skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I'd recommend the Thomas Jefferson Hour for people interested in early US history or the enlightenment period.

http://www.jeffersonhour.org/?id=16

The podcast consists of Clay Jenkinson, a Jefferson impersonator, being interviewed and answering listener questions on various historical or modern topics. I wouldn't normally like this, but Jenkinson has accumulated a mountain of knowledge on the period, and seems to have read everything that was formative in Jefferson's intellectual development. This creates a remarkably effective illusion that Jefferson is actually speaking.

The format is two in-character sections where Jefferson answers questions, then one out-of-character section where Clay Jenkinson gives context for the answers. Occasionally Jenkinson also does an entirely out-of-character show where he talks about recent events in the news. While out-of-character, Jenkinson always maintains a clear separation between Jefferson's opinions and his own thoughts on a subject.

I don't think The Thomas Jefferson Hour is as good as Radiolab or the Philosopher's Zone, but it's still one of the best podcasts I've ever listened to.
Heh I never realized you were actually in London ! - did I ever bump into you at one of those events without connecting you with your HN/irc nick ?
I was thinking about giving emacs a go as I started a while ago getting proficient in vim and told myself that I would try out emacs after I got fairly good in vim.
Dalian, China. Oil spill there recently but China has designated the entire place a tech zone and is working to make it the "Bangalore of China." Super-low living costs is a plus for entrepreneurs. Only main problem I guess would be language barrier -- while many do know English, it isn't like India where most people actually can speak it (with an accent but hey that's the least of your worries when you're trying to find the bathroom).
I once was asked to fix some javascript. I opened the js file and _every_ _single_ _line_ _of_ _code_ was wrapped in a try {} catch() {}

Some code really does suck.
IMHO the only place in Europe where there's been real innovation - and not just copycats of American startups - is Scandinavia. Think Linux (Finland), Opera (Norway), Skype, MySql, Spotify etc (Sweden).
The logical player wouldn't start bidding, unless they bid first. The illogical player presumably would stop bidding when they get tired (or have changed their billing information so that they can't get charged for their bids!).
As you might imagine, I cannot control the results of user v. user auctions. But in an effort for users to trust my system's bot, I am prepared to post actual results of the last n real user v. bot auctions.
"I believe Microsoft is already working hard at making the next version of Android, as tablet-friendly as possible."

What? The author needs to reread and edit the end of this otherwise good article. There are some other typo's too, but this statement stuck out the most - it just doesn't make any sense unless he meant to say 'next version of Windows'.
As a high school student, here's what I've found:

Most students in public school systems don't actually pay for books, so the students couldn't really care less about who makes the books they use let alone the licensing, cost, etc.

Parents aren't aware enough to demand it of their school systems.

Teachers are extremely skeptical of wiki-style operations from the start, even if there is solid editing.

Marketing open-source textbooks is difficult since it doesn't necessarily generate a whole lot of revenue. Organizations, especially schools, buy stuff that's marketed to them.

Most curricula (especially International Baccalaureate/Advanced Placement) is designed with specific topics in mind. Since there aren't as many open books, there isn't as much selection. Books sometimes miss important topics.

Even though teachers aren't allowed to photocopy regular textbooks, they do. Who's going to file a lawsuit?

There's more, but these aren't necessarily drawbacks to open books, but reasons why they're not really being considered as much.
Conrad Black would be amused at your description of him as a lefty. This guy founded a newspaper specifically to combat what he called "soft, left pap" in the Canadian journalism scene. He and his wife are so retrograde they are open admirers of the monarchy and nostalgic for the British class system.

There is a disease in American politics of attacking the position for potentially being consonant with a particular ideology. Call it the ad ideologicem fallacy.

Like, if this statement could be said by a left-winger, it must not be true, even if it's made by someone with actual experience or data.

Maybe his 100 to 1 statement is factually wrong, or perhaps that was just hyperbole. The main issue is that there's any disparity at all between drug sentences.
This is awesome. It would be really cool if they added comments so that people in the know could explain things (and possibly dispute the outcomes)
Tel Aviv has many pluses:

* Good programming talent.

* Access to capital. (Yossi Vardi alone funds a lot of startups.)

* Great English skills.

And some downsides:

* Young tech people can be whisked away by the military in a heartbeat. (And the draft can go up to 40 years old I hear.)

* Not as cheap as it used to be. Talented people make only a bit less than they would in the US.

* The culture tends to be more argumentative than the US. You can find yourself spending too much time arguing about minor details and not building product.

* Design talent can be atrocious. They aren't as focused on aesthetics as Western Europe or the US.

* Ethnicity based immigration policies.

