional web app ideas, and I think figuring out your user funnel is the most important part of deciding to move forward.

After a bit of discussion, we've decided to identify a few key pain areas and then brainstorm apps around those pain areas rather than taking the first idea that comes to mind. With the app market the way it is, a good idea isn't good enough. You need something that fits a market (that's preferably under-served or mis-served), has a good viral component and is novel. Engineering what app to approach is almost as hard, and less straight forward, as developing the app itself.
isn't real estate one of the safer options

In the US, property owners generally have to pay property taxes. In places where tech folk congregate, such taxes can be quite significant. Most municipalities fund education primarily through property tax levies and given the long term trends in the costs of primary and secondary education, I expect that property taxes increases will outpace inflation over the next decade or two. There are two reasons: technological improvements haven't raised productivity in this part of the economy and aren't likely to in the near future. Secondly, it seems that some (many?) municipalities are engaged in a status arms race regarding education spending and since most people are not equipped to assess educational outcomes, decisions often turn on more easily measured proxies that have little effect on outcomes.

Now the government could of course also try to take my house, but I think the public outcry would be bigger than for other investments - so it seems even more of a last resort governments would choose than other forms of taxpayer exploitation. Am I wrong?

I don't think you're wrong so much as that you haven't assembled evidence to make a convincing case. You're speculating. But without evidence, I don't find your speculation to be persuasive. I don't see much difference between the government raising property taxes and raising income or capital gains taxes. There's no need to seize your home.
Whose Tweets Matter Most?
I sit in a C and it's still a smidgen too short for my lower leg length. So, all I really know is that Bs are too small, and I've spent so little time sitting in a B that I cannot even tell you how. ;)

The difference I notice is the height, and perhaps the size of the seat back, but there may be other differences as well.

I did learn the secret for figuring out an Aeron's size: Under the edge of the back of the seat, stamped into the plastic, are one or more raised dots, like Braille. The one with three dots is a C. The one with two dots is too small for me, and I've never encountered a single dot.
Congrats on the site - it looks like you are getting some traction.

Just a suggestion, but you may want to clean up the skills list. Letting the community add their own skills (rather than suggest) causes the list to get really messy in a hurry.

Example:

Ruby
- Rails
- webapp development
--- Programming
----- XProc
--- sinatra
I don't quite know the situation in that market, but to provide an alternative, it could also be an oligarchy. That is, there's a number 1 guy with 60% share, a number 2 guy with 20% a number 3 with 10% and some little guys.

It is not hard in an oligarchy to act like a monopoly.
I wonder if the guys at Google, Ebay, Skype, Twitter, Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook had 10 people that were willing to purchase their software or service before they started? Did Apple have 10 people lined up to purchase their first product? Were they able to pre-sell the Mac?

I understand what the author is getting at, and it may work for a certain class of startups, but I don't think that it works 's terribly realistic to apply that to all startups. Yes, talking to people about what they want or would be willing to pay for is a good idea, but there's a lot of products that people just aren't going to understand until they see other people using it.

The vast majority of successful startups end up building a completely different product than the one they set out to build. I'd much rather build a minimal product, put it in front of people and then iterate the product until you have something that people want and use.
There's not really any reason that individuals couldn't voluntarily band together to bargain collectively. Right now there just aren't that many people in the individual market to make it worthwhile.
The author isn't factoring in HOW the company writes software...it's not just about what language a company uses. That's a small piece of the puzzle.

Did we read different articles? Because I didn't see any arguments based on what language a company uses having anything to do with the ability to telecommute.