* Flying there is a nightmare for non-Jews (sorry to put it bluntly, but it's true, I know from first-hand experience). And if you hire a young male Arab in the US, they will probably refuse to go back after visiting the airport once.
An additional point: If you're starting in the EU, it's probably a good idea to incorporate your limited company in the UK even if you're in another country. Most EU countries have less company-friendly laws and more regulatory hassle.
This is something that's never far from my mind; the unknown sliver of time we have. I think about it when I wonder if I'm saving enough money for the long term vs spending it on some experience that will enrich my life in the near term. What's the point in saving for retirement if you could be gone in 20, 10, 5 years, or tomorrow? Everyone's idea of a rich and rewarding life is different, yet shares many commonalities: friends, family, work, recreation, and ultimately how those combine to define a rewarding life.

It's tempting to take my camera and do a similar, but different, collection of memories. If nothing else it's a nice web of memories to leave your loved ones and a nice side project that takes little time. Also, supposing you do live beyond 80 or 90 it would be all the more interesting.
Do you think the richest american's are being financially irresponsible too, or just shrewd?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/business/economy/09rich.ht...
I personsally like The Changelog, run by two big fans of Github and open source. They have on guests to discuss what's new and hot in the world of open source. They've talked to Doug Crockford, John Resig, and some people behind projects like NodeJS, MongoDB, etc.
http://soup.io is also from Vienna
If you are not EU, London is just as hard to immigrate to as the US. Especially with the recent changes in immigration policy.
A handy list, I'll have to read through it more completely some time. There are some surprising speed differences. For instance, array.drop is hella-faster than array.clear, and array.shift(n) is faster yet (what?).

Nitpick on their array tests, however:

measure "Array#delete_if" do
a = ARRAY.dup
a.delete_if {|o| o}
end

Ah, no. If o == false, that won't delete it. Also, you're calling object == true; how about a.delete_if {true}?

"Array#delete_if{true}" is up to 30% faster over 10000 repetitions
------------------------------------------------------------------

Array#delete_if{true} 1.42472314834595 secs Fastest
Array#delete_if{|o| o} 2.03995013237 secs 30% Slower

Also:

>gsubbing with string literals vs regex. For some reason regexp is faster. I suspect it converts string literals to a regexp anyway.

Really? You're surprised regex literals are faster than regex strings?

The gem however is interesting and nice and simple, I may end up using it for my future testing. Haven't looked through the code, however: anyone know if it's making any mistakes?
TED Talks are wonderful

http://www.ted.com/

They have both audio and video podcasts available. search "TED talks" in itunes.
Large Binocular Telescope Sharper than Hubble
Agreed.

As a server management company, we get a chance to see the support side of many hosting companies.

Softlayer is still the best for dedicated server in our opinion.

@mnxsolutions
I'm very glad that you have such a good opinion this city deserves. I'm from Warsaw, If anyone wants tips or grab a beer while here, just ask.

While we don't have lots of international startups, we have quite a lot local ones, and lots of talented people in the IT field. Internet connection is quite cheap, and a westerner also should not have any problems with rent (you can find sth small in a nice location for about 400Euro/mth). Youngsters generally speak English, elders not so much, but you won't have communication problems in popular places, malls and offices.
To me, I think the most powerful thing in the whole post is at the very end it says

Update 4: Jamie Livingston has been added to Wikipedia.

Man takes pictures daily to express his creativity. Those close to him work hard to make it public. A single blogger happens to find out about it and recounts the creativity. The greater social web learns about the life of Jamie Livingston and, in turn, the small expression of his creativity will be felt forever. At least it will be known to whoever wants to search. Forever.
Sampling error is when your sample doesn't match the properties of the population that you're trying to infer for. It's not sampling error if you actually meant to study only the population that you're looking at. I'm saying that when it comes to asset performance, "Countries with a stable political system and market economy" is a better sample than "all countries", at least when you're investing domestically.

The reason for this is that if your home country undergoes political turmoil, you'll need to special-case that anyway. It's very likely that your assets will be seized by force; it's fairly likely that you will be too, and potentially lose your life. Your priority is staying alive and getting out of the country, not preserving $X million in wealth. It's highly unlikely that the country you emigrate to will be able to recognize any claims you might have had on assets in a country in turmoil. The best you can do is to get out and have sufficient friends & skills to rebuild your life.
Sure you can. Berlin had no chance to really grow all through the Cold War, even worse, part of it was walled off and frontline at the same time. That’s why Berlin’s population plummeted even when Germany’s population grew.

It’s not easy to rebound from that (after 45 years), even when you become capital, pretty much all of Germany’s successful post-war industry established itself in western West Germany. And not just industry, Post and Telekom are both still in Bonn and will probably be forever.

Berlin is also in the middle of a huge sparsely populated area. If there are no companies in Berlin that have jobs to offer not many people are going to move there.

(By the way, looking at lists with the biggest German cities is a bit misleading. Sure, Berlin handily comes out top, but look at this map: [+]. That’s not a zillion different cities like those silly natives with their tradition would want to make you believe, that’s just one city with five million people in it.)

[+] http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Ruhr_area-ma...
You might want to try something like a real estate database API - such as this one from Zillow:

http://www.zillow.com/howto/api/APIOverview.htm
This is an excellent argument against the deletionist faction on Wikipedia. Would this be considered notable?
Come on, this is ridiculous. Why was this downvoted? I mean, seriously, what's so bad about the content of this comment that made it deserve at least two downvotes?

If the entire readership of HN hadn't had such an unquestionable integrity without exceptions, I might be tempted to think that it was downvoted simply out of pure childish hatred and not some real objective reason. But that would be, of course, impossible.
Uncle Bob (one of the founders of Agile manifesto, author or Clean Code and Clean Coder) commented this week (http://twitter.com/unclebobmartin/status/19904664214): Never allow a manager to convince you to break your disciplines in the interest of speed. It'll just make you go slower.
It makes it dead simple, among other things, to export the companies data should the company wish that.
I am shocked Tel Aviv is yet to be mentioned. Tel Aviv and the area are an incredible place. Israel is home to more publicly traded companies than all of Europe, 2nd to USA and Canada. More patents per capita than anywhere else, etc. Lots of young people right out of the army eager to organize with friends with the chutzpah to challenge the status quo and change the world.

See http://www.startupnationbook.com/ A fantastic read.

Though living there if you don't have Jewish family may not really be an option, visiting for business and pleasure is easy.
Heroku, they just make your life so much easier. For those few things (especially client stuff) where we need LAMP we host on Rackspace Cloud.
There are a number of citations in the references to the Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Conrad_Black
Your experience is so different than mine that I find it quite fascinating.

I hope you continue your successes! After my own fifteen years of product engineering, I personally do not have the courage to push forward with a major design (be it code, product, etc) without some external feedback validating it.
Ruby is often just as terse as bash, and often simpler to understand. That said I still end up using bash, awk, sed, tr etc.. and don't revert to ruby until something gets complicated. Probably because bash is more portable.
Heroku is also great for Sinatra apps.
You should use http://github.com/sandro/bench_press and share your findings :)
Apple Was Right To Kill Flash
The fact that the article could be deleted didn't even occur to me. If every human being did this, it wouldn't be notable but how is it not notable? Why is there even a "deletionist faction" on Wikipedia? Not storage costs...
Nice work Sandro.

Andy Stone has a benchmark file he's been maintaining that has some similarity to your project. Check it out if your looking for inspiration on additional tests: http://github.com/stonean/benchmark/blob/master/benchmarks.r...
Heh, yep, old habits :-)
"edit: For another example, http://www.mail-archive.com/nanog@merit.edu/msg04890.html and Vixie's reply ("zeal must become the norm.") at http://www.mail-archive.com/nanog@merit.edu/msg04904.html -- this is simply fundamentalism, and it will not lead to a healthy internet."

This is an 8 year old post. And, I think, it's turned out to be an accurate prediction.

ISPs no longer run open relays, ever. In 2002, an awful lot of them had open relays, and did nothing to prevent spam from their users. Likewise hosting providers; if the server owner was paying the bills, they'd keep the lights on for them, even if they were spewing millions of messages a day into the world.

SMTP authentication has become standard and well-supported by all mail clients and mail servers, and is easy to configure.

DNS is now a fundamental part of the spam prevention regime, and DKIM makes it moreso.

Spamming costs more today, relatively speaking, than it did eight years ago. Not just because of RBLs, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Spammers have to keep moving, constantly, in order to keep sending out their spam. Making it cost more is the only thing that works. Asking nicely doesn't do it.

"It's clear when you enumerate the list of problems that you have to spend time on that you're focusing mostly on things which bother a system administrator -- software updates and that sort of thing. However, I'm focusing on problems which bother users -- business owners, employees, individuals, professionals"

System administrators are the ones who have to fix any problems in the mail server. They see all the problems, not just one email going rogue.

Users also care about spam. Users care a lot about spam. Try turning off your spam filters altogether, and see how much happier your customers are. I bet they'll be really excited to know they aren't missing any mail (especially the 823 messages from a Nigerian prince, and the 348 messages about "テクニックに自信ありますか"--I have no idea what that translates to, it's just a spam in my spam folder right now).

RBLs do reduce spam, and make it harder for spammers to operate. I'll continue to use them (in a limited, weighted, manner) until DKIM or some other authentication mechanism makes them completely unnecessary. Spam is a serious problem, and it takes dramatic solutions to fix it.

It seems to me that all the hoopla has long since past. The problems that RBL maintainers were fighting against are no longer standard practice, and when you run into them it generally means the system administrator has done something wrong. False positives are certainly a bad thing, but they happen in all spam fighting systems.

Anyway, I wouldn't use them as a binary switch and I don't know many people that suggest doing so these days, but I certainly like having them available in SpamAssassin.
Assuming the Gov't statistics are accurate, and nothing in the article or survey indicates otherwise, you're asking why nearly half of small business owners believe the economy is worse?

There could be any number of reasons:

- Because nearly half of small business owners are stupid
- Because nearly half of small business owners are doing worse
- Because nearly half of small business owners lack enough knowledge to accurately assess the state of the economy
- Because nearly half of small business owners watch too much -insert cable news channel here-
- etc.

All of these things are perceptions. If the statistics indicate positive growth, it is up to the individual to learn the facts regarding the economy and adjust their perception accordingly.

My statement was correct and the sentiment of the headline was incorrect in portraying that there is a problem in the US economy compared to 1 year ago. The headline was correct in portraying the perception of nearly half of small business owners, and therefore misleading by failing to portray the majority of small business owners who do not hold the misperception that the economy is worse.
Distinction by design is easy, but your site is distinctive because it is a simple and useful tool. The 'distinctive' style will grow with its use becoming more clear and widespread.

Besides that, it really doesnt look like every other site. Almost all other sites are spoiled with eye sugar.
DragonFly: Chinese Apple-esque Hardware
Thanks for the explanation! It sounds like it's a crazy place.

So all you need is $1k and you're in business? But what would I be paying an accountant or lawyer for - handling the registration? Couldn't I just do that myself, and/or did the "secretary" requirement not exist after all?

I suppose $5k is the bank's only requirement for starting a business account then?

> If you have the money, Hong Kong will accommodate all your wishes.

Would "having the money" mean being rich, or just being able to pay whatever fees you come across?
FWIW, I'm no expert but...

I don't really see much of a security benefit to "one DB per customer". The actual data will be stored on the same disks, the queries issued to through the same DB processes. This seems like a huge amount of overhead for very little realized gain.
www.blipfoto.com is a fantastic community for posting a daily photo. It's the whole idea of the site.

This is something that's never far from my mind;

How? It's so easy to take things for granted. Do you really wake up and remind yourself that today could be your last?
Right. Those times of inequality led to extreme actions, like raising high margin tax rates to 90+%, like we did all throughout the Boom of the late 40s through to the 60s.

Those unusually progressive tax rates correlated to the largest economic boom in our country's history, bigger than the roaring 20s and definitely more evenly distributed. I wonder why we were so scared of socialism then when it was right at our doorstep in the form of a nearly 30-year long virtual command economy.
The OP said business owners and top earners. Wikipedia says that in 2006 the median income in the US was $32,140. I'm going to guess that most here on HN are making more than that (and some probably much much more). It's easier to look up towards the people making millions of dollars and miss that statistically you could also be considered one of those top earners. Are you ready to give up huge portions of your income to the government and let them decide how to spend it?

I think the recent hoopla over the financial reform bill and how it shut out small investors from investing in a startup shows how disconnected the policy makers are with reality. Are those the people you want making decisions on the next startup to fund? Even though they revised the bill, they kept the net-worth requirement of $1M excluding ones primary residence.

http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/resources/public-poli...
Verizon: Data breaches often caused by configuration errors
I think this article doesn't do too good of a job distinguishing a conversion funnel and the actual features of an app.

For a conversion funnel, simplicity is better. The less a person needs to do to sign up or make a purchase, the more people will do it. It'd suck to repetitively fill out a form with your address, name, etc. every time you wanted to buy a song on iTunes.

On the other hand, if you're designing an application, the key is to have layers. Not layers like a conversion funnel, but layers of complexity. An app needs to be simple on the surface (i.e. Google), but have features available (but not prominently displayed) for people who want them. For example, Google searches the web. For a first-time visitor, that's all it does. For me, it's a calculator I use when I don't want to open up my application bar, it's a dictionary, it's a meteorologist, it's a way to search Hacker News, etc. There's a lot Google does with one input box, but it doesn't at any point in time force you to notice what it does. It just does it.
I don't buy this. Gmail allows you to sort/select using other parameters. This would simply be another search param.

Note that I'm not disputing the fact that this may be an expensive operation. But I am able to go in through IMAP and issue the equivalent instructions, sort by size in client, then issue IMAP delete/purge requests, the net result is the same so why not enable this.
This is completely off topic.. but how do you name your son "Dakota"? Poor boy ...
It was much worse in the earlier podcasts, the new ones are pretty solid. Don't download the big torrent you can find on Isohunt but download the latest ~20 podcasts. I found the effects irritating too at first but now I kinda like them.
also http://www.serverloft.com/
Dubai and the rest of the UAE just lost a lot of international respect and standing as a business hub, if you ask me.
changed the example and sent a pull request. Thanks for pointing that out :)
A related feature would be to allow deletion of only the attachement but understandably, this is probably hard to do.